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Dick Tracy, 3/20/18

OK, fine, I take it back, Dick Tracy isn’t abruptly ending its Ghost Pepper plot at all. In fact, it’s drawing it out in loopy new directions! Ghost Pepper, who dislocated his shoulder in the crash, has sought out “Phishface,” who is a doctor (?) or something, and also a fish-man in classic inexplicable Dick Tracy style. He’s such a fish-man that he apparently used to have a “base” at the aquarium, which either means he really is part fish, and the character is a shameless attempt to cash in on the sexy fish fever sparked by The Shape Of Water, or he’s just really committed to the bit, I guess. The real question we need to ask: what’s the deal with Dick Tracy’s obsession with criminals lying low at facilities where animals are held captive for the public to gawk at, making particular use of the many closets and storage areas therein?

The Phantom, 3/20/18

You’d think being a high-powered UN official and consort to an immortal jungle god would leave little room for boredom in Diana’s life, but I guess if she needs to entertain herself by idly trying to work out which of her professional or family acquaintances are savage terrorist warlords, who am I to judge?

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Mary Worth, 3/19/18

Hmm, how does Mary Worth fare on the suddenly very relevant Soap Opera Comic Museum Verisimilitude Test? Well, significantly worse than The Phantom, which meticulously reconstructed a room at the Met for its protagonist to ruminate sourly in. It turns out that Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is in the Uffizi just to the left of the same artist’s Pallas and the Centaur, and not, as today’s Mary Worth would have you believe, next to Some Trees Or Whatever.

Spider-Man, 3/19/18

Oh, man, remember the tense drama that arose in this strip when, for for reasons that were explained in only the sketchiest of ways, Bruce Banner could no longer turn into the Hulk? Well, good news: now he can turn into the Hulk again, with no attempt to explain it at all.

Crankshaft, 3/19/18

Don’t get your hopes up, people. Last year’s Funky Winkerbean strip where we finally had it confirmed that Crankshaft’s moldering husk is still technically alive in the ten-years-ahead section of the Funkyverse’s fractured chronology wasn’t just weird and distasteful; it also robbed us of even fleeting moments of anticipation that Crankshaft might actually die in his own title strip.

Dennis the Menace, 3/19/18

The vision of a child stuffing cookie after cookie into his mouth from a trash can infested with chittering vermin as he mutters “Still clean enough, still clean enough for me,” is … uh, menacing, yes, let’s say that.

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Hi and Lois, 3/18/18

A lot of previously underground gay subcultures have become pretty well known in recent years to the American mainstream, but that doesn’t mean that the mainstream always fully “gets it.” For instance, “Thirsty” Thurston is many things, but he’s not a bear. He’d have to be a lot hairier, for one thing.

Family Circus, 3/18/18

“Thank goodness, Dolly finds reading incredibly boring! It’ll be much easier to keep her from seeking out knowledge from outside the Keane Kompound this way.”