What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? Doesn’t Martinez Know You Can Have Two Starting Pitchers? March – June 2023

One thread in the baseball-season story in Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp is that Valley Tech coach Luke Martinez isn’t giving his son, Pedro Martinez, chances to pitch. He’s got a foreign-exchange student, Kwan Tak, who’s hogging all the glory. But you need more than one starter for a baseball team, and Pedro Martinez was bred to be a hall-of-famer. He’s got allegedly a 90 mph fastball; between Kwan and Pedro, Valley Tech should be winning games they aren’t even in. I saw one Gil Thorp commenter ask whether Henry Barajas even knows how the game is played.

I imagine Barajas does. There are a couple things going on here that you might miss if you aren’t reading three months’ worth of story at once. While you need multiple starters, there’s the starter you give the most important games and there’s your second-chair. And that hurts. And Luke Martinez is busy screwing up his relationship with his kids, including Pedro Martinez. The last we saw him on-screen, Pedro was upset that his father had made their win against Milford all about his coaching, rather than Pedro’s playing. Pedro didn’t play basketball for Valley Tech, a gap you might have thought was just because not everyone plays every sport. Except that last month Marty Moon asked Martinez why Pedro didn’t play. That attention makes the picture clearer.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 19th of May, 2023. I understand the desire, to avoid apparent conflicts of interest, in Coach Martinez deferring to his assistant in formally deciding to replace Pedro with Kwan. However, Kwan is still Kim’s cousin, so the problem remains. Anyway, between this and the Marty Moon line about Pedro not playing basketball we get that the relationship between Pedro and his father is getting explosive.

The picture: Pedro Martinez is angry at his father. He didn’t play basketball, either on Pedro’s or Luke’s initiative we don’t know. Now? It appears Coach Martinez wants a more compliant pitcher than even his own son. Whether he’s actually not playing Pedro at all, or whether he’s benching Pedro for the bigger games, is ambiguous so far. Pedro’s sense of rejection is understandable to me.

So this should catch you up to early June 2023 in Gil Thorp. All going well, I’ll have another plot recap by September 2023 at this link, so look there if you’re reading this in my far future. And if you need to catch up more quickly. Now back to the sports department.

Gil Thorp.

13 March – 4 June 2023.

My last visit to Milford saw the basketball season nearing its end. To seal up an undefeated season, assistant coach Emmett Tays brings in a friend. It’s special celebrity guest star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar! Who gives advice about outlasting the competition; he recommends it, himself. (Later, for Free Comic Book Day, we get special celebrity guest star Steenz, Heart of the City‘s cartoonist. And we get one more special guest star in the window of strips I’m discussing.)

The competition will be a tough one: Valley Tech versus the undefeated Milford for the 2023 Boys Basketball Championship. The game starts, reader time, the 24th of March. (Marty Moon says he’s joined by “the legendary Lachlan Maclean”, a name unfamiliar to me. A commenter at GoComics found that he’s a Louisville, Kentucky, sports reporter, so counts as our third celebrity guest star! Let’s give him a big hand and congratulate the strip on more celebrity ‘gets’ than Dick Tracy managed this cycle.) It’s a hard-fought match, both teams playing well and Coach Martinez not being all weird about Gil Thorp. It’s either team’s game until an accident with one minute left to play. Rodney Barnes — who with Tobias Gordon was selling vape sticks to support the sports program — collides hard with a Valley Tech player. He’s knocked out hard enough Tobias starts giving CPR. Rodney’s taken off by ambulance, and he’ll be in the hospital until the next storyline starts.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 4th of April, 2023. That was a surprise and part of me was expecting that Rodney might die here. Don’t tell me it can’t happen; Neal Rubin had a very effective storyline where a player-character got killed in a freak traffic accident, and Barajas is more eager to take narrative leaps than Rubin.

After Rodney’s taken away — and they get the news he’s conscious — the teams agree to finish the game, telling one another it’s what Rodney would want. So he would: Milford gets the final basket and tops a perfect season with the local championship. Martinez congratulates Gil Thorp on a good game, “but know this … this ain’t over,” causing people in adjacent comics to roll their eyes. “C’mon, mate,” Ginger Meggs chides. “You don’t have to be all weird like this. Cricket wallaby billycart.” But he does, and he’s only going to ramp it up for the baseball story.

---

The baseball story — also, Chapter 3 of Henry Barajas’s first year here, “The Prestige”, begins the 12th of April. There’s miscellaneous little pieces of business. Coach Thorp’s kids are still hanging out with Luke Martinez’s kids. Martinez’s younger kid wishes his dad were nice like Gil Thorp. Marty Moon asks Luke Martinez why Pedro — signed up to be Valley Tech’s star pitcher — didn’t play basketball. Marty’s so used to being told “because shut up is why” he doesn’t even register there’s a story there. It’s right up there in my prologue.

But he does find the long-simmering story of the vape sticks. A leading comment from Gil Thorp sends Tobias freaking out that someone knows what they’re up to. He’s swears that he’s out, even if Rod won’t quit yet, just as Marty Moon snaps pictures of their dealing.

Mimi Thorp’s on the golf circuit. She gets a bouquet of roses and a supporting card on the start of this tour. They’re from Ericka Carter, who’d been giving her lessons.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 1st of June, 2023. The strip from November 16, 2022, saw Keri slug Dorothy for not-undeniably-laughing-at-her. And before you ask how Keri didn’t serve detention for that: Gil Thorp called in a favor, and Keri got mandatory counselor visits but not detention yet.

And Keri Thorp, playing on the girls’ team, has a strange encounter with her bully Dorothy Wolfe. Wolfe’s been pitching a great season, topping it with a no-hitter. Someone on the losing team congratulates her with an elbow into the chest. It starts a brawl, and Dorothy’s stunned when the rest of the team comes to her defense. Wolfe hugs Keri, who startles me by thinking, “She even smells pretty”. It’s a gentle open to a much-needed Pride Month. Also between this and Ericka Carter, Mary Worth has like 350 years of social catching-up to do.

The central sport of all this is baseball, or possibly softball. Someball, anyway. Gil Thorp’s having some trouble finding a pitcher. Kaz gives his old boss one more good tip by reminding him of Greg Hamm, star of Neal Rubin’s final story for Gil Thorp. And Hamm is up for a special guest appearance, giving faintly Yoda-ish lessons about how to feel the air, the sunlight, the position of the catcher. And to make your pitches count; you don’t know how many you’ll get.

Luke Martinez, meanwhile, is almost sick for choice in pitchers. His own son would be killer enough. But Martinez goes all the way to Korea, to coax assistant coach Kim’s cousin into coming over as a foreign exchange student. He offers the promise of being a hugely noticed fish in their pond. Martinez even shows off that he speaks Korean to do this. I like learning buffoon-leaning characters like Martinez have unexpected skills. I assume he’s doing all this on his dime. I can’t imagine Valley Tech has a huge recruiting travel budget for the boys baseball team.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 3rd of June, 2023. I’m not sure whether Coach Martinez is genuinely blown away by Kwan’s wit, or is supporting him for doing this well in wordplay in a foreign language. Absent contrary indications, I’m going to suppose Martinez is impressed Kwan is joking like a native speaker and building him up for that.

Kwan Tak, “The Korean Nightmare”, comes to Valley Tech. Martinez bunches his own son to start Kwan, raising eyebrows from Gil Thorp and scowls from Pedro. Kwan — staying with the Martinezes, for that extra dose of energy — gets along great with Coach Martinez. But also (we learn this week) feels isolated and pressured by his family. They have unrealistic high expectations for accomplishment in the field of high school baseball.

And this, more or less, is where we’ve reached by early June. I don’t know how much of this will wrap up before Barajas’s one-year anniversary of the strip, coming up in five weeks, but we’ll learn together.

Milford Sports Watch!

Who’s Milford playing? Who’s Milford talking about? These teams, and these days. If you want their win-loss record you can work it out from here.

• New Britain (13 March)
• Oakford, Central, Jefferson, Valley Tech (20 March)
• Jefferson, Valley Tech (24 March – 8 April)
• Oakwood (26 – 27 April)
• Bobcats (boys and girls) (2 – 5 May)
• Goshen (9 May)
• Valley Tech, Goshen (20 May)
• Jefferson (26 May)

Next Week!

It’s spies! And betrayals! And family intrigue! And probably a three-month jump ahead to the next season! Three months of Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker gets reduced to like 800 words next week, I hope. See you then.

What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? What’s this beef Terry Beatty has with you? March – May 2023

Terry Beatty does not have any beef with me. There is maybe one chance in sixty that Terry Beatty is even aware I exist, and if he is, his opinion is “there are other people out there for me to have opinions about”. But, this is like the third time he’s run a plot recap of his own, on or near the week I had scheduled for my plot recaps of his Rex Morgan, M.D., seen here. (See January 2022 and also February 2021.)

Well, if he’d rather do the plot recaps than trust me to do it, that’s fine. I can use some easy weeks, believe me. Next week is for Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp, after all, and that’s got a lot of things happening. Reducing it all to a plot recap will take work.

Rex Morgan, M.D..

4 March – 28 May 2023.

Last time, Hank Junior Harwood and Yvonne Grey were planning their honeymoon on a cruise ship. How did that go?

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 28th of May, 2023. Rene Belluso, multi-failed con artist, was in the ocean because he missed while trying to shove Hank Junior in. This because Belluso suspected, correctly, that Hank Junior recognized him as the ‘Professor Augustus Mirakle’ whose snake-oil therapy had coaxed the wonderfully bombastic ‘Mud’ Murphy into being a nice, gentle person. This prompted Murphy to write and perform a lot of treacly, pointless numbers that disappointed his fans, Hank Junior and Yvonne included. I don’t care for the implication that an artist has to be screwed up to be good — it leads to the idea that it’s a good thing to make artists miserable — but it’s not a notion Beatty invented from nowhere. Anyway, Murphy has to deal with the realization that a scammer helped him to fix some of the many issues in his life. But he can use the accidental wisdom and blend that into his life. Plus a children’s TV producer thinks Murphy’s twee little musical doodlings are just what kids want to hear. So that’s all happy endings, including for Rene, who somehow escaped from the ship’s brig, to be seen in some later story.

Thanks for checking in! See you next time.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Why do the secret furries live in the 19th century? February – May 2023

The animal-like people in Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom‘s Sunday-continuity story, “Return to the Temple of the Gods”, came about from an Ancient Egyptian Cult that somehow developed a race of super-men. This was introduced in a daily-continuity story back in 2005. I’m considering doing a special recap of that as the Return starts its second year.

That cult, we learn, died out sometime in the late 19th century. With the lack of surface contact, the underground race of animal-men here have had to develop with their small population and resources. So things have a strong fin-de-siècle vibe.

This essay should catch you up to mid-May 2023 in the Sunday Phantom. If you’re interested in the weekday continuity, or if you’re reading this after about August 2023, I should have a more useful essay up here. And now back to the underground domain of the near-humans.

The Phantom (Sundays).

26 February – 21 May 2023.

The Phantom and Diana Walker and Devil were finally in. Teydra, a lion-like humanoid, brought them into The Domain, an underground city guarded by a gigantic mural of The Phantom. The 3rd Phantom, centuries ago, visited here … but after a terrible fight he retreated and wrote nothing in The Chronicles about a subterranean city. Why?

Diana and Kit Walker’s supposition: The 3rd Phantom never got to the underground city. Instead, after the ferocious battle, the cult built up his image as a protector and warning for and to the almost-humans.

Teydra said the Phantom’s appearance, so like the legendary warrior, would not go unnoticed. In case anyone risked not noticing she finks on him to the Council. (I assume it’s The Council.) Her suspicion: the human called Walker secretly found images of the Champion of Old, and adopted that image for his own secret purposes. It’s an interesting hypothesis, as you could argue it’s true. The Council sets Phantom and Wife in an apartment, under the supervision of a guard who’s not nearly stealthy enough. The guard quits after a good clonk in the face.

Tony Depaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom for the 7th of May, 2023. Phantom is pretty lucky the legend has sprawled out so far as to cover cases like this. Also he’s lucky Teydra isn’t asking about Towns Ellerbee or John Doe. Also I thought The Phantom Wiki had a list of aliases The Ghost Who Walks has used but if it does, I can’t find it.

Next morning Teydra takes the humans to meet their goal. That would be the other human, the assistant missing since the mauling of an explorer that set off this whole story. The Phantom wants to know that she’s okay and that Teydra’s claim that she wants to be there is correct. The assistant proves to be Mina Braun, who was in the 2005 (reader time) story which introduced all this to the Phantom’s world. (She was on the trail of a 1945 desperation mission by Nazis to bring animal-people super-soldiers into the war on their side.) Guran, using the Bandar Potion of Amnesia, suppressed her memories of this. And yet … she recognizes The Phantom on sight. She’s relieved these muddled memories were not a fever dream during a jungle-induced illness.

Diana considers what the imperfection of Guran’s Potion means. Among other things, it makes it harder to ignore the moral problems in mind-wiping. Also that now Braun is wrapping herself tight around The Phantom. She’s overwhelmed in the joy of an island of safety in a swampy confused nightmare. That’ll probably be easy to straighten out.

Next Week!

What’s better than cruise ships? How about serial con artist Rene Belluso teaming up with “Mud” Murphy for a blockbuster story-comics extravaganza? I plan to cover three months’ worth of Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. next week, if I can! See you there.

What’s Going On In Mary Worth? Why is everyone insisting Wilbur’s a great guy? February – May 2023

The story dominating Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth since February has been about Estelle. She’s got a new boyfriend, and a new job working for him for some reason. But there’s been a lot of talk about how Wilbur Weston feels about this. A touch of this is appropriate. Estelle was fed up Wilbur’s Wilbur-ness. And the suspicion that Wilbur was creeping on her helped her interest pair-bonding with Ed the Veterinarian.

But Wilbur’s getting more mention than he needs. It may be because he is a glorious punching bag, all unjustified self-confidence and unaware incompetence. But this makes him a snarker’s delight. There’s a reason we (me included) like to talk about his mayonnaise expertise and such. So it may be that the strip is contracting self-awareness and that Moy and Brigman are playing to the fans. I hope it’s more that it’s fun seeing mildly bad things happen to Wilbur. And that they’re looking to develop more characters that hit that right level of ridiculousness. Hugo the guy who’s totally not making up being French shows they can do it in other tones.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 21st of April, 2023. “What you need is to do a public performance in front of a slightly drunk group of strangers who all think they could do better plus one most trusted friend watching you with steely-eyed determination to constantly judge your feelings. That’ll help you!’

I hope here to catch you up to mid-May 2023 in the comic strip. I keep all my plot recaps for, and news about, Mary Worth at this link. If you’re reading this after about August 2023 there’s probably a more up-to-date plot recap there.

Mary Worth.

19 February – 14 May 2023.

Estelle, haunted by possibly imaginary visions of Wilbur Weston, orders him out of her life. She brings with her the highest possible authority: getting Mary Worth to agree Wilbur’s gone too far. Estelle throws her time and interests into Ed Harding, her veterinarian and witness to the classic Wilbur Karaoke Fight. They seem to hit it off, but —

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 9th of March, 2023. I was surprised how impassive — cheerful, even — Ed shows in admitting this. His expression sells the idea that he doesn’t realize this is a bad answer to have. He looks like he thinks why should he change? The world is the one who sucks, not him.

Ed has to cancel a date. And another. And more. He’s been having a hard time at work, with a lot of animals needing care. And his assistant, Steven, can’t cope with the demands of the job, and quits. Estelle, taking the chance that Ed isn’t hiding from her, leaves a message suggesting Not One More Vet. It’s a (real) group for veterinarians who have mental health crises. Ed remembers how he told Steven he simply doesn’t balance his work and life and wonders if that means anything.

They get together for a third date and it goes great. Even their pets get along great. Stella thinks this is love, so we can only imagine what the fifth date will be like. (That’s the one with Pet Yoga.) But Ed’s looking into therapy too, and he’s prepared to admit they’re short-staffed at work. Stella offers what if she were to work as a volunteer for a couple hours a week? It’s a little weird, but she’s into weird. But she’s good at doing whatever needs doing. And she gets to see Ed doing great stuff like rescuing a choking dog. Ed talks about making this something serious: putting her on hourly.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 11th of April, 2023. First, cute emoting on the snake there. Second, hey are you the famous country singer ‘Mud’ Murphy? No? Totally different guy we’ll see when I get around to Rex Morgan, M.D. in a couple weeks? Okay, I can wait.

Meanwhile, Wilbur’s coping with Estelle’s latest breakup by weeping on Mary Worth’s plates of salmon goo. She coaxes him into going out to karaoke, singing sad songs while Stella and Ed thank each other for loving them.

With all that resolved what is there to do but thank Mary Worth? And for Stella and Ed to congratulate each other on pair-bonding so hetero-monogamously. Also that Ed’s now taking enough time off to not feel burned out. So everyone’s happy, right?

---

And with the 7th of May Stella and Ed’s story comes to its conclusion. The 8th, Dr Jeff calls up Mary Worth to invite her to a surprise. He’s got a much bigger boat and absolutely no intentions of asking Mary Worth to marry him again. She loves both of these. And they agree how great it is Stella and Ed found each other even though Ed is so not like Wilbur. Also but they bet someone’s out there for Wilbur Weston even though he’s so “eccentric”.

Jeff and Mary Worth eating is usually a signal for a new story to start, so my recap week is well-positioned once more. What’s coming next, and will it involve cruise ships? I don’t know, nobody tells me anything.

Dubiously Sourced Mary Worth Sunday Panel Quotes!

But one thing I know without being told: every Sunday Mary Worth quotes something a person almost always did not say! If they did, it wasn’t in context, or it wasn’t that Socrates, or something like that. Here are some recent examples.

• “Nightmares are releases.” — Sylvia Browne, 19 February 2023.
• “Dating is … weird.” — Jennifer Coolidge, 26 February 2023.
• “When things are a disappointment, try not to be so discouraged.” — Carol Burnett, 5 March 2023.
• “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” — Albert Einstein, 12 March 2023.
• “Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.” — Khalil Gibran, 19 March 2023.
• “Patience attracts happiness: it brings near that which is far.” — Kate Phillips, 26 March 2023.
• “There’s nothing like music to relieve the soul and uplift it.” — Mickey Hart, 2 April 2023.
• “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.” — Charles Dickens, 9 April 2023.
• “The world needs people who save lives.” — Frederick Buechner, 16 April 2023.
• “Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.” — Carl Sandburg, 23 April 2023.
• “It’s not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confidence of their help.” — Epicurus, 30 April 2023.
• “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 7 May 2023.
• “We can only learn to love by loving.” — Iris Murdoch, 14 May 2023.

