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Dick Tracy, 2/17/25
Not sure if America was in the mood for the Dick Tracy storyline just concluded, about how the families prominent in our civic and financial elites are getting Nazi-curious about their Nazi ancestors. But has there ever been an era that wasn’t up for a good corpse-napping story? Dr. Hart here is pissed about an attempted corpse theft and she wants Neo-Chicago’s top cop on the case! Only he can track down the perpetrators! And, of course, if the notoriously trigger-happy Tracy were to produce more corpses in the course of his investigation, bringing more business to the morgue … well, that would just be an added bonus.
Judge Parker, 2/17/25
Look, I’m fine with Sophie acknowledging that there are few things less interesting to a college-age girl than her dad’s middle-aged dude friends, but I draw the line on her deciding to just stop engaging with Spener-Driver-Parker antics altogether. Sophie, we already have a comic strip about a blonde college student doing blonde college student stuff, it’s called Luann and (as I am reminded now that I have violated my blood oath and started reading it again) it’s pretty dire. You need to get in there and start hacking that drone footage! You’ve got an audience to entertain here and “doing your homework” or whatever is not going to cut it.
Dick Tracy, 2/20/25
Dick Tracy is a comic strip that operates in an exaggerated storytelling mode, entertaining us with outlandish plots about corpse theft and so forth. But it can also touch on very real, down-to-earth issues, like the problem of inadequate nephews. Are your nephews good-for-nothings who don’t even have the skills and/or gumption to properly steal a dead body? Dick Tracy sees you, and hears you, and knows you are valid.
Pickles, 2/20/25
Another comic I’ve added recently to my rotation is Pickles, a low-key strip about old people. I appreciate today’s installment because it avoids the cliche of making an adorable little moppet the resident computer genius and instead identifies the “generation [that’s] pretty handy with modern technology” as the children of old people, who are, let’s be extremely real, getting pretty old themselves. Sure, assigning tech support to a 52-year-old with bad knees may not get your strip cut out and hung on refrigerators, but you have to respect the commitment to verisimilitude.
The Lockhorns, 2/20/25
“Why doesn’t this person use the opportunity given to him to inflict violence on the one who has wronged him?” is Loretta’s takeaway from what she’s learning about soccer, and that should be concerning to Leroy, probably.
Dennis the Menace, 2/20/25
Mr. Wilson, they’re going to try to cancel you for this, but you’re right. Dennis Mitchell is a five-year-old child and just in general should not be spending extended periods of time at other people’s homes outside a formal arrangement; today he’s banging on a pot like a drum in a very irritating manner and you shouldn’t have to put up with it. I support you in your quest for a common sense resolution of the Dennis issue!
Bizarro, 2/18/25
Big fan of today’s Bizarro for insisting on historical realism in the face of the gauzy, romantic revisionism we usually see on this subject. King Arthur, that paragon of courtly chivalry and the ultimate historical good guy? Didn’t exist, of course, but whatever Dark Ages warlord served as the inspiration for the stories was no doubt a violent thug who established his rule by the sword. Certainly he would’ve held a mere craftsman as unworthy of respect from the warrior caste, wouldn’t have hesitated to murder such a person if he found him even slightly annoying, and would’ve suffered no consequences for doing so.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/18/25
Mother Goose and Grimm hit its 40th anniversary last year, and its characters are sick of it! They were never meant to dance and put on antics for our amusement for so many decades! Please, let them rest! Let them find rest in the grave! They’re begging you!
Mary Worth, 2/18/25
“Well then, a home-cooked meal may do the trick!” [much quieter and faster] “And also advice.”
“What was that last part, Mary?”
“Nothing, Dawn! See you at seven o’clock!”
“Thanks, Mary!”
[even quieter and faster] “For advice”
“Did you say something else?”
“Must’ve been the wind, dear.”
Gil Thorp, 2/19/25
Gil Thorp of course always deals with teen issues both of-the-moment and timeless, and there’s one of the latter type that I don’t think we’ve seen before, which is the phenomenon of the Horse Girl. We’ve actually been in the middle of a wrestling-themed story for the past few days so I’m not sure if this is a classic Thorp-style abrupt transition to the spring B-plot, which will involve the intensely competitive and hitherto undocumented Valley Conference equestrian tournament, or if Valley Conference wrestling follows WWE rules and allows unorthodox techniques like riding a horse into the ring. Either way, I’m looking forward to learning more about this young athlete who loves Silver in a way that the Lone Ranger never could.
