Post Content

Dick Tracy, 8/5/22

Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that Marina did end up throwing herself at Detective Tracy, sexually, but don’t worry: his sense of loyalty to his wife and revulsion at interplanetary miscegenation meant that he spurned her advances so he could do what actually turns him on: detective work wearing a hilariously pointless disguise. If I were one of only three or four humans in an underground Antarctic city, I might be less than confident that just covering my face was enough to ensure anonymity, especially since nobody with Lunarian antennae could properly wear that hood. I’m not the world’s greatest detective, though, so what do I know?

Hi and Lois, 8/5/22

I gotta say, as running gags go, “Chip and his friend in the sailor cap try to break out of their suffocating risk-free suburban lifestyle but have no real idea how to do it” isn’t the worst that Hi and Lois can do. Certainly better than “Trixie thinks she’s friends with the sun” or “Dot and Ditto just aren’t very smart” or the other usual fare we get here.

Mary Worth, 8/5/22

“So I get my full appearance fee? Even if I just appear in a thought balloon? Well, I guess that’s OK then”: What I’m assuming Iris said to Mary Worth management, based on her facial expression here.

Post Content

Hi and Lois, 7/31/22

OK, guys, I’m about to go all Pluggers here, but do you (for values of “you” that are as old as I am or older) remember those ads for Heinz gravy that had a tagline about how it was just like homemade, but with “no lumps”? I never understood that line as a kid, but I guess the point is that was as tasty as homemade but, since it had been produced in a gleaming factory rather than by a person in their kitchen like in olden times, it was free of any imperfections, a fully liquid nutritive slurry that slides down your gullet with ease. Anyway, based on Trixie’s line, I … guess this is kind of the joke here? “Ha ha, it’s just like a classic experience you thought you were going to have, but without an annoying part,” except the innovation here is not the industrial production of processed foods but rather the picnic table? It’s either that or we’re supposed to laugh about how Dot thought they were going to eat a picnic and then Lois felt a need to explain how they’re actually just eating at a table in their own backyard for four panels, which is kind of funny, but not “ha ha” funny.

Marvin, 7/31/22

Say what you will about Marvin, but there’s no question about what the joke is today: the joke is that Marvin is going to eat a truly bizarre and disgusting collection of food, and then, in a few hours, he’s going to expel the waste products from that food into his diaper and it will be both more disgusting than how it went in and more disgusting than his usual poops. That’s the joke! The joke is about his nasty shits. Thanks for “yuck”ing it up with Marvin for the past 40 years! (“Yuck” is a joke there because it’s used as a synonym for laughing but also is a noise you make when you experience visceral disgust; as long as you do one of those things, this strip has succeeded.)

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 7/29/22

The punchline here is just supposed to be “ha ha Dennis is dumb/a child” but the arrangement of pieces on the board seems to indicate he and Mr. Wilson are pretty deep into this game considering Dennis is, what, five? Six? Maybe the comment is meant to indicate that Mr. Wilson can’t keep up with Dennis’s keen chess mastery, and Dennis is actually going to soon graduate from thrashing his elderly neighbors and move on to the high-stakes world of competitive chess, which, if the drama depicted in the The Queen’s Gambit, now streaming on Netflix, is any guide, would actually be a fairly menacing move on his part.

Dick Tracy, 7/29/22

Definitely one thing that doesn’t trigger my suspicions at all is when I am a stranger in an unusual community and a comely local lass I’ve just met offers to be my guide in showing me a mysteriously named local monument. I would fully expect to arrive at this “Fountain” and not be asked to participate in a ritual that nobody will tell me any details about, and if by chance I were asked, I feel confident that I could simply decline and receive no pushback about it. This evening is going to go great for Dick!

Hi and Lois, 7/29/22

Oh, stop whining, you two, if you want to court death to feel alive just do drugs like normal people