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Dick Tracy, 10/23/24

Dick Tracy has spent a lot of this week getting into the architectural history of Neo-Chicago and the state of local landmarked buildings. On the surface, this sounds like the sort of thing that I personally would be into, but it’s actually left me pretty cold. Maybe I’d feel differently if it were about public transit or something, but for now, I say: let’s wrap it up and bring on the officer-involved shootings!

Gil Thorp, 10/23/24

Please excuse a moment of football detective work. Yesterday’s Gil Thorp did not actually establish all the parameters of the game situation when the action depicted started, but we know this much:

• New Thayer was facing 4th and goal, and could “clinch the night” if they scored
• After Milford intercepted the ball, there was 3:15 left on the clock

To me, anyway, this implies that, by scoring a touchdown at that point, New Thayer would have gone far enough ahead that Milford would’ve needed to score twice to catch up; three minutes is plenty of time to put together a scoring drive, so if New Thayer were up by less than 9 after a potential touchdown, it wouldn’t make sense to say they’d clinched anything. That means Milford was losing (though only by a few points) before the interception we saw yesterday; and if Oscar Capp had run the ball back for a defensive touchdown, we probably would’ve heard about it, plus the excessive Mudlark celebration we saw seems pretty clearly to be happening midfield.

Today we learn that the final score of this game was Milford 10, New Thayer 7. Considering what we’ve already figured out, we can safely assume that, after the interception, Milford had to put together a scoring drive to win. (Presumably before the interception the score was New Thayer 7, Milford 3.) What I sincerely appreciate is that we have not been treated to any of the thrilling sports action of this fourth quarter comeback. Instead, we get Coach Hernandez yelling at the new kids for grandstanding, and everyone immediately submitting to his authority. That’s because Gil Thorp isn’t a strip about high school sports; it’s a strip about coaching high school sports. There’s a difference!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/23/24

Speaking of exciting things we don’t see, there was a little bit of a hint last week that Mud Mountain Murphy might be up to his old scene-stealing tricks as everyone got ready for his supporting role at Truck Tyler’s concert. But he didn’t! He did what he was supposed to, the show went great, everyone was happy. Thank goodness! I know you guys were stressed out about it.

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Gil Thorp, 10/22/24

Oh hey, remember the new guys introduced this year on the Mudlark football team? Well, I forgot to mention that one of them has this running bit where he says “yeet” all the time, not in a sentence or anything, just as a general exclamation. I’m actually kind of torn on how realistic that is, because it’s true that teenagers are generally goofy idiots who will repeatedly say a word they think is funny with no context, but also shouldn’t these guys be young enough to just think of “yeet” as a regular word? It’s a verb that means to hurl something away with great force, if you don’t know, although the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website says it also could be an interjection “used to express surprise, approval, or excited enthusiasm,” and if you can’t trust the dictionary about the sort of things teens say, who can you trust?

Beetle Bailey, 10/22/24

Julius, General Halftrack’s driver, is a character who doesn’t show up much in this strip — one of the only times I’ve ever name-checked him was in a 2004 post about Sarge having a gay panic dream, where both the comic and the post are something of a time capsule at this point — but I appreciate the nice, good look we’re getting at his extremely grim facial expression here. Not sure where the smart money was going on which of the Camp Swampy guys was going to Full Metal Jacket the place, but I know where it’s going now!

Blondie, 10/22/24

Hey guys, let’s check in on Blondie! The joke in today’s Blondie is that Dagwood is very depressed.

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Crock and The Phantom, 10/21/24

One of my longest-running bits on this blog is pointing out strips where the colorists have very clearly not read the comic before doing their work on it. I feel like this doesn’t happen as often as it used to, but it does still happen, like in this Crock, where that “golden” shovel is glowing and yet is still clearly made of wood and steel.

I assume that this happens in part because the strips aren’t sent to the colorists with any explicit instructions on what colors should go where. That’s an even bigger problem in cases where the color is important but you can’t necessary get it from context. Like, is this being emerging from the Avarice rover in today’s Phantom, who bears an uncanny similarity to Elon Musk, supposed to be Ian Mollusk himself? Or is it a robot that looks like Ian Mollusk, one made in the mad annoying inventor’s image, and therefore the human-like flesh coloring he’s been given is actually in error?

Bizarro, 10/21/24

A quick recap of some Josh Deep Lore: did I get a college degree in classics, and then get a subsequent master’s degree as part of an abortive attempt to become an historian of ancient Rome? Yes! Was this a mistake? It was! Do I regret having done it? Sometimes! Did they even cover Greek mythology in my coursework? Not really! Nevertheless, I feel qualified to say that this panel has the Medusa thing all wrong. This dumb hippie should be turned to stone! He’s looking right at her! She turns people to stone because she’s so hideous looking; it’s not a superpower she can just turn and off. Are you telling me that this won’t work on hippies, because they reject society’s rules about who’s beautiful and who’s ugly, or because they’re very, very high?

Zits, 10/21/24

A thing about getting old is that you do get to see mores change, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill, but it always creates a little mental dissonance. For instance, a Zits anthology published a full five years after I started doing this blog noted that the comic got pushback from the syndicate whenever it used the word “sucks” in dialogue. And now here it is using the word “horny,” in front of God and everybody! Hopefully I don’t sound like an “old fuddy duddy,” but I think everyone involved in creating a Zits strip with the word “horny” in it should go to prison.