Heathcliff, 2/19/25
It’s very true that you can’t judge a book by its cover. There really are people out there who appear to be ordinary, solid citizens — collared shirts, flattop haircuts, the whole nine yards — and yet behind closed doors full-on bathe in meat, like absolute freaks. Only animals with powerful noses can identify these sickos!
Dick Tracy, 2/19/25
Today’s Dick Tracy really has a lot to say about contemporary journalism. Sam reacts with irritation and impatience to Dick’s attempt to explain the corpsenapping background to him: “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says, thrusting a broadsheet into Dick’s face. “I know all that, I read about it in our constitutionally protected free press, ever heard of it?” But in the final panel, a local citizen refers to “tottering Tribune towers,” a reference to the fact that Chicago’s largest newspaper was forced into bankruptcy by vulture capitalists and is now part of a hedge-fund-owned chain that’s increasingly starved of resources. (The tower in this case is metaphorical, as the real one was sold and converted to condos in 2018.)
The Lockhorns, 2/19/25
Cases in divorce court almost never involve jury trials, of course, which means that Leroy lied to Loretta about having jury duty and convinced her to accompany him to the courthouse just so he could do this bit. Ironically, this just shows that he’s willing to put in the work to keep their dysfunctional marriage fresh and interesting.
Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/16/25
Now, I joke a lot that the only real industries in Hootin’ Holler are moonshining, chicken theft, and (Doc Pritairt only) Medicaid fraud. However, obviously it’s realistic that some of its inhabitants toil in the dirty and dangerous extractive industries that power the flatlanders’ cities. A few dare to dream of ascending to management positions, only to be laughed at for their rustic diction by the city slickers until they give up. You can understand why Snuffy and Lukey don’t even bother trying!
Panel from Slylock Fox, 2/16/25
Today’s strip offers some interesting insight into the question of why humans as a species haven’t been exterminated altogether in the post-animalpocalypse world, and are even still legally allowed to own pets: animals may have occupied most important social roles, but the remaining veterinarians are still necessary to treat their new overlords’ health problems, at least until enough animals get through the new medical schools. But until then, the vet offices are still open and very necessary. Look at poor Max! He’s very sick, or possibly very high, and either way is in dire need of medical attention.
Judge Parker, 2/16/25
OK, very little about the backstory of Judge Parker that’s lead to this moment is believable, and it’s also not particularly believable that Sophie would use her family turning to her for her superhacking skills into an excuse to do a bunch of emotional processing, but you know what is honestly believable? Referring to Randy Parker as “Sam’s friend.” Like, yes, I’ve been writing about Sophie since (gulp) 2006, but in the world of the strip, she’s literally a teenager, and Randy is just some guy her adoptive dad hangs out with occasionally and is fundamentally not interesting or relevant to her life most of the time. And good for her! He’s not that interesting to me, honestly!
Folks … it’s Valentine’s Day, and you’re gonna LOVE this week’s top comment!
“Dolly makes a crack about her brothers whilst the pitch black void looms ever closer. She mentions her brothers because there is no one else but the family, there is nothing outside the Kompound. They may pray to the Lord, but He abandoned them to oblivion long ago.” –Rosstifer
And you’re probably going to at least feel warmly towards the runners up!
“Well, at least Dagwood is supplying helmets without face guards that would slow down his and his guests’ eating.” –nescio
“Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. Dirk(‘s hope of getting laid) was killed when Dawn dropped a bowling ball on his foot. This is accidentally the most high-brow reference Mary Worth has ever made.” –Schroduck
“Jess dutifully records a zero for Dawn’s bowl.” –Hibbleton
“The throwaway panels reveal that Dagwood Bumstead descends the stairs at an angle that can only be called alarming. He might genuinely need that helmet.” –Joe Blevins
“Tell Himself thanks, but we’re Chicago cops. We weren’t paying anyway.” –Rube
“And God spoke to Dolly, saying, ‘What hast thou done with Billy, and with Jeffy, and with P.J.?’ And Dolly answered unto Him, ‘Am I my brothers’ keeper? Isn’t that why they’re supposed to make those dashed lines to mark their path?’” –But What Do I Know?
