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Dick Tracy, 3/7/20

Apologies for not keeping you up to date on this Shaky plotline, but long story short, Dick Tracy’s wife Tess is a PI now and she got some guy sent up the river and Shaky is blackmailing her because he says he has evidence that she falsely accused this dude. Tess knows this evidence is false, and has already talked to Dick about the whole situation, but nevertheless Shaky is extremely confident that he’s going to pull it off, even though he’s fairly obviously walking into a trap. This Shaky is a relative of the original, classic Shaky, so I guess the lesson here is to never trust failsons (or, in this case failcousinonceremoveds) just coasting on their family legacy to get the job done. Look at this dink! He can’t even do an animal metaphor right! Merging together two inscrutable animal metaphors doesn’t create one metaphor that makes sense, Shaky!

Mark Trail, 3/7/20

Aw, look at this mischievous little orphaned imp! I wonder what “trouble” he got up to that ended up with him being forced into doing nature stuff? Robbery? Assault? Con artistry? Hopefully Rusty can tell him what it’s like to have a dad: first you don’t have a dad, then you find some weirdo who lives out in a forest compound who vaguely feels like he should have a family but definitely doesn’t want to do sex stuff with his wife, then you live with him for a while, then you wait until a tree falls on him and you start calling him “dad” and he doesn’t actively stop you. Maybe Rusty can help you find a dad, Kevin! There’s plenty of big trees out here the two of you could drop on somebody!

Mary Worth, 3/7/20

While Dawn is out nerding it up with Jared, in Paris, Hugo is … spending time? With a woman? Like a whore? I mean, it looks like they’re in an “office” which means they’re “co-workers” and have to “spend time together” for their “jobs,” so I guess those sluts over in France just do things differently, but still: Hugo, you dog.

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Mark Trail, 3/4/20

Oh, huh, it turns out that Rusty hasn’t been kept away from the Forest Explorers for their protection, but for his, because they’re “bad kids” who are being taught a lesson by taking them out into nature and “get[ting] them involved.” Involved … in … something? Forest crimes, maybe? Is Geoff a modern-day Fagin, running a gang of backwoods child criminals? If so, we have to wonder if Rusty will narc them out to Mark or if, his mind and morals softened up by the cyberbullying filth of the comics pages, he decides to join them in their sinister schemes.

Marvin, 3/4/20

Ha ha, it’s funny because Jeff finds his own son unbearable, and now uses the child’s worst qualities as tools of revenge on a world he despises!

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Dustin, 2/29/20

I’ve beat this drum before, but it continues to boggle my mind that Dustin, a strip deliberately dreamed up to poke fun at the foibles of millennials, constantly goes to the well of jokes about its millennial characters’ dating life without ever even mentioning Tinder or other dating apps and instead having them go cruise for love at the local fern bar as if they were characters in Shoe. But I also feel it’s important to note that, once you get past this oddity, you get to the actual theme of these strips, which is that Dustin and Fitch, two of the recurring characters whose life the strip offers up to us to experience, are completely unfuckable, just an utterly dogshit pair of dudes who women reject literally on first sight.

Arctic Circle, 2/29/20

The whole deal with Arctic Circle is that its characters all live in the Arctic, and while I’m not sure what the tone of the strip has been over the full 12 years of its run, I can tell you that today it’s about a group of characters living in an Arctic biome completely collapsing due to climate change. This is of course always pretty grim, but today’s strip, in which it appears that a mountain of beaver corpses has been piled up in a futile attempt to hold back the tide of rising sea levels, is really something else.

Mark Trail, 2/29/20

“Normally we don’t let Rusty interact with other children because his face would frighten them, but these kids have seen all kinds of savage beasts in the forest! They’re tough! Maybe if we keep his mask strapped on tight, he can join them!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/29/20

HELL YEAH SNUFFY

NO GODS NO MASTERS