Next Week!

Is it possible there are downsides to memory-wiping a person who’s been taken by a superhero into a land of Victorian animal-men? Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom, Sunday continuity, has explored the question. I’ll explore their exploration next week, I hope. See you then.

What’s Going On In Mark Trail? Why is this leprechaun guy in Mark Trail? February – May 2023

The last few days in Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail have introduced us to Jebediah Jeter. He’s a journalist who went missing while investigating a nature retreat. Rather than being attacked by bears, though, he claims to have befriended them. He seems to be going through some stuff.

So this should catch you up to early May 2023 in the comic strip. If you’re reading this after about August 2023, or news about Mark Trail comes out, I should have a more useful essay here. For now, back to the Lost Forest Non-Municipal Area.

Mark Trai.

12 February – 7 may 2023.

Last time I figured Mark Trail was going to do a story about the alligators in the Lost Forest. So did Mark. Bill Ellis vetoed the story, though, figuring nobody would care unless Mark Trail got eaten by alligators or something cool like that. But he does have another story, one within commuting range. Water Bear Country is this place for rich STEM idiots to reconnect with nature. But True Tech Magazine reporter Jebediah Jeter’s vanished from it. True Tech’s editor thinks he was attacked by a water bear. Mark Trail concedes the possibility but that such an attack would not be a big deal.

Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail for the 21st of April, 2023. I, too, appreciate Cherry’s desire to be precise about the matter. And tha she wants to be intellectually honest enough about her answer not to just blame the disaster on the concrete driveway she hates.

Back to that in a moment. I’d like to outline the Cherry Trail story, which gets to another round of conflict with Honest Ernest over the Sunny Soleil Garden Society. He’s planning to pave over the garden outside the clubhouse. Society president Violet Cheshire is all for this too. Ernest’s (ex?-)wife Caroline wants nothing to do with him, and poured his homemade lawn toxin sideline down the drain. So now he’s into paving. Violet Cheshire won’t hear any arguments against the parking lot, and all Cherry Trail can do is salvage some rose bushes ahead of the concrete pour.

Then comes the rain pour. A heavy but not exceptional storm rolls through and with the soft, absorbent ground gone, the water rolls into Violet Cheshire’s office. She’s not happy about that, either, but what are you going to do? Think about how we get rain sometimes?

---

Back to Water Bear Country. Mark Trail can’t get anyone to say they understand that “water bears”, tardigrades, are microorganisms remarkable for their hardiness and incapable of threatening a human. He does get a greeting from Water Bear Country Retreat organizer and AI writing/art scammer Simon Stump. And he gets to meet the current set of campers. Re-meet, most of them: there’s people like ‘Cricket Bro’ Rob Bettancourt that he’d like to punch. Or Professor Bee Sharp, whose punching is less necessary. There’s also a lifestyle influencer named Holly Folly he doesn’t know anything about.

This gang goes off on a nature hike. Mark Trail figures it’s a good chance to find out why there might be macroscopic bear problems in the village. Possible causes? Lots of food left in attended dumpsters. He can barely consider what this means for park management when Holly Folly runs in calling for help. The trail collapsed and Cricket Bro and Bee Sharp fell down the ravine. Mark Trail drives home and picks up Andy and a cart to wheel Bee Sharp back up.

Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail for the 23rd of March, 2023. I love the little hearts floating around Holly Folly and Andy in the second panel there. This may also be a good spot for a discussion question. Does it work that we don’t have any knowledge of Holly Folly’s problems before Mark Trail announces they exist? In structure it’s a deus ex machina, a thing not set up in the story that gets Mark Trail to the next point. But it’s something she has reason not to bring up, and that Mark Trail has reason not to bother looking at until he’s gotten this clue about Bee Sharp. So is that fair?

The camp’s emergency plan is to point and say, “Look, a big, distracting thing!” before Stump explains journalists are smug and he’s going to destroy them. So Mark Trail gets his own first aid kit, and drives Sharp to the hospital himself.

Mark Trail doesn’t relish telling Rusty that his favorite science guy has a broken leg. Rusty doesn’t care, though; he’s declared Bee Sharp “cancelled”. This because of a video where Sharp claimed hippos were closely related to pigs. This is something you could find in any pop nature book a generation ago but which has turned out to be wrong. (Other things to catch the Old Pop Nature writer? Skunks aren’t mustelids, and red pandas aren’t in the raccoon family.) Rusty Trail embarrassed himself in class repeating Sharp’s mistake uncritically. And when Sharp wouldn’t even issue a retraction? It seems harsh, but we have to hold our science popularizers to standards.

This is the clue Mark Trail needed. Professor Bee Sharp’s in that credibility deathspiral where middle schoolers say mean stuff about him. The Bettancourts have been losing all their money from their NFT and crypto scams turning out to be scams. Holly Folly’s facing a workplace lawsuit. Almost everyone at the camp is broke. But what does that mean? Does it relate to Jebediah Jeter’s disappearance?

Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail for the 28th of April, 2023. What could be wacky about a guy named ‘Jebediah Jones’, a name which doesn’t sound at all like a character Conan O’Brien had on to introduce the next show’s guests from 2004 to 2006? … And it has struck me that “Jebediah Jones” and “Holly Folly” are self-consciously silly names in a way that, like, “Rob Bettancourt” or even “Professor Bee Sharp” aren’t. Even “Chet Chedderson”, the shipping magnate who’s the only person at the camp with actual money has a slightly goofy name. This isn’t a novel thing for the strip, as see Kelly Welly. I wonder if it’s an attempt to consciously make the temporary and minor characters more preposterous and therefore easier to remember.

Luckily, Jebediah Jeter pops right up and shares his story. He was digging around Stump’s office and, he thinks, got too close to the truth. So “they” — Stump and I’m not sure who — marched him off into the night to fight with a bear. He fled, and so did the bear. And … they became friends, all right. But what’s the truth Jeter got too close to?

Sid Stump plans to unleash AI automatic content generation on the world. He’s running the camp as a way to get investor money. But the camp is shoddily run — the cliffs were ruled unstable years ago, and haven’t got any better — and everyone coming to the camp is themselves looking for money. But even if they succeed … AI automatic content generation sucks. It writes plausible-sounding nonsense, because STEM idiots don’t know what epistemology is or how to get one. Mark Trail offers Jeter what he’s most needed — a ride to safety — but it may be too late. He’s led Sid Stump to Jeter.

And that’s our cliffhanger, at least until the cliff collapses out from under us.

Sunday Animals Watch!

The past several months have leaned into the interpretation of Sunday strips as slices of Mark Trail’s articles. He even mentions needing to write about tardigrades a few days before they turned up in the Sunday strip. So I guess here’s a listicle of Mark Trail writing for you:

• Iguanas, 12 February 2023.
• Wolves and why there aren’t “Alpha Wolves”, 19 February 2023.
• Tardigrades, 26 February 2023.
• Great Horned Owls, 5 March 2023.
• Wind Storm Safety, 19 March 2023. (Mark Trail recommends it.)
• Bears and trash safety, 26 March 2023. (Mark Trail recommends both.)
• Monarch Butterflies, 26 March 2023.
• Concrete, 2 April 2023.
• Saint Bernard dogs, 9 April 2023.
• Hippopotamuses, 16 April 2023.
• Sargassum Wave, 23 April 2023.
• Spadefoot Toads, 30 April 2023.
• Eastern Box Turtles, 6 May 2023.

Next Week!

The course of true love never runs straight, but will it run through volunteer work at the animal clinic? How about through Pet Yoga? And most important, has Dr Jeff bought his own CRUISE SHIP All this and Wilbur at Karaoke, too, as we look at Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth in around a week.

What’s Going On In Gasoline Alley? How could Walt Wallet have met Abraham Lincoln? February – April 2023

He couldn’t. Walt Wallet was born over two weeks after Abraham Lincoln’s murder. However, the current story, wrapping up, in Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley builds on a claim he’s made about having shaken Lincoln’s hand. His reasoning, first explained in February, is that his great-grandfather shook Lincoln’s hand, and his great-grandfather shook his grandfather’s hand, and his grandfather shook his father’s hand, and his father shook his hand, and therefore …

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 19th of February, 2023. So some trivia about Walt Wallet’s family tree here, to be entered into the Gasoline Alley wiki at your earliest convenience. Also I’m amused by the notes in the center panel bottom row, when we see the hands of Uncle Walt and Walt’s Father tagged as such, and the tags admitting not knowing if it’s the other way around. Good little detail.

Yeah, I wouldn’t have bought this as a kid either. It’s cute, but I understand the skepticism of the kids who hear the story. And when they hear it a second time, in the daily story. If I do my job well, this essay should catch you up to the end of April in the daily continuity. If you’re looking for something after about August 2023 there’s probably a more up-to-date plot recap here. Here we go.

Gasoline Alley.

6 February – 29 April 2023.

Boog Wallet, of the youngest generation of the strip, started February hanging around his friend Bear, the bear. Bear talked a bit about the problems of encroaching civilization, like how loud it is. Boog gives Bear some earplugs to help his hibernation and heads for home.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 10th of February, 2023. Presenting Jack Frost in the first panel there, with a body literally reading ‘SNOW’, and obscured by trees, is a magnificent bit of staging. Does a lot to make the scene feel colder.

Unfortunately snow’s rolling in. It’s wonderfully illustrated stuff — Jim Scancarelli let himself play here, with happy results — but it also threatens Boog’s life. After a quick prayer he stumbles across the stairs of his mother’s forest-ranger station. So he survives, which is good for him. And he even had a backup miracle. Bear woke up, saw the snow, saw Boog’s prints, and knew he wasn’t dressed warm enough for this. Bear is a good and loyal friend who happens to be bad at hibernation.

Boog’s mother drives him home, though, and around the 4th of March we pass on to Boog’s little sister Aubee and her friends Sophie and Ava Luna. Also Ava Luna’s magic doll Ida Noe. They’re off, first, to see Unca Walt Wallet in case he wakes up.

---

Some great news: he does wake up! He shakes the kids’ hands and tells them they now can claim to have shaken hands with Lincoln. While anyone can claim that, he baffles the kids by explaining his logic. Also baffling them is the sense they did this before, in the Sunday strips, what’s the deal? (They’re reintroducing it for people who only get the dailies.)

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 7th of April, 2023. So I’m going to nerd out here rather than annoy you in the main text. Aubee starts to take out her phone, but is talked into not messing up history, which, good goal there. But it is a shame she couldn’t have taken a discreet movie of the Gettysburg Address, for many reasons, among them that we don’t actually know precisely what Lincoln said. We have several drafts of the speech, with minor variations, and of course Lincoln wouldn’t be bound to deliver the text in front of him exactly. Newspaper reports manage to make matters worse, with “transcriptions” of the speech running from vastly shorter to vastly longer versions. In every real sense it doesn’t matter. Nothing of substance would change if in one spot he said ‘in’ where we think he said ‘with’. But wouldn’t it be sweet to know?

Never mind the odd claim. They wonder could it be true that Walt’s great-grandfather shook hands with Lincoln? Since he passed away in March of 2016 it seems there’s no way to know. Unless …

Ida Noe, the magic doll, observes that since they could wish themselves to visit Santa Claus, why couldn’t they wish themselves back in time? And so they’re off to 1863. Their belated desire not to mess up the course of history lasts until they meet Constable Matthew Waffles and want to know if he knows Officer Barbara Waffles. The Constable is amused by notions like women being cops or having the vote or getting credit cards in their own name. But he takes a liking to the strange kids and brings them to front-row center-stage seats for The Gettysburg Address.

They’re excited, sure, but a gust of wind kicks up and blows President Lincoln’s notes away! This is the job for a couple kids who are young and energetic and don’t know whether that back-of-envelopes story is true. They gather up the notes and, fortunately, a large white guy is there to take over once the work is done.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 24th of April, 2023. Another nice artistic flourish in a season that’s been full of them: the design of Waldo Wallet is more closely fashioned on the style the comic strip had when it started, a century-plus ago, so that Waldo Wallet looks of a different time from the kids. I knew Jim Scancarelli knew we would notice that.

They realize the fellow bringing Lincoln’s notes back to him and shaking the President’s hand looks a lot like a young Uncle Walt. And indeed, turns out his name is Waldo Wallet. As they head home they reflect that yes, the core of Walt’s story was right. Also they can’t think why they didn’t shake Lincoln’s hand while they had the chance. No sense waiting to return home, though. The code of magic doll time travel forbids it.

And so we end, I think, a cute trifle of a story that gave Jim Scancarelli even more chances to play with the visual style. If you didn’t enjoy, well, there’s probably another story coming in the next week or two.

Next Week!

And in my blog here next week or so? More bears! Bears that attack! Bears that befriend! Bears that are microscopic and lack the ability to attack or befriend! All that and architecturally-assisted flooding in Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail, if all goes well.

What’s Going On In Prince Valiant? Why is King Arthur a monk? January – April 2023

For all I talk about the story strips, I didn’t pay serious, regular attention to them until a couple years ago. There’s a lot of backstory I didn’t know because I never saw it and Wikipedia doesn’t get decent updates. Part of why I do “What’s Going On In” articles is to fill that gap for other people.

When Prince Valiant returned from his journey out to Asia, the strip mentioned how Arn and Maeve were co-regents of Camelot. King Arthur’s absense now has an explanation that I know. He retired to a monastery, where he could shelter from the trauma of leadership in a place of rhythm and structure. But as we also see, he’s ready to step in when he must deal with mundane problems.

This should catch you up to late April 2023 in Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant. If you’re reading this , after about July 2023 there should be a more up-to-date plot recap for you here. Thanks for reading.

Prince Valiant.

29 January – 23 April 2023.

With Dialyodd the Witch Hunter dead, slain by a fortuitous hail of stones from the sky, Prince Valiant looks to the aftermath. The math he wants after: what secret pact did Camelot have with the fanatic Dialyodd that he could go around burning accused witches? He’s in a good position to demand this of the regents of Camelot, as they’re his son Arn and daughter-in-law Maeve.

Arn’s reasoning is dreadful in its practicality. Saxons are attacking the west coast with greater intensity. Dialyodd defended Camelot in exchange for religious liberty that Arn didn’t know included burning women and children. Or claims not to have known, anyway. Arn throws his father out. And then throws himself out. He vacates his co-regency, recommending Queen Aleta take his place while he’s not there. Valiant knows where he’s gone.

Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant for the 12th of March, 2023. I am enjoying this story a good bit. It’s doing well at filling in backstory to the witch-hunter story that explains why Dialyodd would have been in the position he was. And to explore how someone can rationalize their way into a bad situation because there aren’t available ways to do better.

It’s to the monastery where King Arthur retired. Arthur understands Arn’s doubts about his own judgement. He offers that a ruler needs to know something of the conditions on the ground, and Arn might do well to get back to adventuring. Before Arn can consider the advice, Valiant arrives. Arthur won’t put up with their bickering and tells them what they need. It’s a father-son bonding trip, out to the west coast to see how Dialyodd got to where he could protect Camelot and kill women.

They journey west. Their first night camping in what we call Wales they encounter a pack of 1d4 wolves, scared off by fire. Further along they find what seems to be a shepherd’s home in good order, except for having no sheep, or anything but 1d6 drunk Saxon warriors inside. Arn and Valiant have no trouble capturing the Saxons. The prisoners spin a story that they’ve done no harm to anyone. They’d come that far inland searching for food, as the coast is starving, torn by war between mad lords.

And that’s what we know of the situation out west. Next week: to the sea.

Next Week!

For Prince Valiant that’s to the sea, anyway. For us, it’s to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania? Enjoy a classic Bob Newhart routine with Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley next week, if all goes well.

What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? Why didn’t the last two stories finish? January – April 2023

THe last two stories in Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy did finish, with reasonable enough conclusions. They share the quirk that both had a big, unresolved piece, and the same one: a mysterious person putting out a hit on Dick Tracy, and Tracy doesn’t know who or why. OK, that’s not a unique element in Dick Tracy stories. One of these may be setting up a future story. The other is a sort of prequel. So the coincidence in resolution is probably coincidence.

This all should catch you up to mid-April 2023 in the comic strip. If you’re reading after about July 2023, I probably have a more current plot recap here. I’ll also post any news I need to share about the comic at that link. Now on to the action.

Dick Tracy.

29 January – 15 April 2023.

Team Tracy was taking all-around forger Art Dekko into custody. While they walk him to the car, a sniper on the roof of a nearby building shoots at him. Or at Dick Tracy; they don’t know. Tracy has Dekko and Officer Lee Ebony indoors while he chases the sniper. The sniper is Kryptonite, or was, as he and Tracy shoot each other, Tracy more successfully.

Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 8th of February, 2023. Though the characters don’t know who the target was we the audience do. Kryptonite said to himself he recognized the yellow trenchcoat as Dick Tracy and that “I’ll bag him someday”. He, uh, doesn’t.

Art Dekko spins a tale of how the mysterious 99 coerced him into forging a Leonardo da Vinci painting. The attempted murder is evidence for his story. Tracy’s able to find evidence linking 99 to various extortion and money laundering schemes. She’s escaped to Miami, though, and we overhear her on the phone talking with someone who promises, “listen to me, 99, and you’ll always be one step ahead”. Who is doing the speaking? And what for? We don’t know, as of the story’s close the 25th of February.

---

The 12th of February was a week of reruns, a repeat of the Minit Mystery solving the death of Ultraman TV star George Reeds. It’s a one-week story and the mystery is solvable from the clues we get, so, do enjoy. It was an oddly-timed interlude in the conclusion of the Art Dekko story.

---

The 26th of February started the just-concluded story. It’s told in flashback, Dick Tracy telling Sam Catchem of the time he met Nero Wolfe. Yes, that Nero Wolfe, of many charming cozy mysteries. Also a couple of old-time radio series that are free for the listening. The best-cast is the one with Sydney Greenstreet as Nero Wolfe, although none of his actual stories were adapted to that series. Nero Wolfe is a massive detective who would rather not leave home, good day. His factotum and right-hand snarker Archie Goodwin goes into the world to gather evidence and flirt with any women who happen to be in the story. Wolfe solves the crime, he prefers, without standing up.

Tracy’s story starts with Archie Goodwin appealing for Dick Tracy’s help. Nero Wolfe’s been kidnapped, he says, and is somewhere in Tracy’s distractingly unnamed city. What Archie knows: Wolfe got a telegram of such import that Wolfe left home without eating dinner. It’s a turn of events so unlikely that Nero Wolfe fans hearing about this right now are writing Internet Angry comments about how no he did not. He did so, and Archie has the telegram to explain it. The telegram sender offered Nero Wolfe some of Basil St John’s unique black orchids if Wolfe visits him alone. All those Internet Angry people are now saying, okay, yeah, that checks out then. Wolfe is even more motivated by orchids than Eugene the Jeep is. Tracy agrees to investigate Wolfe’s disappearance, even if it isn’t shown to be a kidnapping yet.

Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 12th of March, 2023. I’m not sure how Zeck got the black orchids. He claims to have snagged them from Basil St John (Brenda Starr’s beau), but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything besides that Mike Curtis knows he can tie in more references to things. (By the way that appearance of Oliver Warbucks back in late January hasn’t developed into anything yet.)

Wolfe, meanwhile, may be kidnapped but he’s having a fine time of it, mostly sitting in a chair reading while supervised by ‘Duncan’ and ‘Mr Zeck’. And this is a big tipoff to the Nero Wolfe fan. Arnold Zeck is a crime boss who appeared in several of Wolfe’s novels, in case you wondered whether Nero Wolfe had his own Moriarty. Of course he does.

After a week of this they give Wolfe the tease of seeing some black orchids. Meanwhile Tracy and Goodwin are on the trail by going around asking if anyone has seen a really fat guy. No, fatter than that. If you don’t understand how he’s moving without the aid of Oompa-Loompas you’re not thinking fat enough. This isn’t a fat joke because Nero Wolfe wears his enormity with pride and he’s got the coolness to back it up. I’ll get there.

Mr Zeck, meanwhile, meets with someone he’d like to hire for a second job. It’s Dick Tracy’s own Moriarty, Flattop, who’s happy to take on a kill-the-cop job. He figures he can roll it in with another bank job, even if his short-tempered big brother Blowtop doesn’t agree. The top brothers end up in a duel: Blowtop’s to do the bank job, Flattop to do the Tracy hit, and whoever brings in the most money for their work wins … uh … control of the family, I guess. And from the tone of this the hardcore Dick Tracy fan realizes this is not only a prequel to Nero Wolfe’s Moriarty. It’s also the prequel to Flattop’s adventure with Dick Tracy, a story that ended, reader time, before my father was one year old.

Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 2nd of April, 2023. I can absolutely buy Wolfe and Goodwin’s dialogue here, but I’ve listened to the old-time-radio series enough that I hear the actors performing it and adding their charisma to things. Anyway, yes, the resolution did end up being that once Nero Wolfe decided he’d had enough of this and was leaving, it was impossible to stop him. Fair enough.

Tracy, in a stroke of luck, spots the bank robbery as it’s starting. Flattop sees a chance to finish his side gig; it’s foiled when Archie Goodwin fires a warning shot. Mr Zeck is annoyed with Flattop, thinking now how he’ll have to deal with Wolfe himself. And no, he won’t. Nero Wolfe, having had enough of captivity, has taken his black orchids and left. He meets Archie and Dick Tracy as they were at the end of his trail. It’s like that episode of the Adam Weest Batman where he had to stop fighting the Green Hornet because plot got in their way.

Wolfe explains his escape, pausing to sneer at the ineptness of his kidnappers. All the time he spent “reading” was his studying the routines and operations of his captives and observers. When he knew Mr Zeck was gone he pulled out the knife he’d secreted on his person, a trick he learned in his youth as a spy. And tossed it right at some ambiguous but important part of Duncan’s body. With that, he got out to the street and phoned the cops. Along the way this freed some other captives we didn’t hear much about. Duncan and, we presume, Mr Zeck fled before the cops arrived and neither of our super-detectives know who was kidnapping them or why. But that is where Dick Tracy leaves off his reminiscence.

---

Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 9th of April, 2023. From this I guess we learn Sam Catchem’s not a fan of Monopoly, probably more a Mice and Mystics player. Anyway, I know people just happen sometimes to be named Brad and it’s something they do all right, sometimes even thrive on. But ‘The Federal Bank robbery as retold by Brad” feels like a weird sentence. I can’t give a good reason why.

The 7th of April began the current story. A man with dice on his mask robs the Federal Bank (incidentally the bank that the Tops had tried robbing). He leaves behind a calling card: the street sign outside changed to show the intersection of Boardwalk and Park Place. And you get to thinking, wait, the new Dick Tracy villain is a guy who’s way too into Monopoly?

No, of course not, that would be silly. Gameboy, his name is, leaves a note behind referencing the Shenanighoul. This was a monster who appeared in the 1960s kids game show Shenanigans that I know from like two references on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Gameboy robs a rare prototype board game from the Toy Museum, and promises more. Sam Catchem has an idea for the next target: an 1860s Milton Bradley board game on display at the Gould Library. Sounds plausible to Tracy, at least, and me too. I don’t know in detail where this is going. But I too would bet on Gameboy trying to play his Get Out Of Jail Free card. We’ll see.

Next Week!

King Arthur is back in the days of Prince Valiant! And … he’s right back out again! What is all that about and why did we see him at all? I’ll finally recap the plot in Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant next week, all going well.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (weekdays)? Are tribesmen really going to conquer a prison? January – April 2023

Well, not only tribesmen. Women are there too. But yes, the current story in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity, has the Bandar tribe’s warriors attacking Gravelines. It’s the maximum security prison for fascist Rhodia. Tony DePaul has tried to make this a fairer fight. The prison’s a lousy posting. The already-lousy posting got a heap of new, under-trained soldiers. This is the consequence of cracking down after The Phantom broke The Trusted One out of the prison. And the Bandar have numerical superiority.

And most important, the battle is bonkers. Militias don’t attack maximum security prisons. It’s not something the prison guards could train for. The Bandar don’t even battle “correctly”, refusing to pick up the loot boxes the Gravelines guards drop when they’re killed. So there’s reasons to think Gravelines would be too confused to make a sensible response. Still, have to admit, I’d have to put my money on Gravelines. Except that the Bandars’ battle plan is being improvised and lead by The Phantom, which counts for a lot.

Tony Depaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 18th of February, 2023. This has got me wondering what actual prisons have in mind against mass assaults. I have to figure their training is built more around a riot inside the grounds and maybe a couple vehicles trying to crash the gates. Conceivably a helicopter grabbing someone out of the exercise area.

So this should catch you up to mid-April 2023 in The Phantom’s weekday continuity. If you’re interested in the Sunday continuity, or if you’re reading this after about July 2023, there’s likely a more useful essay at this link. Thanks for reading.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

16 January – 8 April 2023.

The Phantom, having relied on Mozz’s prophecy of wrack-and-ruin like a strategy guide, is still breaking Savarna Devi out of Gravelines. And then the whole Bandar nation rolls in as backup. Their poison-tipped arrows are great ways to kill the tower guards. Savarna, not one to escape quietly, grabs some heavy weapons to blow up the tower and alarm everyone. The Phantom wonders if this is Mozz’s prophecy, for all he’s worked to subvert it, will happen in substance anyway.

But also: how different could things go? And realizing he has considerable surprise, and numbers, and the chance encounter’s started anyway … why not do something really crazy? Why not try and get everybody out of Gravelines? Is that maybe the reason Mozz had his vision of wrack-and-ruin, and was set in motion to change that?

Tony Depaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 10th of February, 2023. A thing that’s gone unexplored is: granted there are many prisoners kept there for acknowledging transgendered people have rights and that abortion is a necessity and other truths fascists can’t tolerate. But aren’t there surely people who are there for legitimate reasons, like the serial murder of sex workers? There’s hardly time to examine everyone and I realized it doesn’t matter. One hallmark of fascism is the disregard of truth in favor of power. In that condition no court judgement — which is, ideally, a determination of truth — can be legitimate. Even the guilty have to be treated as having been framed.

---

And so, with the 13th of February, we begin ‘Dungeons Undone’, the sixth part of this story since it began in May of 2021(!). It is about the assault on Gravelines. With a few interludes checking in on Diana Walker, who’s staying, along with Bandar non-combatants, on the Bangalla side of the border. Babudan, leading the warriors into Rhodia, secured her promise to stay in safe territory. He warned he could only keep one Walker safe and if he had to choose, he’d protect her. So she waits and thinks of what she read in the Chronicle of Mozz.

What she read was enough to tell Guran of the need to send as many people as possible to support her husband. Which is how he has a militia on hand to make this assault. He’s optimistic enough. He’s sure the prison guard morale is so low that they’ll declare they didn’t sign up to be poisoned by hundreds(?) of bow-wielding jungle-dwellers. And The Phantom can’t keep Savarna from blowing up stuff. Some of this is of clear tactical use, like the power plant. Some is targets of opportunity. Some is just, she set an egg in the microwave for ten minutes. All in the service of confusing Gravelines’s forces.

And they are confused. As mentioned in my preamble, the attack doesn’t make sense, at least by the standards they expect. The warden, lacking power and communications in the command center, decides to find the leader of the attack himself. He leaves behind a sergenat with orders to guard the command post with his life.

Tony Depaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 6th of April, 2023. You have to admire The Phantom’s strength of will that he is not just breaking up laughing right now because, goodness but this is funny-ridiculous. And, you know, he is the costumed superhero who’s delighted at being a superhero. I guess he’s saving it for the Chronicle-writing.

The warden doesn’t find The Phantom because, you know that saying, he finds you. Or The Phantom finds the sergeant and the sergeant figures yeah, he doesn’t have to do this. The lieutenant calls his boss, and The Phantom urges the warden to set down his weapons, order as many of his men as he can get to do the same, and leave.

It’s transpired this week, so a little outside my scope here, that The Phantom is calling in the Jungle Patrol too. This makes some good sense, as the Jungle Patrol has modern equipment and could arrange, say, the air evacuation of hundreds(?) of Gravelines prisoners. On the other hand, as angry as Rhodia would (reasonably!) be at the Bandar attack, to have the Jungle Patrol join in will not make things better.

Next Week!

I’m shuffling up the order of these strips a little. So that brings me, sooner than otherwise expected, with … a guy who’s way too into Monopoly? I, too, am eager to know what’s going on in Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy and with luck will tell you in a week.

What’s Going On In Little Oop? Are they not in the Stone Age anymore?

There is, once more, not enough story in the Sunday Little Oop installments of Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s strip for me to do a narrative recap. I’d like to, yes, but all I could do is repeat the strips without saving you any work besides looking at pictures.

The last couple weeks, though, have done something with Penelope trying to fix her time machine and return to the present. In particular, it’s now reached the point where it can send them through time but she doesn’t have control over where or when they end up. I know, I’m excited by the prospect of a comic strip adaptation of Voyagers! too.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 19th of March, 2023. OK, the advertisements are nothing but the stories those pamphlets will spread to keep you reading? Those can be something else.

I don’t know if this reflects a permanent change in the strip’s premise. It seems fair after having spent a year or so with Alley Oop trapped in the present, and then Penelope stuck back in the Bone Age, that they should shake it up again. A while spent lost in time could be fun, if also close to the comic’s day job.

Also, this is a fun day to talk about Alley Oop a little more as we’re on the anniversary of when Doc Wonmug was first introduced, back in 1939, and turned a caveman comic strip into a thing still going 84 years later. GoComics has that ancient story, so you can read how Alley Oop first came to the modern day and punched out a train. And now you’ll go and check whether that actually happened. Enjoy!

What’s Going On In Alley Oop? What was that fungus woman’s dark secret? January – April 2023

The dark secret of Myc, the alien fungus creature who adopted Alley Oop and Oola as parents, is that she didn’t have one. That story, which was under way when I did my last recap, surprised by having no heel-turn or particular shenanigans. It was a story of Alley Oop and Ooola experiencing something strange and wondrous. I liked it. The gentleness is a nice change of tone. But I speak as a fan of Hal Clement’s and Clifford Simak’s science fiction novels, in which everybody’s pleasant enough and nothing all that bad happens [1].

So this should catch you pu to early April 2023 in Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop. If you’re reading this after about July 2023, I hope to have a more up-to-date plot recap for you here. I’ll also post there in case there’s news people should hear from me for some reason.

Alley Oop.

9 January – 1 April 2023.

Myc, a fungus from beyond space, had settled in Alley Oop’s cave. She reveals that she has botanical powers, having the ability to make watermelons blossom, if that’s what watermelons do, at will. She has a desire to help humanity. Under her vaguely defined spell Alley Oop recognizes fire as hot without sticking his hand in, for example.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 20th of January, 2023. Alley Oop and Ooola as parents is pretty much the goofball-dad/sensible-mom but it still worked nicely, to me.

But Myc grows old, a decade or more each day. Soon she’s quite old, promising that she’ll always be a part of their lives. And, as she’s got a root network dug deep through Moo, she’ll be able to re-emerge in human form some also. She does die in the human way, though, and Our Heroes reflect on the strange wonder they’ve experienced.

Returning to Doc Wonmug’s lab in the present day they learn Myc has re-manifested as human several times. And Wonmug met her, back in 1982, in her seventh time growing above ground.

We then get a little interlude, less than a week focused on lab assistant Ava Peckedge. She’s been particularly starved for attention in the Lemon/Sayers run. A couple days of her trying to invent and finding she’s no good at it isn’t much, but it might be a seed for a story.

---

An actual story got started the 30th of January. And it’s wrapped up this past week, making this another suspiciously well-timed installment for me. It begins with Octavius Scrod, who wants their help finding the pearl of Queen Conger, recently-deceased queen of Aquatown. This is an Atlantis-like place, only real. He claims the pearl has sentimental value and he tosses around bags of money to get it.

There’s more than sentiment: he claims to be the son of Queen Conger and rightful owner of the pearl. Our Heroes aren’t going to turn away many sacks of money. They sail to the Arctic Circle, finding the location of Aquatown by the hole in the ocean where its hot spring surfaces.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 25th of February, 2023. Mostly I like the dynamic that the stuff Our Heroes expect to be hard is easy instead. It does mean we miss out on things like the heist that would have involved stealing the pearl, though.

Doc Wonmug, Alley Oop, and Ooola dive down. (They have gills for this story because genetic engineering blah blah go ahead.) On entering the reclusive Aquatown they’re approached by Detective Haddock,. He hires them to guard the pearl of Queen Conger while he does some business. This sounds like a nice easy mission, then.

It goes wrong within minutes. Or days, reader time. The pearl’s stolen. They go to the police where they discover nobody’s ever heard of a Detective Haddock. There’s a Prince Haddock, but he was a jerk and everyone’s glad they kicked him out of the royal family. So we have a nice twist here: Haddock had hired these strangers as guards while he stole the pearl, the better to make his claim for the throne of Aquatown.

Scrod shows up, having somehow heard they’ve botched the pearl-theft mission. And Ooola asks a quite good question; why do they care who takes the throne of Aquatown? Why not just leave? Wonmug and Alley Oop have the only good answer, which is, who wants to miss Drama like that?

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 25th of March 2023. Left unaddressed in all this is who Aquatown figured their ruler would be. Haddock had been kicked out of the royal family. Scrod wasn’t it, since he didn’t have the pearl. We’re told that Queen Conger died only days ago, so fair enough if they haven’t done formal coronations and all that. But someone should’ve been heir apparent and we don’t get any of their side.

Wonmug tries to come up with some reasonable way of deciding who should get the pearl. Nobody’s got any good ideas, so he suggests cutting the pearl in half. (This gimmick, by the way, is also being used in the 1956-era Vintage Phantom comics running on Comics Kingdom. In a marginally more serious story the Wambesi and Llongo tribes are fighting over rights to use a river dividing their lands. So The Phantom, with the Bandar people, is damming up the river to split it into two.) Wonmug, who hasn’t caught on to how nonsense flows around here somehow, is surprised they’re both good with this. But good, as Alley Oop’s already split the pearl. Haddock will take one half and rule Aquatown; Scrod will take the other and rule the land from his base in Schenectady.

All told, a happy enough ending. Apart from being paid; Scrod isn’t willing to pay for Our Heroes achieving nothing of what he hired them for. (Well, they got him half the pearl.) Also, Scrod didn’t realize there’s already rulers for pretty much all the spots on Earth. Ooola offers that he could rule some patch of the Arctic Circle, if he wanted. And we close on him ruling the polar bears hanging out above Aquatown’s hot spring.

That brings us to this weekend, so that brings me to looking at …

Next Week!

On this side, a maximum security prison with guard towers and machine guns. On the other side, a tribe of jungle-dwellers equipped with arrows and the element of surprise! Who will win? Oh, also the jungle-dwellers have Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom on their side. Place your bets before next week when I hope to look at the longest-running story in the funny pages right now. See you then, I hope.

---

[1] Yes, I have read Simak’s 1939 Cosmic Engineers, in which boring people of the far-future year of 1939 But Set In 6939 blow up seven-eighths of the universe because another universe full of baddies is crashing into ours. Don’t you make the same mistake.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Is it enough to make a regular feature of this? December 2022 – March 2023

I don’t know that enough is happening in Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye to make it a regular part of my What’s Going On In … writing. I’ve limited these columns to the story strips. And particularly the ones where the story is involved or long enough that a new reader would need months to catch up.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 14th of February, 2023. There happen to have been more plot-bearing strips in Milholland’s installments, run on Thursdays, than in Amin’s, run Tuesdays. This is not to slight Amin, just a side effect of what I’m trying here. But this makes a nice example of the scenarios that Amin likes illustrating. (Olive Oyl had failed to reply to Popeye’s text that he could put off the sea monster business if she wanted to see him tonight.)

Olive and Popeye has had stuff happen. Not so much action and adventure, although there’s a few with that. It’s rather a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take on Olive and Popeye’s own life. One of the bits of action the past several months was Popeye having to beg off a date to go punch a sea monster, for example. With Milholland starting to do short stories in the Popeye Sunday strips perhaps between the two of these there’ll be enough for me.

Whatever does happen I’ll bundle all my Olive and Popeye plot recaps here. I’ll figure on doing at least one more of them, which should come around June of 2023, and we’ll see what follows from there.

Olive and Popeye.

27 December 2022 – 27 March 2023.

In the first several months of Olive and Popeye we mostly had characters get back together. This includes the return of Ham Gravy, one of the original cast of Thimble Theatre. He was set out as Olive Oyl’s beau, but couldn’t hold his own against the pillar of charisma and intrigue that is Castor Oyl. When Popeye took over the strip he didn’t have a chance.

And we also meet some new characters. Whaler Joe was, created by Elzie Segar himself back in 1931, as part of a newspaper feature explaining Popeye’s past. As far as I know he’s not been on-screen so he’s effectively a new character. Unmistakably new is his daughter Petunia. She’s an aspiring marine biologist who’s up for learning what Popeye knows of the sea. This is a lot of trouble with monsters and such.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 19th of January, 2023. Pappy is getting written a bit more sociopathic than I think is quite true to his character. But it’s being played so preposterous that it works for me.

