The past couple months in Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) has seen a lot of Jungle Patrol head Colonel Worubu looking over the Unknown Commander’s new office. This is justified by the import of the thing. Tony DePaul is trying to revise a big part of Phantom Pholklore. Up to now, The Phantom has given his orders to the Jungle Patrol by orders left in a safe, signalled by a light above the door. Now, The Phantom, and DePaul, want the Unknown Commander to have new ways to be “seen” by his forces. If the big change doesn’t get screen time to make an impression and show why this is more interesting it doesn’t get weight; compare the hilarious failure of the multicolored Daleks that one Doctor Who. The bigger panels and looser story of a Sunday continuity give time to luxuriate in this.
Back at Jungle Patrol Headquarters, Colonel Worubu and Captain Weeks can’t resist the temptation to see the Unknown Commander’s office. Especially now that there’s personal possessions in it. We spend a lot of time in this, examining things brought from the treasure rooms — sextants and battle flags and Maltese Falconses and such. It deeply impresses the Colonel and the Captain.
Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom for the 17th of March, 2024. DePaul really gives frustrated-lit-majors a treat with this Maltese Falcon which, of course, is a thing invented for the novel without basis in reality. This whole story has been about creating fictions; the opening and framing even had “Lee Falk” — a fictional version of the man, standing in for DePaul and (I read it) all creators of Phantom stories — addressing the audience and speaking of how even he doesn’t know what The Phantom is thinking. This reached its peak on the 11th of February, where “Lee Falk” peeks over The Phantom’s shoulder as he writes his Chronicles, and The Phantom notices. An actual critic would launch an essay about text and metatext on that.
Finally, The Phantom breaks silence, speaking over the hidden speakers to Worubu and Weeks. His declaration: when John X gets back, bring him to the Unknown Commander’s office. X’s most recent report is inadequate. Also, turn the lights out when you leave.
The Phantom then returns to Jungle Patrol headquarters, in his guise as John X. He had, as John X, spread the story he thought the Unknown Commander was dead and was supposedly checking the post office box in Mawitaan for orders. Worubu brings John X in and they hear … nothing.
Next Week!
After some of the indignities of age we swerve into dog medicine in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D., next week. Uh … there is pet endangerment in the current storyline but, c’mon, it’s Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan. Everything’s going to be okay, and pretty fast.
I’m hoping to make Dan Schkade’s Flash Gordon part of my regular rotation, yes, but I haven’t yet figured on a good spot for it. So for now it wanders through my schedule much as the rogue planet Mongo does. You can catch all my recaps of its plot at this link, though, and there’ll probably be a successor plot recap by July 2024 or so. For those not reading this in mid-April 2024. Now, let’s recap:
Dan Schkade’s Flash Gordon for the 25th of January, 2024. Aegia makes a good case. I’m a little sorry the genre precludes the chance of seeing how the Mongo justice system — especially immediately after the Revolution — works. The suggestion of the inquisitors acting so completely independently of the rest of the government is an one I’d like to see more of.
Aegia, the Inquisitor, rules Flash Gordon a legitimate subject, and Barin and Aura agree they can’t interfere with the course of justice just because, c’mon, it’s Flash Gordon. The jailmaster “loses” the directions to give Flash decent quarters while waiting for trial, instead sending him to The Bellows, the subterranean mine/open battle royale pits that prisons always are in this genre. The viridium patch radio pin Dr Zarkov slips Flash isn’t much good for contacting anyone that deep underground. It’s even worse when it’s lifted by Bones Malock, a tough, energetic woman who gives me Tank Girl vibes. (Based on what I remember from seeing the movie in like 1997. I don’t know if I’m right.) Malock has an idea how to get out of there, and it depends on bringing Flash to the Death Pit.
The first Death Pit battle goes pretty well, considering. Flash doesn’t die at the hands of Death Pit champion Bok, a dragonman. Bok doesn’t want to kill him either, but, y’know, Bok was prematurely anti-Ming and that’s what his life is now. At the next round, Malock calls in a debt and has someone use a galvanic cutlass to smash the meter-thick window between the audience and the fight. Malock, Flash, and — with Flash’s encouragement — Bok escape.
