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Family Circus, 1/28/17

Awww, isn’t it cute? Jeffy has heard advice on looking both ways before crossing the street, but is too young to have really processed or understood it! Less cute: Jeffy and his toddler brother have been abandoned on a street corner, and are apparently about to wander out into traffic, utterly unprepared for what comes next. Looks like they’re going to get pretty muddy, right before they get hit by a car!

Pluggers, 1/28/17

Pluggers know marriage is like endlessly driving alone down a darkened highway, with thousands of pounds of cargo behind you and your destination days away, and the only way to make it bearable is amphetamines.

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Welp, it’s Friday, so that means it’s COTW time y’all!

“The robin’s grotesquely distorted size was yet more disorienting when I thought those cats were cows, which confusion was abetted and compounded by the entirely disproportionate house in the background and the overall cracked-out composition. Also it’s January, which is like very much not spring. I guess what I’m trying to say is I really miss Apartment 3-G.” –Violet

It’s also hilarious runner up time!

“I honestly would have expected a plugger’s bucket list to be, well, a list of buckets.” –Dmsilev

“Q: Why is Wilbur’s face distorted so that it occupies nearly the full width of the laptop display? A: It’s a Mercator projection, and he’s near the south pole.” –A Concerned Reader

Dennis’s hipster ensemble really sells that he intends to mooch off society for his entire life.” –Jon Bennett, on Facebook

As healthy as a horse. You’ve seen The Godfather, right, Rex? Remember how healthy that horse was? Yeah. We understand each other now.” –Voshkod

“Since I’m up an hour earlier than I wanted to be, as a result of having to catch a live squirrel not much smaller than my cats, which nonetheless one of them managed to haul into my bathroom, I have to say I think Josh is underestimating the both the courage and stupidity of cats.” –Duke of Earl Grey

“‘And we’re going to leave the store without paying for these Freezy Bombs.’ ‘As long as we respect them? Absolutely.'” –Super Luigi 64

“By the way, ‘Freezy Bomb’ is Gil Thorp street lingo for a Slurpee laced with powerful hallucinogens.” –Steve S

“Aaron’s mom looks like she’s struggling to remember who’s who and what’s going on in this strip. Finally, a character I can relate to!” –pugfuggy

“Pop quiz, hotshot. Your idiot spouse has just received two backhanded compliments in a row and is just dumb enough to take them as regular compliments. How many seconds do you wait before destroying him? One? Five?” –Joe Blevins

“I love that you diagnosed Aaron’s mom with the vapors! Perhaps we can see her lavishly drawn fainting couch… er wait, this is Milford, so it is likely a Bauhaus-ian metal-framed vinyl loveseat.” –Skeltometer

“That’s funny. But seriously, the ukulele is just a hobby. Anyway, did you know the medical industry in Nashville is estimated to be more than six times larger than the music industry? That’s why I’m headed there to see a specialist about my grotesquely misshapen thumb.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

“They should get matching tattoos of Mary Worth. We should all get matching tattoos of Mary Worth!” –handsome Harry Backstayge, idol of a million other women

“What’s the matter about showing the Phantom’s face on a stamp? It will still be a mystery, it’s not like anyone is using stamps anymore. Speaking of which, they could also show his face in the comics page.” –Ettorre

“Hey boss, we got two more security clearance requests here. Should I do any cursory work to look into these guys’ past, or, you know, look at their faces even? Or should I just go ahead and rubber stamp them? Rubber stamp them? Okay then.” –The Penultimate Silent Panel

“The Brush and the other feller with much less impressive facial hair (the Toothbrush? The Mascara Applicator?) represent Dick Tracy’s most terrifying villains yet — as their uniforms make clear, their mission is none other than the abolition of the Thai constitution and the restoration of the absolute monarchy of Siam. Will Tracy be able to defeat them, or will he decide, actually, that’s just the sort of thing he could get behind?” –Schroduck

“I admire the precision of Brush’s gloating. How many scheming bad guys would take the time to say they were going to come away with ‘$1.25 million?’ Most would just say ‘a ton of money’ and leave it at that. Tomorrow, we can look forward to Brush calculating the tax implications of his heist.” –Randy

And I must give a huge thanks to all the extremely kind people who signed up to be a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter, put some scratch in my tip jar or backed me on Patreon! I’m taking a moratorium on ad buys because we’re still tweaking the ad slots, but look for exciting ways you can advertise on this site come 2017!

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Dick Tracy, 1/27/17

As I always note with increasing nostalgia, ever since the switchup of creative teams in 2011, Dick Tracy plots rarely end in insanely violent and gory death anymore. But Joe Staton and Mike Curtis do have a knack for unearthing the most horrifyingly deformed villains from the strip’s decades-long history and fitting their traditional look into today’s more modern art style. “The Brush,” whose head is completely hairless except for a drooping reverse mullet covering his entire face, is a particularly vivid example of this, and it says a lot about our society’s tolerance that someone so profoundly unsettling looking can find work in the landscaping industry.

According to the Dick Tracy Wiki, the original Brush was a scam artist who claimed that radioactive fallout from A-bomb tests had caused his condition, when he was actually just wearing a face-wig (face-merkin?). After raising a bunch of sympathy money in a preview of modern GoFundMes, his scheme fell apart and he fled to the countryside one step ahead of Dick Tracy, only to die when the dynamite trailer he was hiding out in got struck by lightning (!!!!!!!!). So I’m not sure what relationship this dude has with the one who was blown to bits in an act of a particularly vengeful God, but if this storyline is half as bonkers as that one, I am very much looking forward to it.

Phantom, 1/27/17

Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on the current Phantom storyline, which, no lie, has involved a guy determined to get the Phantom on a Bangallan stamp. Anyway, the second panel is a great example of why the big purple guy is so philately-worthy: he’s punched this criminal so hard in the jaw that the dude’s head has partially phased out of our dimension, allowing it to become hopelessly embedded in the bars of his prison cell in a queasy-making, Escher-esque mess.