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Dick Tracy, 6/10/18

Ha ha, I guess this is why they call him “Sawtooth”: if you try to make small talk with him during the 46-hour train ride from California to Chicago, he’ll bite your head off! Metaphorically. And maybe literally, later. 46 hours is a long time. And that’s the scheduled travel time. Those long-haul Amtrak routes often run very late. Lotta opportunities for, say, a guy with metal teeth to bite another guy’s head off, is what I’m saying. He’d have some soothing quiet then, by God. Except for all the horrified screaming, I guess.

Mary Worth, 6/10/18

Remember, Mary is of a certain age, so she uses euphemisms like “seeing someone at the Medical Arts Building” to mean psychotherapy and “exciting personal life” to mean “non-stop fuckfest with a hot rich dude her son’s age, to which I have given my blessing.”

Spider-Man, 6/10/18

Boy, there’s a lot of musing about hospital administrators padding out this comic before we get to the best: the NEXT: box that boldly uses the completely horrifying phrase “spider of flesh!” Imagine if you will a spider not covered in chitin like the ones you know, but rather just composed entirely of flesh. Just a spider-shaped flesh-chunk, no organs or anything like that, but somehow alive, and moving. Pretty awful, right? Sure would want a fist made of iron to come along and pound it into oblivion!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/10/18

“…with a bigger budget than most, of course. So, in other words, I’m not like a regular mom at all! I’m rich as shit!”

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Gil Thorp, 6/7/18

So it took almost a month, but the Milford Trumpet finally landed its interview with Barry Bader, to allow him to tell his side of the story! I thought the high point was a few days ago, when Barry said that his dad feels bad about killing Boo Radley in a drunk driving accident, but he’s doing his time and have you noticed that Boo could be kind of sarcastic when she was alive but now that she’s dead everyone thinks she’s a saint? Today, though, we get to the true meat of the interview, which is that Barry is convinced that the world is stacked against him because he’s short. Did you know that Barry was supposed to be short? I sure didn’t! I guess that’s what the joke in this strip is supposed to be about, because I guess Jay Bhatia is supposed to be short too! It would probably be easier to tell which characters in Gil Thorp were short if the POV in every panel weren’t at some crazy, improbable angle, just sayin’!

Mary Worth, 6/7/18

I regret to inform you that Mary and Dr. Jeff have spent their entire lunch date chatting about Wilbur’s journey of self-actualization, although apparently they’re still of the generation that doesn’t like to use the word “therapy” and so resorts to circumlocutions like “talking to a professional” or “seeing someone at the Medical Arts Building.” Dr. Jeff seems into it, but I do notice that he’s just rattling off whatever vaguely therapeutic things he can think of while holding the door open pointedly and hoping Mary gets the hint that it’s time to go.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/5/18

It’s hard to get a handle on exactly what the larger world of Snuffy Smith is supposed to be like, either geographically or chronologically. Is Hootin’ Holler a uniquely isolated community, surrounded by a modern flatlander civilization we would recognize, or is it simply one of a whole complex of adjacent hollers, each similarly cut off from mainstream American life but all connected to each other via a tenuous network of mountain roads? And if our protagonists were to wander beyond the hills, would they find the big-city denizens to be dressed more or less like us, or in garb as anachronistic as their own? What I’m trying to say is that I really want to be mad that this dude has old-timey prospecting gear and not, say, a metal detector, but I feel like I need to understand where and when he comes from before I get all worked up.

Mary Worth, 6/5/18

Why, look! It’s Mary’s beloved boyfriend Dr. Jeff! When we last saw this distinguished gentleman, he had just enthusiastically introduced Mary to his good pal Ted Miller, who then tried to rape her and so she cut off contact with him but never told Jeff about it. Now they’re getting together on Jeff’s lunch break and talking about … how lucky Wilbur is to know Mary? God, I just love the solid line of communication that keeps this relationship strong!