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Apartment 3-G, 3/23/14 (panels)

“Listen, you idiot! I have found a need to fill: as a nurse, at this hospital! In fact, I think I’ll take your job, since it’s so obviously vacant! Sheesh, who do you think I am — Lu Ann?”

Dick Tracy, 3/23/14

When Chester Gould launched Dick Tracy in the 1930’s, newspaper comic strips were a big deal. Like reality TV today, comics had prima-donnas, feuds, alliances, bitter contract disputes, knockoffs, parodies, the whole megillah. One of the best parodies was Al Capp’s Fearless Fosdick comic inside his own L’il Abner. Fosdick “ran” from 1942 through 1977 and spun off comic books, TV shows, endorsements (Wildroot Cream-Oil), jazz compositions, and toys. And here it is again, reparodied in its own source as “J. Straightedge Trustworthy” by in-strip cartoonist Vera Alldid. Wheels within wheels.

Anyway, I hope that Dick Tracy tries to recreate the entire 1930’s comic-strip ecosystem, especially if it makes good on the hint in panel 2 there.

Hi and Lois, 3/23/14

Hi and Lois entertains the Boomer fantasy that their nostalgia represents the apex of culture, but has the wisdom not to push it.

Mary Worth, 3/23/14 (panel)

“Gee whiz, weed and booze are already taken …. I guess it’s meth for me, then!”

Time for me to toddle off into that good night: Josh will be back Monday with your Comments of the Week and brand-new comics snark. Thank you for the wonderful response to the fundraiser, and for a fun week!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/19/14

Mary Beth announces her plans t’ butcher and wed Jughaid based on wildly inaccurate folk anatomy. Upside: plenty of sausage t’ serve at th’ reception!

Crankshaft, 3/19/14

Hey, remember that one summer we rented a lake cottage but it rained all week so we scoured the bookstores and sat at the kitchen table passing around Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks and eating popcorn? And I had to explain to my sister how Ice-9 worked, and felt vaguely uncomfortable watching my Mom read Welcome to the Monkey House?

You DON’T? You mean it wasn’t part of your experience, and hearing some jackass narrate his private recollections isn’t compelling entertainment? Wow, somebody explain that to Jeff here, wouldja?

Mary Worth, 3/19/14

Or maybe these three things are actually just one thing? Hey, I know! Tell him if he had a job he could buy one of those adorable flat cars with the greywall tires!

Funky Winkerbean, 3/19/14

In Westview, smoking is an aspirational vice — the stylish path to a miserable death. The losers who can’t afford $5.67 a pack have to chug contaminated groundwater or huff radon.

Curtis, 3/19/14

Sorry, Greg — once those quotes go up on your “cool,” they never come down.

Edge City, 3/19/14

Hey, Len — that’s pretty “cool”!

Words to live by: “Life is just too damn short to go around carrying store-brand tote bags.”

— Uncle Lumpy

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Gasoline Alley, 3/14/14

Well thank goodness the violent chaos is over in Gasoline Alley! Now we can get back to the strip’s stock in trade: long, drawn-out hyperrealism that hammers home the ennui of middle-class American life. Look forward to the next six weeks of “There’s a problem with Sheezix’s tickets,” which ought to rival the mannered intensity of 2012’s “Sheezix tries to return a DVD player” and 2011’s “Sheezix tries to fix his washing machine.”

Mary Worth, 3/14/14

Wow, this strip is suddenly leaning pretty hard on the “Tommy’s salvation is a post office job” thing. Are potential employees so afraid that the financially troubled agency will collapse that it’s being forced to woo the unemployable to apply for jobs with paid storylines in Mary Worth? “Ex-con? Ex-drug addict? Career opportunities in the U.S. Postal Service await you! If you can make mail-related puns in your mind, we want you!”