Archive: Phantom

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Dick Tracy, 3/27/18

It has been brought to my attention by many of you that Ghost Pepper didn’t dislocate his shoulder in a car crash; he got shot by Dick Tracy from an improbably angle as Tracy lay prone on the ground behind the car. This happened in a Sunday strip that I missed (SHAME), and also the windshield got shot out in the process and the airbag activated, I dunno. The point is that Ghost Pepper’s wound is seeping blood, and, his plan to lay low at the aquarium having been foiled more or less immediately by someone needing to get into the closet where he was hiding, one assumes that he’s about to fall into a tank where something that likes the smell of delicious blood, like a shark or an orca or a kraken or whatever, is going to put him on the Dick Tracy horror death list of honor.

Gil Thorp, 3/27/18

I hereby apologize for implying that the Social Justice Teens don’t know anything about sports and don’t know what they’re doing. In fact, their highly sophisticated campaign of clownish behavior and harassment aims not just to drown out and provide an alternative to Marty Moon’s racist rants but to also draw everyone’s attention away from the patriarchal and hierarchical world of sports altogether. Way back in in the mid ’00s, earnest liberals Steve Luhm and Hadley V. Baxendale tried to bring justice to basketball season by means of incremental reforms. But Steve Luhm ended up a bitter, overeducated high school janitor, and this current generation of radicals are here to smash the system to pieces with pure, goofy anarchy.

The Phantom, 3/27/18

Meanwhile, thousands of feet above the Atlantic Ocean, the most self-righteous nap in human history is about to begin.

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Mark Trail, 3/22/18

Nope, still haven’t changed my mind about how weirdly villainous Marlin Creed seems. Remember the last guy in this strip who was named “Marlin”? He was illegally harvesting sea turtle eggs, just putting that out there. Anyway, the fact that Marlin has introduced himself by his full name and yet refers to his assistant only as “Jim” is telling. The real question is: who is Jim? Is he famed hijacker DB Cooper?

Or is he the notorious Zodiac Killer?

Either way, we’re in for a rollicking elephant-cage adventure to come!

Hi and Lois, 3/22/18

Be careful there, Dot: throw around talk like that and your mom is going to think that someone in the house is leaking information about the Flagston family’s criminal activities to the Feds, and that someone might end up gettin’ wacked.

The Phantom, 3/22/18

When you pay for International First Class, you’re of course paying for lie-flat beds, semi-private mini-suites, and lots of attention from the flight crew; but you’re also paying for the shrieking to be kept to a minimum. Looks like Bangalla Air is going to be getting some angry letters from representatives of the country’s overlapping government and business elites!

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Dick Tracy, 3/20/18

OK, fine, I take it back, Dick Tracy isn’t abruptly ending its Ghost Pepper plot at all. In fact, it’s drawing it out in loopy new directions! Ghost Pepper, who dislocated his shoulder in the crash, has sought out “Phishface,” who is a doctor (?) or something, and also a fish-man in classic inexplicable Dick Tracy style. He’s such a fish-man that he apparently used to have a “base” at the aquarium, which either means he really is part fish, and the character is a shameless attempt to cash in on the sexy fish fever sparked by The Shape Of Water, or he’s just really committed to the bit, I guess. The real question we need to ask: what’s the deal with Dick Tracy’s obsession with criminals lying low at facilities where animals are held captive for the public to gawk at, making particular use of the many closets and storage areas therein?

The Phantom, 3/20/18

You’d think being a high-powered UN official and consort to an immortal jungle god would leave little room for boredom in Diana’s life, but I guess if she needs to entertain herself by idly trying to work out which of her professional or family acquaintances are savage terrorist warlords, who am I to judge?