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Mary Worth, 10/8/06

So as I was contemplating this strip on my computer screen with Mrs. C. looking over my shoulder, I said, “Boy, Mary sure is looking…” and she said, “LAVENDER?”

She’s right, of course, but the word I was looking for is smug. In fact, this whole quartet of murderers is looking awfully self-satisfied as they get dressed up for one last look at the mangled body of the man they condemned to an early grave. Mary looks in particularly good spirits in the last panel for someone who’s contemplating her degree of responsibility for a poor schmuck’s untimely demise. In fact, the only way that facial expression would make sense to me would be if you replaced “prevented” with “expedited.” “Could we have driven him to suicide even more quickly somehow and saved me some annoyance? What if we had dressed Toby up as the ghost of his dead wife and demanded his soul in exchange for hers? Oh, that would have been delicious! Too bad we’ll never get the chance now…”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/8/06

There’s been much buzz in the comments of this site about how and when Heather’s Brigadoon In-Law Adventure and Tommy Lee’s True Tales Of White Trash are going to link up, plot-wise. But now that we know that Milton’s family isn’t a bunch of kilt-wearing, Sassenach-hating Scots snobs but just poor, I propose an elegant solution to the problem: what if these lowlifes are Milton’s family, and Nikki (whose gender I still haven’t been able to figure out) is Milton’s son? You can’t hear accents in dialog balloons, after all. It would be a lot less Ivanhoe and a lot more Trainspotting, but would be entertaining nonetheless.

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Apartment 3-G, 10/6/06

The Case Of The Dumb Blonde In The Mysterious Dark Building has been grinding on slowly while the other A3G girls enjoy their old-man-taunting dinner party. It’s not exactly clear where it is that Lu Ann is sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong; presumably its door was opened by the mysterious set of keys Alan left for our blonde bombshell back in August, and it’s the only building in New York that isn’t in the midst of a condo conversion. Hopefully the moodily lit Lu Ann will get to the top of the stairs and discover that Alan has been living for the past few months Phantom Of The Opera style in a ruined but strangely beautiful aerie, where he’s been perfecting his art in isolation and brooding over the girl who got away. Either that, or it’ll be some kind of sex dungeon.

I don’t like to criticize when I can’t offer alternative solutions of my own, but: I’m not really sure how in the context of a single relatively small panel you’d indicate that a character’s flashlight is starting to flicker on and off, but I’m pretty sure having it emit the words “BLINK BLINK” isn’t it.

Mary Worth, 10/6/06

OH MY GOD FUNERAL FUNERAL FUNERAL! You know what happened the last time Mary went to a funeral, don’t you? Don’t you? AWESOMENESS! Even if Aldo really is dead, surely the presence of the evil meddlers who drove him to desperate self-harm will cause some sort of angry riot among his (no doubt many) friends, family members, and loved ones. Will Mary and Toby have to flee one of Santa Royale’s classiest funeral homes one step ahead of an enraged mob of Kanes and Kelrasts? Will Ian and Wilbur find their bodies strung up from the nearest lamppost the next day? Or (better yet) will this “funeral” turn out to be an intervention for inveterate meddlers, presided over by none other than the not-really-dead Aldo himself? I mean, in real life, it’s probably going to be a chance for Mary to dispense Bartlett’s-worthy bon mots about alcohol abuse, but let a guy dream for a day or two, OK?

Mark Trail, 10/6/06

Uh, yeah, but Mark is really just lulling Hoyt into a sense of complacency, and then he’s going to turn around and punch him in the jaw, right? Right? I mean, the phrase “Keep your dogs off of Lost Forest property, Hoyt” would be best delivered with Hoyt supine, cowering, and nursing a broken nose.

I have a feeling that Molly is going to have a hard time understanding the hostility towards her from the administrators of the local hospital and the county health inspectors.

Ballard Street, 10/6/06

Uh, yeah, her own mind. That’s what she’s deriving all that pleasure from. Riiiight.

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So, today was the 75th anniversary of the beginning of Dick Tracy! Many of the strips distributed by the same syndicate offered their tributes today, which were for the most part significantly less wanktastic than Blondie’s endless anniversary hijinks. The awards for the two least seamless nods go to:

Gil Thorp, 10/4/06

Gil Thorp, which features a namecheck by a teenager who never reads the paper and wouldn’t read a 75-year-old comic strip if he did, and who was at most two years old when the most recent movie incarnation of the franchise came out; and…

Shoe, 10/4/06

Shoe, which features Detective Tracy’s severed head in a case behind Roz’s bar, with death’s grim rictus forcing him to feign amusement at this awful joke.

In non-Dick Tracy news:

Mary Worth, 10/4/06

Actually, it seems to me that in a single evening you corrected things quite nicely.

Seriously, I’m really beginning to believe that Mary and her crew are just going to talk themselves into a sense of guiltless satisfaction. If this is the beginning of the all-singing, all-dancing, all-sociopathic Mary Worth, then I’m going to just embrace it and run with it. I can’t wait to see what murderous crimes they’re going to escalate to next! “Yes, perhaps crucifying Mr. Jenkins in the Charterstone courtyard and leaving him to die over a period of days was a bit harsh, but he did tread on the flowerbed, and there is a sign warning against doing just that, so in a real sense, this is all his doing.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/4/06

Wow. So, it looks like June and Heather are on the verge of a full-on makeout session, with Rex watching from afar and thinking “ME LIKEY!” Could this strip get any more polymorpheously perverse — or divorced from its ostensible narrative content?

June seems pretty upset that Heather’s petty personal problems have ruined her vacation plans. I’m surprised Heather even bothers to bring up her mother’s feelings, which are clearly not as important as June’s, who had already picked out the kilt Rex was going to wear. All this clan stuff sounds promising to me, though; Heather’s English, if I remember right, so maybe we’ll get into some kind of Anglo-Scot hatred storyline that will baffle the vast majority of Americans for whom all “those people over there” are pretty much indistinguishable.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 10/4/06

YEAH, THAT’S JUST HOW IT IS! ‘CAUSE YOU STILL LOVE HER, BUT SHE LOATHES THE VERY SIGHT OF YOU! WHAT’RE YA GONNA DO? HAW HAW! Ah, whimsy.

UPDATE: So it turns out that “David Tarafa” is actually faithful reader and occasional commentor Lambnesiac, who is the first Curmudgeonite to be successfully TDIETed. And, uh, whose marriage is I’m sure much, much healthier than the Scadutotization would have you believe. Uh. Heh.