“I love how that punchline is delivered as flat and emotionless as possible. He’s attained a higher level of assholeness, not restrained by emotion or desire.” –pugfuggly
“Crankshaft’s dead-eyed expression is a reminder that his puns (using the term in the loosest possible sense) are not deliberate attempts at wit but the result of his precipitous cognitive decline. This man is regularly responsible for children’s safety!” –TheDiva
“Unless Dirk breaks his stride, he’s going to step right into the GMC Generica that’s parked exactly one foot from the bowling alley entrance. Then his foot is going to hurt even more.” –Bob Tice
“Pluggers use pet names because they are literally pets — the descendants of animals who replaced the humans before them. While they took ‘names,’ what they really react to is tones of voices, and an encyclopedic memory of what sounds mean food, baths, or walkies.” –Philip
“I think Dennis should be more upset that Alice prepared precisely one meatball for three people, and isn’t sharing. And no sauce. Frankly, she deserves the Menacing this time.” –Dmsilev
“Leroy ordered the burgers unwrapped in the mistaken belief that they’d be cheaper.” –Naked Bunny with a Whip
“When Jughead experiences pain, his friends go through a range of emotions. Betty is obviously delighted, while Archie is also delighted but with a little dash of anger that his warning was ignored. Jughead’s friends hate him, I guess is where I’m going with this.” –Dan
“Gertie is watching a boxy car with a spoiler and window netting going down a hill, without a single advertisement to be seen anywhere. I don’t know she’s watching, but it is decidedly not NASCAR.” –Banana Jr. 6000
“Aw, it’s a celebration of love among the grey-ashy-pallor-due-to-congestive-heart-failure set. Turn up your supplemental oxygen to three liters a minute and check for mottling, kids, it’s going to be a hot one tonight!” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV
“I like this old-timey kind of basketball, with a bunch of skyscraper-tall players discussing strategy while barely moving around a court. Of course you’re open, dude — it’s not as if anybody here is trying to guard anyone.” –BigTed
“Another deep lore dump from Mary Worth. The moon, a pure white pearl in the heavens, lacking the scars and basins that we know so well. Where is Tycho crater? What of the great Mares, the Sea of Serenity, the Sea of Crises, or the Sea of Tranquility, which in our world bears Neil Armstrong’s 'one small step?’ There is only one answer; the Worthverse did not endure the Late Heavy Bombardment of the Neohadean and Eoarchean eras. Neither Earth nor Moon was pummeled by the orbital residue of failed planets. Which means the cratons of the early Earth were not disrupted back into a molten state, plate tectonics never occurred, there was no split of the early supercontinent Rodina, the lack of solar system remnants prevented the Cretaceous—Paleogene extinction event, the dinosaurs survived and evolved into humanoids that replicated our own mammalian culture to a surprising — but not exacting — extent. So, now you can all think of Dawn’s cloaca, or Wilbur’s need for massive caloric intake, or Mary’s cold blood.” –Voshkod
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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/15/25
Hey, here’s a fun fact for you: did you know that ventriloquists don’t “throw” their voices anywhere? They just learn to speak with their mouths closed while working a puppet to match their speech, which creates the illusion that the voice is coming from elsewhere, because our sense of vision is much more precise than our sense of hearing and we tend to lock on to the moving puppet and assume that’s where the sound is coming from (and it’s generally not too far from the puppeteer anyway). Advanced practitioners can alter their voice to be softer so it seems to be coming from far away, but nobody can actually make it sound like it’s coming from a completely different direction. And yet there are so many comics and cartoons that imply otherwise! Much like this one! I attribute it to comics and ventriloquism emerging from the same milieu of popular entertainment and so cartoonists felt they would be violating kayfabe if they let on how it worked, but it’s also possible they didn’t know either because you couldn’t just look stuff up on Wikipedia back then, and now we’re stuck with the tropes. Anyway, my point is that as a child, I, like I assume many of you, had wildly incorrect ideas about ventriloquism, so thanks a lot, comics. And don’t even get me started on quicksand!
Heathcliff, 2/15/25
Oh, are you saying a robot and a cat can’t be friends, Grandpa Nutmeg??? I guess this really is the last acceptable prejudice, huh. (Not going into the details of what “this” might refer to, please write some fanfic about it if it interests you.)
Dennis the Menace, 2/15/25
I’m not sure what exactly Dennis is blathering on about — like is he saying that he did a bunch of sins over the past week because he hadn’t heard the good news about how he shouldn’t or something, maybe? — but I don’t actually think that’s important, because he’s only talking to distract the minister so he can get close enough to deliver a solid punch to the nuts. And the minister knows it! That’s good defensive use of the Holy Bible there, rev, I know they don’t teach that at seminary, you learned it from hard experience.
Mary Worth, 2/14/25
Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody! Mary Worth would like to take a break from Dawn’s romantic crisis to show you what real love looks like: it looks like two old people who haven’t experienced drama or conflict or strong emotions of any kind in years going to the same restaurant they always go to and then maybe home for six to nine desultory minutes of hand stuff.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/14/25
Speaking of romance, I’ve decided to duck in to Mother Goose and Grimm again and discovered that Mother Goose’s love life is in a tailspin. Did her boyfriend Hiram leave her for her hairdresser? Has she decided to go to the bar the two of them used to hang out at together to find a new lover? Can birds and humans have sex, in the world of Mother Goose and Grimm? Do birds have teeth there? Do dentists see patients in their own homes, rather than an office dedicated to the practice of dentistry as they do in our world? Has Mother Goose, a bird, put in false teeth specifically to attract the sexual attention of this handsome human dentist? Honestly lots of questions here that I’m not sure any of us are prepared to learn the answers to.
