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Dick Tracy, 6/11/14

Well, Dick Tracy is going to fully commit to this crossover with the defunct Little Orphan Annie, with added hint-references to, I guess, Alley Oop? Maybe? It’s a series of nesting nods to comics history that maybe a few dozen people are going to fully appreciate, and you know, you keep doing you, Dick Tracy creative team. I’m more interested in the idea that Annie has been kidnapped by/is hanging out with “The Butcher of the Balkans,” whoever that may be. According to Wikipedia, there are at least five people who have been graced with that nickname (and, side note, sucks to be your region if it merits that kind of Wikipedia disambiguation page); two of them are in jail for war crimes and three are dead, one of whom was subjected to some extreme measures to make sure he stayed that way. Is there another one waiting in the wings? What relationship does he have with the Warbucks family? Will uncomfortable questions come up about who made bucks selling weapons to both sides in the wars that killed tens of thousands when Yugoslavia broke up in the ’90s? Is someone going to have to write a lot more checks?

Gasoline Alley, 6/11/14

I wonder if we’re being asked to believe that (a) “awk” is a thing the Kids Today say when they mean “awkward” (do they? maybe! I try to avoid contact with the Kids Today whenever possible) and (b) that children who who have been depicted casually throwing around the word “fellers” would talk like the Kids Today? Either way, I’m much more unsettled by the parrot, who seems fully sapient and increasingly outraged that nobody seems to notice or care. “No! Not the blanket again … I can’t stand any more darkness! Why won’t you listen to me? Why can’t anyone understand what I say?”

Herb and Jamaal, 6/11/14

Looks like Rev. Croom is in some financial difficulty and is dodging his creditors! Fortunately, he’s found some biblical backing for his strategies.

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Pluggers, 6/10/14

Hey, remember when pluggers thought that the best way to win a lady’s heart was to take her to get samples at Costco? Well, since then they’ve figured out that ladies are already at Costco, giving out samples, so why even bother bringing a whole different lady there? Why not just cut out the middlewoman? The sample ladies can meet all a he-plugger’s needs, if you know what I mean! (A he-plugger’s needs are primarily made up of bite-sized bits of meat and cheese on toothpicks.)

Mary Worth, 6/10/14

AHH AHH AHH THE CHILD HAS SUMMONED UP ROSE-DEMONS! UNCLEAN UNCLEAN UNCLEAN! BURN ALL THE FLOWER BUSHES AND FILL THE SWIMMING POOL WITH HOLY WATER

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Slylock Fox, 6/9/14

Do it, Max, Sly said to Max, silently, with his eyes. Do what you have to do. The irony was palpable: he was, after all, a fox, and there was a time when everyone knew that foxes had to be free, and the awful truth that they would chew through their own flesh and bone to escape a trap became a cliche. Slylock, who like all his anthropomorphic brethren had no memory of the Before Times, couldn’t appreciate the little joke, but presumably Count Weirdly could, presumably that was why he had set up this macabre little scene in the first place, why he had shackled Sly up in a room with a mouse-sized open window, left that saw out where Max could find it. In fact, the more you thought about it, the more obvous the many layers of irony Weirdly had baked into this sick little scenario became: the sudden Emergence of Earth’s animal life into sapience had nearly wiped out the human race, and forced poor holdouts like Weirdly into inaccessible fortresses, but Slylock now had too much cognitive power to free himself from a trap the way his kin could before, too much ability to understand the consequences of his own actions, to foresee the agony and the blood, to bring himself to do it. But he knew that if he remained in Weirdly’s captivity, worse would happen, much worse. So he had no choice but ask his best friend to do the unthinkable, to place the the sharp steel against his flesh and begin to … oh, wait, what? The eye hook is made of some different material? Haha, yeah, sure, that’d work too. That Count Weirdly, always forgetting some crucial detail! Ha!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/9/14

The whole underlying point of this endless Rex Morgan, M.D., Sarah plot is that Sarah is a frighteningly precocious adult-child and everyone around her is in a state of mortal terror at all times. They’re so terrified, in fact, that they never actually call her on any of her shenanigans, which is why the pushback she’s suddenly getting is completely fascinating to me. Either she’s going to shatter at the first sign of direct confrontation in her life, or this young man’s going to be a smear of gore with a few bits of blond crewcut in a manner of minutes.

Spider-Man, 6/9/14

YES, Dock Ock! It’s not enough that Spidey be shown up, he must also be MERCILESSLY HUMILIATED! More taunts, I say!