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Dick Tracy, 12/2/09

So it turns out that one of my earlier assumptions — that Dick’s reference to “long hair stuff” meant that he and his wife would be attending one of those subversive rock and roll shows, put on by some damn hippie band — was off by several centuries. It turns out, intriguingly enough, that up until the 1960s “long-hair music” denoted classical music. You can find the etymology here, but the gist is that 19th century artists and intellectuals (the damn hippies of their day, like this shaggy-haired punk here) tended to wear their hair long; by the 20th century, the term came to denote intellectuals generally, most of whom by now had gotten respectable haircuts, and by the 1930s it was being used by jazz musicians and journalists to refer to classical musicians, who apparently appealed to a more high-falutin’ educated audience.

Obviously this whole association between classical music and long hair in American vernacular English was abruptly and definitively ended by the advent of the aforementioned long-haired hippies and their rock and roll music. Thus, Dick’s persistent use of it is revealing. Like all right-thinking American law enforcement officials, he hates hippies with every particle of his being; in his fight against what they and their dope-smoking have done to this nation’s moral fiber, he simply refuses to even acknowledge their existence, and will speak as if the 1960s never happened and everyone associates long hair with tempestuous 19th century German artists.

Almost as interesting as all this social etymology is how depressed Dick looks in panel two. “Am I ready for long-hair music?” he asks himself, as if this was the last stage in a man’s life before death. “Normally the only music I listen to is made up of perps begging for mercy as their bones are shattered. Has it really come to this?”

Mary Worth, 12/2/09

AAAUUUGGGGGHHHH WILBUR CLOSE-UP TOO CLOSE ABORT ABORT ABORT

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/1/09

What must it be like to be part of a couple in which both you and your spouse work in the demanding but rewarding medical field, with human lives literally in your hands, day after day? Since I’m a terrible person, I assume it mostly involves petty score-keeping. “Oh ho, Peter, it looks like you managed to kill someone — again — while I nobly went above and beyond the call of duty and found one of my missing patients just before she developed deadly pneumonia. Advantage: Becka!”

Family Circus, 12/1/09

I’m going to skip over Dolly’s chilling views on mother-daughter relationships (“I can’t believe she’s wasting her time talking to that old bag! When I grow up, I’m not even going to tell Mommy where I live!”) and focus on little Jeffy, wearin’ his best penny loafers and just stone cold maxin’ and relaxin’ in that doorway. I love the way he’s holding that book in his lap like a little table. Obviously he has some dim idea that education might be his ticket out of the Keane Kompound, but since literacy will be forever beyond his capabilities, he just grabbed a thin little brown volume (the Reader’s Digest abridged version of Leviticus, probably) from whatever shelf he could reach and carries it around the house with him, hoping it will help, somehow.

Mary Worth, 12/1/09

Mary’s expression of palpable and inappropriate relief may indicate that even a master meddler has her limits; even she doesn’t have the spiritual strength to deal with the emotional problems of a sad sack like Wilbur. “She’ll only be gone a few months, but who will wipe all this dirt off my face? I’m far too sad without her to deal with basic hygiene! Will you do it Mary? I think there are some towels over by the side of the pool.”

Dennis the Menace, 12/1/09

“An’ that’s why we’re buryin’ this snitch in a shallow grave.”

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Mary Worth, 11/30/09

At last, the long, dragged-out saga of Adrian and Scott and Adrian’s Hesitation To Love and Scott’s Many Bullet Wounds is over. (And how did you do in faithful reader 8th Man Fan’s pool? See the results online here, or download them in an OpenOffice or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet!) As is the style of this feature, the details of the new story will emerge at a Charterstone Pool Party, and I’m very excited to see that said new story will involve Mary’s long-neglected neighbor Wilbur Weston, who, for an extra added bonus, has just had his heart ripped from his sweaty, hairy chest (metaphorically), as his girlfriend has skipped town without him. I’m guessing that Mary is oh-no-ing not because Wilbur is sad (as Wilbur’s sadness is hilarious), but rather because, as Charterstone’s resident manager, she was supposed to make sure that Iris hadn’t trashed her apartment before leaving in the dead of night, as one might be prone to do after God knows how many months in a relationship with Wilbur Weston.

Anyhoo, today’s strip is quite satisfying not just because it presages Wilbur’s long-term humiliation, but because it features Ian Cameron in his most outrageous pool party outfit yet. He pays a lot in condo fees and works hard reading years-old lecture notes on Robert Burns to bored undergraduates, damn it, and he deserves to unwind a little, and if that means matching up a Hawaiian shirt, electric blue cargo shorts, white socks, and (invisible, but a pretty safe bet) Birkenstocks, then so be it. Toby has put on her most bland off-pink shirt-dress to make sure that nothing outshines her husband’s aggressive sartorial choices.

Wizard of Id, 11/30/09

Speaking of hirsute humanoids, today’s Wizard of Id contains what I’m pretty sure is another instance of a legacy strip forgetting its own gimmick. Perpetual prisoner Spook, I have always assumed, is portrayed as hairy because he’s been in a dank jail cell, forgotten by the outside world, for decades, and has never been allowed any kind of razor or scissors to cut his hair or otherwise groom himself because he might use them to commit suicide and end his torment. This strip, however, seems to imply that he’s not just someone with long, matted hair, but is rather a member of a particularly hairy hominid species; perhaps his detention is not a result of some long-ago act defined as a crime by Id’s repressive regime, but was dictated by racial purity laws that keep his kind out of the public’s sight. It may be that he is in fact the last of his race, which makes his request for the depiction of a comely she-Spook all the more poignant.

Mark Trail, 11/30/09

Oh, and speaking of soap strips changing storylines, usually in the transition between Mark Trail plots, Mark briefly revisits Lost Forest and spends a few days avoiding his wife’s marital advances before going out on another moronic assignment. Therefore, I’m assuming that what Rusty is warning Mark to LOOK OUT for in eight-gazillion point font is Cherry lying in wait on the side of the road in her attempt to sex-ambush him. On the other hand, they are near the ocean, so it’s possible that their car is coming under attack from a flock of vicious flying squid.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/30/09

Oh look, Peter the Sex Chameleon has made an appearance! He’s normally blond when interacting with his similarly fair wife, but can darken up when necessary to woo a raven-haired beauty. And now that he has encountered a rival for his wife’s affection, his hair has turned red, for anger! Tim’s going to need those throttling-and-punching skills soon enough.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/30/09

Funky is leading Les down into the basement so that he can feed him into the meat grinder and serve him as pepperoni on Montoni’s awful pizzas. Thus Funky Winkerbean’s feel-good holiday storyline begins!