Post Content

Dick Tracy, 2/20/11

Wow, do you realize that I haven’t talked about Dick Tracy’s plot in more than 10 weeks? Here’s the sum total of what’s happened in that time: it rained, Dick and his prisoner ended up in abandoned granary, and his prisoner wormed his way out of his chains. That’s it! Of course, this is Dick Tracy, so this action consisted of the same semi-comprehensible catchphrases repeated over and over again and herky-jerky chronology. I assumed, naturally, that all this action took place over about 20 minutes, but apparently it’s been going on for more than a day. It’s possible that all this crazy madness is a hallucination brought on by Dick’s sleep deprivation, but that doesn’t explain the last 40 years or so of what’s gone on in this strip.

The Lockhorns, 2/20/11

Ha ha, so yes, it seems that you can get away with “shitting oneself in fear” jokes in a family newspaper so long as the terrified being is a bird and they poop out eggs instead of poop. I pass over this quickly, pausing only to pray that the people at Shoe don’t get wind of this, because I’m much more interested in why Loretta is out on this hunting expedition with Leroy despite not toting any firearm of her own. Presumably she’s not actually interested in shooting at birds and mostly wanted to wait for Leroy to fail so she could sigh out some heavy-lidded sarcastic rejoinder. So don’t put too much stock in her glum expression; she’s been waiting for this moment, squatting in a duck blind all the while, for hours.

Post Content

Spider-Man, 2/7/11

Whoah, big surprise in Spider-Man today! No, it’s not the fact that newspaper Spider-Man has finally decided to cash in on Twilight mania; that was more or less inevitable. Nor should we be startled by the title character’s braggadocio over his epic sleeping prowess, since we’re all well aware that the sheer magnitude of his laziness is his only distinguishing feature. No, the shocker is that J. Jonah Jameson has decided to transform the Daily Bugle into a British-style tabloid, as we can see in panel two. Unfortunately, on day one the copy desk already used the only Britishisms they knew — “cheers” and “Yanks” and were forced to just slip a placeholding “something” in as the headline’s final word, hoping to cram in some BBC watching in time for tomorrow morning’s edition.

Shoe, 2/7/11

Speaking of the mass media, I’m pretty sure that this is the first time I’ve ever seen ostensible news-bird Cosmo actually perpetrating journalism in this strip. I’m not really sure why he’s filing his story from the Roz’s diner rather than the newsroom, unless the gruesome crime scene he’s describing is actually just off panel, and the characters’ favorite lunchtime spot has become a scene of unimaginable carnage, with corpses everywhere. Gory as the thought is, the strip at least deserves kudos for actually making its bird-world setting integral to the joke, for once.

Mark Trail, 2/7/11

Barely a year after managing to keep an inarticulate interrogative to himself, Mark Trail has apparently learned how to think exclamations without saying them. Soon he’ll be able to construct a sentence complete with nouns and verbs silently, entirely within his own mind — and then there will be nothing he can’t do.

Lockhorns, 2/7/11

Loretta doesn’t want Leroy passing out like last year, so she hid all the booze! Which is frankly pretty cruel. The only thing worse than a birthday party with no guests except the wife you hate is a sober birthday party with no guests except the wife you hate.

Post Content

Panels from Blondie, 2/6/11

These are the throwaway panels from a dumb Blondie about stores being sold out of snack food on Super Bowl Sunday, but I think on their own they constitute a pleasing vignette about two men who are grocery shopping together, and have gone a little insane. I’m sort of intrigued that, despite “corn flakes” almost certainly being a generic and untrademarkable term at this point, the artist has lovingly rendered a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box in Dagwood’s hands, in contrast with the unidentifiable stuff around it (note that the pinkish box to the right of Herb is literally just “cereal”). I’d speculate about paid placement, but if Kellogg’s spent real money on this, any ending other than the whole neighborhood eating Corn Flakes in front of the big game and remarking on how delicious and appropriate they are would be unacceptable.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 2/6/11

You know, in real life or narrative it generally doesn’t pay to overload your metaphors; most people don’t use “straight from the horse’s mouth” to discuss situations that involve actual horses, as it just makes for confusion. That doesn’t mean we should ignore the punchline here, though, in which Loretta implies that a horse farted and/or pooped on her husband.

Gasoline Alley, 2/6/11

Ha ha, it’s funny because a dying Walt is afraid of being tortured forever by the Devil, in hell! Of course, he might not have such worries if he didn’t hold his pastor in such obvious contempt.