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Dick Tracy, 2/22/13

Long-time readers will remember when Dick Tracy was a staple of these pages, back before a new team, narrative coherence, and really sumptuous art (go back and look at that first panel again; I’ll wait) put an end to that. So it’s nice of them to toss in an grisly death now and again, just for us old-timers. Thanks, guys — BEROWH!

Judge Parker, 2/22/13

Ha ha, so L’il Judge Randy’s going to tell his fiancée — a well-equipped professional assassin with a hair-trigger temper and history of gun violence returning from covert wet work in some Middle East hot spot — that their honeymoon will trap them on a boat with Mom ‘n’ Pop, the very people she planned to escape by eloping, swearing him to secrecy. Sam’s concerns are misplaced — L’il Judge won’t live to see cocktail hour, let alone Mexico. Work it like a claw, and call him mincemeat.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/22/13

The Scarlet Letter meets Welcome to the Monkey House. Those townsfolk will be mighty surprised when Reverend Dimmesdale shows up with a scarlet “D-” on his chest — the mercy grade Hester gave him so he wouldn’t try to retake the course.

Edge City, 2/22/13

Obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin finally found a personal trainer well-suited to her capabilities and goals, and promptly stopped exercising. Husband Len sizes up the situation perceptively, but both irony and correction are lost on Abby.

Hi and Lois, 2/22/13

Lois, check out the the Cubs memorabilia and the Dylan, Who, and Led Zeppelin posters: this guy is your Dad.

Just a reminder – no Comments of the Week on my watch. Look for them when Josh gets back Sunday or, you know, whenever.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Momma, 2/21/13

It’s funny because Momma is down to her last five bucks and her son is a thief.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/21/13

Many, many comic strips have terrible dialogue, but the dialogue in Funky Winkerbean and sister strip Crankshaft is terrible in its own unique way — not from lack of craft or attention (Hi, Crock!), but its very opposite. Stare at a simple line like “How’s your room?” long enough and you’ll start to ask yourself if readers will remember the characters are traveling, or maybe think the question is whether they have enough room, say, to swing their arms or something? Then it’s down the rabbit-hole: “How’s your hotel room?” could be any hotel, so let’s go with “How’s your room in the hotel” to make it clear this Esteemed Figure is staying at the main convention hotel and not some off-strip dive, then plaster “Music Educ Asso  t” on the wall for good measure. Despite all that work — no, because of it — you wind up with overwrought phrases that seem unambiguous, but which no actual human would ever utter: “solo car date”, “dead man’s singles”, or “space heater in the basement” (for “water heater”).

More fundamental is the Quip Fail at the heart of this strip. Hotel ratings use stars, not letters, so “B-flat hotel” makes no sense even coming from a band leader Music Educator. My guess is that the joke started out star-related — maybe Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever? — and then got reworked into its present form. But if “B-flat hotel” is really your punchline, own it, don’t bury it in these wads of bumf. Put it at the end, where punchlines go: “I won’t be staying there much, so I don’t mind a B-flat hotel.” And spare us Beardo’s in-strip affirmation of your character’s dubious wit. Exactly.

Wizard of Id, 2/21/13

It’s funny because it’s not golf.

Crankshaft, 2/21/13

Got that? A joke. Now laugh, God damn you!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Hey, gang, remember Margo’s vaguely ethnic comical-but-lovable fortune-tellin’ birth mother Gabriella? “Vaya, el espiritu malo!” Gabriella? “Gracias, Santa Maria!” Gabriella? I mean this Gabriella:

Well if you do, I’ve got sad news:

Apartment 3-G, 2/20/13

Yes, the passage of time and renewed romantic attentions of Martin Magee have bleached, rectified, and WASPicated our favorite Roma/Filipina/Chicana firecracker, to the point where things like “Bless you, Mr. Cooper” actually come out of her mouth.

Now I understand that as we approach the End Times, there needs to be a certain amount of convergence among God’s creatures in preparation for our ultimate unification with the One. Heck, the guys in Apartment 3-G have been interchangeable for years! So it’s not that I’m against the End of the World as a concept, or even as a near-term possibility. I’m just not ready for the Omega Point to look quite so much like Mary Worth.

Phantom, 2/20/13

In the fifth month of the daily Phantom game Who’s Got the Lioness?, Evil Miner Logician rudely dismisses his colleague’s naïve “argument from absence of evidence” without considering alternatives:

1. Surely 500 years of the “Man-Who-Cannot-Die” legend provides some evidence of absence, no?
2. Alternative hypothesis: the Phantom may be a vampire or zombie, and therefore dead already. Vampires and zombies are very popular right now — he should at least consider it!
3. All right, a single null result is inconclusive. So why not add more trials and widen the scope a bit: try hanging, burning, shooting, drowning, poisoning, or simply boring him to death. God knows it’s working on us.

Marvin, 2/20/13

For the past several days Marvin’s been having a late-night chat with “his worst nightmare” on the right here. Today we learn that “Marvin nightmare” = “Marvin bowel movement”, i.e., the visitor is in fact Marvin’s own poo come to terrifying life. This being Marvin, such a development was of course inevitable. But we should still be grateful that Disney’s ironclad trademark control over the name “Poo” keeps the newcomer from having his own spinoff strip.

And speaking of poo:

Mary Worth, 2/20/13

John Dill has finally digested his prizewinning cake.

— Uncle Lumpy