Dr Zarkov and Dale Arden consider how to prove Flash’s innocence. Since Flash was the only one on the scene the obvious explanation is he was mind controlled by the witch-queen Azura. Arden sneaks off to find evidence, along the way encountering Brian Blessed hollering at someone how they can’t just murder whoever they like. You have to dislike them, at least a little, first. Azura’s delighted to catch Arden snooping around. Also to sneer at the “peasant thinking” Arden’s bringing to the investigation, as though whoever held the the throne of Mongo was particularly relevant to where power was. And then she shoves Dale off a hundred-storey balcony. She’s rescued by Thun on his hover-motorcycle thingy.
Azura’s talk about “peasant thinking” makes Arden realize something. Granted the assassin was there to kill a prince of Mongo — who knew that Ming W was going to be there? Nobody, that’s who. The target was someone else. And Bok notices something. There’s a Kiran Skel, invisible to you folks who don’t have heat vision like him, right there. With a whole party of space-opera heroes around it’s easy to catch one invisible assassin. Queen Fria of Frigia takes Flash and company under her protection and Aura accepts this.
Dan Schkade’s Flash Gordon for the 16th of March, 2024. I am very interested, yes, in why Vultan might want Ronal dead. And also that Aegia, introduced as what felt like a strong voice of integrity, is willing to be even more political than Barin and Aura were.
And we see Aegia and Brian Blessed talking. Aegia knows that Blessed accidentally ordering the killing of Ming W, when Prince Ronal — cousin to Barin — was the real target. Why Blessed wanted Ronal dead is, as yet, unexplained.
From the 18th of March we journey to the ice kingdom of Frigia. Some curious major rumblings derail the magnetic rocket train and almost send Fria plummeting to death. But, you know, Flash Gordon. And they can at least see there’s some 300-foot-tall thing moving in the haze.
But that sort of thing just happens and might even be normal. Back to Frigia for the first time in a year Fria examines how her regent has been doing. Just the occasional spot of trouble, you know, witchcraft in Gwynedd and pirate miners and this walking mountain thing. So Fria begins a tour of her kingdom to see what all is going wrong and what she can do about it. And they find some pirate miners. So they have a project now, which is nice.
It was not. It feels close, though. It’s traditional after a Mary Worth story to have Mary Worth recap the lesson learned and then for everyone, and then for Dr Jeff, to praise her. This time around it felt like a lot of that. I’m not sure it was, but the coda to the story of Keith Hillend felt like a prolonging of this transitional period.
Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 19th of February, 2024. This is not the first time a Mary Worth character has resolved a problem by deciding they’ll pretend they didn’t know otherwise. There’s a practicality to it, and it is something people really do, but it stands out in the comics where we assume people settle on The Truth. I’m curious whether Moy debated having Hillend think over whether he would do anything differently before learning Sonia was definitely not his daughter, and whether the story would have been as effective if he had decided he didn’t need to test to be happy.
I don’t care for how we got there, but it’s not like I insist protagonists only make good choices, especially when it lands them in a fix like this. Also where we discover a Mary Worth character had premarital sex a whole two times! Wow! And we get intersting questions like did Kitty Faber lie about Hillend’s fatherhood? Was she mistaken? Can he trust these relationships that have a falsehood at their core?
He decides that he does trust Faber, and likes his new family, and however they got there does not matter. So this story finally resolves, the 25th of February, with a joyful group hug. Then we get a week of Mary Worth explaining the emotions of the hew-mons to Toby, another week of her explaining them to Dr Jeff, and a week of Dr Jeff talking about how gret it is he loves Mary Worth and she goes to restaurants with him. So, you see, it’s not a preposterously long period of everyone thanking Mary Worth. It’s just well-placed to feel like that.
Monday, the 25th of March, starts the current story. It stars Agony Aunt columnist and man who has opinions about each of the possible etymologies of “mayonnaise” Wilbur Weston. Instigating things: Dawn’s got a call from her mother, who wanted to reconnect. After talking for hours on the phone Dawn wants to go live with her in Connecticut for a year. This seems like rather much to me — I’d maybe try a weekend, first, and discover if you can share a bathroom without killing each other — but hey, any reason to get away from Wilbur Weston, right? Also so she doesn’t accidentally run into her ex Jared, who’s going off being happy and all. So she’s off.
Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 4th of April, 2024. I have no information, I’m sorry, about whether Wilbur’s ex-wife has ever been seen on-screen before, or if we know precisely why she hasn’t been part of Dawn’s early adulthood. If someone knows, I’ll just have to say something wrong and they’ll come in to correct me. Um … Dawn’s mother is named … let’s say Alexandria Madeline and she’s a professional toll-booth designer who was instrumental in taking the tolls off the Connecticut Turnpike back in the day. They broke up over whether there’s any good surfing on the New England coastline, complex story.
With the house feeling big and empty now, though, he reaches to Mary Worth for muffins and companionship. She can’t make karaoke night with him, though, building his feelings of loneliness. He accidentally runs into his ex Stella and her boyfriend Ed Harding and their estimated 18 to 24 pets. They’re happy and charming and even invite him to get together with them for no reason any person, sane or otherwise, can imagine. This unquestioning acceptance leaves him only more miserable. This Sunday, he bumps into a kid — the art makes it look like he shoves the kid over, although it’s more that the kid collides with him — accidentally saving him from behing hit by a car. That seems like it might be something developing. We’ll see.
(Based on the Comics Kingdom offer of a week’s preview … this doesn’t immediately lead to something, but there’s some quite funny bits coming up soon.)
Dubiously Sourced Mary Worth Sunday Panel Quotes!
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” — Aristotle, 21 January 2024.
“Hope is a waking dream.” — Aristotle, 28 January 2024. A rare double-feature! Unless these are different Aristotles.
“By doubting we are lead to question. By questioning we arrive at the truth.” — Peter Abelard, 4 February 2024. So somebody got the Mary Worth team a Quotes From Philosophers book for Christmas.
“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” — Aldous Huxley, 11 February 2024.
“Follow your heart and make it your decision.” — Mia Hamm, 18 February 2024.
“While loneliness has the potential to kill, connection has even more potential to heal.” — Vivek Murthy, 25 February 2024.
“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.” — Richard Bach, 3 March 2024.
“Things work out best for those who make the best of the way things work out.” — John Wooden, 10 March 2024.
“Life is made up of small pleasures.” — Norman Lear, 17 March 2024.
“Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.” — Alexander Smith, 24 March 2024.
“I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and my father.” — Greg Norman, 31 March 2024.
“Hard to be sure … sometimes I feel so insecure, and love so distant and obscure … remains the cure.” — Eric Carmen, 7 April 2024.
“You can have an impact anywhere you are.” — Tony Dungy, 14 April 2024.
Next Week!
The Ghost Who Orders Office Redecorations sees his most dramatic plan come to fruition! How will this change forever the Jungle Patrol’s relationship with their Unknown Commander? Or with their fan idol John X? Catch up with Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) next Tuesday, if all goes according to the script.
PS: the “Ish Kabibble” line is there for my Dad, great guy, working on sending me one of those animated emojis of a smiley face cracking up even now, so let’s give him a round of applause, make him feel at home. Thank you.
In-universe, she’s in the story because she got Mark Trail hired to report on a story she had. She wanted a journalist who wouldn’t be fazed if things turned into punching a lot. She did something or other with Instigator Magazine to get Bill Ellis to hire Mark Trail without telling him who Mark Trail would work with. I’m not sure why she needed the deceit. Mark Trail was talked into it once he met her.
I suspect the real reason is Jules Rivera liking Diana Daggers as a character. And may reason that it’s better to have this sort of secondary role be filled by someone she enjoys writing. It does suggest Daggers has an odd career that tracks Mark Trail’s.
Mark Trail’s adventure in running an outdoor camp enjoyed its conclusion, about as I wrote up the last plot recap. Mark Trail’s cheer at enduring people having emotions evaporates when editor Bill Ellis calls. Ellis has a story about invasive horses in the United States southwest. Mark Trail is stunned to consider that wait … that’s right, they are invasive, aren’t they? Yeow.
