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Gasoline Alley, 4/10/24

You know, after all these years, I still experience the joy of discovery from reading the newspaper comics. Or, well, at least sometimes I read something like today’s Gasoline Alley, sigh heavily, and then Google “gasoline alley family tree” in hopes of making sense of it, but then am just a little bit charmed when I find a graphic like this:

That comes from a page on Hobbylark dot com that also includes an annotated timeline of important events in the strip lore, such as “Wilmer admits to being a sap, a wart, and a drip, but claims the Army did a job on him!” (November 20, 1945), “Corky and Hope move into a new apartment – landlord is Pert!” (May 6, 1954), and “Melba decides to take advantage of leap year to move Rufus along towards a wedding” (July 5, 1976, and yet somehow Melba is now the mayor and still hasn’t sealed the deal). Anyway, from this documentation I have confirmed that Sheezix and Corky are brothers, and Corky runs the diner (in fact, according to that timeline, 1950 was the “year of the Diner”). And because Corky has decided to embrace the town name change, that means that the coming Gasoline Alley vs. Electric Acres civil war will literally pit brother against brother, so I guess I’m finally coming around to being interested in it.

Judge Parker, 4/10/24

“He’s going to kill your mother, April. Then he’s going to kill you! The he goes after Charlotte, your daughter! It never ends! He’ll just keep going after you or your female relatives! Your male relatives will be fine! Certainly any of your relatives who happen to be the title character in the strip are safe! But it’s the principle of the thing!”

Hi and Lois, 4/10/24

Big news, everyone! Trixie seems to have grasped the concept of the linear flow of time! Also, Hi and Lois did a strip without a joke, but I guess that’s not “big news” per se.

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Dick Tracy, 4/8/24

In a lot of ways, it has to be a real pain in the ass to be a criminal in the Dick Tracy universe — like, you have to have some kind of gimmick, and if someone in your family has already established a gimmick, you have to try to riff on it, even if the result is incredibly labored. What if this lady doesn’t even like crop-tops? What if she dreams of wearing comfortable, loose-fitting blouses, but instead she has to do business with her belly showing, and then feels obligated to stick to a rigorous diet and workout regimen to keep her abs shapely and wear a navel ring to draw attention to it to boot? On the other hand, in other ways it’s actually pretty easy to be a criminal in the Dick Tracy universe — like, you can just walk into a bar and say “Hey, I’m doing some crimes, anyone else want to do crimes with me?” and a lot of people will cheerfully sign up.

Judge Parker, 4/8/24

Wow, big news, everybody! Randy is sick of this same story happening over and over and over again, so he’s shutting down the Judge Parker newspaper strip. RIP Judge Parker, 1952-2024, you taught me it was OK to be weird, but not in, like, an interesting way.

Mary Worth, 4/8/24

HE’S NOT LADY, HE VERY MUCH IS NOT, PLEASE DO NOT ENCOURAGE AND/OR HAVE SEX WITH HIM

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Gil Thorp, 3/28/24

The Milford Mudlarks: the team whose players trust one another so much that they just keep passing the ball back and forth, indefinitely. Is this their key to victory? Well, they never shoot, so they never score, so no, it isn’t. But the trust! Think about the trust!

Judge Parker, 3/28/24

I’ve been commenting on Judge Parker’s April for nearly two decades, and I guess thanks to the magic of comic book time she’s probably a Millennial at this point, right? As evidenced by her steadfast refusal to answer her phone? We can tell she’s not a Zoomer because she’s at least contemplating listening to any potential voicemail the caller might leave. Anyway, her daughter, a representative of Generation … Alpha? I guess this is what we’re calling them? As a placeholder, maybe? … demonstrates that each generation reacts against the excesses of their parents. When she’s old enough to have her own phone, she’s going to answer it, by God.

Mary Worth, 3/28/24

Dawn is — and I mean this in the kindest possible way — a lot. So I can’t even imagine what her mother, who apparently cut her out of her life for years, is going to think when she shows up and says “Good news, mom! I dropped out of college so I can spend the next year focusing on nothing but the mother-daughter time I crave!” I mean, I can imagine what she’s going to think, actually, which is why I remain pretty excited about this storyline.