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Dick Tracy, 12/20/23

So Dick and X. Libris’s sword fight ended with X. tumbling to her death from a spiral staircase, which was in a library full of her beloved books, so I guess we’ll count this is as an ironic comeuppance? It’s marginal but I’m feeling generous about it. What I’m not feeling generous about is that the strip is spending this whole week making sure we understand the emotional repercussions of her life of crime, which, BORING. This is a strip where people used to get eaten alive by rats, we don’t care about, like, ruined businesses or whatever else this Hayes Code-ass epilogue wants us to think about. Those cops don’t really care either. Look at those numb facial expressions. “Yeah, it’s called a ‘warrant,’ I guess? I’d never heard of one either. Anyway, your business is ruined.”

Mark Trail, 12/20/23

Haven’t kept you up on what’s happening in Mark Trail for a while, and what’s happening is this guy’s trying to get rid of a bat infestation and is spurning Cherry’s offer of PPE so he’s gonna die of rabies. Rabies! He’ll be foaming at the mouth and screaming and Cherry is going to have put him down as an act of mercy with a shotgun blast to the head. It’ll be as exciting as any boat explosion, and twice as messy.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/20/23

IS RENE STILL IN THE HOTEL??? HE MIGHT BE!!! STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER RENE-HOTEL NEXUS DEVELOPMENTS!!!!!!!

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Blondie, 12/19/23

Of the legacy comics characters out there, Blondie has a less expressive face than most — I think the word I’d use to describe it most of the time is “rictus” — but it seems clear that she’s pretty gobsmacked in the final panel, right? Like the scales have fallen from her eyes and she realizes what a bum her husband is. She works her fingers to the bone all day building a successful small business and has to cook for the biggest glutton in this nameless, soulless suburb, and now she finds out that every supposed slander her husband’s boss has laid out about him has been true all this time! And yet he still collects his fat, steady salary. The nerve! The absolute nerve!

Hi and Lois, 12/19/23

Speaking of facial expressions and suburban ennui, I like the emotional roller coaster Hi is on here. He already knew there wasn’t a bonus check in that box, and he thought had settled into the appropriate level of despair. But upon opening it, he discovered he was still capable of shock.

Family Circus, 12/19/23

I know that “smug” is Billy’s primary non-sullen facial expression and it usually isn’t appropriate, but it seems particularly inappropriate here. “Heh heh,” he seems to be thinking, “Santa loves the fact that I keep changing my mind and he’s had to retool my Christmas haul multipe times.” No he doesn’t, Billy! Nobody would like that!

Shoe, 12/19/23

Excited to see that Roz has transcended the goggle eyes of horror and has achieved the bulging eyes of murderous rage. Well deserved, too! Shoe, she just wanted your expertise as the editor of a failing newspaper to help her price her new entry into the competitive pre-made frozen meal market! There’s no reason to be a dick about it!

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Dennis the Menace and Gasoline Alley, 12/18/23

Christmas is just a week away, and that means our beloved (?) legacy comic strip characters are starting to interact with, or perhaps perform as, mall Santas. How’s that going? Well, Dennis is showing that the real menace is the slow process by which enchantment seeps out of the world; he sits a good distance away from Santa, presumably for liability reasons, and instead of opening up about what he most wants as a gift, he’s interrogating him about how his mythical powers fit into the regulatory framework of the modern state. But Gasoline Alley for all its faults still understands the chaos that’s necessary to make magic seem real. Rufus will say “Ho ho ho” if he wants to! No rules constrain these elves, and that’s why small children believe they can deliver livestock to neighborhoods that are very much not zoned for it.

Crock, 12/18/23

One of the dilemmas to be contemplated in a world like Crock, where sapient animals coexist with people, is whether we’re dealing with a spectrum of intelligence, and if so how that maps on to the spectrum we already know about for human beings. Is a child human, by virtue of his humanity, smarter than an adult animal? Would a person of any level of intelligence of learning know more about a camel’s biology than a camel himself? These are fun things to think about when you’re trying very hard not to imagine a camel’s hump bursting like a giant pimple, sending a rush of pus and blood flowing over his haunches onto the sand below.