Post Content

Dick Tracy, 6/16/23

Dick Tracy is, indeed, a rich tapestry: one of its supporting characters, Diet Smith, is a wealthy scientist whose inventions have conquered both space and time, which led to sci-fi adventures on the Moon (whose people are now hiding in Antarctica), but the strip’s world also has room for comical rustics like the Plenty family with their old-timey phones and in-home poultry. These two storylines have collided both in Dick’s family, because his son married Moon Maid, the Moon Governor’s daughter, who later got blown up by car bomb, and then he married Sparkle Plenty, Gertie and B.O.’s daughter, but then Moon Maid came back and everyone got uncomfortable for a while until it turned out she was just a gangster’s girlfriend modified with moon DNA and forbidden science. Whew! That’s quite enough Dick Tracy backstory for the moment, so we’ll have to leave for another time the questions of whether the Moon Governor is aware that he’s named a new space coup after his dead daughter’s widower’s second wife, or why he uses “M.G.” as his initials. (Is “Moon Governor” his name?)

Pluggers, 6/16/23

All of us, pluggers and cosmopolitans a like, define ourselves and our tribes in part in terms of the qualities and habits in the Other that we lack. I am surely guilty of this in my many comments on the Pluggers syndicated newspaper panel, but I feel confident the panels themselves engage in the same practice, and I cannot look at this one without assuming that your typical plugger thinks my razor blades, my face, and indeed my entire coastal elite bathroom are simply awash in blood.

Judge Parker, 6/16/23

[extremely “LET’S GET READY TO RUMMMMMMBLE” voice] LET’S GET READY FOR THE SUMMER 2023 JUDGE PARKER POLYCUUUUUUUULE

Post Content

Judge Parker, 6/15/23

Sorry you’re a coward, Sophie, but I actually would’ve liked to have seen the process by which Abbey decided to “get back out there” on the dating scene, and am definitely curious about which apps she used, considering that she’s the richest person in town and just had a very public failed campaign for mayor driven by revenge for having been falsely accused of burning down her own B&B. Was she on Raya, the dating app exclusively for celebs, rich people, and the celeb/rich people adjacent? Does Raya do local matches, or was she just getting a bunch of silver-haired finance guys in NYC or London? Did the pic where she “felt cute” look like this surreal nightmare?

The Lockhorns, 6/15/23

This joke is enh but I am very charmed by the way the bartender is smiling at that bottle in the background. “Oh, brown liquor,” he’s thinking to himself, “you and I have brought happiness to so many people! We’re a great team!”

Hagar the Horrible, 6/15/23

Wow, I’ve spent so much time on this blog trying to figure out where exactly in the late Carolingian era Hagar the Horrible takes place, only to learn today that Hagar’s civilization is actually part of the pre-Deluge world as described in the Book of Genesis! Definitely this is a society that is corrupt before God and filled with violence, so this adds up.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 6/10/23

Look, I am a huge animal lover. My wife and I have two cats that we dote on and spend a probably unreasonable amount of time thinking and talking about. We also trapped and neutered many feral cats who made their way through our neighborhood, and three of them now live in our yard full-time, and we feed them even though none of them will lower themselves to allow us to pet them or anything. If any of them were to disappear one day (something that is inevitably going to happen with the ferals), I would be devastated. And yet even in my grief, I would never assume that the fate of one of these beloved creatures would ever be worthy of coverage on the local news. I’m sorry, I know Santa Royale isn’t a big media market like Los Angeles, but there simply isn’t a news day slow enough for this.

Judge Parker, 6/10/23

Remember when Sophie was a weird tween and used her telescope to spy on her sister doing “that tongue thing” with a long-forgotten boyfriend? She sure took it all in stride then, just wryly smiling at the thought of it, though I guess it’s a little more surprising to physically stumble into your recently divorced parents making out than it would be to observe the human mating process from a safe distance through a specialized scientific instrument.