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Dick Tracy, 4/27/19

Usually a week-sized chunk is the smallest unity of plot for a continuity strip, but Dick Tracy wrapped up its gym teacher murderer plot around about Thursday, so why not use the remainder of the week to keep us up to date on the Vitamin Flintheart/Kandikane May-December romance, which is definitely a storyline that we all care about? A couple days is all we can spare on the miracle of life, though, because a Minit Mystery awaits! (I will not be covering the Minit Mystery, because zzzzzzzzz.)

Mark Trail, 4/27/19

Congrats to Mark: based on his pensive facial expression the final panel here, it looks like he’s finally learned how to have thoughts without verbalizing them. I’m curious as to whether those thoughts are along the lines of “This is an old man’s folly, I hope Doc isn’t too embarrassed when it doesn’t pan out” or if they’re more like “I don’t trust JJ at all! I bet I’m going to have to punch him soon!”

Pluggers, 4/27/19

Once pluggers hit a certain age, they stop even pretending that they have any interest in reading.

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Mark Trail, 1/13/19

It’s always been pretty obvious that loresman and aspirational mansplainer JJ Looper was destined to be the villain in this storyline, what with his bad attitude and overall squintyness. Today he has committed the ultimate sin within the Trailiverse by referring to adorable baby animals as “dumb,” when everyone knows it’s the people in Mark Trail who are dumb. Anyway, he’s about to get his comeuppance remarkably swiftly, and presumably after he’s mauled to death by that ocelot Mark and company will just go take what they need from his store and enjoy some low-key, risk-free gold mining fun.

Gil Thorp, 1/13/19

OK, not to go back on my praise earlier this week for Gil Thorp’ scattershot, tell-don’t-show visual/narrative style, but … you can’t have everyone praise Jocelynn’s hat without showing us the whole hat, guys, c’mon. We gotta see the whole hat! We’re only seeing the bottom of hat. How far up does that hat go?

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Mary Worth, 4/5/19

Ahhh, Toby’s great internet scam adventure, who could forget it? Back in 2008, the Dark Time before internet video streaming, Toby tried and failed to find a DVD about Scotland because she can never think of what to get Ian for his birthday, so she ordered it from the extremely real website enormoushop dot com but then subsequently fell for a painfully obvious phishing scam and her card was misused by northern criminals. She was devastated despite suffering no harm whatsoever, and worried that Ian was going to leave her for being stupid, but it turned out that he didn’t care, like at all. What we didn’t know was that this was Toby’s superhero origin story, and she subsequently dedicated her life to becoming extremely good at computers. So watch out, “Arthur Z”! No matter where you hide in the most disgusting corners of the Dark Web, Toby will find you! [Toby pulls out her 2011 Dell laptop and begins typing: “G … O … O … G … G … wait, that’s one too many Gs, I think”]

Mark Trail, 4/5/19

While most people looking for gold probably are more interested in physical equipment, like pickaxes and stuff, I have to admit that if you’re specifically trying to find a magical disappearing gold mine that a mysterious stranger led you to years ago, you would want a guy who specializes in the lore side of the mining business.