Meanwhile Poopdeck Pappy wonders why Wimpy is being so nice to him and hanging around all the time. This is because Popeye’s paying him to keep Pappy away from Whaler Joe. Popeye’s not worried about his mother Irene or his Aunt Jones (wife of Davy “Locker” Jones) knowing him. They get along great, in fact, with the worst that happens digging out old photos of Popeye’s teen goth phase.

Still, Pappy is jealous and he won’t take any of the abundant good advice he gets to back off. I know it’s the mode of modern cartoons and comic strips to have emotionally aware characters. Still, when you think of how many Popeye adventures have depended on bonkers headgames it’s odd to see Olive and Popeye being mature. It fits well enough, moreso on Popeye, but still.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 16th of February, 2023. Boy is that a sweet comic, though. You do have to suppose Popeye was a difficult child, but also that he probably responded well to boundaries that made sense to him.

And it turns out Pappy and Whaler Joe knew each other anyway. Pappy had used a young, naive Whaler Joe as lackey on the first ship Joe ever sailed on. That ended when Pappy accidentally got Whaler Joe fired. It’s a gag solid enough that it feels more like a stroke of Dickensian plotting than a shrinking of the Thimble Theatre world. Pappy leaves, wondering why everyone treats him as the jerk. Whaler Joe is gracious and we learn Popeye’s taken up that same good grace.

Stuff’s been happening with Olive Oyl too, although I’m less sure there’s a story there. Some avoiding of the new flirtations by Ham Gravy (who, with Castor Oyl, had a fun five-week sequence in the Sunday Popeye strips failing to vanquish all, or any, of Popeye’s foes). Some getting-together with her family and with Petunia and offhandedly vanquishing Susie the Sea Nymph. Rolling her eyes and sneering at Bluto. Being nice to Brutus, and the Sea Hag’s intern, for a Pi Day strip. A lot of the stuff that would be the thing going on when an adventure starts. I don’t know that it’s going anywhere but it’s all fun to see.

Next Week!

I get serious about our favorite time-travelling cave people and how they encounter a claimant to the throne of Schenectady. Also the oceans. Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop gets some love from me next week, if things go to plan.

Joe Giella has died

The Daily Cartoonist reports the death of Joe Giella. I know his work from his quarter-century drawing Mary Worth, a tenure so long I still think of June Brigman as the new artist even though she’s been the artist since before I started doing plot recaps.

For as long as he worked in the daily syndicated story comic game he worked far longer in the comic books, starting in the 1940s and continuing through .. I’m not sure just when. The Grand Comics Database lists over six thousand stories with his work, although I don’t know how many of those are reprints. Likely many are; a lot of his work was in well-regarded Silver Age comic book stories, including one of the era’s iconic stories, “Flash of Two Worlds”. He had also, before his Mary Worth work, inked Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, The Phantom, and pencilled and inked the Batman comic strip for two years.

What’s Going On In Judge Parker? How was that a detective story? December 2022 – March 2023

The story, recently concluded, in Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker had Sam Driver investigating the murder of Judge Duncan’s family. But he didn’t do a lot of clue-gathering. It was more he drove around and saw who shot at him, which turned out to be, most everybody, until finally a witness explained what the heck was going on.

Do I accept this as a story? Oh, you know me; I’m easy and I’ll take most anything that doesn’t trip over some some vague lines. But I’m also accepting of stories where the detective figures who did it by seeing who shot at him the most. Done well, you get swept up in the noir-ish style and energy. Done poorly, you get those old-time-radio shows based on the adventures of Sam Spade where it’s all right if you don’t pay attention. There’ll be a fistfight or snappy patter soon enough.

This is another case, by the way, where the comic strip pretty well explains itself in the week or two before I come around. This is how a paranoid mindset develops, you know.

But this should explain stuff through to mid-March 2023. If you want to catch up on Judge Parker after about June 2023, there’s probably a more useful link here. I mean if you’re here after about June 2023. If we’re not that far in the future there’s nothing I can do.

And finally a content warning. This story is built around murders, including some grisly ones, and explained as being fueled by the drug trade. There are people shot, off-screen, and people battered on-screen. To respect your choice about whether you want to deal with that in your recreational reading, I’m putting the rest of the article behind a cut.

Judge Parker.

18 December 2022 – 18 March 2023.

What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? Didn’t Mimi Thorp’s mother die back on New Year’s? December 2022 – March 2023

Christmas Eve. And no, we didn’t. We did see Mimi Thorp holding her mom’s hands while a parting song played on the radio. That would have sufficed as her death, particularly given Henry Barajas’s trust in readers inferring things. But not only is she not dead but is okay enough by Valentine’s Day to watch the kids. Granting I’m assuming the Thorp kids aren’t too burdensome these days.

And, yes, I’m late — even for postponing a day — in this plot recap for Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp. This is not because the story has been that complicated. I’ve just had a bit of a week and hope not to have another like it soon. But if you’re reading this after about June 2023, and I haven’t had another week like it, a more up-to-date plot recap should be at this link. And in other questions I can’t answer: on the 26th of December we learned this was “Part Two: The Only Game In Town”. Henry Barajas wanted the first year of the strip to have an overarching story with distinct parts, like he was writing The Phantom or something. No, Part One was not named anywhere on-panel. I don’t know if Barajas provided it in the comments or on his own site.

That all said, let’s get to the story.

Gil Thorp.

12 December 2022 – 11 March 2023.

When I last checked in Milford and Valley Tech were finally playing football. Valley Tech coach Luke Martinez has made beating Gil Thorp the summum bonum of his life. So the match has a weird intense energy. Valley Tech wins in the last play of the game. Martinez is busy giving his speech for the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize in Academy-Award-Winning Medal of Freedom High School Coaching (GCMG) when he notices all he gets from Gil Thorp is a good handshake and promise to see you next year. So Gil Thorp one-hit-killed Martinez in all the ways that count.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 22nd of December, 2022. So, welcoming failure sounds like a bad thing for a coach. But it is a respectable, somewhat Stoic, approach to any competition: ultimately, all but one participant in an event loses. You can drive yourself crazy thinking about that, or you can decide that doing your best is the real triumph. And, if you’ve taken the second, there’s nothing terrible about failure; it’s either random luck or teaching you what you can do better.

---

Part Two, the current phase of the story, began the 26th of December, with Milford looking over budget cuts. They have to look into fundraising ideas. Sports Team Candy Bars move okay-ish. Toby Gordon and Ron who probably has a last name an idea as brilliant as it is dumb: what if they sell vape sticks instead? I’m not clear how they finance this. Those details would have been the center of the Neal Rubin version of this story. As it is, they’ve raised enough money to stand out, but no grown-ups have figured out what’s going on here. Which is striking because that would absolutely have happened if this premise were done last year.

While that plays out, girls’ coach Cami Ohchoa has an idea for a Lift-A-Thon. People pay a buck for every four pounds their chosen athlete can lift. Fun enough idea. When Luke Martinez sees that Gil Thorp is going to be lifting, he gets a new goal in life. Even more important than telling boring stories of his glory days to his students? Out-lifting Gil Thorp. He focuses on this with the manic energy of a 24-year-old with ADHD who’s just fixated on Nixie tubes. He’s soon spending every waking moment training, to the point he even misses a practice. Valley Tech business-suit-wearer Paul Lastname calls him out on this. Martinez can’t hear Paul over the sound of out-lifting Gil Thorp. Martinez’s wife also calls out how this is being creepy and weird and he needs to think about something that isn’t out-lifting Gil Thorp. No luck getting through to him. He’s got out-lifting Gil Thorp to do.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 20th of January, 2023. I hope Ian and Sue are fellow high school students because if they’re even two days older than Ron and Toby, they’ve burst into laughing at these two bright young idiots the moment they were out of hearing range and are still, two months later, going. Also, I like ‘Peach Disorder’ as a string of words; I have no idea if that’s a plausible vape flavor.

Other stuff going on. Keri Thorp and Pedro Martinez are happy together, sharing a New Year’s Eve kiss. Toby, reassuring Gil Thorp, tells him how he’s the only man who’s ever apologized to his mother, one of those sincere compliments that makes the receiver feel the world is rotted beyond repair. Oh, but Mimi Thorp’s mother is doing better. And Mimi is taking golfing lessons in Scottsdale, Arizona, from someone named Ericka Carter whom Gil Thorp’s glad to meet. The Thorps have a happy Valentine’s day dinner, too, suggesting their relationship is getting back on track. Mimi still has doubts. She had told Carter “I don’t know if my husband even finds me attractive anymore”. But trust is hard to rebuild, I hear, so it reasons it wouldn’t be linear.

Meanwhile, Coach Kaz has, as promised last What’s Going On In, left Milford High. He’s now Milford Juvenile Sports Program Manager Robert Kazinski, and also his name was Robert Kazinski all this time. Keri is still being harassed by Dorothy, who keeps using her connections with Princess Ozma (rightful ruler of Oz) and Glinda the Good to stay out of trouble. And Pedro Martinez is still angry at his father. After Valley Tech’s football team had a perfect season, his father made it all about him. The actual players got a mention somewhere after the jump in the newspaper. Which is much like the injustice that kept Luke Martinez going for years.

Emmett Tays comes in as temporary assistant coach to fill Kaz’s place. Tays, whose glory days tale started Barajas’s run and also figured in Luke Martinez’s Origin Story, impresses the kids just by being there. I feel like he has more backstory than even this and I don’t know what. Sorry. Tays has some rough edges. Player Leo Atazhoon wears sneakers that are dozens of sneaker molecules held together by masking tape and good intentions. Tays starts to rag him about that. Thorp warns Tays off who suddenly sees, oh, right, poverty. Next time we see the two, they’ve got Atazhoon new sneakers, for the sake of team looking like a team.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 6th of March, 2023. A recurring motif here has been Gil Thorp doing his best to center the story on other people, and Luke Martinez wanting it to be about himself. It does well at making Gil Thorp be likable without forcing us to like him any. And it helps make scenes like this even more evocative of that episode of the 90s Superman cartoon with Mr Mxyzptlk.

But back to the lift-a-thon. That gets going in good, respectable order. And then Luke Martinez shows up for his out-lifting Gil Thorp. And he’s quite good at out-lifting Gil Thorp. He earns thanks from Thorp and like five hundred bucks for Milford sports. I assume not all in one lift because, like, two thousand pounds at once would be a stretch. (The 500 bucks may also not be literal. Barajas is willing to let people say things that are exaggerated or sarcastic in the ways regular people talk.) I mean if they were dead-lifting. They’re bench-pressing, though. And it’s two-handed. The important things are that Gil Thorp is gracious and congratulatory, and Luke Martinez is left demanding that Elmer Fudd does too have to shoot him now.

Are we nearing a Part Three? Is the vape-selling scheme about to come unravelled? Is Mimi Thorp’s mother going to die when she’s just got back into babysitting? We’ll see answers to some of these over the next couple months.

Milford Sports Watch!

• Valley Tech. (12 – 22 December.)
• Valley Tech. (2 January.)
• Forest View. (3 – 5 January)
• Salem. (14-16 January.)
• Valley Tech, West Falls. (19 January.)
• Bradley. (26 -27 January.)
• Valley Tech, Bradley. (9 – 10 February.)
• Valley Tech. (15 February.)
• Sunnyside High. (21 February.)
• Pueblo. (22 February.)
• Corcoran High. (8 – 10 March.)

Next Week!

Why are people trying to kill Sam Driver and why are they not better at it? It’s a tale of secrets, substance addictions, and off-screen gunshots in Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker that I recap next week, if things go right.

What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Why don’t you make forecasts about where story comics are going? December 2022 – March 2023

I’m posting this a day ‘early’ to prove that I can too sometimes make deadline and even when it isn’t one of the Sunday-only strips that have easier plots to recap.

Yeah so this is what happens when I try to think like a writer. Last story recap came after a couple months of dealing with ‘Mud’ Murphy, ten headaches of a performer stuffed into one gigantic body. I thought there were hints being dropped that Murphy was dealing, badly, with self-destructive issues. Maybe he is, but they went unexamined in the strip. Maybe a future storyline; Terry Beatty does like bringing back characters and Murphy’s bombast does play well.

This recap, meanwhile, should catch you up to early March 2023 in Rex Morgan, M.D.. Any news about the strip I’ll post here. And there should be a more up-to-date plot recap around June 2023, in case you’re in the far future and everything I write is more irrelevant than usual.

Rex Morgan, M.D..

4 December 2022 – 4 March 2023.

After everyone called Mud Murphy a Wilbur Weston for his attention-grabbing stunt he quit Lew’s Nite Spot and the strip, at least for now. ‘Truck’ Tyler apologizes to Wanda Lastname, who turns out to be the owner of Nick’s Diner. (I hadn’t known she was anything besides a server there.) They enjoy a happy after-hours dinner. Watch this space.

---

We transition over to watching Rex Morgan’s family the 13th of December. It’s some hanging around with family, particularly for the holidays. There’s a bunch of that, filling the strip from December through mid-February. The high points there are the kids worrying about getting Christmas right and then Valentine’s Day. Sarah is peeved to learn her little brothers, Michael and Johnny, have girlfriends and a whole life she (and the readers) don’t know about. It’s a deft touch. It might plant story options for the two young boys, although see my preamble for my ability to forecast what’s going on in a comic strip.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 8th of January, 2023. How did Rex, who works at the same clinic June does, get home before her?

But most of what we see is June Morgan having a full day, that gets started with January of the year. She’s trying to go to the supermarket. But a man slips on the ice in front of her and she does your basic first-response work, checking that he’s all right and able to get up and about and all. She recommends they go to the local hospital and that the Morgan Clinic is available for follow-ups.

It doesn’t end there, though. Inside, a man stumbles around asking for help. He’s diabetic and can’t read his blood sugar monitor. He is low; she gets him some orange juice and sits with him until it gets better. She scolds him to be more careful about watching his blood sugar levels and drops another plug for the Morgan Clinic.

And that’s not the end of her emergency medical caring. As she’s driving home she sees a car accident, caused by a teen driver going too fast on icy roads. The kid’s all right apart from how his dad’s going to kill him. The other driver is Melinda Jenkins, someone June knows from the PTA. I don’t know if Melinda Jenkins has been in the strip before worth mentioning. She needs an ambulance, but also calls out asking if Petey in the back seat is okay. Her son is named Tommy. Petey, it turns out, is their dog, who is fine if nervous. Once Jenkins has the ambulance crew watching over her, June’s day turns to delivering Petey to his home. That goes without incident. And it gives her time to authorize Rex to make frozen pizza like the kids have been asking for since the story started.

---

Valentine’s Day is the transition to a new story, based on the multiple sets of older men finding romance with diner owners current in the strip. It starts with Truck Tyler coming back to town and visiting Wanda in her diner. (She’d inherited it from her father.) He’s thinking of settling down, now that he’s doing well enough to not have to live out of his car. And Glenwood seems like a great place what with it being where his life turned around and Wanda being a lovely woman who doesn’t mind him. Wanda confesses to liking him too, and they kiss.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 26th of February, 2023. I like how the relationships this strip get started, by the way. There’s not much drama in them, just the terror of opening up to someone you can’t ever be completely sure is going to be responsive. But it feels true to me. Like, imagine staging this scene; would it be hard to get actors to play this well? Compare even to how you’d need a pretty skilled line read to get June Morgan’s thought balloons in the other strip to not sound weird or smug.

As Tyler leaves for his upcoming gig, in walk Hank Harwood Junior and his new bride, Yvonne Grey, the Route 66 diner dowager. They talk a little about the diner and how nice it is to be retired from running one. And about their upcoming honeymoon, a country music cruise. No, Truck Tyler’s not one of the performers. This suggests where the story might be going in the next few months but, again, see my preamble. I’m not making guesses about anything.

Next Week!

And if it weren’t hard enough to guess where things are going, it’s time for my biggest challenge saying where they’ve been! Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp is the next on my schedule, for next week. I need to start work a couple days ago.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Why are there furries in The Phantom? November 2022 – February 2023

OK, first, this is about the Sunday continuity for Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom. This has been a much lower-key story than the daily continuity, currently in a chapter about a massive impromptu jailbreak. If you’re interested in that story, or if you’re trying to catch up on the Sunday strips after about May 2023, there’s probably an essay of more use to you here.

Now the furries here come from the Temple of the Gods. As introduced in a story published 2005, the place is an ancient Egyptian compound populated by “Gods”. These creatures have the heads of animals and bodies of men. And they flee at the sight of The Phantom. The current Kit Walker discovered the Third Phantom had survived, barely, a battle with them. He tried to suppress the strange creatures there. But somehow word of it got to Dr Manfred Markus Meier, who was recording the discovery of a cave entrance when something mauled him. These semi-human creatures seem to resemble your classic Egyptian hieroglyphic figure. And, we learn, at least some of them regard themselves as much better than mere humans, and obliged to maintain that superiority. You know that sort of person.

The Phantom (Sundays).

27 November 2022 – 26 February 2023.

While exploring the Temple of the Gods, a onetime lair of an Egyptian cult with inhuman mummies, The Phantom, Diana Walker, and Demon were tracked. They got a glimpse of the woman tracking them. The Phantom approached her and something roared at him.

It wasn’t a human woman. She has a lion-esque head. She growls when asked if she understands. They tie her up and resume exploring the tunnels, finding at last the entrance where two adventurers — wait. Or is it? The Phantom and Diana started out searching for where two adventurers got mauled, on live-streaming, by some strange beast. There’s one human skeleton there. And one inhuman skeleton. Diana and The Phantom start to speculate on the second person, the assistant. They speculate she’s returned to Germany, possibly with documents that will lure even more people to this spot and rapid death.

Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom for the 15th of January, 2023. Both the Sunday Phantom and the current story in Judge Parker feature characters whom it was assumed couldn’t speak, and used that as a way to gather intelligence. I’m sure it’s coincidence; after all, Judge Parker is drawn by the daily continuity Phantom artist and not the Sunday.

The lion-woman — Teydra, she claims — says no. The assistant is with others of Teydra’s kind. Teydra’s people strive very hard not to regress to being mere humans, and they keep the lesser beast-men, the ones more nearly human, in line and in the caves. The portraits of the Third Phantom, who centuries ago fought them to a standstill, serve as a still-potent warning. Teydra demands her gun back, so she can return to The Domain without being slain by the lesser-humans.

The Phantom is willing to let her go. But he insists on meeting the assistant and letting her leave if she chooses to leave. Teydra insists they do not take prisoners; that’s a human thing. The Phantom can’t just leave without investigating, though. Teydra leads them through the tunnels to the bring of The Domain. It’s guarded by, among other things, a giant portrait of the Third Phantom. Teydra expects that Walker’s resemblance will not go unnoticed.

Next Week!

