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Today I’m doing something a little different, but for important reasons! I need to talk about today’s Phantom, but I need to go back to earlier Phantoms from this week to fully explain what I need to talk about and why I neglected to prepare you for today’s amazing strip. Let’s start on Monday!

The Phantom, 12/14/20

The only background you need is that the Phantom and a friend are infiltrating a compound in Rhodia using lucha libre fighting techniques; no further explanation or context is necessary and none will be supplied. On Monday, they breached the compound’s walls and began their assault. Notice the rhino head at top right in the first panel. I don’t remember this registering with me at all; if I noticed it at the time, I probably assumed it was just a decorative statue of some sort, since it appears to be in the middle of a planter in a courtyard.

The Phantom, 12/15/20

On Tuesday, the rhino’s head is looming behind our heroes. I missed it on that day as well, presumably because I was so taken by the villains hanging around a the bar, watching Scarface and eating Mary Worth-style oblong ecru appetizers. And it’s just a head! It could still theoretically be part of the decor, I guess?

The Phantom, 12/16/20

This is clearly the Phantom reassuringly patting a living, full-sized rhino, who’s just hanging out next to him. I have no excuse on this one, none at all. But like … nobody’s mentioned the rhino, in strip dialogue? It’s just kind of … there? These strips are not usually subtle! That’s the only excuse I have.

The Phantom, 12/17/20

Today, finally, I cannot ignore this magnificent rhino as it bursts through the glass, joining our hero in his bid to free his friend and defeat the sinister Rhodian warlord. I assume said warlord keeps this rhino captive in his compound as an ostentatious display of wealth, and the Phantom won the beast’s massive heart by displaying simple human kindness and decency. Now the behornèd behemoth will help dispatch the villains, and — we hope — will be freed once the adventure is concluded.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/17/20

Oh man, video chatting is a great platform for Rex to really superciliously glower at one of his pathetic patients. “Buck, have you gone and developed the diabeetus? I’m disappointed, but not even slightly surprised.”

Gil Thorp, 12/17/20

HELL YEAH, DOUG GUTHRIE HAS A BITCHIN’ CAR

THERE IS LITERALLY NO REASON HE NEEDS TO PAY ATTENTION TO HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL, HE ALREADY RULES

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Six Chix, 12/16/20

It was just back in March of this year that there was a Rhymes With Orange strip about dogs pissing on sentient snowmen for which the syndicate colorist bravely held the line and refused to use yellow to highlight the clearly drawn section where the snowman got pissed on. But the last nine months have frankly felt like about a million years, and so now, in December, the colorists have clearly just given up. You wanna do a comic where a snowman tries to bargain with a dog to stop the pissing? Sure, whatever. Let’s make the piss the same color as the sunset, too, just really drive home the melange of beauty and disgust that we’re aiming for. It’s been a year, man, there’s no point in being precious about, well, anything. Also, fun fact, I at first misremembered the Rhymes With Orange strip linked above as a Six Chix strip, so I spent a lot of trime trying to find it in my Six Chix archives using keywords like “urine” and “piss” and “pee” and honestly I got a lot of results, so clearly I am, and always have been, Part Of The Problem.

Beetle Bailey, 12/16/20

No one would ever mistake Lt. Fuzz for a Jacobin; his only ideological orientation is towards his own advancement. But clearly he’s not moving up the ladder in the army’s current structure, so maybe he thinks that so long as he backs the guillotining of a few aristocrats he’ll have better luck with the French Revolutionary practice of officers being elected by their soldiers (he won’t).

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/16/20

CALLING IT NOW: Buck has come down with just a touch of the ol’ diabeetus! In normal times, newspaper readers can handle exciting medical things happening to Buck, like him getting shot in the head with a nail gun. But in the midst of a global pandemic, and especially with Wilford Brimley’s tragic passing this year, we need the comfort of a diabeetus storyline, to anchor us emotionally.

Dennis the Menace, 12/16/20

“My goodness and badness exist in superposition in the same physical space, in defiance of the laws of physics! My mother cringes away from me whenever I approach in horror at the ontological whirlpool of virtue and vice that I have become!”

Hi and Lois, 12/16/20

Is someone laughing? Fooling around? Having fun? Well they won’t anymore, not after Lois gets to the bottom of this!

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Shoe, 12/13/20

Any old cartoon can do a classic joke like “The ladies insist that ballet is one of the world’s great art forms, but we fellas know that it’s boring, amiright fellas?” But leave it to Shoe to put an extra grim spin on it, forcing us to imagine a scenario where the Perfesser shows up at the ballet and tells Shoe’s girlfriend in very serious tones that, alas, her boyfriend has died, but his last wishes were that he wanted the Perfesser to attend the opera in his place. She’s probably so flummoxed by this that she agrees to it, spending the first act of the performance consumed by grief, only to realize in horror that the Perfesser, apparently unmoved by the death of his best friend, has dozed off. Later on she’ll presumably learn that Shoe is still alive, which will be extremely awkward.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/13/20

Looks like Buck is about to pass his physical with flying colors! This is good news for everyone, except for those of us who were hoping for some kind of medical drama in general, and an illness that would make Buck suffer in particular.