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Dick Tracy, 11/28/17

Dick Tracy is starting a new storyline this week, as usual bringing back beloved grotesqueries from the strip’s long history, and, you know, can you imagine how awkward it must be to have to make small talk in Mr. Bribery’s waiting room. “Sooooooooooo … your mom was called ‘Ugly Christine,’ huh? I guess there’s no real chance that was, like, ironic or anything, huh? Ha ha, obviously not. I mean, I’m the only black character in this strip and my name is ‘Lee Ebony.’”

Shoe, 11/28/17

Parallel evolution is an amazing process! It’s how animals as distantly related as the shark and the dolphin have come to look so much alike, and why the civilization of sapient birds in Shoe functions so much like our own. They have clothes, and corrective lenses, and even corporate media mouthpieces that cover for the crimes of the capital-holding class!

Family Circus, 11/28/17

Billy is definitely going to jail, right?

Mark Trail, 11/28/17

The sheriff is definitely going to feed all these people to the bear, right?

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Gil Thorp, 11/4/17

This entire “Uncle Gary schemes to get Rick to sing the national anthem” storyline is like the old philosophical irresistible force/immovable object problem, only with half-baked Gil Thorp plot points. Here, the conflict is between Gary’s monomanical attempts to get his nephew behind the mic for the homecoming game, which effort is all for naught because it can’t possibly lead to superstardom like he seems to expect, and Gil’s stubborn refusal to entertain the idea, which is entirely pointless and which he hasn’t even bothered articulating a reason for. Today’s strip is mostly entertaining to me because of the final panel, in which Dr. Pearl attempts to use her Ed.D. Mind Tricks to get Gil to lighten up already.

Spider-Man, 11/4/17

Speaking as a freelancer, I have to say that Peter Parker seems to have an extremely flawed view of the power dynamics between a stringer photographer and that stringer photographer’s only client. Still, I find today’s strip extremely relatable, as I too often soothe myself by imagining J. Jonah Jameson in a state of apoplexy.

Shoe, 11/4/17

Roz is right to sport the Patented Shoe Goggle Eyes Of Horror. In the Shoe world of sapient avians, a common form of suicide is to purchase multiple cats, then lay back and allow them to feed on the bird-flesh they crave.

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Pluggers, 10/21/17

Oh, hey, remember Elam, the extremely unappealing guest character who served as a sexual rival to Rufus in Gasoline Alley a few months ago? Well, I don’t think I ever made it clear at the time, but he was obviously based on Jack Elam, an actor who mostly played villains in westerns and gangster flicks in the ’50s and ’60s. Anyway, is there any particular reason why this guy, who died in 2003 and never intruded into my consciousness until July, is suddenly popping up everywhere? Are we in the midst of some Elamssaince to which I’m not privy? I guess we should follow Occam’s Razor and accept the simplest answer: that the there’s a pretty wide overlap between Gasoline Alley’s readership and the set of people who submit things to Pluggers.

Shoe, 10/21/17

It’s a funny world when you wake up one day at the age of 43 and realize that you spend quite a lot of mental energy, as part of your job, parsing the body language of a couple depressed middle-aged bird-men killing time in sad bar, isn’t it? Life is definitely a rich tapestry in that respect. Anyway, in panel one I kind of like — no, “like” isn’t the right word. Let’s just say that I respect the work that’s been put into Shoe casually leaning towards the Perfesser as he taps out his cigar ash, creating a little bubble of intimacy as he asks about his friend’s romantic life, and clearly expecting the answer to his question to be “Sex. Sex is how it went.”