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The Phantom, 3/19/19

Welp, Kadia and Heloise have been successfully extracted from the U.S., probably in only slight violation of international law, and now we’re set up for a daring new adventure, where the Phantom rescues Kadia’s mother from a heavily armed terrorist compound. And what better way to start than with six to eight weeks covering the girls’ schooling situation? The kids are leaving their elite private New York boarding school behind for an honest public school in Bangalla, but one thing is staying the same, which is that they are not living at home. It’s the most important rule passed down over the ages by generation after generation of Phantoms: no teens living in the house under any circumstances.

Pluggers, 3/19/19

You hear that, liberal elitists? Pluggers are not switching to metric time, no matter what the United Nations says! If a sexagesimal system was good enough for the ancient Babylonians, it’s good enough for us.

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The Phantom, 3/17/19

So the Sunday Phantom storyline has involved a little girl who’s stowed away on a historic airplane that’s using travelling to air shows around the world as a front for exotic animal smuggling in an extremely well thought out scheme. Mostly I like today because the Phantom has announced that these rogues are going to face prison … in Bangalla, a country that isn’t the site of any of their crimes and which has no legal jurisdiction over them, and it’s like, who does the Ghost-Who-Walks think he is, American?

Spider-Man, 3/17/19

Reading this, I assumed that longtime Newspaper Spider-Man credited writer Stan Lee famously said “Ditto” in a movie once, but turns out nope! So I guess that Peter and MJ are spending their last ever Sunday strip paying homage to, uh, the smash hit 1990 Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore vehicle Ghost. Excelsior, everybody!

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Mary Worth, 3/12/19

Oh, hey, if you’re wondering where the Estelle/Arthur Z (or, more accurately, Estelle/team of catfishers hanging out in a Kuala Lumpur cybercafe operating the “Arthur Z” SilverDaters account) is at, it’s reached “quoting e e cummings over the phone,” and Estelle is over the moon! The main question I have is if they’ve somehow tricked her into calling into a phone number she has to pay them for, or if they’re doing this toll-free via Skype or whatever and they’re keeping their powder dry for the moment when “Arthur Z” loses his wallet and needs a five-figure sum wired to a Malaysian Western Union office, stat.

Mark Trail, 3/12/19

Meanwhile, in Mark Trail, Cherry’s dad just got a phone call letting him know his old friend died, which means we have six to fifteen weeks of a “Doc confronts his own mortality!” adventure ahead of us. Not sure how they’re going to work Mark blowing up a boat into this but I’m confident they’ll find a way.

Beetle Bailey, 3/12/19

The Wikipedia list of Beetle Bailey supporting characters is invaluable to a scholar of the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC oeuvre such as myself, but I have problems with some of its takes on the players’ personalities. For instance, Dr. Bonkus (NO REALLY HIS NAME IS “DR. BONKUS”) is described as “Camp Swampy’s loopy staff psychiatrist, whose own sanity is questionable,” but in all the time I’ve been reading the strip he’s never been anything other than a long-suffering straight man to everyone else’s antics. I kind of enjoy the fact that today’s strip takes place in two entirely different locations; it would have been a little shticky if Rocky had pulled out his guitar and delivered this punchline in mid-session, but as it is we can imagine that he just said “Great!” and got off the couch and left without further explanation, leaving Dr. Bonkus behind to sigh heavily and contemplate, not for the first time, just how much he really helps his patients.

The Phantom, 3/12/19

You’d think that when you’ve been raised from birth to be the 21st in a lineal series of mysterious jungle superheroes, you wouldn’t make rookie secret identity mistakes along the lines of “me … uh, I mean, not me, my close personal friend, the hero, who isn’t me at all, heheheheheh [nervous laughter gradually fades out]”

Six Chix, 3/12/19

Congrats to Six Chix for taking its weird foot thing to the next level … indeed, to the highest possible level. Who wouldn’t want to worship a God with such magnificent toes? Truly we are blessed to be formed in His image, foot-wise.

Pluggers, 3/12/19

Ha ha, did you guys know that bears are carnivores and kangaroos are herbivores? I sure hope plugger diner seats are pleather or some other material that’s easy to hose the blood and viscera off of!