Gil Thorp, 2/14/25
Oh yeah, I’ve been lax in keeping you up to date on Gil Thorp developments, which are as follows: Mudlark semi-superstar Rodney Barnes agreed to let some students make a short documentary film about him, and he came across like a real egotistical jerk in it, so now everybody hates him and won’t pass to him. I like the last panel here, and I assume we’re supposed to imagine “I’m open” echoing sadly as Rodney realizes the enormity of his various blunders.
Dennis the Menace, 2/14/25
Dennis, this is just deep stupidity that would make every single Keane Kid — yes, even PJ — ashamed. The only person you’re a menace to is … yourself.
The Lockhorns, 2/12/25
Inexpensive compared to what, Leroy? Eating at a “nice” restaurant? It still is! Eating at home? It never was! No, you’ve just decided to make Loretta feel bad because she begged to go out to eat somewhere, anywhere for once. Isn’t it cruel enough that you’re forcing her to split a single order of fries with you? Why can’t you be more like the guy in the background, who sincerely appreciates all the fast food industry’s deep bench of food scientists have done in terms of creating meal-like experiences suffused with the proper combinations of chemicals to activate the exact same part of your brain that reacts to cocaine?
Dennis the Menace, 2/12/25
Normally I’m not a fan of the “Dennis shit-talks his mom’s cooking” strips, but I gotta admit he’s really selling it here. That’s the face a guy with a mouthful of sawdust. That’s the face a guy who hasn’t tasted anything other than sawdust in years.
Pluggers, 2/12/25
Either pluggers swap sexual partners so often they can no longer be bothered to keep track of their fuckbuddies’ names, or they’re suffering from some kind of tragic brain ailment that’s causing early onset dementia. I leave it up to you to decide which possibility is more disturbing.
Mary Worth, 2/12/25
“I am now that Jared has pointed out that ‘Dirk’ rhymes with ‘jerk’! That’s a great mnemonic to remind me that he’s a jerk! Usually I just see his pretty eyes and beefy forearms and forget.”
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/12/25
Ha ha, it’s funny because everyone in town knows that Snuffy is a financial, legal, and emotional burden on all of his loved ones!
Mark Trail, 2/11/25
Oh, sorry I didn’t update you on the “Mark helps return a displaced manatee to the sea” storyline, or even [checks archives] tell you about it in the first place, but today’s strip pretty much recaps the high points so I don’t have to, in a real reversal of this blog’s original mission statement. The whole thing about the guys in bear costumes is actually a story that was ripped from the real-life headlines, except the real-life guys were actually just doing some light insurance fraud rather than trying to prevent the return of a manatee to the sea for murky climate-change-denial reasons. Anyway, I’m showcasing today’s strip because I’m furious that Mark is doing “flight” wordplay about guys in bear costumes, and you can tell that foreground bird in the last panel is upset that it’s been dragged into this thing as a fig leaf. “They’ll be hibernating for the winter … in jail” was right there!
Luann, 2/11/25
On the note of returning to some of my old favorites, I’ve decided to start reading Luann again, I guess because it’s worth it to inflict deliberate pain on myself just to feel something? Anyway today’s strip is about Brad trying to bake Toni a cake but the whole thing is actually an elaborate metaphor about his dick that’s both fully transparent and also doesn’t hold up to any degree of scrutiny, so I’m glad to see the vibes have not shifted too much.
Crankshaft, 2/11/25
Also, Crankshaft is back, in your life and mine! God, look at how completely dead Crankshaft is behind his eyes in panel three here, I love it, put it in a spoon and feed it to me like I’m a little baby that loves Crankshaft’s pain. Do you think the implication is that, now that marijuana is legal in Ohio, it’s not clear what “under the influence” specifically means? Or is it simply that the mayor may have gotten blotto after drinking too many Budweiser beers? Sorry, it’s neither: Crankshaft isn’t “implying” anything, he’s merely saying vaguely wordplay-shaped sounds while his soul screams endlessly inside, begging for a death that will never come.
Dustin, 2/11/25
Wow, Dustin’s mom has decided to divorce his dad! Obviously a big move but I think we can all say that it’s not a particularly surprising one.