Mark Trail’s contact in Utah is … wait, is that the southwest? Well, never mind. His contact is Diana Daggers, who concealed her identity from Bill Ellis so Mark Trail wouldn’t get even weirder about the job. She lays out why this is a story worthy of Instigator Magazine. The Bureau of Land Management has been managing wild horse populations … wait, are horses land? Well, never mind. They’re manageable … wait, are horses manageable? My experience with horse people tells me no, but you can usually get to an emergency room well enough.
Well, never mind. The Bureau of Land Management has been sending loud helicopters, beating at 120 dB, to round up horses. The horses get sold at auction for a dollar a head, with many of the horses getting sold to slaughterhouses. And if you think that’s depressing, you’re just now learning about animal welfare issues. Daggers, meanwhile, thinks the Bureau of Land Management is clearing the land at the behest of a developer. Wait, would the federal government put its power at the beck and call of someone rich? The whole of United States history says “the federal government went looking for someone rich they could service, actually”. But you can’t have rich people without having poor people trying to do the right thing, and that’s Clayton with the Happy Hooves horse rescue. They shelter horses. They also give long-lasting anti-fertility drugs, which control horse populations without requiring deaths.
The land developer turns out to be Tad Crass, former stunt TV comedian and the dingbat who had an AI “write” a camp guide that almost got a guy killed. Mark Trail asks why Crass is using the federal government to clear horses on and around his land. Crass answers by ordering his security guards to beat Mark Trail up. Mark Trail punches some, and escapes more, saving his recorder with its precious … lack of anything said by Tad Crass … on it. And that’s where Mark Trail’s gotten.
Cherry Trail’s story begins with the Lost Forest talent show. Sunny Soleil Society chair Violet Cheshire does well with her harp solo, but gets upstaged by Doc Davis and Banjo Cat. Banjo Cat is Doc’s new adoptee, and the cat loves hanging out and singing when Doc plays banjo. Cheshire’s totally normal feelings about Banjo Cat get validation when knocks over her harp. (She and Cherry were moving it into the Society building). Cherry wants to know: why can’t he keep his cat indoors?
Doc explains that Banjo Cat’s a stray that was happy to get food and shelter when wanted, but wants to be an outdoor cat. But learning how many birds outdoor cats kill a year unsettles Doc. And he’s horrified when a car narrowly misses hitting Banjo Cat. Banjo Cat, luckily, wants inside the Sunny Soleil Society building. Turns out Banjo Cat just wants to play with the harp and show up that Libby who thinks she’s so great. So a happy resolution for now.
Sunday Animals Watch!
Actually there are animals around almost every day of the week, but here’s ones that got featured in a Sunday informational strip:
Largemouth Bass, 14 January 2024.
Spotted Lanternflies, 21 January 2024.
Domestic Cats, 28 January 2024.
Mustangs, 4 February 2024.
Grater Sage-Grouses, 11 February 2024.
Grasshopper Mice, 18 February 2024.
Desert Tortoises, 25 February 2024.
Cicadas and lots of them, 3 March 2024.
Crows and Ravens, 10 March 2024.
Shamrocks, 17 March 2024.
Bighorn Sheep, 24 March 2024.
Chernobyl Wolves, 31 March 2024.
“Recyclable” Plastic, 7 April 2024.
Next Week!
You know who’s great? Like, really great? Really, really great? Mary Worth. Yeah, that Mary Worth is a really, really, really great person. You know who’s as great as Mary Worth? I don’t know, I don’t know if there can even be someone great in the ways Mary Worth is great, and even if they’re great in ways Mary Worth is not great — and are the ways Mary Worth is not great really that great after all? — are they greater than Mary Worth is great? So we’ll go through three months’ worth of Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth and how great Mary Worth is. Great!
Yeah, so, the town where Gasoline Alley takes place is named Gasoline Alley. In the current story Walt Wallet tells a few bits of how that came about. It’s mundane enough: the spot where Walt and his friends got together to try getting their cars to work was naturally named the “Gasoline Alley” and as town congregated around them the name stuck to the place. I suspect without knowing that Frank King didn’t have a particular town in mind for where his jokes were set, and by the time it mattered everyone called the place after the comic strip. I know that by the late-40s radio series the town was called Gasoline Alley and that seems to be as much name as it needs.
