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Dick Tracy, 10/18/17

Awww, yeah, the Space Coupe is back! And maybe with it some of the batshit energy of the 1970s Dick Tracy — no more of this “fake Abe Lincoln audio recording” crap that was the focus of the recent storyline. I’m not sure if there are multiple Space Coupes or if this is the same one where villains from three years ago suffocated to death. Maybe this blue dude is some space alien who found their corpses and decided to joy ride their spaceship back to its planet of origin for a little light interplanetary conquest. Looks like he’s already discovered one of Earth’s finest products already: delicious tobacco! Like all spacecraft built in the ’70s, the Space Coupe came equipped with a designated Camel Containment Unit, to ensure that the mildness levels in the astronauts’ T-Zones didn’t drop to unhealthy levels.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/18/17

Man, that’s … not was doxxing is? Doxxing is when someone who was previously anonymous or pseudonymous online has their real identity revealed, or when you post personal contact information for someone who doesn’t want it posted. Posting fake news articles about someone is … well, it probably has some other dumb fake Internet word for it, but “doxxing” isn’t it. The future is stupider than anyone could’ve possibly predicted.

Marvin, 10/18/17

Look, we spend a lot of time dwelling on the poop jokes in Marvin, but there’s something else important about the strip to keep in mind, which is that over the past decade or so it’s expanded beyond the core Miller family to add new characters (grandparents, talking pets, grandparents’ talking pets), all of whom, without exception, are embedded in a mutual web of loathing for everyone who’s ever appeared in the strip.

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/16/17

Ah, it’s Monday, and what new gloom is settling on the Funkyverse? Well, somebody in a generic office building has been working to track down Darrin Fairgood, somebody with a flat-top haircut and dour demeanor that implies law enforcement of some sort. Or maybe this is tied into the plotline about Darrin’s stalker-y bio-dad that never seemed to come to anything? Anyway, I love that these guys are acting like they just cracked a major cold case by looking up a guy’s IMDB page, as I’m sure it presages hilarity ahead!

Mary Worth, 10/16/17

The problem: Wilbur so hates and fears his own body that he’s unable to even dance properly. The solution: radical exposure therapy, implemented by taking him to the beach, putting him in a speedo, and showing him that nothing bad will happen as he and his beloved frolic together in the ocean for all the world to see. And it’s working! Look at the grin! Feel that joy! His glasses are about to get knocked off his face by the next big wave, but even that won’t be able to kill his mood!

Meanwhile, back in Santa Royale, Mary is sitting in the dark, to make sure she doesn’t accidentally catch a glimpse of her foul, sinful flesh.

Marvin, 10/16/17

Hey, just a reminder that Marvin’s house is wholly permeated by the smell of feces, to the extent that the family dog feels morally superior because he goes out in the yard to take a dump!

Dennis the Menace, 10/16/17

A good way to make us all feel really menaced is to remind us that we’re three or so generations into a long-running experiment to see what happens in a society where most people start getting antsy any time they’re not looking at a screen of some sort, and that experiment is not going well.

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Pluggers, 10/4/17

Do you guys know about Just Watch? It’s a great site where you can plug in pretty much any movie or TV show you can think of and it’ll tell you which of the innumerable streaming and paid download sites out there has it available. (There are probably tons of others, but this is the one I use.) Anyway, I plugged Gunsmoke into it and found…

So I immediately take back all the unkind thoughts I had about Older Dog-Man here. You’ve hit the jackpot, buddy! Your meticulously catalogued collection of videotapes, kept secured in your locked Gunsmoke Closet,represent a resource more precious than gold in the plugger community. Of curse, videotape is an analog medium, and with each viewing the tape degrades, so you’ve got to be smart about rationing wholesome Western entertainment. That’s why you have to make sure that your fellow pluggers pay a price that reflects both market demand and the irreplaceable nature of the resource before you allow them to sit enraptured and watch 333×480 black-and-white imagery flicker across the flat-screen TV that your nephew, after much coaxing, finally hooked up to your wheezing old VCR. He doesn’t get a cut. You sent him $5 for his birthday every year until he turned 18. And you dutifully hit “Record” on the tape machine every night at 11 for years when they still played decent syndicated TV on that UHF channel that’s all half-hour commercials for kitchen stuff now. You’ve earned this.

Lockhorns, 10/4/17

Even see a comic that just seems really stuck in a specific time period, like the Lockhorns with its sort of early-to-mid ’60s suburban vibe, and think, “You know, this strip should really get in touch with a more modern set of cultural touchstones if it wants to stay relevant”? Well, be careful what you ask for, is all I’m saying.

Marvin, 10/4/17

Wait, does Marvin’s dad think that women … don’t use toilets? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it seems this strip has yet to fully explore all of its characters’ terrible and wrongheaded ideas about urination and defecation.