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Gasoline Alley, 6/11/24

So, the reason the electricity went out at Walt’s is that a big tree fell over and pulled down the power line running from the utility pole to the house, and now some guys from the power company have come out in the middle of the night to repair it. This is, obviously, annoying, and could easily be the most annoying thing that would happen to you in a given year, if your year was pretty good overall, but I do not think it could in any way be described as an “unbelievable ordeal.” It’s actually quite easy to believe! You think Walt and Gertie are going to describe it to other people and they’ll say “My God, you can’t be serious”? No, it’ll be more like “Oh wow, that sounds annoying. Nice that the power company came out to fix it in the middle of the night, though.”

Dick Tracy, 6/11/24

If we’re going to go through the trouble of continuing to make Dick Tracy comics, then I suppose part of that process has to be about exploring how Dick Tracy and his friends and foes would interact with modern-day stuff. I feel ambivalent about it, but I respect that they want to do it rather than just rehash golden age Dick Tracy stuff endlessly, and I have to say that I am marginally more intrigued to find out what Dick Tracy thinks about cryptocurrency than I was to find out what he thinks about furries.

Bizarro, 6/11/24

There are two things I love about this comic. The first is that the snowman outside the apartment has clearly spent a lot of time sculpting his snow-body into the flowing shape of a ethereal spectre, but is big enough to recognize that his friend’s cheap prop humor is more likely to win kudos than his own more subtle work. The second is that Bizarro has, in a bold refusal to adhere to conventions, chosen to do a joke about snowmen going to a Halloween party in the middle of the summer.

The Phantom, 6/11/24

A classic bit I do on my blog is to look at a day’s comic and say “Ha ha, surely the next development in this strip will be [something that is far too silly to ever happen in a comic strip]”, and a classic bit that the comics do in response is to produce a subsequent development that’s substantially sillier than I predicted. Anyway, I apologize for joking that “Space-Ox,” the private rocket company in the current Phantom storyline, is run by Elon Musk Ox (he’s just like Elon Musk, but also an ox). In fact, it’s run by Ian Mollusk (he’s just like Elon Musk, but also a snail).

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Mary Worth, 6/10/24

The thing about disposing of a dead fish is, honestly, that there isn’t a particularly dignified way to do it, and if you’re as emotionally devastated about said fish’s death as Wilbur clearly is, then I suppose it’s hard to get some kind of closure. Maybe this is a best-case scenario! Because I don’t think that chucking a matchbox coffin off the deck of Dr. Jeff’s DieselBurner-2000 superboat is going to be that dignified, actually, and that’s before we even take into account how visibly contemptuous of the proceedings Dr. Jeff will be (you will be able to correctly ascertain his negative attitude from space).

The Phantom, 6/10/24

So the idol theft storyline turned out to be related to the years-long Death Of The Phantom arc, in that it gave an opportunity for the Phantom’s dumb son to reveal that he had a dream that sort of tied into Old Man Mozz’s prophecy in ways I don’t fully follow and am not going to bother trying to rehash for you here. Mostly I am just putting down a marker of hope here that we truly are getting a fresh new storyline, one involving a private spaceflight company known as “Space-Ox,” run by a guy named Elon Musk Ox (he’s just like Elon Musk, but also an ox).

Hi and Lois, 6/10/24

Fine, I’m all in on the new “punchlines are for the old and weak” era of Hi and Lois. Hi is up in the dead of night brooding over the fact that the world has changed since he was young. Are things better, or are they worse? Hard to say, but they’re different, and that exercises his mind in ways his wife would give anything to not hear about. Perfection, no notes, etc.

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Gasoline Alley, 5/14/24

Ha ha yes, last week I had some fun imagining Walt encountering some biblically accurate angels, but this week Walt has entered a dreamscape where he’s conflating going to a public meeting and not actually doing anything helpful until the mayor showed up and fixed the actual problem with being an ancient hero, a biblical patriarch and warrior who triumphs over impossible odds. Don’t worry, though: unlike the real bible, this imagined ancient setting will still include the crushingly unfunny wordplay you have come to expect from this strip.

The Phantom, 5/14/24

Oh, OK, so this whole thing has ultimately been about a little light idol theft, and I think it’s funny that this bad guy thinks he can rope our hero in with the promise of ill-gotten idol riches. The Phantom would never do anything so gauche as to launder pilfered cultural heritage through discreet and well-connected European auction houses so they end up at the British Museum next to a small plaque that says “provenance unknown”! Why would he bother, when he could just keep them in a room deep in his jungle lair and go down and look at them every few years?

Gil Thorp, 5/14/24

“Well, here’s your problem: you got one of those cubist buses! Sure, you can perceive it from multiple perspectives at once so you can better understand its context, but that kind of setup is hell on an internal combustion engine.”