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Gasoline Alley, 12/6/16

As is my wont with Gasoline Alley, I have no desire to bring you up to speed on the current storyline about beardy PA Chipper Wallet, and fortunately have no need to either, since nothing happening in today’s strip had any kind of earlier setup. I’m guessing that the strip was tied by some mysterious web of obligation to mention Reg Carter of the PA History Society — like perhaps the PAHS deposited a tidy sum into a certain Swiss bank account controlled by an intermediary shell corporation owned by Gasoline Alley intellectual property holder Tribune Media, or maybe Mr. Carter lost a bet. Anyway, obviously what this transaction needs to make it interesting is a little sex appeal, and what better way to deliver that than to have Chipper’s redheaded assistant practically throwing herself at him? Look at her fluttering her eyelids in panel one. That’s the stuff that gets red-blooded comics readers hot under the collar, I tell you what. The PA History Society’s really getting its money’s worth.

Mark Trail, 12/6/16

If there’s something funnier in the history of comics than Mark’s pose in panel two here, I can’t imagine what it might be! Since he’s talking, I’m pretty sure he’s not actually running yet, just posing extremely dynamically to impress upon Abbey how very fast they’re going to have to run in order to not suffer an awful death by lava.

Pluggers, 12/6/16

“Nothing gets a dog hornier for a chicken than the smell of fruit pastry” –a nationally syndicated comic panel, apparently

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Dick Tracy, 12/5/16

It’s no secret that, once the days of Dick Tracy’s violent insanity ended in 2011 (with a storyline that concluded with a villain in a bondage mask being eaten alive by rats) and a new creative team took over, I stopped focusing much on the strip here, mostly because it just wasn’t such an object of sick fascination for me any more. There hasn’t been anything particularly dramatically different about the current plotline, yet somehow it’s really caught my imagination with its string of low-key absurdities as it shambled from “a mean Congresslady wants to put space aliens in concentration camps” to “a guy who can’t stop taking selfies is lying low at the zoo.” Anyway, today’s strip particularly tickled me, mostly because of Dick’s line in the first panel. “Another storage area? Who knew that zoos had so much stuff that they needed to store? When am I going to get to stop looking in areas where things are stored and start shooting people in the face?” Don’t worry, Dick, I’m pretty sure that getting cattle prodded in the back is very much something that the Major Crime Unit’s internal review board will be glad to let you get extremely trigger happy over!

Dennis the Menace, 12/5/16

Wow, Dennis the Menace turned into bondage porn so gradually we barely noticed!

Hi and Lois, 12/5/16

Wow, Hi and Lois turned into a crushingly realistic depiction of a couple exhausted by parenthood and slowly losing whatever residual affection they had for each other so gradually we barely noticed!

The Lockhorns, 12/5/16

Is this the first time we’ve seen the top of Leroy’s head? I don’t care for it. I don’t care for it at all.

Mary Worth, 12/5/16

[I run up the stairs and throw open the door to the rooftop]

[I’m on the roof of an apartment building in a dreary metropolis]

[It’s pouring rain]

[I run to the edge of the roof and with a great heave pull aside a huge tarp]

[Underneath it is an ancient-looking spotlight]

[I throw a huge switch on its side]

[electricity surges into it and huge shaft of light beams into the sky]

[something’s written on the spotlight, something that’s now visible across the city]

[everyone for miles around cranes their necks to read the message written on the clouds]

MARY WORTH IS ABOUT TO GIVE A FORTYSOMETHING WOMAN ADVICE ABOUT WHETHER IT’S OK TO FUCK A 25-YEAR-OLD.

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Funky Winkerbean, 12/4/16

Just to remind those of you who don’t have the backstory to Funky Winkerbean occupying valuable real estate in your skull: After Cindy was fired from the TV news for being old, which, I can’t emphasize enough, is totally illegal, she went to work for some Internet thing called “Buddyblog.” This company mainly exists within the Funkyverse narrative to give Cindy an opportunity to openly insult young people for no reason, but it’s not exactly clear what it is exactly. The name implies that it’s a blog, but obviously that’s a media form that’s way past its lucrative prime [BITTER, HOLLOW LAUGHTER] and mostly it does video stuff which it … posts on the Internet, I guess? Do you think it’s streamed live? If it’s streamed live, Buddyblog’s dozens of viewers are probably about to get their most exciting episode yet, if you consider off-script rage from an interviewer “exciting.” You can really tell how seriously Cindy takes her new gig by the way she just checks the Google Alert she set for “‘mason jarr’ + cheating” while she’s on camera.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 12/4/16

Hey, Slylock doesn’t just use his powers of ratiocination to solve mysteries, OK? Sometimes he uses his powers of ratiocination to determine just where in physical space his enemy is, the better to kick his enemy’s ass. I am pretty disappointed that all we got here was a description of the thought process that led to the fracas, and not the actual vulpine vs. canine battle that we long to see.