Post Content

The Phantom, 2/20/19

You know, usually it’s easy being a supposedly immortal jungle ghost who’s actually a series of dudes handing down a spandex suit over the centuries, in that when do you heroic stuff everyone really appreciates it and when you don’t do it, it’s not like most people 100% believe in you anyway, so they don’t get mad and think “Why did the Man Who Cannot Die let my beloved grandma get eaten by a tiger?” or whatever. Being able to pick and choose your battles is key to the vigilante game! Unfortunately, the danger zone in the Phantom life cycle comes when the kids you’ve had to perpetuate the whole scheme are old enough to understand your heroic mission but not old enough to get the nuances and practicalities, and end up trying get you to go save everybody. Once the Bandar finally perfect that immortality medicine, this isn’t going to be a problem, but in the meantime the Ghost-Who-Would-Rather-Not-On-This-One is about to find himself in a real pickle!

Mary Worth, 2/20/19

Excited as I am about this Older Adult Online Dating plot, I do need to point out that it’s problematic that we’re shifting storylines without an intervening Charterstone Pool Party. But I’m hoping that we will get one, and that Estelle plans to invite all of her potential paramours (clockwise from top left: Skinny Ian Cameron, Wilbur Weston But Not Clinically Depressed, Guy Who Seems Nice But Starts Letting Slip Racist Remarks On Date Three, Dude Who’s Into Fun Outdoor Activities And Is Also A Swinger It Turns Out, and Street Magician) to the poolside soirée so that Mary can help her choose!

Rhymes With Orange, 2/20/19

Squirting water … out his butthole? Because that’s what the gut is attached to? The butthole? This is a comic about a doctor who just got sprayed in the face by a stream of water out a clown’s anus? I guess?

Post Content

The Phantom, 2/16/19

Tragically, the Nomad’s teen daughter would rather hurl herself off the roof of the Bangallan Consulate than live torn away from her family, which she now knows was a nest of terrorists all along. This will be doubly awkward for our heroes. It will make Heloise’s escape from the country, with the President in tow, all the more suspicious if her helicopter zooms away from the site of a public and gory suicide; plus, Kadia was a Bangallan flag rank officer, which means her next of kin is entitled to a generous military pension. Looks like the Nomad’s prison commissary account will be fully stocked!

Spider-Man, 2/16/19

Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on the action in Spider-Man! Killgrave had his full powers restored and was about to force Spider-Man and Luke Cage to kill one another, but fortunately MJ managed to completely disable his near-omnipotent voice by whacking him in the throat with a small piece of metal. And if you think it’s kind of unsatisfying that our superheroes were saved by a completely non-super-powered ally, don’t worry: she also did it entirely by dumb luck. Anyway, I assume Killgrave has been permanently defeated by this extremely mild throat injury, seeing as everyone is just kind of standing around chatting about it rather than attempting to, like, cover his mouth or tie him up or something.

Dick Tracy, 2/16/19

I honestly can’t work up much energy to appreciate or even recap the two or so storylines going on in Dick Tracy right now, but I have to admit that I’m intrigued by the apparently introduction of a new one, about a sportswriter … who stabs.

Mary Worth, 2/16/19

Just want to point out that Ian had a clear chance to say “No, Toby, of course I wasn’t having an emotional affair with Jannie” and he 100% did not take it! I mean, technically an emotional affair has to involve reciprocation, but still.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/16/19

Brayden is lucky he has that sweater to ward off the desert cold, but Rex? Rex just got to smugly correct someone by saying “That’s a common misconception,” and the glow from that will keep him warm for hours.

Post Content

The Phantom, 2/7/19

So I was roundly and correctly roasted last week for not being up on the Phantom lore and realizing that it’s Heloise who has a Great-Uncle Dave (a terrorism expert, natch), not Kadia. I may not know much about ancillary Phantom characters, but I do know about international diplomacy, enough to realize that giving teenagers cabinet positions and admiralships in order to spirit them out of the country and avoid talking to the police is pretty dodgy, and I also know enough about storytelling to know that it’s kind of weird to spend this much post-climax strip time talking about the mechanics of how President Luaga is spiriting Heloise and Kadia out of the country. Really, it’s only interesting to nerds who are curious about the details of Bangalla’s governance and external relations — and I cannot emphasize enough that I am very much one of those nerds. Why do you think President Luaga is doing this himself? Are these sorts of appointments exclusively made by the president in person, according to the Bangallan constitution? Or is Luaga just here on a lark because he’s kind of bored with the day to day of Bangallan governance, which, for the record, I as a nerd am also eager to learn more about?

Mary Worth, 2/7/19

I’m pretty sure that Mary Worth is the person that Toby spends the most time with, which is profoundly sad, for both of them really, but it’s clear here that at least it means she’s building up an immunity to Mary’s platitudes and has gotten to the point where she can now just ignore them altogether. “Don’t worry about how you appear. Just talk to him.” “When I do, the most important thing will be how I appear!” I’m not sure how long Mary will accept this state of affairs before she takes her meddling to the next level (hypnosis, binding court orders, etc.).

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/19

You ever see one of those sentences that has been run through some kind of automatic translator and while grammatically correct makes no sense? In unrelated news, here’s today’s Rex Morgan, M.D.!