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Hello everyone! I’m back and very grateful to Uncle Lumpy for his guest-blogging prowess … and extremely grateful for everyone who donated to the Comics Curmudgeon fundraiser! Individual thank-yous are, per usual, coming your way in the next week or so. And now, tanned, rested, and ready to take on … Dick Tracy? Sure, why not.

Dick Tracy, 9/14/20

Brenda Starr and Little Orphan Annie, two iconic long-running continuity strips, sadly came to an end in the last decade, but that hasn’t stopped Dick Tracy from still plugging along (because America likes violent cops more than it likes newspapers or orphans!) and gathering up its syndicate’s intellectual property into a Tribune Content Agency Cinematic Universe. Now Brenda is going to teach Annie and Dick’s half-alien granddaughter Honeymoon to write a journalistically rigorous feature article on … vampires? Sure, why not. I’m honestly surprised that the head of the University of Neo-Chicago’s Department of Ghouls and Draculas they’re interviewing isn’t named “Professor Stakes,” as that’s the sort of on-the-nose nomenclature this feature specializes in.

Crankshaft, 9/14/20

It’s a difficult environment out there for indie booksellers — especially when they have to compete against nice old ladies who operate unlicensed bookstores over their garage, flouting the ADA and any number of fire safety codes and just daring the city’s toothless permitting apparatus to shut them down.

The Lockhorns, 9/14/20

A lot about The Lockhorns, especially the fact that they spend most of their time in a semi-featureless void space, can be explained if you imagine that they’re kept captive in some kind of containment field, possibly floating in a sphere high above the earth, and the rest of the world watches a livestream of their dysfunctional antics for entertainment and/or as a cautionary example. In this alternate universe, journalists like Jake Tapper (?) comment on major milestones in their lives, and presumably everyone’s focus on them brings us together as a nation.

Mary Worth, 9/14/20

I was pretty dubious about Saul Helps A Tween Heal, but I am cautiously optimistic about Saul Woos A Giantess!

Funky Winkerbean, 9/14/20

Honey, just because you’re saying it louder doesn’t make it true

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Six Chix, 9/11/20

Hmm. Is this a “guys don’t do dishes” joke? Is Blondie there a guy? Are these two in fact pretentious artists, and that’s a legit installation? If so, what’s the joke? Are the flies in on it? Hey, that lady’s wearing a beret! Maybe these are pretentious French artists washing down the last of their beautifully-prepared meal with a well-chosen wine, but they can’t be bothered to clean up or even bathe?

Funky Winkerbean 9/11/20

This is one of those conversations where the participants aren’t so much listening to one another as waiting for their own turn to talk. Or, in Funky’s case, whine. It’s not clear why a guy who avoids exercise and is a notorious jerk at the gym expects a medal, but hey, these guys.

And have you ever wondered why we don’t ever see Les Moore smile — I mean not just squeeze out one of those little sideways triangular smirky moue things, but really smile? Well now we know.

Mark Trail, 9/11/20

I’ll admit to being a real sissy when it comes to child- or animal-in-danger movies, stories, you name it. I’m glad this strip is a rerun because that way I know Andy will make it, and I won’t have to avert my eyes or even leave the theater the way I had to back when there were movies. On the other hand, I could watch “Mark runs briskly in place” all day long.

Mary Worth 9/11/20

Greta watches them approach. Yes, he’s “a big one,” all right — they both are, and their matching neckwear tells her all she needs to know. About Saul’s neediness, and her own role as bait in this sick charade.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Mary Worth, 8/29/20

If you had asked me where I might expect to encounter the line of dialogue “Pain exists. But so does hope,” I would’ve guessed the end of the first act of a big-budget superhero origin story movie, with an anonymous hooded figure staring down at our protagonist and throwing him a rope after he’d been left for dead in a pit somewhere. Our hero climbs out but the figure is gone, but he’s inspired to enter a years-long rigorous training program to make himself into the perfect fighting machine so he can defend his city from the kind of evil-doers who almost killed him, only to discover at the climax of the film that the mysterious leader of the twisted criminal syndicate he’s been trying to defeat is in fact his long-ago rescuer. “We’re not so different, you and I,” intones the Hood as the two of them battle it out on the city’s rooftops. “I made you so you could make me. A shadow cannot exist without the light.” But, you know, it could be an contented retiree making amiable chitchat with a tween as they sit besides the pool on a sunny Southern California day, that would work too!

Hi and Lois, 8/29/20

Today’s Hi and Lois is brought to you by the good people at the International Dairy Foods Association. In These Unprecedented Times℠, Cheese: Now More Than Ever™.

Pluggers, 8/29/20

Pluggers want more tomatoes. More. More tomatoes. Do you think they’ve had enough tomatoes? They’ll tell you when they’ve had enough. There will never be enough. More tomatoes. Bring more tomatoes to them. More. MORE. M O R E