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Hello everyone! I’m back and very grateful to Uncle Lumpy for his guest-blogging prowess … and extremely grateful for everyone who donated to the Comics Curmudgeon fundraiser! Individual thank-yous are, per usual, coming your way in the next week or so. And now, tanned, rested, and ready to take on … Dick Tracy? Sure, why not.

Dick Tracy, 9/14/20

Brenda Starr and Little Orphan Annie, two iconic long-running continuity strips, sadly came to an end in the last decade, but that hasn’t stopped Dick Tracy from still plugging along (because America likes violent cops more than it likes newspapers or orphans!) and gathering up its syndicate’s intellectual property into a Tribune Content Agency Cinematic Universe. Now Brenda is going to teach Annie and Dick’s half-alien granddaughter Honeymoon to write a journalistically rigorous feature article on … vampires? Sure, why not. I’m honestly surprised that the head of the University of Neo-Chicago’s Department of Ghouls and Draculas they’re interviewing isn’t named “Professor Stakes,” as that’s the sort of on-the-nose nomenclature this feature specializes in.

Crankshaft, 9/14/20

It’s a difficult environment out there for indie booksellers — especially when they have to compete against nice old ladies who operate unlicensed bookstores over their garage, flouting the ADA and any number of fire safety codes and just daring the city’s toothless permitting apparatus to shut them down.

The Lockhorns, 9/14/20

A lot about The Lockhorns, especially the fact that they spend most of their time in a semi-featureless void space, can be explained if you imagine that they’re kept captive in some kind of containment field, possibly floating in a sphere high above the earth, and the rest of the world watches a livestream of their dysfunctional antics for entertainment and/or as a cautionary example. In this alternate universe, journalists like Jake Tapper (?) comment on major milestones in their lives, and presumably everyone’s focus on them brings us together as a nation.

Mary Worth, 9/14/20

I was pretty dubious about Saul Helps A Tween Heal, but I am cautiously optimistic about Saul Woos A Giantess!

Funky Winkerbean, 9/14/20

Honey, just because you’re saying it louder doesn’t make it true

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Pluggers, 8/25/20

The old era of Pluggers has ended and a new one has begun! How will these new-look pluggers distinguish themselves from their predecessors? Well, pluggers have traditionally be depicted as hard-working blue-collar folks, whose very name comes from continuing to “plug” away reliably even though society’s deck is stacked against them. But new pluggers? New pluggers have realized they can just take a nap and they honestly don’t even feel bad about it! Plugging away at things is for suckers! I’m both excited to see where this strip is going and terrified at what pluggers will do now that they’ve rejected the societal norms that have served as guardrails for their behavior up to this point.

The Lockhorns, 8/25/20

Maybe it’s a bit odd, but I’m more willing to accept change in Pluggers than I am in The Lockhorns, who in my opinion are inhabitants of Levittown circa 1965 and should stay there and then, forever, and should definitely not be watching shows only available on streaming services. Anyway, that fence is nowhere near tall enough to block out spoilers, neighbor! Leroy may be a gnomish three feet tall, but he can still easily shout audible spoilers into your yard! The only solution is to enclose their entire property under an air-tight dome, which frankly you should’ve done a long time ago.

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Blondie, 8/15/20

Honestly, what exactly is the social context for the first two panels of this strip? Herb and Dagwood are eating out together, decked out in their pastel polos, at someplace fancy enough to have white tablecloths and high prices. What’s really eerie to me, honestly, is how completely spotless that tablecloth is. Maybe I’m a slob but that seems kind of unusual, post-meal, yes? Maybe Dagwood, driven by his omnipresent, insatiable hunger, sucked every last molecule of food out of the fibers of the tablecloth once he had licked his plate clean, literally. You can see why Herb might be reluctant to pay in that situation.

The Lockhorns, 8/15/20

It’s of course common to see Leroy and Loretta using their occasional guests as props in their sick psychodrama, which explains why said guests never visit more than once. Today seems to be breaking a new frontier, however, in that Leroy and Loretta are actually opening up emotionally to their friends about how troubled their marriage is, maybe in hopes of getting some guidance on how to turn things around. (These people will also not visit more than once.)

Shoe, 8/15/20

“Get it? Sheltering? Sweltering? Anyway, you don’t seem to be sweating so it’s possible I’m just running a high fever, but I got bored of staying at home so whatever. You don’t mind if I breathe all over you, do you?”