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Dick Tracy, 6/23/15

So, the recently cancelled Little Orphan Annie comic strip was distributed by Tribune Media Services, which also distributes Dick Tracy, which allowed last year’s fake time-travel crossover story to happen. And now apparently Annie is just going to straight-up become a supporting Dick Tracy character, which is a positive thing you can bring up when one of your hippie friends starts complaining about out-of-control media consolidation. See, you thought this beloved Depression-era scamp was going to be gone from newspapers forever, and who brought her back? Obama? Nope, it was our friends at the various private equity firms that ended up owning the Tribune Company after its protracted bankruptcy proceedings were finally resolved! Let’s give a big hand to Angelo, Gordon & Co., Oaktree Capital Management, and other lesser stakeholders for giving this kind of creative corporate synergy a home for a while, until they abruptly shut down all unprofitable content-production operations entirely in 2017.

Anyway, let’s make the time we have left with the characters count with maximum insanity, shall we? Seems Annie and her friend, Dick Tracy’s half-moon-person granddaughter Honeymoon, are starting to go through puberty, and will have to deal with bullies in their own way, which I sincerely hope involves equal parts deadly moon powers and hired thugs paid for by Warbucks money.

Mary Worth, 6/23/15

“Ha ha, yep, we both know what really matters in life! It’s love or whatever. Say, Terry, you haven’t thought about running for Congress, have you? Running for Congress and letting me take a bullet for you? Come on I really really need this”

Six Chix, 6/23/15

Wait, is the joke that random people just show up at country weddings who don’t know the bride and groom, or that the country is haunted by bipedal, sapient cows? See, this is why I refuse to go anywhere that doesn’t have a high enough population density to support Thai food delivery.

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Crankshaft, 6/22/15

Happy Monday, everybody! Remember how Crankshaft’s depressed old theater-owning friend hit a pothole and decided to run for mayor? Well apparently that wasn’t depressing enough for the Funkyverse, so here you go: road conditions in Centerville are so bad that that they’re literally paralyzing the populace. The current corrupt administration doesn’t care how many shattered spines serve as a testament to its administrative incompetence, which will make it extra poignant when Ralph inevitably loses.

Rex Morgan, 6/22/15

At last! Mrs. P. is seeing Sarah’s paintings! For the very first time! And … uh … no, wait…

I know this plotline has had a certain “making it up as we’re going along and also forgetting the details of what happened before, or maybe playing an elaborate game of Exquisite Corpse” quality about it, but I’m pretty sure this is the first time the narration box’s information has been immediately contradicted by dialogue. If this were an improv scene — and frankly I have no evidence that it isn’t — I’d be pretty disappointed.

B.C., 6/22/15

A legacy strip like B.C. has of course accumulated characters and running gags over the decades, and Apteryx, who always introduces himself with “I’m Apteryx, a wingless bird with hairy feathers,” has been around for literally as long as I can remember. Not any more, though, as he’s now dead, devoured in an orgy of violence by these hungry predators. RIP Apteryx, we’ll miss you!

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/21/15

[briefly turns monitor upside down] Oh, the toad did it, did he, the short toad, because the pictures were taken close to the ground and only the toad is close to the ground … oh but wait, you know who else is close to the ground? Why, Max Mouse is, Max who magically “solved” this “crime,” who was able to find the camera so quickly, much to the swooning delight of his little mouse girlfriend. The toad stares ahead in shock, knowing that his innocence will be no defense against Slylock’s pull with the authorities; the bear glowers, seething at Slylock’s ability to use the punishing authority of the state to impress his girlfriend and fulfill his whims.

Dennis the Menace, 6/21/15

Dennis doesn’t appear to be adding any value to this chain of transactions by, say, managing the cheap labor he found, so I’m going to go ahead and deem him a labor arbitrageur and classify him as an economic menace.

Spider-Man, 6/21/15

Stan Lee is one of the co-creators of the Black Widow character, according to Wikipedia, and here he is apparently very interested in having sex with her! This is probably more revealing about the comics creative process than anyone involved really intended.