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Dick Tracy, 6/4/19

Well, it turns out the reason Little Orphan Annie is returning to Dick Tracy is because Daddy Warbucks’s second wife gave some testimony in a criminal case years ago, but the cops lost it (?) and now they need to talk to her again, but she’s disappeared and Daddy Warbucks doesn’t want to talk about her! Today we learn that this is probably because … he murdered her? On a boat? And yeah, the authorities should have investigated, but really, “rich, politically connected guy kills his wife in international waters” just isn’t a high-reward prosecution, honestly, which is why we’re only bringing it up now that we have a gangster with a facial deformity and corresponding nickname we need to put away.

Crankshaft, 6/4/19

If you ever need evidence that the Funkyverse is where joy goes to die, you could just present panel one of today’s Crankshaft, in which Pam and Jeff brace themselves for what seems like it’s going to be a happy announcement from their son and his girlfriend in their own particular way, which for Pam is “staring wide-eyed in absolute panic” and for Jeff is “crossing arms defiantly and glowering with contempt.”

Funky Winkerbean, 6/4/19

Of course, if that’s too subtle, you could also just point out today’s Funky Winkerbean, in which a little boy threatens to vomit on his grandmother.

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Slylock Fox, 6/3/19

Since the early days of this blog, I have cruelly mocked legacy strips’ tendency to shamelessly recycle content. So perhaps it is a fitting comeuppance that I, having in nearly fifteen years of blogging become something of a legacy feature myself, sometimes get sucked into the repeats, compelled to comment on the same recycled strip with variations on the same joke! Sometimes I catch myself and sometimes I don’t, but I suppose it makes sense that the same strips would draw me in, since they’re presumably activating the same parts of my comics-mocking brain. Still, it’s I enjoy contemplating the differences in how I react to the same strip, to try to understand how my own mind has changed over the years. For instance, back in 2011, I found it sad that Slylock could only correct some physics facts as this poor stork-lady’s business collapsed around her. Today, I’m reading this and thinking — did she call the cops because her candles were melting? Couldn’t she get ahold of her landlord, or, like, an HVAC repair person? Does she run a candle store and somehow not have an HVAC repair person on retainer? She’s taking up valuable police time! Slylock and Max could be out there finding Slick Smitty guilty of something that isn’t even a crime rather than coming up with ways to save this careless merchant’s inventory! It makes me sick.

Hi and Lois, 6/3/19

Wow, Hi and Lois looked genuinely shattered that their daughter is doing a perfectly normal, if irritating, baby thing! “Oh, Hi! We raised our kids in stultifying suburbia specifically so that they’d respect the sanctity of private property from birth. And we failed! She’s an anarchist, Hi, a damn anarchist. What have we done?”

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Mary Worth, 6/2/19

Oh man, I take back what I said yesterday about this strip being stuck in a holding pattern. Because now Estelle is going to be smart. She knows how to play the game. She knows how to lull the lonely into a false sense of intimacy that can be easily exploited. She knows she’s not getting her $10,000 back from “Arther,” but she’s definitely going to get $10,000 from somewhere.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/2/19

Time to add cybersex to the long, long list of things that the Funky Winkerbean crew doesn’t understand and can’t do right!