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While we in the northeast prepare for further heatpocalypse, I offer you your comment of the week.

“I don’t know … maybe you’re process servers! Or maybe you’re here to steal my limited-edition Droopy Dawg bookend.” –Esther Blodgett

And the runners up! Very funny!

“I just want to know who Smokey and his lover are burying. Only YOU can prevent exposure of your dirty little secrets.” –LUJBEM FEJF

“So which will come first: Nina’s baby or Luann’s first orgasm? Yep, I went there and now you can’t unthink it. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” –Apeman

“What travel brochure just shows a random road? ‘Have a nice relaxing stay on Highway 42!'” –Dartpaw86

“Why do I get the feeling that this isn’t the first time Tommie has thought, ‘There is another way, but I’m totally inexperienced’? It wouldn’t surprised me if she has it stitched into a sampler.” –Pozzo

“Come on, Dawn, don’t you realize that Italian cuisine is famous primarily for its fresh vegetables? It’s not as if you can find fresh vegetables back home in California.” –Samuel PG

“Look, Tommie. You’re never going to learn if you don’t try. What’s the worst that can happen: your client and her baby dead on the floor of a Manhattan apartment with a major trauma center only a few blocks away, that’s all. So you have to make some mistakes, but that’s how you get better. I think it was Thomas Edison who said, ‘Yes, I invented the medical X-Ray machine. But no one talks about the fact that I poisoned dozens, including my loyal assistant to get there.’ So I say go for it!” –geekwhisperer

“The United States flag has 5 rows of 6 stars and 4 rows of 5 stars (5×6+4×5=50). The flag does NOT have 10 rows of 5 stars, except in the police state that Dick Tracy pledges allegiance to.” –Mysterion

“I forgive you for acting like a jealous nincompoop. I still need time to come to terms with you being such an indolent limpdick moocher, though.” –Doctor Handsome

“I hope Giorgio turns out to be Mary Worth in an elaborate latex mask.” –Drew Funk

“I’d always thought that ‘bighorn’ were a type of peaceful and cute mountain dwelling sheep. In fact their appearance in the Lost Forest is apparently a semi-annual terror-fest. ‘I wish Mark was here … We could go take pictures of the bighorn as they come down the mountain to feed … on brains and human flesh'” –Inkler

I must thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

• The Hole Behind Midnight: Royden Poole is having a very bad day. “… fast, profane, full of joy, deeply intelligent, and just a lot of damn fun to read.” –Colin McComb, author of OATHBREAKER. “… like the fevered brainchild of Warren Ellis and Kenneth Hite. Smart, dark fun.” ––Matt Forbeck, AMORTALS and VEGAS KNIGHTS.

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Dick Tracy, 7/6/12

So the new Dick Tracy writer-artist team of Joe Stanton and Mike Curtis have been on the job for more than a year now, and I haven’t been discussing the strip here as often as I did in its previous iteration, mostly because the art is pretty good and the plots are no longer marked by incomprehensible dream-like lunacy punctuated by horrific violence. If I have one major criticism, it’s that so much of the plots seem to have been aimed at assembling all of the strip’s classic villains into one overarching criminal syndicate, which has gotten a bit tiresome to those of us not up on eighty years of Tracy lore. But over the past few week’s the assembled baddies have been caught up in an epic gunfight as Tracy and the cops bust in to make arrests, with a fair amount of carnage ensuing.

Which makes me wonder — what if the last 15 months have just been carefully putting all the pieces of the storied Dick Tracy rogues gallery in place just so they can all be killed in a crazed, botched police raid? And then the new team can say “Ha ha, this strip is ours now, we’re going to make up all sorts of new crazies?” Probably won’t happen, but it would amuse me. Plus I kind of want to see this Indonesian action film called The Raid about a police raid on a huge gang-controlled high-rise tower that goes horribly wrong (here’s the trailer, but be warned that it’s crazy violent) but in practice I probably don’t have the stomach for that much movie violence so maybe this Dick Tracy is as close as I’m going to actually tolerate.

Judge Parker, 7/6/12

Wow, for once things are not going right for our wealthy Judge Parker heroes! They’re being tailed by marijuana farming hoodlums, their fishing lodge is a dump, their reservations never went through, and the proprietress is going to assault them with a hammer at any moment. Don’t worry, though, there are still breasts, so the world makes some sort of sense.

Mark Trail, 7/6/12

If you need more evidence that Mark Trail plots are recycled from another era, imagine a contemporary American parent sending their child (or hideously ugly ward, in this case) off into the wilderness to go take some pictures of sheep. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of it, because children need to learn more self-reliance than this modern crop is picking up, plus “Rusty in danger” plots are extremely hilarious.

Apartment 3-G, 7/6/12

“So, it’s completely safe, when competent people do it, but it’ll be really dangerous with me in charge. Lemme just scan the entry for it on WebMD and then let’s get started!”

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Momma, 7/5/12

Momma owns a bottle of some kind of incredibly fast-acting and powerful pesticide, which is no doubt highly toxic to all living things that come in contact with it (e.g., Francis, Momma).

Wizard of Id, 7/5/12

This lady is “keeping her husband on his toes” by threatening to have immolated alive.

Hi and Lois, 7/5/12

Ditto can control the weather, or perhaps the very flow of time itself, with his mind, but isn’t really very good at it.

Spider-Man, 7/5/12

Something about the crazed madman who sent a theaterful of people running in terror and incapacitated her super-powered husband frightens Mary Jane.

Shoe, 7/5/12

Shoe is really kind of a dick.