Oh, thank goodness, I have two weeks to figure out how to describe what’s happened in the past several months of Gil Thorp. I have the one week to figure out how to explain what’s happening in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.. If you want to guess “mild, not-too-serious stuff to people who are maybe vaguely likable” you’re not far off. But I’ll use more words to say it.

What’s Going On In Mary Worth? When did Iris get pets? November 2022 – February 2023

She didn’t. The current story in Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth started the 18th of January. A narration box introduced it with “When Iris takes her pets to the veterinarian”. Narration Box was confused. This was Stella bringing her pets to the vet. Probably the previous story being so much about Iris. That both Iris and Stella had bad experiences with Wilbur Weston, and having just made a joke about that recently, muddled things.

This should catch you up to mid-February 2023 in the comic strip. If you’re reading this after about May 2023 I should have a more useful plot recap here. And now on to the big wedding news.

Mary Worth.

20 November 2022 – 19 February 2023.

Zak and Iris, bonded over how they both prefer Zak to not fall off a cliff to his death, are marrying! I believe it’s the first actual factual marriage happening in Mary Worth since I started recapping the plots. What could disrupt this happy event?

How about a face from Zak’s past? We see Zak on the phone talking to someone he’s missed. Someone he says “I can’t wait to see you, dear” to. It’s Nan, his former babysitter. She’s in town, taking a vacation from her home in Hawai’i to visit Santa Rosa for some reason. Nan looks uncannily like Iris, a thing Zak never notices because they wear different earrings. Iris notices, though. Also how Zak and Nan have all sorts of bits they have to run through. Things like Nan surrounding her face with fingers or the two saying things like “yummy yummy yummy in my tummy tummy tummy” and all.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 7th of December, 2022. Must say that all of Zak and Nan’s inside jokes and gestures, like whatever the heck they’re doing here, seem like stuff you might do with your babysitter when you’re six and she’s in high school. I guess it speaks well that they’re not embarrassed to do this stuff as grown-ups out in public, but I also see where it’s even more exclusionary than usual inside jokes are.

Iris was already insecure about how she and Zak had a nontraditional relationship: he’s never seen or heard of Casablanca while she takes thyroid medication. What if Zak’s interest is only in the spiting image of his first crush? Wouldn’t that be weird? Like, too weird for people to deal with? Zak insists no, insisting that he loves different things about them. And besides she’s happily married and he wants to happily marry. And they only look generally alike. And besides, “people fall in love all the time based on their past experiences”, a declaration true yet also not on point. Anyway Zak insists it’s not weird until he has to leave the room.

Mary Worth doesn’t comfort Iris more, but she offers a chilling comparison. You know who else was jealous of another person? Wilbur Weston. Iris is willing to do anything not the way Wilbur does things, but she’d still like to know someone else thinks it’s weird Nan looks so much like her. Mary Worth won’t even give her that and insists it’s jealousy that’s the real problem. So Iris surrenders, agreeing to marry a man she loves even though she looks a lot like his old babysitter.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 23rd of December, 2022. So on the one hand, Iris seems to be wrong in being jealous, if we take all of Zak’s protests at face value and don’t think about his calling his former nanny ‘Dear’. On the other hand, nobody is giving Iris the dignity of taking seriously her feelings; if she feels this is dangerously weird it would be nice if any person said anything other than “what’s your malfunction here?”

The happy day comes the 2nd oF January, with a church ceremony before the eyes of God and Wilbur Weston, who’s invited because ?? ???? ??????? ???? ???? ? ???? ??. I guess to make sure he doesn’t stumble into doing something really embarrassing. All he does is comment to Mary Worth how, hey, most marriages end in divorce so he’ll be ready in case Iris breaks up with Zak after all. It’s the sort of comment you make when you know you’re charming and can be facetious and don’t notice everyone slapping their foreheads around you, like, all the time. Still, we did see Wilbur’s thought balloon sincerely wishing her happiness, so, I still don’t know why he was invited.

Everyone agrees it was lovely, though, and they’re very happy to see people married. Dr Jeff has learned well enough not to even suggest that Mary Worth marry him. So that’s all happy to see.

---

The current story, as mentioned, began the 18th of January. Stella and not Iris took her dog and cat to the vet, Ed. She’d gone out with him once before. That date got turned into a colossal karaoke battle between Stella and Wilbur Weston. Stella and Mary Worth remember it as the most awkward and embarrassing event they had ever been present for or could imagine witnessing. Wilbur Weston remembers it as “Tuesday”. The vet is up for another date, though. Stella and Ed bond over how they both would prefer companion animals not die, and how life is stressful. It seems a promising start to a relationship. And then Wilbur appears.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 16th of February, 2023. Early lead for the title of Funniest Single Mary Worth Panel of 2023 here. I’m sure Moy and Brigman are doing that for the fan delight and possible meme-ification but, you know? I’m still delighted.

He says running into Stella at the pet store is coincidence. His goldfish needed food. Innocent? Maybe, but as anyone who keeps goldfish will tell you, if you run out of goldfish food you’re feeding them too much. But then she starts seeing him leering into the window, looking like she threw away a jar with easily two dozen mayonnaise molecules still left. But is he actually there or is she hallucinating? This Sunday we see Wilbur’s face intruding on her dreams, which is a heck of a thing to have to dream about.

Dubiously Sourced Mary Worth Sunday Panel Quotes!

• “The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.” — Nikon Kazantzakis, 20 November 2022.
• “Friendship is another word for love” — Unknown, 27 November 2022.
• “Everything in adulthood can be traced back to childhood.” — Penny Junor, 4 December 2022.
• “I look back to a happy childhood.” — Helen Spence, 11 December 2022.
• “You can be the moon and still be jealous of the stars.” — Gary Allan, 18 December 2022.
• “The love we give away is the only love we keep.” — Elbert Hubbard, 25 December 2022.
• “Cheers to a new year and another chance to get it right.” — Oprah Winfrey, 1 January 2023.
• “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” — Mignon McLaughlin, 8 January 2023.
• “If I get married, I want to be very married.” — Audrey Hepburn, 15 January 2023.
• “I believe, in life, you always get a second chance.” — Fabio Lanzoni, 22 January 2023.
• “It is not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.” — Hans Selye, 29 January 2023.
• “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” — Bob Marley, 5 February 2023.
• “Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live.” — Tom Wolfe, 12 February 2023.
• “Nightmares are releases.” — Sylvia Browne, 19 February 2023.

Next Week!

I didn’t have a good spot to mention it in the main text but I’m delighted to see that the Santa Royale pet shop is now carrying eevees. They’re demanding pets but very rewarding if you put in the effort. But what about other strange animals with uncannily human-like features? The Ghost Who Walks was looking at some of them. I’ll recap the last couple months of Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s Sunday-continuity The Phantom next week, all going well.

What’s Going On In Mark Trail? Why was that kid so snide toward Rusty? November 2022 – February 2023

The recent story in Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail featured Robbie, a rival classmate of Rusty Trail’s. Their fight got started in class, as such things will, particularly in a quarrel about who had the better presentation about cryptids. Rusty Trail knew stuff about krakens that his classmate didn’t mention in the report. So you can understand Robbie’s being fed up with the know-it-all.

This should catch you up to mid-February 2023 in Mark Trail. If you’re reading this after about May 2023, there’s probably a more up-to-date plot recap here. Thanks for joining me.

Mark Trail.

13 November 2022 – 12 February 2023.

Stories were wrapping up last time we visited the Lost Forest. Caroline accused Cherry Trail of having an affair with her husband, Honest Ernest. Cherry accidentally lets slip it’s Violet Cheshire he’s seeing. Caroline wants to teach him a lesson. She accepts Cherry Trail’s suggestion of taking all of Ernest’s home-brewed lawn toxin to a waste collection facility. So that’s all fine, right?

---

Meanwhile at the Tiger Touch Center, escaped elephant Gemma has stormed into the scene, revenge apparently on her mind. Tess Tigress admits to Rex Scorpius why an elephant might want revenge against her. Years ago — at another, overloaded, zoo, she claims — the attempt to sell off Gemma and her sisters enraged her mother. They had to put the mother down. And Gemma remembered, which is plausible enough. I’m not clear how Gemma knew where to find Tess, especially across several states, with one of them Texas. It can be explained, we just don’t see it done.

Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail for the 26th of November, 2022. Wait, wasn’t this the first story in Skin Horse?

Gemma chases Tess out of town, and out of the country, and out of the story. The mysterious tent turns out to have juvenile tigers, ones too large for ‘therapeutic’ touching, and way too large for their cages. Luckily Diana Daggers drives back around, ready to pick up Rex, and Mark Trail, and the tiger cubs. The Tiger Touch Center gets closed up, people who weren’t sure they were in a cult go home. Tess Tigress is absent, and so is Gemma, threads for another story, one imagines.

---

The current story got started the 5th of December. It plays on one of the traditional Mark Trail snarks. A common story transition, particularly in the Jack Elrod era, was Mark Trail promising Rusty a fishing trip that the new story would preempt. James Allen actually got Rusty on a fishing trip. And now Jules Rivera has Mark Trail take up Rusty on his request from like three years ago to go fishing.

Thing is, Rusty’s a bit older, getting into the teenage years, and not excited to get up at 4 am on a Saturday to spend time with Dad without even someone else that Dad could talk to instead. Mark Trail fears the worst, that Rusty doesn’t like fishing. Cherry talks sense into him: ask Rusty what he would like to do today instead.

Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail for the 29th of December, 2022. Hey, Mark Trail has other hobbies, like probably avoiding the Florida police and Coast Guard.

What Rusty wants to do is cryptozoology. To wit: finding the bassigator, Mark Trail doesn’t believe there is such a part-bass, part-alligator, but what the heck. He can borrow a boat from the De-Bait Team. And a bunch of Rusty’s school friends, plus a promising new enemy he’s picked up. They’re rivals over the quality of their in-class reports about cryptid animals. This is ridiculous in exactly the right way to tickle me. It’s got that nerd-sniping chic to it.

So next week Mark Trail and Rusty and some of his classmates set out in a boat to find adventure. Or at least some coves, you can always find a good cove if you’re trying. The search bumps up hard against adventure and coves: alligators in the Lost Forest waters, farther north than they should be. And, worse, the boat runs aground in a cove full of alligators.

Cherry Trail doesn’t know exactly what happened. But Duke, who provided the De-Bait Team’s boat to the expedition, mentions knowing about the horseshoe-shaped cove with all the alligators. And Cherry, who’s slipped a tracking device into Rusty’s backpack, knows they’re at that cove. So they’re off to the rescue.

Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail for the 25th of January, 2022. That’s funny because I have definitely finished this article before its schedule deadline time of 7:15 pm Eastern the 14th of February, you know. Long before, long enough before I could re-read it and fix weird sentence conglomerations that crept in.

Mark Trail, meanwhile, has gone and rescued himself. With Rusty at the helm he hops off the boat to push it into the water. Rusty backs the boat away from the shore, and the kids help yank Mark Trail aboard before anyone can be eaten. They follow the tracker Mark Trail left on Cherry’s car, to a happy safe reunion. And all the kids, including Rusty’s imminent enemy, agree this was awesome. Fair enough.

And some more happy news. Bill Ellis is up for a story about alligators moving into the Lost Forest. So Mark Trail gets a writing gig he doesn’t have to leave home for. All’s looking great and there’s no way there’s any problems ahead.

Sunday Animals Watch!

Here’s animals or natural phenomena mentioned in the Sunday panels the last few weeks. Please forgive me not having some wisecrack about them. It’s been a pretty rough couple days and, I mean, the train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, doing for the Ohio River Valley what the US Navy’s doing for Hawai’i, makes it hard to do my usual whistling past the graveyard here.

• Roadside Zoos, 13 November 2022.
• Rip Currents, 20 November 2022.
• Pumpkins, 27 November 2022.
• Elephants, 4 December 2022.
• Muskrats and Beavers, 11 December 2022.
• Moose, Reindeer, and Caribou, 18 December 2022.
• Christmas Trees, 25 December 2022.
• The Klamath Dams, 1 January 2023.
• Alligators, 8 January 2023.
• Squirrels, 15 January 2023.
• Formerly Legendary Animals, 22 January 2023.
• Snowflakes, 29 January 2023.
• Mountain Lion P-22, 5 February 2023.
• Iguanas, 12 February 2023.

Next Week!

Sure we’ve got platitudes, but we always have platitudes. What the past several months of Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth have given us is a wedding. And, even better, humiliation for Wilbur Weston.

What’s Going On In Gasoline Alley? Why does Gasoline Alley have a talking bear? November 2022 – February 2023

Gasoline Alley, at least under Jim Scancarelli’s tenure, is a lightly fantastic universe. That’s all. There’s elements that can’t exist, like the Old Comics Home, or the recent visit with Santa Claus, or the current story with Bear. There was an attempt at saying the recent visit with Santa Claus was imaginary. I think it’s not possible to make the talking bear only something in kids’ imagination. Scancarelli enjoys a strip that lets him step outside the already-gentle realism of the normal story and that’s that.

This should catch you up to early February 2023 in the comics. If you’re reading this after about May 2023, I should have a more up-to-date plot recap of Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley at this link. If you’re not, then, enjoy catching up here.

Gasoline Alley.

7 November 2022 – 4 February 2023.

Walt Wallet was finally writing up a bucket list. The least recklessly dangerous thing on it? Riding on the back of a garbage truck, something that caught his imagination as a child and that he never got to do. The trouble: nobody’s going to let a man who can remember when there were 45 states in the union ride the back of a garbage truck. Even if they would, they can’t; there’s no perch for that anymore. Hulla Ballew, reporter for the Gasette newspaper, thinks it’d be a fun story if he could. And Rufus, of the comedy-relief team of Rufus and Joel, has an in with Mayor Melba.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 7th of December, 2022. Snarky guy is not exactly wrong; EtymologyOnline gives 1913 for the introduction of ‘truck’ like we think of trucks in American English. But ‘motor truck’, certainly getting the same spirit of the thing, dates to 1901 which … I guess we usually suppose on 1900 as Walt Wallet’s notional birthdate. (The word itself goes back much farther, with the usual sorts of goofy mutations in meaning.)

Over dinner at Corky’s Diner Rufus asks if Walt Wallet could get a ride. Melba thinks it’s a great idea; fun for Walt Wallet and some good publicity for the sanitation department. Despite Skeezix’s reasonable concern, the bit of civic whimsy gets set up in good order. By early December the city has a garbage truck, with a platform on the back, and a harness so a theoretically 122-year-old man can’t fall off, ready to go. And so, in front of cameras, the press, and half the population of town, he gets his ride.

Though we see him take off, we don’t get to actually see his ride. We see him arriving back home and thanking the mayor, who thinks she’ll ride the garbage truck back City Hall herself. And, the 13th of December, he falls into a happy sleep.

---

The 14th starts the next story, with Aubee Skinner (great-granddaughter of Walt Wallet), Ava Luna, and Sophie visiting. Also Ida Noe, Ava Luna’s magic doll, who’s used as an excuse for Scancarelli to spend a week drawing The Twelve Days Of Christmas. Which was not the only Twelve Days of Christmas montage this season, either; Barney Google and Snuffy Smith had a take on the song too.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 3rd of January, 2023. You have to agree Jim Scancarelli draws a cute reindeer. Any animal, really; we’re a bit disadvantaged he didn’t get into drawing a full-time funny-animals comic strip.

After that — and after Christmas — Ava Luna says she’s going to take Santa up on his invitation last year to visit again. And in a poof they’re off to … not the North Pole. It’s after Christmas. Santa’s vacationing in the tropics. Not for long, though, as there’s a crisis back at the North Pole. Bunky, the Big Book Brownie — keeper of the list of naughty and nice kids (we met him in 2021) is resigning. He wants to strike out on his own, form some company of his own to do elf business. Santa is skeptical of this plan, which you can’t even call half-baked. It’s more resting in the mixing bowl waiting for someone to find the cake dish and start preheating the oven.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 17th of January, 2023. I was starting to pitch a story about Santa deciding to use his worldwide overnight transportation network to gather all the trash from all over the world and then — using his amazing skills at creating things — salvaging what can be made into new goods and bringing the true waste to places it can be safely stored, dispersed, or left for future technologies that make it usable again, and then realized I was probably writing a Dinosaur Comics that already exists.

But Santa understands Bunky’s aspirations and mentions his own childhood wish to ride the back of a garbage truck. This, I’m sure, reflects Jim Scancarelli’s awareness of how The Jack Benny Show could turn anything into a runner. Anyway, Santa wishes him luck. He may be aware that the moment Bunky saw Santa’s new secretary, Allure, he’d insist on staying another 99 years. So everything is resolved in a happy if old-fashioned manner.

---

And then — you know, I’m going ahead and putting the start at Sunday, the 29th of January — we start what seems like the current story. Boog Skinner, Aubee’s older brother, is talking with the local wildlife again. Particularly, Bear, his best friend. Bear’s having some trouble sleeping, what with the racket of the city (Gasoline Alley) encroaching on the wilderness. Also all the fuss about Groundhog Day. Boog offers some earplugs and wishes him a good late hibernation and that’s where that story’s gotten.

Next Week!

It was an innocent attempt at cryptozoology; how we not end up exploding a boat over alligators? Other than because they were crocodiles? I try to answer next week as I recap Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail, all things going to plan.

What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? Since when is Mumbles a furry? October 2022 – January 2023

The current storyline in Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy included some scenes at a furry convention. It was a decent way to get the story’s main villain (Art Dekko) on-screen and explain his deal (art forgery). And, along the way, we encountered Mumbles, whom you remember from that one odd yet strange scene in the Dick Tracy movie. I mean the one with the polar-bear-shaped water cooler that’s a tape recorder. Mumbles says he’s a furry and acts surprised Tracy didn’t know.

Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 8th of December, 2022. It would be easy to believe this is a scam, but we saw Mumbles annoying Dekko by looking for art of the Chipettes. The Chipettes are the female counterparts to Alvin, Simon, and Theodore introduced in the 80s cartoon, which you know if you’re a “greymuzzle”, defined as “a furry who has knee and back pain”. So … I guess he’s legit?

It’s a moment that left me startled. It felt weird to write a personality trait like that into a character who’s been with the comic since before anybody ever heard of Chuck Yeager. I understand, Mike Curtis is the writer of the strip, he has the right to play with the character any way he likes. But — as with Francesco Marciuliano’s decision that Abbey Spencer’s father had a secret second family — I do wonder how the writers feel about adding big new traits to long-established characters. I’d love to know if they feel intimidated changing, or at least augmenting, someone that way.