After reading this you should be up to speed on Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for early April, 2024. Want to read all my plot recaps and, where available, news about the comic strip? Including, if you’re reading this after about July 2024, a more current plot recap? You’ll find everything I have to say about Gasoline Alley at this link. At other links, you might miss something.
Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 5th of February, 2024. While I couldn’t imagine anyone seriously thought the love note was anything too different from what it was, I was surprised Scancarelli didn’t tease the story out by having Slim investigate and get some false leads, or
After a day spent at Corky’s Diner having coffee and schtick with Baleen Beluga, Slim falls asleep in the parking lot. The cops come waking him up, with the news that his wife filed a missing-persons report. Also that all is forgiven. The note was from Aubee, their granddaughter, who called to make sure he saw the note she slipped into his pocket for a surprise. It’s a thank-you note for the money he gave the kids’ cheerleading squad for outfits. So, a happy reconciliation in time for Valentine’s Day.
And then, the 12th of February, started the current story, with Clovia and Slim hearing news so shocking they can’t tell the reader about it for over a week, telling Skeezix, and having Skeezix go to Walt Wallet. That news: the city council is considering renaming Gasoline Alley. To have something that sounds more modern and not-so-dingy they fed the problem to an artificial intelligence, and after burning up 346 acres of Brazilian rainforest it gave a sure hit of a new name: For Peanuts Or For Hobbes.
Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 28th of March, 2024. The Wallets are quite worried about the idea of Imeswine changing the town name “arbitrarily” but, I mean, towns change names all the time. Mind, I’m from New Jersey, where whatever you called them every municipality was officially named either “Washington”, “Hamilton”, or “Dover” until the last thirty years when they filed paperwork to spread the names out to, oh, “City of Toms River”, “Borough of Toms River”, and “Town of Toms River”.
The Wallets go to City Hall, where mayor Melba is not. She was called out of her office “real sudden like”, according to comedy relief Rufus. Acting mayor Elburt Imeswine is happy to see the Wallets right up until they start talking. He shuffles them off with the promise there’s a council meeting next week when they can talk about it. And that takes us up to Easter and the close of my reporting window. How will Mayor Melba come back home and quash the renaming plan? How will it turn out Vice-Mayor Imeswine tricked Melba into leaving town? We’ll find out in the weeks to come, I’m sure.
Next Week!
Also in the weeks to come! Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail hits more security guards and there’s something about a banjo cat! That’s if all goes to plan, and the plan is what I’ve claimed it is. We’ll see just what happens by next Tuesday, though.
“Flamberge”, held captive by a tribe of cave dwellers in the current Prince Valiant story, is Prince Valiant’s named sword, the one that until this story I thought was just called the Singing Sword. But it’s a real class of cool-looking swords, based on named swords that appeared in various romances and epics and such.
Baedwulf believes they’ve got a case of Tuatha here, creatures driven underworld by the Gaels at the dawn of time, and still seeking revenge. The Tuatha, though, say they were living peacefully until the humans violated their world. A mad Saxon attacked them, killing many Tuatha, and stealing their sacred Black Stone. So Valiant can see their side of things. Also Witgar rounded up the population of the fishing village and drowned them all. They claim the thief and war criminal was Witgar, a name Valiant recognizes but I don’t seem to have in my notes. Fortunately Witgar turns up soon enough; he’s the chief at Dyfflin, where they’d been heading before this abandoned village and all.
Mark Schulz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant for the 18th of February, 2024. Between stealing the sacred Black Stone, and drowning a whole village, and I infer being responsible for sending just enough soldiers to Gwynedd to not lose a war but not enough to win it, I’m getting the vibe this Witgar is not a good person.
Witgar is all weird and paranoid about seeing Baedwulf again. The peace in Gwynedd that they’ve negotiated thanks to Valiant and Arn sounds to Witgar like enemies gathering against him. Also, maybe they heard about the drowned village or something. Our Heroes, plus Badwulf’s fiancee Bronwyn, are treated to quite nice apartments as long as they don’t leave or anything so you know what’s up. But they notice the cat who’d stowed away on their boat is able to sneak through the walls. Turns out there’s passageways hidden behind the tapestries.
