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The Phantom, 8/18/24

A fun running bit in The Phantom is that we sometimes see original Phantom creator Lee Falk going about his day in pre-war Manhattan, musing about whatever direction the Phantom storyline is going to go in next. This can cause minor issues when it comes to suspension of disbelief, since the Phantom clearly takes place in the 21st century; I buy that Falk could’ve dreamed up plutocrats with their own private rocket companies, though independent post-colonial African states seems a bit more of a stretch. However, I have a harder time believing that our comics scribe neither keeps copies of his own strips nor subscribes to the newspapers that print them and needs help remembering plot points from a few days ago. I guess we really lost something when we replaced friendly one-man newspaper stand businesses with the Internet, although the Internet would also be happy to show Lee Falk last week’s strip, if he asked.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 8/18/24

This is in fact a repeat of a mystery that ran back in June of 2022. However, it’s been redrawn and recolored and — crucially, to establish the much worse vibes — has had dialogue added to show that Slylock has decied to dispense with even the flimsy pretense of rule of law that Forest Kingdom cops operate under and is about to dish out a brutal extrajudicial beating on his shrew nemesis.

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Slylock Fox, 7/8/24

For hundreds of thousands of years, between H. Sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and H. erectus, there were multiple human species coexisting on the planet. But they mostly lived in small bands separated from one another by great distances, and weren’t that different from one another (DNA evidence even shows that they occasionally interbred when they did meet up). At any rate, H. sapiens soon prevailed, and the differences between the various subgroups of our species, which we have historically placed so much importance on, are little more than a rounding error, genetically.

The animals of the Slylockverse seem to have taken over our institutions wholesale, but surely the most difficult part the transition was the idea of equality of all citizens before the law, something even we have trouble with. Here, the varying abilities and evolutionary adaptations of various animals become important aspects of police work, despite the fact that everyone is wearing clothes and, presumably, living most of the time on land. It’s confusing! Also confusing is the fact that Slylock is wasting his time on a minor harassment incident when we’re watching a straight-up murder happen in the background. Some animals are more equal than others, and fully aquatic animals are the least equal of all!

Gasoline Alley, 7/8/24

It appears that God has answered Walt’s prayers, and is about to save him from financial ruin by [squints] ensuring that his up-to-date homeowners insurance pays for the damages to his house, in accordance with the provisions of his policy documents. You might question how God was involved in that transaction. Well, He is Eternal and does not experience time as we do, so how do you suppose Walt came to buy that policy in the first place, huh? Makes you think.

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Slylock Fox, 6/4/24

I assume that the gentleman who’s been tied up is the victim here, some solid citizen who was simply walking around with burlap sacks full of cash, as one does, before being kidnapped by this nefarious pair of thieves. Now he’s watching the fisticuffs perpetrated by his rescuers, and we may note that in both versions of the panel, he looks on not with glee or even relief but with what appears to be wary trepidation. Sure, getting forcibly tied up, presumably under the threat of bodily harm, was harrowing, but he takes no pleasure in this orgy of retributive violence either, and seems unsure whether these costumed vigilantes, operating as they do outside the law, truly have his best interests in mind. And what about the fact that each opposing dyad includes one human and one animal who walks on hind legs and seems to have achieved human-scale intelligence? What’s that about, and what’s it going to lead to? Probably nowhere good!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/4/24

Shocking development: our pair of budding tween comedians are not regarded as the coolest kids in school despite their encyclopedic knowledge of vaudeville, and were in fact cruelly bullied last week! But don’t worry, they defeated their bully in the marketplace of ideas, and now in the aftermath of that encounter are reflecting on the fact that their misguided would-be tormentor is merely caught in a cycle of psychic violence that hopefully they can all break out of together. More on this story as developments warrant, or as they don’t warrant, if it’s on a slow day.