Oddly, this threw me more than the same storyline’s revelation that Officer Lee Ebony, part of the strip since the Carter administration, was lesbian or bisexual. I don’t know why this registered as different except maybe that the Mumbles news came first. But I know at least one friend of mine wondered if Mumbles was there as part of the storyline, using “I’m a furry” as his abili. Doesn’t appear to be so; he just, you know, has a life outside whatever his exact guitar-based crime deal is.

And there might be something Mike Curtis has in mind for all this. He’s a writer not afraid to plant stuff for use years later. For example, and relevant to the first story of this recap, Curtis established Sam Catchem as a fan of the fictional-in-our-universe comic strip Derby Dugan ages ago. (For us, it’s a series of novels by Tom De Haven, with illustrations by Art Spiegelman.) It set him up as having a reason to hang around the Derby Dugan musical being put on at Vitamin Flintheart’s theater.

So this should catch you up on the comic for the end of January 2023. All my plot recaps, and news about Dick Tracy, should be at this link. So if you’re somewhere around May 2023 or later, you’ll probably find a more useful plot recap there. If you’re here at the end of January or the starting end of February 2023, though, read on. This may help.

Dick Tracy.

30 October 2022 – 28 January 2023.

Steelface, who runs an automobile chop shop outfit, called in a favor from his nephew Robert Parrish. Parrish had wanted a key part in the Derby Dugan comic strip musical and Steelface arranged it. In trade, Parrish swiped a couple cars needed to make quota. One happened to be Derby Dugan superfan Sam Catchem’s car. With Catchem’s wrist radio in their possession Steelface’s gang can clear out ahead of the cops’ raids.

Derby Dugan author Tom De Haven (to them, historian of the strip) meeting the performers causes Parrish to twig onto Sam Catchem being a cop. Before he’d only known him as a friend of Vitamin Flintheart hanging around the theater a lot. And guilt-stricken at this, he sneaks Catchem’s wrist radio out of his uncle’s shop and back to Catchem’s pocket.

Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 17th of November, 2022. I admit I was expecting Steelface (‘Mr Arceneaux’) to die from the metal scrap in his face being ripped out, and was a bit disappointed that the far more sensible and reasonable thing — that he started screaming in pain and they shut everything off fast — happened instead. Such is what happens when you have genre conventions on your mind.

Steelface, fuming about the theft of the wrist radio, has a car accident. He drives to the hospital where they start giving him an MRI. The powerful magnets resonate mightily with the chunks of metal in his face. They cause extraordinary pain before the hospital staff yanks him out of there and asks, oh, like you were named Steelface literally?

Parrish, who’d got a text his uncle Steelface was in an accident but nothing more, comes clean about everything to Catchem. Steelface, maimed by the MRI pulling his skin out, decides to take his chances with car crashes. He races out of the hospital to find his car, ironically, stolen. Or “stolen”, since he was using a bait car, and Dick Tracy and Sam Catchem were right there to pick him up. And that wraps up the story, the 25th of November.

---

After a pause to observe Charles Schulz’s centennial the current story started. Tom De Haven is back, looking unsettlingly like Les Moore, to show Dick Tracy some animal cells he got from a 1930s Derby Dugan cartoon. Tracy’s impressed, he guesses, until De Haven reveals there were never Derby Dugan cartoons. Someone’s selling forged animation art. This … doesn’t seem like a Major Crimes Unit case. But Dick Tracy knows who’s writing this strip. He goes to meet Sam Catchem’s pal Eric, who deals movie memorabilia at Fanfur Con. That’s how we get the revelation about Mumbles mentioned above.

Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 5th of December, 2022. See, like, is the Jester Bunny really Mumbles in costume? Or what? The scene is funny and not every installment has to be more than an amusing moment, but is this just an amusing moment or is it setting something for later?

Eric’s not saying he knows anything but that Art Dekko guy’s selling counterfeits. So he is, although not clearly enough that Tracy and Catchem can nab him. But he’s got a plan, that he explains to his moustachioed assistant, Sue Reel. Art Dekko explains a lot this story, mostly by explaining how Art Dekko didn’t get where he did by making obvious mistakes. Such as taking shortcuts in his counterfeiting. We get this shown by his demanding wardrobe tags for a fake George Reeves Superman costume be made right. (Granting, that is the sort of oversight a casual inspection would catch.)

His big plan? Faking a Leonardo da Vinci. In Paul Chandler he has a talent who can do the painting. He sets Chandler up with period materials and special paints and access to da Vinci sketchbooks. And while Dekko is happy to explain this to his assistant, he’s not telling anything where any cops can hear.

Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 14th of December, 2022. Wait a minute … is that Derby Dugan on the right page of the sketchbook in the second panel there? You have to tell me if that’s Derby Dugan, you know.

Enter Blaze Rize, last seen in the strip somewhere around 2015-16. She had been part of a scam to defame Dick Tracy with forged video. She turned state’s evidence against the gang. In the past few months she’s started a relationship with officer Lee Ebony, who’d met Rize when undercover in Mr Bribery’s gang. She’s willing to do the cops a solid and goes into Dekko’s memorabilia shop. She finds a post-it note to ‘Call Paul Chandler’, the first thing that looks anything like evidence for the cops.

Fortunately, everybody is ready to blow up a perfectly good scam. Chandler demands a bigger share of the Da Vinci job. Dekko declares he didn’t get where he is by not being fair, and agrees. And pays for Chandler to take a vacation in Panama City, Florida. Dekko then declares (to himself) that he didn’t get where is by doing his own killing. He calls a hit man named Kriptonite, or Kyptonite, or Kryptonite, depending on which day you read. And before he knows it Chandler enjoys an early-morning swim with nobody but the fishes and the hired killer spearing him, leaving his corpse to wash ashore days later.

Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy for the 26th of January, 2023. I assume that 99’s name is a Get Smart! reference but I’m not following the logic yet. I also don’t get the logic of why Art Dekko actually went to Paul Chandler’s apartment. Like, I get saying he was going there: he wants to have other people think he checked in on Chandler and was mystified that he hadn’t returned from his holiday. But as he had said to himself a few days before, he could just get a couple coffees and pretend to have visited. I can imagine even going up to the apartment and knocking on the door, so neighbors might attest he’d done the ‘reasonable’ thing, but 99 said she caught him breaking into the apartment.

Dekko tells Reel he’s going to Chandler’s place, pretending to check on him. He’s confronted by a woman calling herself 99 and demanding half the da Vinci job’s take. And warning she’ll call in Kryptonite if Dekko tries to trace her. She muses how if Chandler had needed Dekko’s connections to pull off the scam, and if he’d only kept his cool … and, of course, she’s planning to knock off Dekko whatever happens. Meanwhile, Dekko observes that he didn’t get where he is by not being able to turn people against each other. Where he is is hiding in the storeroom, living on Montoni’s Pizza, so you know he’s in dire straits. He’s thinking of how to break up whatever links 99 and Kryptonite might have.

And that’s how we got where we are now. We have had a couple appearances by Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, who’s got some hand in Diet Smith rebuilding his laboratory. And worrying about Annie growing up. And, this Sunday receiving a mysterious package that Diet Smith needs to know about. We may suppose that’s to be dealt with in a coming story.

Next Week!

Garbage truck rides: are they only for the impossibly old anymore? Or are they also for immortal being such as Santa Claus? Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley is unafraid to tackle the tough issues, and next week, I might be too! See you then.

What’s Going On In Prince Valiant? Why are you angry at Prince Valiant of all things? October 2022 – January 2023

The last couple months of Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant have been about freeing people from a witch-hunter. The catch is that in the Prince Valiant world there are witches. And people have good reason to be afraid of them. A couple months ago we saw Morgan Le Fay bring a flood to London, killing dozens, for her (and Valiant and others with them) to escape. This story we saw witches call down asteroids from the skies to kill their would-be tormentor.

So this is what has me angry. It’s the same thing I can’t swallow about the movie Hocus Pocus or certain episodes of Sabrina the Teenaged Witch. I grant the dramatic irony of witch hunters in a world where witches really exist, especially if (as far as we can tell) they go after the completely innocent. But the moral outrage of witch-hunting is people letting their own fears and imagination and prejudices into actual persecution. Make witches real and present and actively working against the witch-hunter, and you have a hard time not trivializing this injustice. I know, it’s just a story. But we have enough trouble with would-be witch-hunters without so many stories building on the idea that sometimes they’re in the right.

All this should catch you up to late January 2023 in Prince Valiant, though. If you’re reading this after about April 2023 I likely have a more up-to-date plot recap here. And there’s still a nice solid story rolling through here, interesting despite my objections.

Prince Valiant.

23 October 2022 – 22 January 2023.

Dialyodd the witch-hunter was about to set fire to Afton, one of a couple women very good at their farm work, just because Aleta, Queen of the Witches, declared her to be under her protection. Yeubar, alongside Prince Valiant’s son Nathan, swarmed the scene with bees. It’s a great opportunity to free Afton in the chaos of the moment that doesn’t work. Dialyodd spots a great chance to burn three devils now. He assures a cautious mob member that Camelot will have nothing to say about burning Nathan.

Audrey, Afton’s partner, does escape the chaos and get back to Camelot. She’s able to summon one cavalry: Valiant and Galahad gallop off to the scene. She also gets another, though. Aleta, Queen of the Witches, tells Maeve and Audrey they have work to do too. While Dialyodd gathers a nice big party together at a megalithic temple (I suppose Stonehenge, though for all I know it could be another ancient stone circle), Aleta gathers ingredients and allies. With Sebel, who I totally know who that is, and Morgan Le Fay they cast a spell calling for the sky to come to Earth, and let like find like.

Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant for the 25th of December, 2022. I quite liked this twist, by the way, as something which seems to come from nowhere but which also makes sense. And something which should make Valiant’s life more complicated from here; there’s something exciting about a plan that should settle one problem going completely awry. What I don’t know is if Galahad knew about this before getting on-scene, or how much he did know.

Valiant and Galahand charge into the demon-burning. Valiant’s taken aback when Dialyodd complains of Camelot breaking its pact with him. Dialyodd claims Camelot agreed to not interfere with his crusade in exchange for protecting the western shores from Saxon invasion. Galahad says if that’s true they should keep the children but leave. Valiant is too angry to care, and attacks Dialyodd. He doesn’t kill the witch-hunter, though. The Orionid meteor shower does it first, sending a meteor through Dialyodd’s heart. It’s a heck of an accomplishment, given that the Orionid meteor shower wasn’t discovered until 1839. (It’s one of a couple meteor showers created by Halley’s Comet, by the way.) If the text is right that these are the Orionids, the story is happening in October, by the way.

It’s convenient to our heroes to have the witch-hunter out of the way. But having the stars fall from the sky to shoot him through the heart seems unlikely to convince people that Dialyodd was wrong. And Morgan Le Fay sneaks out to Stonehenge, finds the stone that killed Dialyodd, and brings it back to her castle. So that might be leading somewhere.

But where that does lead is to this week’s comics. You know now what’s been doing on the last several months, in slightly less time than it would take to read yourself. When I get back to the strip around April we’ll be able to say whether this thread continues, or whether we’re on a new adventure.

Next Week!

Speaking of new adventures, how did that story of the small-time mobster trying to be an actor in a comic-strip-based-musical turn out? And how did it turn into a counterfeit Leonardo da Vinci painting? And did we really get there by way of a furry convention? We’ll get to Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy next week, all going well. See you then.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (weekdays)? Where did the Bandar cavalry come from? October 2022 – January 2023

From Bandar. Do try to keep up.

For those who came in late: The Phantom, in his escape from Gravelines Prison, saw “the Bandar nation” ride out of the mists to save him and Savarna Devi. The question is how they knew where to be. This hasn’t been explicitly answered but we can surmise. Mozz the Prophet finished telling The Phantom of the wrack-and-ruin he foresaw. When finished, The Phantom took Mozz’s Chronicle and set it in the catacomb reserved for his body. Mozz had deceived The Phantom: what he seemed to read from was not his text of his prophecy, but one of The Phantom’s own Chronicles. Somehow the prophet was able to anticipate that The Phantom wouldn’t check which volume he was setting on the shelves and which he was hiding. We last saw Diana Walker reading Mozz’s Chronicle. I have a suspicion what dots we’re meant to connect.

And for the Word of God, or at least the author, about the strip, you couldn’t do better than Tony DePaul’s recent essay discussing the writing and his plans. Also explaining a controversial choice in the writing. And that there was a controversy.

So this essay should catch you up to mid-January 2023 in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays). If you’re reading this after about April 2023, or you’re interested in the separate Sunday continuity, there is likely a more useful plot recap for you here.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

17 October 2022 – 14 January 2023.

Having heard Mozz’s prophecy of how rescuing Savarna Devi from Gravelines Prison will destroy his family, The Ghost Who Walks sets out anyway. He’s making some changes from the prophecy, though. He’s setting out a couple days later, for one thing. He’s accompanied by Devil, his wolf. He’s setting out with the knowledge of the prophecy. He’s setting out with all the self-ruining confidence of a guy who’s crammed every strategy guide before playing the game for the first time. It’s a fun energy to read, as he keeps trying to remember what comes next and doubting that he could know. Also in the delight he takes in, he thinks, outwitting Fate. One great side of The Phantom is he’s basically happy. His glee at being clever is infectious.

One thing he does know: in the prophecy he reveals to Devi the critical information — the location of Jampa, who killed her family and enslaved her as a child — in a post-surgical daze. So he figures all he has to do is not get shot. That was already part of the plan. Further planning: if he does get shot, he has to not have a post-surgical daze. So he drops in on Dr Fajah Kimathi, a veterinarian who in Mozz’s vision performs the operation that saves his life. And here we get controversy.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 27th of October, 2022. I know this may look unfair but the veterinarian’s husband here has been known to collect stamps.

The Phantom’s intention is to warn the doctor that she must not save his life, if she’s pressed by Savarna Devi to do emergency surgery on him. He does this by waking the doctor and her husband in the middle of the night. And holding his guns on them. That is, on people who not only haven’t done anything objectionable yet, but who would in the prophecy do heroic service to him. Tony DePaul explains his understanding of The Phantom’s thoughts in the essay above. I agree with DePaul. The Phantom figures conspicuously holstering his guns he shows he chooses not to be the threat a masked man breaking into their house is. I also think The Phantom’s wrong. Waking someone while holding guns on them does not put them in a more agreeable mood however much you put the guns away. But that is part of the fun of The Phantom. He has blind spots. Here, that people he knows through hearing of Mozz’s vision don’t know who he is or what he’s on about. (Although they’ve got to suspect this is The Phantom of regional lore.)

With that done successfully-ish, The Phantom figures how to get into Gravelines. Hijacking a truck in worked well enough in the vision, so he does that again. And he fights his way up to Savarna’s cell. Before breaking her out he stops to ask her something. In Mozz’s vision this was whether she was done with vengeance. She said she was, a claim The Phantom (now, in the present) decides was a lie.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 15th of December, 2022. From here Devi goes on trying to push The Phantom towards the “original” course of events, the one that gets him shot on the road to that veterinarian’s. But that’s also what looks all the time like the sensible path for them. The Phantom does some wrangling with whether this is Fate trying to force things back into line, and it’s a fair thing for him to wonder.

I’m not sure that’s fair. I think it plausible she sincerely believed she was done with vengeance. Learning where Constable Jampa was presented an irresistible temptation. Now The Phantom asks a question to make super-sure he doesn’t let slip Jampa’s location: if he’s shot does she promise to leave him behind? She says she will, which we know from her thought balloon is a lie. I love this irony.

We get a haunting moment in this of other prisoners, possibly also on death row, begging for The Phantom to release them instead. It’s hard to give a fair reason The Phantom should not rescue them. He knows Devi can help fight their way back out, but that doesn’t mean the others don’t deserve rescue.

To the breakout. Devi sees no reason not to grab an armored vehicle and shoot their way out. The Phantom knows. It’s gunning their way out through the well-defended roads that gets him shot. But then how to get out instead?

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 11th of January, 2023. Won’t fib; this is one of those Crowning Moments of Awesome they talk about on TV Tropes. I had wondered why the Jungle Patrol couldn’t be used to break Devi, and others, out of Gravelines, although I suppose they have an institutional structure ironically more vulnerable than the Bandar people do. While the Jungle Patrol may operate across national borders, Bangalla can be pressured to cut off headquarters’s water and electricity.

Devil, who wasn’t there in Mozz’s vision, has an answer. He guides The Phantom off to the mists where, as said in the introduction here, the Bandar nation has come. The Gravelines guards may be ready to handle one or two people with machine guns. Dozens of people with poison-tipped arrows, though? That’s something they can’t even imagine is coming. And the best part is there’s no way an evil state like Rhodia will retaliate against the Bandar people for crossing the border and attacking a maximum-security prison. (I snark. I’m sure DePaul has put some thought into how Rhodia might answer this.) And this is where we stand as of the second week of January, 2023.

Next Week!

I get a break! It’s one of the Sunday-only strips. And oh, I get to be angry about this for a change! Next week find out why I’m mad at Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant. If all goes well.

What’s Going On In Alley Oop? Why do Alley Oop and Ooola have a daughter? October 2022 – January 2023

Myc, their daughter, is some weird organism ageing dozens of years in a day. It’s attached to Alley Oop and Ooola because they’re the lead characters. Past that we’re still learning her deal so I don’t have more to say about them.

On another note, Jack Bender, longtime artist on Alley Oop, has died, reports D D Degg at The Daily Cartoonist. I came in to reading Alley Oop and appreciating his work only at its tail end but did always enjoy it. The Daily Cartoonist shares more of his life’s work, including the sports comics he made his name on.

This essay should catch you up on Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for early January, 2023. All of my Alley Oop essays should be at this link, so if you’re reading this after about April 2023 there’s probably a more current plot recap there. Now to the past fourteen weeks of shenanigans and whatnot.

Alley Oop.

10 October 2022 – 7 January 2023.

Someone was tampering with Doc Wonmug’s past, going back to divert his young self from an interest in science. It’s Doctor Atoby, of course, Doc Wonmug’s counterpart in Universe-4, the all-villains universe. His goal: to rid the multiverse of 156 of his counterparts, establishing himself as not just the greatest but the hardest-working evil genius in the multiverse.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 22d of October, 2022. This all reminds me of a plot thread in David Gerrold’s early-70s time travel novel The Man Who Folded Himself. Also, I do like Alley Oop’s nonsense in the last panel; it’s a good dumb joke to pair with a serious (yet ridiculous) menace from the narrative.

The plan seems unshakeable. Alley Oop and Ooola keep trying to go back to the day before Atoby first visites the young Wonmug, only to find he’s gone back to a day before that. It’s the logical yet funny end and points out one problem of a “Time War” story. It’s hard to see how it could ever be won. Alley Oop and Ooola ask, if Doc Wonmug’s history has been rewritten so he never got into science how does he still have a lab and all? Wonmug explains something about changes in time taking time to change the present. It doesn’t make sense but if we don’t have some buffer like this we can’t have a story, okay?

