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Dick Tracy, 12/8/10

Oh, hey, Dick Tracy has been happening! The new plot involves Dick taking an inhuman maniac mass murderer, who’s wearing a terrifying gimp mask that also kind of looks like a toaster, to his sentencing, for reasons too unrealistic and dumb to go into here. However, I thought today’s strip was worth mentioning because of Dick’s dialogue in panel one — “Doctor, or whatever you are.” “I mean, I didn’t look at your CV or anything before they put you, draped and shackles and fetish gear, in the back of my low-slung sedan. Are you a medical doctor? Should I call you ‘professor’? Alls I know is that a depraved monster like you had to come out of the so-called ‘higher education’ system.”

Judge Parker, 12/8/10

Sam being garden variety smug about his wealth and privilege is all good fun. But Sam being smug about how his friend Judge Parker wrote especially erotic sex scenes involving his fictional stand-in, “Hank Austin,” and a beautiful assassin? That’s … that’s kind of gross, actually.

Mary Worth, 12/8/10

Obviously Jill’s drunken tirade wasn’t going to end nicely, with her storming out in a huff. I think that we all should have realized that the only way she was going to leave this hideously decorated reception hall was by being dragged out bodily, raving like a lunatic, clinging to her precious, precious bottle of wine. As usual, Jill’s apparent emotional state is all over the map: in the first panel she’s all rage, but in panel two she looks genuinely terrified, convinced that Adrian is making a terrible, fatal mistake. She reminds me of nothing so much as the final scene in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers:

YOU’RE NEXT, ADRIAN! YOU’RE NEXT! Foolish Jill — did you not realize that you’re already in a room full of pod people?

Pluggers, 12/8/10

Dear Pluggers: If you’re trying to make a double entendre like this, keep in mind that we look at the cartoon before we read the caption, which kind of ruins the effect. Also: never, ever make a double entendre again, for reals.

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Luann, 12/7/10

Oh my gosh, long-despised villain Dirk is suddenly going to become a hero! Some might find this to be a shocking turn of events, but it’s the logical conclusion of the same process by which the strip’s ostensible protagonists have become completely unbearable.

Mary Worth, 12/7/10

You thought that Mary Worth couldn’t get any better. You thought wrong. Panel one is a delight: I love the fact that Mary has escalated from a single hand to the mouth to two, and I’m practically hypnotized by the droplet of ketchup-wine suspended in mid-air within Jill’s glass. And then she gets out of her chair and karate chops Scott in the face.

Apartment 3-G, 12/7/10

“Yes, architecture, the practice of designing the buildings we live in every day with a modicum of art and grace … I’m sure it bores a bohemian like yourself to tears, as it does me. Oh, I’ve tried to really express my innermost self through my hobby, clothing design, but it’s about time I admitted to myself that my combination scarf-cravat — or ‘scarfat,’ as I dreamed of hearing it called on the runways in Paris and Milan — is never going to catch on.”

Judge Parker, 12/7/10

Ha ha, that classic Sam Driver smugness is still in full effect. “Some poor crazed woman out there who pines for me but can never, ever have me? That’s more intoxicating than this extremely expensive wine!”

Mark Trail, 12/7/10

Faced by the sudden and terrifying prospect of a woman in his room, Mark covers his genitals the only way he can: by bellowing out the largest word balloon his lungs can muster.

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Mark Trail, 12/6/10

Allow me to dabble in a little heresy here for a moment: could Kelly and Mark actually be perfect for one another? It’s been clear for some time that Cherry isn’t getting her needs met by her spouse: she expects “love” or “affection” or at least a husband who “understands” the “emotions” that motivate “humans.” On the other hand, Kelly, though ostensibly cast in the role of the strip’s sexpot, seems genuinely confused about why it would be inappropriate for her to walk into Mark’s hotel room while he’s showering and answer a phone call from his wife. I don’t think we’re intended to read her line in panel three as being delivered in some kind of sultry yet sarcastic mode; instead, she’s just gazing dumbfounded at the phone, wondering how something she said could possibly have caused such offense. You know who else demonstrates that sort of diagnosable inability to grasp the needs and inner lives of others? Mark Trail.

I’m sort of curious about exactly how Cherry’s posture translates into the massive SLAM we see in panel two. Did she suddenly go all faint at the thought of Kelly in Mark’s hotel room and lose her balance, with one hand catching herself on the table as she pitched forward and the other sending the phone careening back into the cradle almost by accident? Or did she firmly place right hand on the table for balance, so that she could smash the handset down with her left all the more vigorously?

Mary Worth, 12/6/10

A comic panel is, when you think about it, a curious way to convey narrative: although it’s tempting to think of it as a single frozen moment, panels with dialogue do depict a certain amount of time passing, and so each of the motionless characters must occupy a particular instant within the interval that the panel contains. In today’s panel two — which, I hope I don’t need to say, is the most wonderful thing anyone will show you today — Dr. Jeff still bears the beatific expression of a man in the midst of a good uninterrupted bloviation, whereas Mary and Adrian’s looks of stricken horror indicate that they’re living in the moment after Jill’s drunken interruption ruined everything good, forever.

I love virtually all of the details in today’s strips: Jill taking a big gulp of wine in panel one, for courage; the happy couple holding hands, oblivious to what’s about to happen; Mary bringing one hand up to her mouth in shock, while Adrian merely stares on dumbly, finally aware that the friend she’s coddled all this time really, truly doesn’t like any of this crap. But mostly I love Jill’s inexplicable rage, which I’ve loved from the moment it became apparent that it would be the driving force behind this storyline. Jill won’t put up with Jeff’s pablum. God? Don’t talk to Jill about God. Jill knows there’s no heaven above us, just a grid of hideous drop ceiling panels that never end.

Gil Thorp, 12/6/10

With Milford’s star player kicked off the team for dealing drugs, Gil needs to pull some clever coaching out of his coaching hat at the end of the season if he wants to salvage his playdown hopes. “They’ll be looking for the wildcat formation — but not this wildcat!” he says, revealing the the mountain lion he plans to release into his opponents’ backfield on key plays. “Who wants to volunteer to sneak into Valley Tech’s locker room and rub raw meat all over their jock straps?”