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Dick Tracy, 1/18/22

Oh, look, everybody, it’s another quick Dick Tracy Minit Mystery, starring [steadfastly refuses to do any actual research on the relative popularity of Dick Tracy villains] everybody’s favorite villain, Piston Puss! According to the invaluable Dick Tracy wiki, Piston Puss has appeared in exactly one other storyline, in 1966, which means that the Giant Wheel Of Obscure Old Dick Tracy Characters the creative team spins every time they need a new antagonist must be even bigger than I thought. Anyway, clearly this mystery is going to somehow hinge on the order in which the various suspects hung their coats on that rack, so it’s too bad that Piston Puss’s wiki entry doesn’t say whether or not he’s partial to fur coats. Meanwhile, I have some notes on his character design and overall execution: if his name is Piston Puss, shouldn’t his face be a piston? Putting some half-assed metal disks over his ears does not make his face a piston, I regret to inform you. Also, call me bigoted if you must, but I would not hire a part-car, part-man person to work at a car dealership, because I would worry that he would try to eat the cars, or perhaps make love to them.

Mary Worth, 1/18/22

Haha, welp, looks like Wilbur’s not only still alive, but he didn’t even lose his glasses or his belt! We’re not even going to get the pleasure of watching him stumbling around this desert island, unable to see anything and desperately trying to keep his pants from falling down! Don’t think we’ll be satisfied by his comically ruffled combover! We Mary Worth readers aren’t mere goldfish, content to gobble up whatever flakes you drop down on us! IF WILBUR ISN’T DEAD, HE MUST AT LEAST SUFFER

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Marvin, 1/17/22

Man, say what you will about Marvins where the joke is about pooping or peeing, but at least I have some grip on what’s happening in those (Marvin is pooping or peeing, and it’s disgusting). This one, I … am a little lost on? Like technically there are a near-infinite number of vacations you could label a “no skiing” vacation, but I guess that’s supposed to be where you go to a ski lodge but don’t ski, and just drink hot cocoa by the fire instead? But also, did Jeff just forget about this long-planned vacation coming up, because I feel like Jenny shouldn’t have such a sunny smile in panel two if he did. It’s weird! It’s not totally insane or anything, but the whole thing’s a little bit off! That’s why I propose an alternate interpretation: Jenny has set aside the coming weekend for her and Jeff to finally kick the cocaine habit, and Jeff’s not super jazzed about it.

Mary Worth, 1/17/22

Oh, hey, so, uh, in other news, Wilbur is alive, everybody! Wilbur … is alive? Somehow? Did we ever establish where this cruise was happening? Because if it was a west coast cruise, it’s not like there are tons of islets within drunken floating distance of the cruise lanes. That’s why I’m hoping that Wilbur has actually reached one of the upper levels of hell for comic characters, which is that you have to be the hilariously disheveled guy on a tiny desert island with two palm trees in a New Yorker cartoon. Or, better, that’s his corpse, and for the rest of the week we get to watch crabs eat it.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 1/15/22

One of the last pure pleasures of social media is when some bizarre bit of pop culture ephemera from decades past gets surfaced and passed around, and last summer many of us had some good fun with “Inhalants,” a song from McGruff the Crime Dog’s 1987 anti-drug album that, as a viral tweet put it, “sounds like New Order.”

So, I have one note on this otherwise amazing song, which is that “inhalants” is a pretty technical term and probably most kids don’t know that it means, like, huffing paint or sniffing glue, but otherwise this a banger of a track that manages to pack a lot of emotions in to the gimmicky McGruff voice, and I immediately thought of it when I saw today’s Mother Goose and Grimm. This McGruff? The one with the thousand-yard stare and a barful of empty shot glasses in front of him? That’s the guy who sings “they can break you in two” about inhalants and you can tell he knows exactly what he’s talking about.

Family Circus, 1/15/22

Guys, I’ve been spending a lot of time staring at this Family Circus, in which Billy eagerly stares at his mother in a low-cut dress and talks about people getting their eyes knocked out, and trying to come up with an Oedipus joke and I just can’t quite make the pieces fit together. I feel like I’ve let you all down on this one and promise to do better in the future.

Dennis the Menace, 1/15/22

A child amazed by the number of screens in a multiplex but angry that no Western films are on offer? The only menace he represents is one to the integrity of the space-time continuum if he ever returns to his native year of 1953 with knowledge of the future!

Mary Worth, 1/15/22

“Well, he didn’t jump, exactly … here, let me show you the video, but hold on a second while I queue up ‘Yakety Sax.’”