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Dick Tracy, 5/25/21

Wow, who could’ve possibly predicted that taking a protectee who already faced one assassination to the theater would’ve been a bad idea? Turns out this dress rehearsal wasn’t anywhere near as closed to the public as promised, so you better believe that our lovable pair of goth murderers are here to finish the job on ol’ Charlie. Anyway, I’m featuring today’s strip mostly to ask the very serious question of what in God’s name is going on with the mysterious figure in panel three. Is this yet another villain with a bizarrely specific costume shtick, wondering who’s here to horn in on his theater crime business? Or is this production of The Tempest just particularly avant-garde?

The Lockhorns, 5/25/21

Though I am by chosen profession a Comics Curmudgeon, and though I poke fun at The Lockhorns as much as anyone, my fundamental position on this comic from the beginning has been that I unironically like it. Today is a great example of its purity of essence. Leroy writhes in pain, having failed at a mundane household task, and Loretta looks at him, saying something cutting and genuinely funny, with absolutely dead eyes. It’s perfect. No notes.

Dennis the Menace, 5/25/21

It is absolutely in character and yet still absolutely infuriating that Henry has suited up for his macho weekend chores by putting what I’d bet money is a brand-new baseball hat and tool belt over the immaculately pressed dweeb-ass work clothes he wears most of the time. And I know some of you are going to say, “No, Josh, you don’t get it, he’s not planning on doing any chores, this is sex thing,” and if that’s the case he honestly ought to be more embarrassed about how he’s dressed.

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Blondie, 5/24/21

Ha ha, the kids today! Always getting on the online and becoming millionaires! It’s almost unfair! Used to be you could get rich doing a syndicated newspaper comic strip and making people laugh all over the country! But not anymore! Now you gotta show your naked ass on SnapFans if you want anyone to take you seriously! Is that what you want, America? You want to see the naked ass of the creator of a syndicated newspaper comic strip? Because we’ll do it! We’ll show that ass! And then you can go to hell! You can go straight to hell! Fuckin’ teenagers!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/24/21

“Wow, a man so beloved that he no longer has to deal with his well-wishers as individuals, but can rather bathe in their adulation in the aggregate while his assistants take on the grunt work of actually interacting with other humans? Must be nice. Must be real nice.”

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Dustin, 4/23/21

So the last time I tackled wordplay in a Sunday Dustin comic strip lots of people got mad at me because apparently they think hanger and anger rhyme, so maybe I shouldn’t tempt fate again, but whatever: I can tell by looking at it that this punchline is supposed to be wordplay, but I have no idea what the wordplay is supposed to be. I guess we’re meant to believe “takes it out on approval” is a well-known English phrase we all know and love, maybe? Well, it’s it’s not, but I’m sure a bunch of people are going to chime in telling me it is actually and I’m wrong. Anyway, one of the things about Dustin is that it’s about a generational war between two unlikeable characters, and you have to kind of admire how it makes you dislike whichever one is in the strip on any given day.

Marvin, 4/23/21

Get it? “Cry-Fi”? Because instead of communicating via a local wireless arean network defined by the IEEE 802.11 standards, he’s just yelling? Mercy! That’s pretty funny, of course, but let’s not let it distract us from the main thing here, which is that Marvin’s parents have locked him outside to die of exposure and starvation.