Valiant and Baedwulf follow the cat, and a tunnel, and find Witgar doing some weird mumbling incantation stuff with the Black Stone. Witgar notices them, and flees with the stone, sending a party of 1d4+2 guards after Our Heroes. Then Witgar goes to the women’s apartment, declaring that Bronwyn is going to marry him instead, on the grounds that Baedwulf and Valiant et al are traitors and going to be executed. Right after the ceremony. And that’s where we are now.
This year is the centennial of the debut of Little Orphan Annie. While Annie is no longer in production, Mike Curtis has been glad to make his tenure on Dick Tracy a guest home for them. In celebration, then, we’re getting a backstory that seems to tie in to some Annie plot I don’t know anything about, the case of one Boris Sirob, and how it brought Annie to an orphanage.
Also: The past couple months saw the transition from Shelley Pleger as main artist to Charles Ettinger. I don’t think the style has changed that dramatically, but if you were wondering why it’s changed at all, that’s why. Nothing like Rod Whigham taking over the art on Judge Parker while Mike Manley recovers his health.
So our story began with comic book celebrity guest stars Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster stopping in to visit Dick Tracy because … they’re related to the Plenty clan and can work with relative Plentia Kopz on something that hasn’t come to light yet.
So our story actually begins with Rikki Mortis, onetime assistant to Abner Kadaver, getting out of jail on the support and secret messages of Fata Morgana. Morgana’s a travelling stage magician and occasional hit person and, apparently, Kadaver’s understudy. And needs an assistant to carry out some work. First is the murder of Patrick Throughton, who’d been scheduled to testify against drug lord Jon Pertwee. No, I don’t get what the Doctor Who Actor Names thing is teasing either or why they’re picking on Jon Pertwee. Still, it’s a clean hit, calling Throughton up on stage and sawing him in half with a chainsaw, and then later that night he dies of poison.
Mike Curtis and Shelley Pleger’s Dick Tracy for the 14th of January, 2024. I’m not sure why Morgana had the fast-acting poison here; the slow-acting kind used for Throughton’s murder seems to provide a much better chance for getting away with it. I guess that Morgana realizes the kind of strip she’s in and knows it’s not death without a witnessed corpse.
Morgana gets another job. It’s a hit on Tess Tracy. She hasn’t been in enough stories lately, so the Bosco crime family steps in to want her gone. Mortis can’t have any part of this, not after Dick Tracy let her say goodbye to the dying Abner. Morgana can work with this. She goes to the Tess Tracy Detective Agency, spinning a story of being afraid of a stalker. Bad luck for the hit: Tess is caught in traffic, and her partner Johnny Adonis accidentally gets jabbed with Morgana’s poison pen.
Morgana figures to disappear a while, doing so mid-show, alongside an elephant. And she disguises herself as Bob Baxter, okay enough magician who sometimes fills in when Morgana does one of her vanishing acts. That cover would be decent if George Bosco — alarmed by Dick Tracy asking to see his organization’s books — didn’t go to Baxter on the off chance that he can make people disappear too.
Unlucky for Bosco, Dick Tracy’s there. I think the implication is he followed Bosco, but my initial read was that Tracy was there to ask Baxter some more questions about Morgana’s disappearance. Anyway, in the scrum of arresting Bosco, Baxter escapes into the bootlegger’s tunnels underneath. She sheds her disguise, goes back to recover Baxter’s performing rabbit Harvey, and meets up with Rikki Mortis to get the heck out of the story. And that, the 10th of February, ends our introduction to Fata Morgana and the fall of the Bosco crime syndicate.
The 10th of February also ends our time with Shelley Pleger as main artist for the strip. After that is a two-week Minit Mystery written by Eric Costello and drawn by Dee Fish, a fresh poisoning puzzle that also has a solution in stage magic. Or at least stage magic-style trickery.
The current story, and Charles Ettinger’s tenure as main artist, began the 26th of February. This with a phone call from Oliver Warbucks, at the Hotel Siam. We get a mention of J P McKee and Captain Easy. The name “J P McKee” means nothing to me. Captain Easy I recognize as the concept-drift champion comic strip Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy, which I never read either. Anyway the important business is: Warbucks has made contact with Bob Smith, a figure we saw in a teaser back in May 2023. Smith has a picture of Annie’s parents.
