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Dick Tracy, 2/1/19

Obviously Dick Tracy’s rogues gallery skews more towards “seedy underworld” than “powerful supervillains,” but this current plot, involving Splitface, who used to be Haf and Haf, is testing the limits of reader interest in seediness. A couple of hobos in an abandoned factory, arguing over who did more work in ordering a pizza? “I scraped up the money … I called the pizza delivery. Made the arrangements!” bellows Splitface, as if there are any more “arrangements” involved in ordering pizza than scraping up the money and calling in your order. This guy will definitely be a challenging opponent for Dick Tracy, whose only defense consists of dozens of cops, space-age gadgets, lots of guns, and a judiciary system that’s pretty cool about him killing suspects.

Gasoline Alley, 2/1/19

Desperate to keep up with the times and relate to the kids today, Gasoline Alley today reveals that Rufus and Joel’s omnipresent jugs are no longer filled with moonshine, but rather with moonshine’s modern equivalent, purple drank.

Mary Worth, 2/1/19

Is that the slightest hint of a smile Ian’s showing us in panel two? While being complimented by his students (or, really, anyone) is flustering and confusing for him, the position he finds himself in today — being cruelly berated for no good reason — is his comfort zone.

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Mary Worth, 1/29/19

There are a lot of ways this plotline could’ve escalated. Jannie could’ve implied that she’d be willing to do more than wink if that’s what it took to get a good grade, or, if we wanted to be more daring, Ian could’ve implied that she would need to do more than wink to get a good grade. But, nope, Jannie is just going to get outraged that her perfectly insane plan of occasionally saying nice things to her professor and then not doing her homework somehow failed to work. Mary Worth may not always pay off when it comes to actual drama, but it invariably delivers when it comes to characters making inscrutable choices based on opinions and assumptions that no real human being would ever actually hold.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/29/19

One thing you really have to respect about Funky Winkerbean is its commitment to the bit, with the “bit” here being “unending, grinding darkness.” Like, normally, you’d expect a comic with this dialogue to feature its old-timers exchanging rueful smiles and they contemplate the foibles of aging. But no, check out these guys. They’re miserable! Getting old and going deaf sucks, and they hate it!

Crankshaft, 1/29/19

Meanwhile, the joke over in the “fun” Funkyverse strip is that Crankshaft thinks Ralph is talking about his doctors putting a tube up his dickhole, but they’re actually gonna put a tube through his heartholes, because he has an extremely serious and life-threatening medical condition. But at least it doesn’t involve his dick!

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Mary Worth, 1/28/19

Monday is starting with BIG MARY WORTH NEWS, everybody: it turns out that Professor Ian Cameron will not just give you a good grade even if you don’t do your assignments, no matter how vigorously you wink at him. With that out of the way, we can now begin to explore the fact that he’s been ignoring his wife for entirely non-affair-related reasons, probably because he just doesn’t like her very much.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/28/19

Hmm, now I’m beginning to lean away from my longstanding “Hootin’ Holler is an extremely impoverished community that’s geographically, economically, and culturally isolated from mainstream American life” theory and pivoting to “Hootin’ Holler is a deliberately anachronistic intentional community/compound, much like the titular setting of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.’

Dennis the Menace, 1/28/19

Dennis Mitchell only received the nickname “the Menace” during his trial for crimes against humanity, when the results of his awful genetic experiments came to light, but there were signs of what was to come from a very early stage in his life.

Family Circus, 1/28/19

Ha ha, kids sure say the darndest things in Munchausen syndrome by proxy situations!

Sam and Silo, 1/28/19

I admit that I’m still having a hard time trying to figure out what Sam and Silo’s deal is, even in terms of its cultural situation, by which I mean: what are the things outside of itself, in the larger cultural universe, that it references? Today we have name-checked the most famous political crisis in American history and … a 2006 cheating scandal in international test cricket? Never change, Sam and Silo, you delightfully unplaceably weird strip!