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Dick Tracy, 2/23/22

Kind of weird that Dick Tracy, the man who had a portable voice communications device decades before the rest of us had cell phones, apparently has a … pager? In the year of our lord 2022? Seems implausible, to me. Probably more likely that he’s just desperately trying to get away from Sam as Sam tries to ratiocinate his way to the solution that Dick is going to get by doing some light enhanced interrogation on an informant or two next week. “I’d love to really get into your thought process, Sam, but I’m [tries and fails to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse] getting a page from [tries and fails to come up with a normal-sound name] Riger.”

Crankshaft, 2/23/22

Look, I am a huge history dork, OK? Last fall one of the high points of my trip to New York was going to a tiny train museum in the Catskills where I bought this sign and was sincerely disappointed that we had dinner reservations and couldn’t stay for the talk they were giving about … I don’t remember now, but it was definitely train related. But even I would be very upset if I got a mysterious invite that made it seem like I’m about to learn that my great-aunt was going to leave her entire fortune to anyone brave enough to spend the night in a haunted house, but I show up and it turns out it’s just at the local Historical Society. This is going to turn out to be some NIMBY bullshit where Crankshaft And The Gang Stop Evil Developers From Tearing Down An Old But Disused Silent Movie Theater or something and I’m going to wish they had ended up saving journalism instead.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/23/22

Funky Winkerbean has taken a break from its a plot about how the Oscar nominations work that was marred by a number of errors of fact and chronology, and is now doing a riff about how everyone in Hollywood has an eating disorder, which I have to admit is pretty on point.

Mary Worth, 2/23/22

Oh, sorry, it looks like Cal isn’t going to bring his smoldering youthful libido into Toby’s staid life and reawaken her sexual self, which she thought died years ago in Ian’s bed. No, he’s going to want her to be his substitute mom, but like a cool mom, who doesn’t yell at him when he gets high with his bros and does getting-high-adjacent stuff like playing frisbee or watching Netflix but instead tells him he’s “feeding his creativity.” He will still expect her to sleep with him, though.

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Crankshaft, 2/22/22

God, I certainly hope this is the setup for an Agatha Christie-style locked room murder mystery, where all of our beloved Crankshaft favorites — you know, Crankshaft, [squints at mailbox] Keesterman, Crank … friends, uh, and the, uh, ladies — are summoned to a mansion for a mysterious gathering where everyone has a secret and nothing is as it seems. Will Crankshaft turn out to be the killer … or, better, the victim, and turns out everyone killed him, just like in Murder on the Orient Express! Uh, spoilers for an 88-year-old novel, I guess. And for a five-year-old movie. I swear I don’t know who did it in Death on the Nile! Anyway, yesterday’s strip consisted of Crankshaft aggressively reading the back of a box of cereal and complaining that he didn’t have a newspaper to read, and the bearded guy with one arm used to run the local paper by himself until he quit to spite the hedge fund that bought it, so I’m betting this is actually going to be a meeting where Crankshaft And The Gang Save Journalism, a plot that will make me so angry that I’ll wish they’d all murder each other and then go to jail for it.

Gil Thorp, 2/22/22

I always find it charming when we get occasional reminders that Milford isn’t so sports-crazed as to be able to afford a full-time assistant coach and that Kaz has to double up as a teacher of some sort. In real-life schools, phys ed teachers/coaches are often enlisted to teach health — I got my sex ed from a guy who insisted we refer to him as “Coach” in the classroom and wore short shorts and a whistle at all times, but the information he imparted on contraception and STIs was accurate and complete — but Kaz seems to teach … geography, maybe? No doubt he’s hoping that he can drag out “Paraguay: South America’s forgotten -guay” for two or maybe even three class periods. Pranit, meanwhile, is learning a different kind of lesson, namely that traditional bookies employ burly men to shatter the knees of recalcitrant bettors for a reason (the reason is that if you don’t, the bettors simply refuse to pay you a lot of the time).

Mary Worth, 2/22/22

Wow, I assumed the inevitable Cal-Toby flirtation would begin with Cal showing Toby a drawing he did of her, implicitly saying “Ms. Cameron, look at how young and beautiful you are … in my eyes.” I’m very pleased to be proved wrong and see that his actual opening move was to give her a dreamy-eyed picture of himself. “Here you go, babe. You can rub one out to this if you want.”

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Mary Worth, 2/18/22

Look, I’m not going trying to draw any particular conclusions here, but it is really true that a surprising number of Mary Worth plots involve romances with eyebrow-raising age gaps! You know, Zak-Iris, Dawn-Harlan, Dawn-Dr. Drew, Ian-Toby … and now Toby-Cal? Toby has been whining about her birthday all week, but maybe she’s finally hit that magical age when she can stop being inappropriately young for her sexual partners, like Dawn, and instead can start finding sexual partners who are inappropriately young for her, like Iris. The c-i-i-r-r-cle of life!

Pluggers, 2/18/22

Wait. What. What? You’re telling me there are European pluggers? No. Absolutely not. Actually, hold up, that’s not a very Italian looking name, which leads me to believe that this is an American living in Rome. The only thing less plugger than a European is an American expat in Europe. I demand that this panel be stricken down by the plugger court of arbitration (which consists of three manimals lingering over all-you-can drink coffee at a diner somewhere, to the annoyance of the wait staff).