The Clawed Oracle, cat-shaped being unbound by time and space, has advice for Alley Oop and Ooola. (Doc Wonmug is getting too much into free jazz and other “silly” arts stuff, as the time changes seep into ‘now’.) That advice is: take the battle to Doc Atoby. So they venture into Universe-4, the villain world. It’s a difficult place to be. Everything kind of operates on the inverse-logic of Bizarro World so it’s confusing working out normal conversations. Like, when the person who works the Misinformation Booth offers to help, should Alley Oop clobber them or what?

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 2nd of December, 2022. Another strip I really like, as a good blend of comedy and dramatic movement. Also that it’s really clever of Ooola to monologue in this plausible-enough say while Alley Oop silently sets up for the actual plan. I understand the people upset the strip has shifted to comedy first, adventure second, but even they couldn’t be upset if they were all like this.

Our Heroes barely start figuring out a plan when Doc Atoby captures them. His Time Heptahedron is far more powerful than their Time Cubes. he brings them seven billion years in the future, when Earth is a lifeless void, a half-billion years from being consumed by the sun. He plans to leave them there. But Ooola outwits him, and Alley Oop catches him, and they’re left with what to do with the villain. Abandoning him in the dead future Earth is so villainous he approves. Lecturing doesn’t work. What about going back into his childhood to make him less villainous? That’s only arguably murder.

So, they go to Doc Atoby’s childhood and give him a puppy, to make him less villainous, or at least a villain with a cybernetic evil dog. Hard to be sure. But when they get back to the present, Doc Atoby’s a much less evil, less ambitious mad scientist; he’s into free jazz and all that stuff. So this somehow undoes all the time-tampering done with our (Universe-2) Doc Wonmug. I assume also the other versions of Doc Wonmug since there’s a couple that are surely jokes they’ll want to come back to. And with that, the 16th of December, we come to a happy conclusion.

---

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 4th of January, 2023. This story’s done a nice job of having Myc be quite intelligent without having her automatically know things she couldn’t, like who George Washington is or what a banana peel might be.

The 17th of December started the current story, with Alley Oop and Ooola getting back to Moo. Inside Alley Oop’s cave is a crying infant. Nobody in Moo knows who she is. Or why she’s growing so fast, going through years of (human) growth in hours. She tells Our Heroes that her name is Myc. And … she’s pretty sure she’s a fungus. Is that weird? No, of course not. They’ve lived. They know people from Mastodon who are feral dreams hoping to invade shampoo by way of Louisa May Alcott novels. Being a rapid-ageing fungus from space is mundane in all but the literal sense. But what her deal is, past that? We don’t yet know.

Next Week!

Mozz’s Prophecy comes to pass! Or it doesn’t, because we saw it, so it can’t unfold like we were told! If we were told it correctly! If you’re confused, hold on about a week as I get to Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity. Or read Tony DePaul’s blog because he explained everything using better-chosen words about two weeks ago. Your call.

What’s Going On In Eye Lie Popeye? Also, what is Eye Lie Popeye? October – December 2022

Eye Lie Popeye is another web comic about everyone’s favorite crusty sailor who isn’t Shipwreck from the 80s G.I.Joe cartoons. At least I’ve been treating it as a web comic, as Marcus Williams’s manga-style comic book’s been presented to us. It’s properly a comic book of at least twenty pages, available for preorder. One page has been shared roughly each week for the last couple months. We’ve had ten pages published online and I don’t know whether there’s going to be a continuation. They do want to sell the comics, after all.

One may ask: is this adventure canonical? One may answer: does that matter? If the story’s good does it matter whether it gets referenced anywhere else? But it probably is. Randy Milholland, who draws the new Popeye strips, and half of the Olive and Popeye side project, seems to have an inclusive view of what’s Popeye Canon. He’s tossed references to the radio series of the 1930s, to the Popeye’s Island Adventure short cartoons, to Bobby London’s run on the strip, and to characters created for the King Features cartoons of the 1960s into his tenure. If I had to put a bet I’d suppose some of this gets into the “official” strips. Heck, I’d be only a little surprised if Milholland worked in a reference to the bonkers pinball game backstory Python Anghelo wrote up.

So I can’t say whether there will ever be another of these What’s Going On In installments. But if there is, well, this should catch you up to the start of 2023. I’ll have all my Eye Lie Popeye essays arranged at this link. Thank you.

Eye Lie Popeye.

October – December 2022.

A shadowy, intimidating figure stands over a field of ruins, including an unconscious Bluto. Popeye struggles to find spinach which the figure warns is not to be found. Popeye’s stubbornness will kill him — and then we hear the Jeep, drawing the figure’s attention away from Popeye. I bet you’re wondering how Popeye got into this fix.

Panel from Marcus Williams’s Eye Lie Popeye, page one. The full page has many panels, in a fairly complicated pattern (that’s still easy to read), but this will give you a feel for the kind of technique to expect.

So we flash back to the start. Judy P’Tooty, reporter from the Puddleburg Splash, wants to write the story of how Popeye lost his eye. (The name Puddleburg Splash references a 1934 Popeye story. That story’s the source of a panel you might have seen where Popeye explains cartoonists are just like normal people except they’re crazy.) Olive Oyl intercepts her and promises to tell the story. We get a nice view of what looks like a classic (cartoon) adventure. A titanic mer-man sucker-punches Popeye and harasses Olive Oyl. Popeye eats his spinach, rockets in, and smashes the mer-man into cans of tuna. Only, this time, in the sucker-punching the monster knocked out his eye. I think the mer-man may be a representation of King Neptune, who appeared, among other places, in the 1939 story “Homeward Bound”. It’s the one going on in the Vintage Thimble Theatre run on Comics Kingdom right now.

Bluto has a different take. In Bluto’s telling, sure, Popeye was fighting a giant horned octopus. This series has not been short on fun monster designs. I’m not sure if this is meant to be any particular giant cephalopod from the rest of the Popeye universe; there’s a couple it might be. But it’s Bluto who stepped up to save the day, using Popeye as the impenetrable rock to beat the monster back. And in smashing Popeye against the monster the eye popped out. Popeye and Olive Oyl declare this story baloney, but P’Tooty is barely listening. She’s telling someone that she’s located and eliminated each stash — which she tells the gang is just her taking notes.

Marcus Williams’s Eye Lie Popeye page 8. This is my favorite of the pages we’ve had so far. The action’s great, Bill the De-Ming is nicely rendered in a way that’s cute and menacing at once, Wimpy looks great, and the narration feels like it’s got Wimpy’s voice; it’s rococo but for a purpose.

Wimpy has yet another take, in which he’s interrupted during a six-hamburger lunch. Popeye smashes through the window, battling another, this time winged, monster. This one’s called Bill and I believe it to be one of the underground demons, or De-Mings, from the final story Elzie Segar worked on before his death. This makes me suppose the other monsters are from other Thimble Theatre adventures. Bill targets Wimpy with a finger laser, as one will, and Popeye intercepts it, saving Wimpy’s life but losing his eye. Bluto calls this nonsense but Popeye acknowledges that this at least happened.

Meanwhile, P’Tooty has lost her patience. She declares this a waste of time and demands Popeye tell her where is the eye. And that she’s done with her cover story. She is, in truth, P’Tooty the Jade Witch. She’s sent by the Sea Hag. She’s eliminated all the spinach in the area, including the can Popeye keeps in his shirt collar. She wants to know where is the Bejeweled Eye of Haggery, and where is the Jeep. She dissolves into this huge inky goop, bubbling up from the sea, and it’s not hard to connect this to page one.

Marcus Williams’s Eye Lie Popeye page 10. Bluto might have the best line in the book so far, with this panel, but I’ve enjoyed the characterizations of everyone so far.

And that’s where we stand.

Oh, for the record. None of the flashback encounters we’ve seen can be perfectly true. Popeye was introduced, with his missing eye, before he ever met Olive Oyl, King Neptune, Bluto, Wimpy, or Bill the De-Ming. At least in the Thimble Theatre continuity. But you knew that. And there’s no limit to the number of continuities of Popeye except the willingness of people to hear the stories.

Next Week!

OK, now I’ve run out of Popeye web comics. I intend to get back to Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop next week. Promise.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Also, what is Olive and Popeye? September – December 2022

Happy end of the year! So, late this past summer, Comics Kingdom started to run a twice-a-week strip, Olive and Popeye. The strip, which has a daily-strip form, is done alternately by Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland. Milholland is the person who draws the Sunday-only Popeye strip. I don’t know how they’re coordinating the writing. I remember seeing Milholland tweet that both their strips were “canon”. I don’t know whether anyone said whether this is supposed to be in continuity with the Sunday Popeye. I doubt there’s going to be anything irreconcilable.

A couple weeks back I realized that while the Olive and Popeye strips stood alone, there was a continuity going. And things look like they’re putting a story together. I don’t know that this is going to be a new story strip in the way that the standard syndicated newspaper strips are. But, you know, I want to encourage Popeye re-entering the popular culture. And it’s easy to imagine without knowing and without hearing anyone suggest this is the case that doing a two-day-a-week strip is testing whether a full-time daily strip would be viable. So let me take one of my Tuesday slots and say stuff about a comic strip you might have had no idea existed.

Olive and Popeye.

30 August – 22 December 2022.

Olive Oyl leaves a canoodling session with Popeye to meet her brother Castor. He’s meeting up with his wife Cylinda, a character who hasn’t been in Thimble Theatre since before Popeye was introduced. She was written out in 1928, either running off to Hollywood or divorcing her unfaithful husband. It depends whether you read the daily or the Sunday strips. In any case it has to be a record for characters re-emerging from off stage. But she’s back and “a bat now”, according to Castor’s daughter Deezil. Deezil’s a character from the 1960s cartoons.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 6th of September, 2022. This might be Deezil’s first appearance since the King Features cartoons. It does establish just who her parents are, and how she’s a niece of Olive Oyl, which seems almost to violate the rules about how cartoon nieces and nephews work. From what I read of Cylinda Oil’s backstory I don’t see where she could have had a child, plausibly, unless somehow something happened to her while off-screen. But what are the odds of that?

Meanwhile, Popeye’s mother Irene(!) and his aunt Jones fly in to spend time with the family. His mother, it turns out and is footnoted, got introduced in an early-50s story. This makes sense of her appearance in that one Famous Studios cartoon. His aunt Jones is, by the way, married to Davy Jones, of Locker fame. She’d been introduced in the early 40s and neglected since then.

Then we get some slice-of-life stuff. Popeye’s mother and aunt bonding with him and Swee’Pea. Olive Oyl working out with a friend named Mae. Mae seems to be her rival from the 1936 short Never Kick A Woman. The woman was unnamed there, but “Mae” suggests both Mae West (a clear influence on the short) and Olive Oyl’s longtime voice actor Mae Questel. Poopdeck Pappy stopping in, wondering if Irene is still upset about all those times he ran off and such.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 22nd of September, 2022. So it turns out Popeye’s Mother was introduced in 1951 which I have never known or seen talked about. This may explain why she suddenly got an appearance in Popeye’s Pappy, that color yet racist Famous Studios cartoon remaking Goonland worse.

There’s some antics in the background too. A character that makes me think of Susie the Sea Nymph, a menace from the late 30s, emerges from the water a couple times but Olive Oyl easily foists her off. (Susie the Sea Nymph was in the story run a couple months ago in Comics Kingdom’s Vintage Thimble Theatre.) Popeye going off to foil the Sea Hag and dump some of his stress at his family situation on her. Also, Bluto and Brutus keep popping in to slight effect. Ham Gravy pokes around to see if Olive Oyl might be up for getting back together. Her sisters protect her from him. But Olive and her big-city cousin Sweet still get along mostly by fighting.

Popeye hires Wimpy to keep an eye on Pappy, and keep Pappy away from his mother. Wimpy offers that someone down by the docks is asking for him. It turns out to be Whaler Joe, Popeye’s guardian when Pappy and his mother were both missing. I had assumed Whaler Joe to be one of Randy Milholland’s creations for Popeye’s Cartoon Club. Turns out, no; he was Elzie Segar’s creation, for a 1931 newspaper promotional piece titled The Private Life of Popeye, his biography as imagined before there were any animated cartoons or much comic strip lore.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 8th of December, 2022. In Popeye’s defense, he’s been parenting Swee’Pea for nearly 75 years now and he hasn’t aged a day. The key element has to be ‘not looking at them’.

Well, Whaler Joe is in Sweehaven to see his daughter Petunia, who I belive is a new character here. At leas, the Popeye Wikia I use doesn’t mention her before. She was an infant when Popeye last saw her, when he was eighteen. We first see Petunia when she happens to ask Olive Oyl for help scaring off some men following her. Petunia’s hoping to be a marine biologist, much like all of us who were kids in the 80s did. But she’s got the help that her father and her big brother are sailors and I guess her great-uncle is Davy Jones. She’s thrilled to meet Popeye, and wants to know everything he’s experienced with sea monsters. Like, now.

And that’s where “Now” is in the comic strip! As I warned above, I’m not sure this is a story strip in the way that, like, Mary Worth is a story strip. But I’m willing to take at least one try at summarizing a strip that’s been a lot of reintroducing obscure characters. We’ll see if that ever needs doing again.

Next Week!

Well, we know there can’t be another Popeye web comic with a strong storyline that people might want to know about and that I could provide a brief recap for. So let’s get back on schedule with Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop in a week. Would I lie to you about that?

What’s Going On In Judge Parker? Are you mad at Judge Parker too? October – December 2022

No, I’m not mad at Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker. Not yet, anyway. The story has been a big conspiracy-tinged murder mystery. I have no doubts about Marciuliano’s ability to create a big, confusing, messy scenario. He’s done it many times, often in interesting ways. But I agree he has a habit of jumping the action ahead a couple months, so we don’t see the exact resolution of the chaos. It’s an effective way to change what the default condition of things is, but it can leave mysteries under-written or under-motivated.

I can be okay with a mystery that isn’t perfectly explained. Heck, I love your classic old-time-radio mystery. Those are all attitude and action and fun dialogue. The story logic is a charming hypothesis. I understand readers who have a different view and understand if they have no faith in where this is going. We readers still don’t know Deputy Mayor Stewart’s reason for framing Abbey Spencer for her bed-and-breakfast’s fire. Whether you can accept that Marciuliano had one for Stewart, I imagine, tells whether you think this mystery has an answer.

So this should catch you up to mid-December 2022 in Judge Parker. If you’re reading this after about March 2023, there should be a more up-to-date plot recap here. That might help you more.

Before getting to the recap, a content warning. The story started with murder, and several murders or attempted murders are centers to the action. If you do not need that in your goofy fun recreational reading, go and enjoy yourself instead. We can meet back soon for the Alley Oop plot recap or whatever I get up to next week. I’ll put the recap behind a cut so people can more easily bail on it.

Judge Parker.

2 October – 17 December 2022.

What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? Are there even stories anymore in Gil Thorp? September – December 2022

Henry Barajas has brought a different style of writing to his and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp. Compared to the Neal Rubin era the stories are much less linear, with many characters having stuff going on at once. And Barajas has an apparent desire to set everyone up with a host of issues. The combination has made the strip — already having a reputation for jumping around, because it often changed scene during a day’s strip — seem more unfocused.

So things are still going on, and the story threads are more obvious when read a week or more at a time. This may be inconvenient for people who can only read Gil Thorp in the newspaper, but, c’mon. People doing that aren’t reading my blog, anyway. Still, Barajas may need more experience with providing background or reminders in the text. It’s a hard thing to do. Science fiction fans call it “incluing” and the daily story strips are a master challenge in doing that well.

So this should catch you up to about mid-December 2022 in Gil Thorp. There is probably a more up-to-date plot recap at this link, if you’re reading this after about March 2023. Or if news about the strip happens, I’ll post it here. Now back to the sports pages.

Gil Thorp.

26 September – 10 December 2022.

It’s Coach Kaz’s last season with Milford, we learned as I did my last recap. They hope for a good one, especially as Valley Tech’s Coach Luke Martinez has some bizarre, passionate rivalry with a guy who barely knows who he is. But whose kids get along great with his kids.

Meanwhile, Milford’s been having a good season for the boys football team. After losing the first game the team would go on to a string of of wins, including two wins in a row against Madison, somehow. I assume this was an editing mistake but never saw it explained. Centerpiece for the season — and what I imagine Neal Rubin would have made the focus of the season — is Tobias Gordon. His soccer talent leads Thorp and Kaz to naming him a kicker, and over the season he transitions to being a linebacker. GoComics commenters say this is an improbable turn of events, but I don’t know any better.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 7th of November, 2022. I understand all two/three opponents playing in the same colors is most likely an accident. The people colorizing daily strips generally get very little direction and not much time to think through their work. But there is a dramatic unity provided in giving all these dramatically-unimportant visitors the same outfit, as a visual cue of how the audience should read them.

Gordon’s progression draws media attention, as he is the first (open) transgender male athlete in Milford football. Early on some of the athletes complain about how Coach Thorp “went and got woke”, talk a win streak squelches. I appreciate the choice to portray treating transgendered people as people as the winning course. But it does carry an undercurrent of “respecting human rights will be profitable” rather than “is what decent people do”. Still, Milford enjoys a good season and is — this week — facing Valley Tech and Coach Martinez in the finals.

Speaking of Martinez. After one of Valley Tech’s wins Martinez describes what his issue is with Gil Thorp. It goes back to the Valley Tech/Milford game of 1987, when he was playing. It was a hard-fought game, and Valley Tech won. But the local press reported on how “Coach Thorp Ends Season Strong”. And now Martinez is out to right that historical wrong.

Thorp goes to the videotape, literally, finding Matty Moon’s broadcast of the playdown game. We see Emmett Tays, whose story of Thorp’s coaching a different game lead Barajas’s tenure, trying to shake off Martinez. Marty Moon seems to toss to commercial mid-play. Even I know that doesn’t happen. What was going on was a light break of the fourth wall, providing space for Gil Thorp’s celebration of Charles Schulz’s 100th birthday. Still was weird reading it the day before.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 30th of November, 2022. It occurs to me we’re maybe not to take this as literally happening; that Gil Thorp is reading in whatever Martinez actually said the coach’s present-day intentions. But it’s always hard to pull off unreliable narration, and like ten times harder to do that in a comic strip.

