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Dick Tracy, 10/29/18

I did a small amount of Googling to try to figure out what “the old ‘neighborhood bank’ plan” was and came up empty, but I assume it was the sort of thing that wasn’t uncommon in the early 20th century, where local, unregulated financial institutions flourished and you could never be entirely sure if you were dealing with a grey-market bank or a ponzi scheme. But today’s Dick Tracy makes it clear how you could ensure your money was safe: just get your lawyer involved and then these undeground, gangster-run pseudo-banks would have to hold onto your money for decades and hand it over to your duly appointed heirs, decades later!

Crankshaft, 10/29/18

You know, when I was a kid riding a yellow bus to school, we had both a driver and a “bus aide” whose job was to keep us from killing each other so the driver could focus on not killing us in a terrible accident. Is that even a thing anymore? Was it ever a thing in most places? Anyway, Crankshaft has never had any assistance on his bus, and he makes do by just literally not giving a shit about what the kids do, not even bothering to look at them or spend any time thinking about them, really.

Pluggers, 10/29/18

Pluggers seems like they’re doing OK at first, but when you talk to them for more than a few minutes, the extent of their cognitive decline becomes obvious.

Crock, 10/29/18

Ha ha! It’s funny because the lady cactus doesn’t want to fuck!

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Six Chix, 10/19/18

Without any aid or context, what do you think is happening in this cartoon, in which a devil and angel argue over whether an email (?) should be sent, with the “pro” argument being that the potential sender is bad and the “con” argument being that the recipient is good? Would you guess it’s about … cyberbullying? It is, because “Unity Day” is the signature event of National Bullying Prevention Month, and you can sort of work your way backwards to see what’s going on, but I think the whole to-do relies on the idea that bullies do their thing because of some innate sense of worthlessness, and while that may be true at some base level, I don’t think it’s the immediate motivation for individual acts of social cyber-aggression. Anyway, I guess this strip did its job in the sense that it was baffling enough to get me to look up what the hell “Unity Day” is, but that also led me to the sad discovery that nobody updated the Unity Day Wikipedia article with 2017’s events. Is it even happening this year? I’d do more work to find out, but I’m afraid someone might make fun of me.

Pluggers, 10/19/18

This failing car is doing its best to protect this plugger’s failing body. But the heart wants what it wants (specifically in this case, it wants to get clogged up with grease until it stops beating, forever).

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/12/18

A thing that was a big deal about Jordan when he was first introduced was that he was a veteran of one America’s several ongoing wars and had been wounded in action and had two artificial legs, a fact that has been … not necessarily retconned away but not talked about very much! But anyway, it appears that now we’re in store for a very special PTSD plot, which is appropriate and medical but it’s kind of weird that it’s only coming up now. Like, Michelle was an army nurse, so you think she would’ve … like … put two and two together here, rather than just being like, “My man, who lost his legs in an explosion, I hope he doesn’t get stressed out in the restaurant biz like the way he does around explosion sounds, which is a fairly unremarkable reaction and we’re not going to discuss in any way!”

Pluggers, 10/12/18

This could’ve been just another “Ha ha, pluggers’ bodies are falling apart as they age” panel, but, the anxious look on that l’il plugger’s face is truly harrowing. “Gramps, please … please turn down the TV. It’s so loud. None of us can hear each other. You can’t even hear me. And you’re sitting only about three feet away from the set. Do you even know I’m here? Do you even care?”