Anyway, the game was a rough one. Tays sure seems to have done something foul-worthy against Martinez. But Tays fumbles the last play, letting Martinez save the game for Valley Tech. In the 1987 postgame interview Martinez says he hopes “Coach Thorp knows one thing … I’m coming for your spot, Thorp”. Which … doesn’t quite satisfy me? It doesn’t seem to me like Thorp did anything particular besides be the coach he beat in the playdowns. Fixations can be weird, though, and small incidents can curdle in one’s mind.

Other stuff going on. Keri Thorp is having a rough time of it. The school has a mass-shooter drill, with the simulated shooter holding Keri’s class. This is less traumatic than an actual aggrieved white supremacist with a gun collection coming into the classroom, but that’s all. On top of that trauma is a fellow student’s death, identified as “the third overdose this semester”. Three seems very high to me, especially given it was only November, but I understand high school has changed since I was in it.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 16th of November, 2022. To be fair to Dorothy we don’t see that she’s laughing at Keri (or a friend) so this isn’t quite the neat story of punching out the bully one might like. I’m all right with things being a bit messy, even though it makes the stories harder to snark on.

Dorothy, who’s been bullying Keri (cropping her out of team photos, for example), mocks her for tearing up over this. Kari punches Dorothy, getting her sentenced to counseling through December. I know high school hasn’t changed to much that the worst offense of all is punching a bully. (Many commenters pointed out two years ago we saw a kid expelled for bringing a bread knife in to spread peanut butter on a bagel. Actual violence getting a “talk with someone ineffective” punishment seems like inconsistent standards.)

And in the most important non-student relationship bit of business: Gil Thorp asks Mimi if she wants a divorce. She says she does not, and that she’ll always love him. It doesn’t make their relationship any easier. And I don’t believe Mimi has yet owned up to how her mother is months away from death (and encouraging Mimi to leave Gil). That’s surely a heavy strain that Gil Thorp can’t anticipate or deal with.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 4th of November, 2022. Lot of action going on with those hands there, which is not me being snarky; it’s the correct thing for the camera to focus on. I do like that the trouble in the Thorp’s marriage isn’t some simple thing that could be worked out with one good conversation but rather something they’re not able to articulate. I feel optimistic given that they both want to work it out (Mimi’s defended Gil to her mother too much for me to think she doesn’t), but it’s not a thing with a sure fix.

Past that there have been a lot of small bits of business. Mimi’s mother noticing how much attention Tobias is paying to Keri, and Mimi encouraging her child if they want to date him. Kaz talking about how happy he is with his partner, maybe wife, Rachel. Keri bruising their ankle in a volleyball practice. Discovering Marty Moon has a two-year-sober Alcoholics Anonymous medallion. (Combined with how amiably he chatted with Gil Thorp back in September, this suggests Moon’s clashes with Thorp reflected alcoholism. I don’t know that Barajas meant that, but it’s a thread for possible exploration.) Thorp saying he’s old enough to have had Cold War civil-defense drills in school. Student Monica Yellowhair preceding her singing the National Anthem with the observation that the school was on stolen land, which narrows Milford’s location down to “the United States”. All told, many miscellaneous things that I’m noting in case they get built on. Or because I took notes and you’re going to see notes. As you like it.

Milford Sports Watch!

Among my notes I tried to keep track of the other schools mentioned in the strip. Here’s my record of them:

• Valley Tech. (28 – 30 September).
• Goshen. (6 – 7 October).
• Central. (10 October).
• Valley Tech, Tilden. (12 – 13 October).
• Jefferson, Madison, Madison again. (7 November). I guess an answer to the question “if Madison is so great why wasn’t there a Madison 2?”.
• Valley Tech. (8 November).
• Valley Tech. (23 – 30 November).
• New Thayer. (3 – 11 December).
• Valley Tech. (12 December).

Next Week!

Who’s trying to kill Sam Driver, and why aren’t they better at it? I look at Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker unless something shoots up my car and I have to drive it into town.

What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? What was Mud Murphy sick with? September – December 2022

‘Mud Mountain’ Murphy was a delight to see enter Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.. Most of the characters, as Beatty writes them, are pleasant enough if a bit vague. Not Murphy, who entered as a Brian Blessed-esque force of nature, all bold text and boundless energy. Story strips do great with outsized emotions and Murphy carried himself so even saying hello was outsized.

During the current story he had to run offstage rather than perform. It looked like some digestive issue, since he had just eaten four steaks, three dozen pancakes, thirty eggs (scrambled), eight gallons of mashed potatoes, a quadruple order of bacon-fried hash browns, two bystanders, six quarts of ice cream topped with twelve bananas, a Honda Civic hatchback, and five packzi. He claimed later that it was all a stunt to make himself the headliner rather than the opener. But —

Well, I noticed some points Terry Beatty dropped. We’re told that Murphy hasn’t performed in a decade. A club owner and another musician say it’s because he was unreliable about actually showing up. When Murphy does appear at the venue he talks about not having any merchandise to sell. Murphy tells a fan who mentions having a complete set of his albums that he doesn’t even have a full set of his own albums. I’d call that good crowd work if it weren’t for other mentions suggesting Murphy’s in dire straits.

When Murphy arrives at the venue Truck Tyler mentions how “I don’t think he’s showered in a while”. Murphy’s diner order is enormous like you expect from a bombastic person. But also like you expect from a starving person eating on someone else’s account. I was a grad student, I know this pattern.

Right now we’re at a point where Murphy’s story is at a sensible conclusion. He’s been a manipulative jerk and got called out on it and the regular cast are done with him. But. There is plenty of material in-text to suggest that Murphy’s dealing with some issues, plausibly a social anxiety, that sabotage his career and relationships. I don’t know whether we’re going to see him rehabilitated in the coming weeks. The room is there, is all I want to flag.

If you’re reading this after about March 2023, though, you know whether this story continued. If you don’t know how it’s turned out there’s likely a plot recap at this link which explains it. For now, for the early-December 2022 report? Read on, please, and let’s explore it.

Rex Morgan, M.D.

18 September – 3 December 2022.

We were near enough the beginning of a story last time I visited Rex Morgan, M.D. Hank Harwood Junior paid a visit to Yvonne Grey, daughter of one of his father’s old flames. They met when Hank Senior reconnected with Yvonne’s mother shortly before her death. Well, they’ve been cyber’ing, as the local news wants us to believe people call it, and the relationship got serious enough to be worth an in-person visit.

Through the visit Hank and Yvonne talk about their past relationships, and how much comfort they’ve found in each other. How close Yvonne is to retiring and turning the family diner over to her kids. Hank Junior’s challenges caring for his father. And then they turn up in the strip the next day, married.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 10th of October, 2022. The story carried on a while, mostly Hank and Yvonne figuring out whether they’ll take a honeymoon and that sort of thing. It’s all pleasant enough, getting back to Beatty’s main mission of having pleasant people to whom nothing very bad happens.

I found the development interesting. To us readers it’s entirely a retcon; we never saw a word about their relationship before this story. But it didn’t feel arbitrary. I bought that they had a happy long-distance relationship and that it made sense to them to marry on a day’s notice. It seems fast to me, but not arbitrary or foolish. So here’s hoping that all turns out well. And I note that Rex Morgan is up at least three weddings on Mary Worth in the time I’ve been doing recaps, here.

---

From about the 16th of October the story moved from Hank Jr and Yvonne’s relationship over to roots country singer Truck Tyler, his agent Buck Wise, and returned-from-exile singer ‘Mud Mountain’ Murphy. Murphy’s first gig in a decade is opening for Tyler at Lew’s Nite Spot. Murphy defies his reputation by showing up in enough time that he, Tyler, and Wise can go get a bite to eat. Or, for Murphy, can get all the bites to eat. It’s a pretty fun scene in Nick’s Diner as he charms Wanda, their server, who’s a fan of Murphy. And eats pages three through eight off the menu.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 12th of November, 2022. “I have an honorary degree from Anderson College!” Yes, all the ironic readers were excited to see how Rex Morgan, M.D., would get out of doing doctoring stuff this time. Murphy saved Rex Morgan from having to M.D. anything by locking himself in the bathroom for an hour.

After his Brobdingnagian dinner, though, he gets on stage and looks unsteady. He apologizes and runs off stage, promising to be back in a little bit. Rex Morgan gets ready to do a medicine, but Murphy won’t come out of the bathroom. With the audience growing restless Tyler steps out on stage and reassures everyone that Murphy will be fine once his tummy settles. And he puts on a good show, doing his set list an hour earlier than he figured.

And as Tyler finishes, Murphy emerges, insisting all he needed was a little time for his stomach to settle. He steps out and thanks Tyler for warming up the crowd for him, a joke that Tyler doesn’t laugh at. It gets worse as Murphy repeats the joke. And after the show, talking to Wanda from the diner, he boasts how this was all a fake. He couldn’t face being only an opening act; he had to be the headliner.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 29th of November, 2022. As you maybe gathered, I’m torn whether to take it at face value that Murphy does figure this kind of stunt is how he wants to live or whether it’s the best scheme he has to cope with whatever his real problems are.

Buck Wise is furious, but Murphy says — not wrongly — that it made a good show so what else matters? Well, it’s still jerk behavior. Wise fires Murphy as a client. And Wanda, whose name Murphy insists on pronouncing ‘Rhonda’, says after that stunt she’s not so much a fan. An angry Murphy storms out, even calling an innocent autograph-seeking fan a ‘loser’. This seems like an end to the story, but, who knows? Besides someone reading this like four weeks from now?

Next Week!

Uh-oh.

I’ll have to start writing my recap early, because it’s the manyfold story threads of Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp next week, and I know I don’t have good enough notes about them yet. Stop by next week and see if I’m completely defeated!

Why Is Everyone Mad at _Funky Winkerbean_?

This may be hard to believe but as recently as the 21st of November, nobody was mad at Funky Winkerbean. At least nobody was mad enough at the soon-to-expire strip to click the ‘angry’ react at the bottom of Comics Kingdom’s page. That changed the 22nd, and since the 25th of November there’s been only one day that the strip got fewer than a hundred angry reactions, as of when I write this. So I want to explore that since people mad at comic strips is good for my readership.

But first, anyone really interested in this should visit the Son of Stuck Funky blog. It has always provided daily snark and commentary and research on Funky Winkerbean. The community there knows the strip with a depth and insight I can’t match and, yeah, they’re feeling extremely ambiguous about what to do next year.

So. The current, and it appears final, Funky Winkerbean story began the 24th of October. Summer Moore, the much-forgotten daughter of Les Moore and Dead Lisa Who Died of Death, returned from college. Her absence as a significant character for like a decade was explained as she kept changing her major. Now she’s thinking to take a gap year in her grad studies. Her goal: writing a book about Westview, the small Ohio town where Funky Winkerbean takes place. She figures to write about how the community’s changing over the last couple decades. Her plan is to use oral histories of her father, her father’s friends, and her dead mother’s diaries. Dead Lisa left a lot of diaries. And also a lot of videotapes. She recorded them after she decided it would be easier to leave a lot of video tapes with advice for her daughter rather than not die of breast cancer. (I sound snide, but what did happen was after a relapse she decided not to restart treatment.)

Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers’s Funky Winkerbean for the 21st of November, 2022. The last Funky Winkerbean (as of this writing) that nobody was angry at. It’s possible that there was some anger that got unrecorded because of Comics Kingdom changing out their commenting system and destroying years of earlier comments.

She started just in time! She’s barely decided to write a book when Funky Winkerbean, the character, announces he’s closing his restaurant, Montoni’s. The pizza shop was the social center of the comic strip since 1992. This event went so fast — in under a week of strips they were auctioning off the fixtures — and with so little focus that it felt like a dream sequence.

By the way if this storyline turns out to be a dream sequence, it would both make more sense and deserve even more to be punched.

So after some interviews Summer goes to the Westview High School janitor, a guy named Harley. Who turns out to be a longtime background character; ComicBookHarriet found he entered the strip no later than 1979. Summer says she kept finding a pattern, not shared with us readers, where Harley’s name popped up too much. And she read something in her mother’s diary about feeling watched. Harley curses himself for being a novice and starts to unreel the story that’s got everyone mad.

Because it turns out that Harley is not merely a janitor who’s been there since before they invented high-fiving. No. He is, in fact, a Custodian, one of a group of people from some other time, with a mission to tend “important nexus events in the timeline” so they’re not disrupted. You know, like in Voyagers!, which you remember from my childhood as somehow the only TV show even more awesomer than Battlestar Galactica. Or like the early-2000s Cartoon Network series Time Squad, which answered the question “what if Voyagers! had three main characters but they were all jerks?”

So he’s been around for forty years watching over Westview High School as a janitor. Apparently it wasn’t intended, exactly. It’s that his Time Helmet got stolen, years ago, by … Donna, who back in the 80s wore this goofy space-guy-ish helmet to play video games as “The Eliminator”. Part of modern Funky Winkerbean lore was that she had worn the helmet to disguise her identity. This way, fragile boys wouldn’t freak out at a guh-guh-guh-girl being good at video games. (Which, eh, fair enough.) (Also she got her Mom to call her ‘Donald’ to help her cover.)

We’ll get back to this in a second. But a lot of what has people mad about this is that the strip revisited The Eliminator’s helmet a few months ago. This in a story where Donna’s husband, Crazy Harry, found the helmet in the attic, put it on, and found himself somehow back in April of 1980. He met up with his high-school self. He told Young Lisa that Les Moore liked her in a not-at-all extremely creepy way. He almost told her to get regular mammograms. He bought a copy of Spider-Man’s debut (a comic book twenty years old at the time) at a convenience store. And lost it, for John The Comic Book Guy to find. And he blipped back to the present. Everyone agreed that was wild. It must have been a hallucination from the helmet outgassing, the way 40-year-old plastic will. Anyway after that weird yet harmless experience they throw the helmet out. But a stray cat wandered into it and blipped into hyperspace. This in just the way The Eliminator would back in the day.

Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers’s Funky Winkerbean for the 27th of November, 2022. Again, not clear how this was easier than just breaking into Donna’s attic and swiping it in the decades that the helmet sat forgotten in a box there. The bit of Eliminator blipping out there reflects a common old Funky Winkerbean motif where wacky stuff would happen, like a character blipping into hyperspace. And apparently that needs explanation now because we can’t just have whimsy. Yes, that’s another thing to be mad about.

Back as it were to the present. So, Harley took a job as a janitor to be where he could watch over stuff. OK. He lost his Time Helmet when the young Donna swiped the cool-looking helmet form his supply closet. He couldn’t snag it back because that would disrupt the timeline. But he could touch her mind enough to make her think she’d made it herself, like she’d always told people. And touched the mind of comic book artist Ken Kelly to make a design that Donna would use as the basis for her helmet. Because that’s easier than touching Donna’s mind to bring the helmet back. And all this mind-touching isn’t creepy or weird so you will stop thinking it is, starting now [ snaps fingers ]. Anyway he figured he could always snag the Time Helmet if he really needed it … except that then it went missing a couple months ago and he has no idea where it went. It’s that cat wearing it.

There’s the first big thing everyone’s mad about: how the heck does it make sense to leave the Time Helmet lost in someone else’s attic for 40 years? And was his mission supposed to be “hang around Westview High School for forty years in case something happens?” And if that was the plan, then what Time Admiral’s great-grandmother did he punch out as a baby to draw that assignment?

Next big thing: what big nexus is it he’s there to protect? And can we shut down everything if his mission was being sure Les Moore wrote How Dead Lisa Died In The Most Tragically Tragic Thing That Ever Happened To Anyone Ever? In a twist, considering Dead Lisa has been the center of most every Funky Winkerbean story the past fifteen years, it is not. No, the thing that needs protection is the book that Summer Moore is about to start writing.

Yes. As you might think if you watched Bill And Ted Face The Music but missed the movie’s thesis that utopia can only be created as an active collaboration of all people, Summer Moore’s going to create a utopia. Specifically, her book connecting the grand sweeps of history to Westview inspires “a science of behavioral-patterend algorithms that will one day allow us to recognize humanity as our nation!” If I have this right, Harley means she lets them invent psychohistory, like in Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novels. In The End of Eternity and Foundation’s Edge, Asimov’s capstones to exploring the implications of a mathematically predictable future history, he concluded psychohistory would be a bad thing. I have to paraphrase because I don’t have the energy to dig up either book. But viewpoint characters come to see the future psychohistory creates as “condemned to neverending stasis by calculation”. I agree we could make a much better world if we treated all people as worthy of our brotherhood. But if the powerful can choose to shape future history they will not choose one for the good of the powerless.

Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers’s Funky Winkerbean for the 2nd of December, 2022. Recommended reading: Katherine MacLean’s short story “The Snowball Effect”. Anyway, the pattern I would like explored is why this strip has major characters named Crazy Harry, Harry Dinkle, Holly Winkerbean, and now Harley Janitorman. What’s with all the two-syllable H-y names, huh?

So that’s what else has people mad. First, the declaration that yet another character in this strip is going to become an important author. Authors already in the strip have written a blockbuster biggest-movie-of-the-year superhero franchise, a bestselling memoir that got turned into an Oscar-winning movie, and an Eisner-winning graphic novel. Second, not even an important author but someone who makes a better future. Third, an author whose work is so important it’s worth having a league of Timecops send one of their members to while away his life watching over her. But not someone good enough to do things like “not lose his Time Helmet for forty years”. Also not good enough to “maybe get a job somewhere near where Summer spends ten years in college”. Or even a job “where Summer spent anything but four years of her life”. Fourth, that it’s toying with some respectable comic book or science fiction ideas, badly. As said, it’s fiddling with what you see in the Bill and Ted movies, or with The End of Eternity, but missing their points. And, what the heck, because all this is being presented in big blocks of exposition rather than, you know, a mystery. Summer’s presented in-text as though she had cracked an elaborate mystery. But we-the-readers never saw any clues or even more than maybe two people mentioning the janitor had been here forever.

Oh also, that we’ve never seen evidence that Summer writes, or is any good at writing. Sometimes a newcomer has an amazing talent, yes. To get back to Isaac Asimov, he write “Nightfall” — acclaimed for decades as the best science fiction short story ever — when he was about twenty. It was only his seventeenth published story. Writing about the experience, Asimov noted that, had someone told him the night before he began writing, “Isaac, you are about to write the greatest science fiction short story ever”, he would never have been able to start. He’d have been destroyed by the menace of that potential. I think we don’t have enough time for a clash between forces helping and hindering Summer’s writing. I can imagine the story, though; Jack Williamson wrote something like it, in the Legion of Time. I’m told, anyway. I haven’t read it.

Anyway, everybody likes that the strip is trying to go out bonkers. But it’s fumbling the ideas, so the plot points don’t hold up to casual scrutiny. And they’re being delivered in time zeppelins of word balloons. I’ll try to post updates, when they’re deserved. But again, Son of Stuck Funky is the place to really know what’s going on here.