From here we get into a flashback, explaining how Annie came to be orphaned. Way back in the day gangster-coded palindrome Boris Sirob planned to kidnap Not-Yet-Daddy Warbucks. Tracy was guarding him. Also guarding him: two FBI agents, Harold and Winifred Gray. You may recognize the name “Harold Gray” as the person who, in our history, created the comic strip. Go ahead and guess what Actual Harold Gray’s wife was named.
Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger’s Dick Tracy for the 10th of March, 2024. This story might lead you to wonder about the timeline, since, like, who says “flatfoot” since Johnny Dollar went off the air? Heck, who says “banker’s hours”? So that suggests “a long time ago”. But the Grays are sure their child will be born a girl, when the biology of pregnancy was completely unknown to the medical establishment until 1994. And Annie is … not an adult … today, in 2024. So in short: there is no way to make this all consistent, just don’t worry about it.
In the story, in flashback, the Grays are undercover agents planted in Sirob’s organization. Harold and the extremely pregnant Winifred get the task with doing the actual kidnapping. They’re happy to subvert the kidnapping and let Tracy arrest the getaway driver, but now they can’t go back to Sirob without giving themselves away. And they’re thinking very hard about their imminent daughter, and the orphanage they’ve seen many times over the course of this assignment.
How does that all come together? I have some guesses, but obviously, no telling yet. I imagine the next month or two will answer it all and then I can get back to you in June to retell it, in fewer words.
More likely than not, whatever strip you’re reading looks funny because of Mike Manley’s health problems. This forced him to take leave of The Phantom weekday edition as well as Judge Parker. The weekday Phantom has been drawn by Jeff Weigel and then Bret Blevins. Judge Parker, D D Degg observed at The Daily Cartoonist, is being filled in now (without credit) by Rod Whigham of Gil Thorp renown.
So some happy news: Manley posted to his Facebook that he’s scheduled to return to The Phantom with the strip for Monday, the 10th of June. I don’t know whether that coincides with the start of a new story. It may represent just being a comfortable margin. I have no word on when he’ll return to Judge Parker. I am also not clear whether Rod Whigham’s tenure at Judge Parker is just for the week — which, must admit, the Comics Kingdom redesign lets us see early — or is until Manley’s return.
Last time, we were looking at the denouement of Tony DePaul’s more-than-two-year story about the death of The Phantom. Spoiler: The Phantom does not die. But he does spend time wondering what he can learn from diverting what seems like his destiny. Despite everything, Savarna Devi does learn that her former enslaver, Constable Jampa, is in the Mountain City, and goes after him. She seems to shoot him dead, although there is room for deniability in case DePaul wants to tell of Devi keeping her promise not to seek vengeance. (I believe her sincerity in her promise, but this may be irresistible temptation.)
With the 13th of January the sixth and final chapter of this story ended, and we began “The Chain”. It begins with something I imagine was a bit of DePaul teasing readers upset at so long an imaginary story: The Phantom talking about what a weird dream he had last night.
The important points of the 1950s “The Chain” are that our The Phantom is having a right lousy time of it, unable to stop a war between the Llongo and the Wambesi and feeling sorry for himself over it. In the 2020s “The Chain” our The Phantom — and his family — chuckle over the weirdness of him not even liking being The Phantom. (As ever, I’m more forgiving of the 1950s author in this. While one of The Phantom’s defining traits is that he enjoys being The Phantom and feels his work is worthwhile and appreciated, everyone’s entitled to sometimes doubting themselves.) In the 1950s/the dream, a previously unnoticed Bangallan named Woru tells the story that explains the previously unnoticed chain hung on The Phantom’s throne in Skull Cave.
It seems that a tinpot dictator of a prince spots the woman who’d become the 20th Phantom’s wife and has his lackeys kidnap her. The 20th Phantom rides to her rescue, of course, but gets caught. And chained to the water well, forced to walk in circles to pump water to the animals, right where his future bride can see but not help. 20th notices, though, that every rotation the chain gets caught a little bit on this one stone, and after months of work, the chain finally snaps. In one bound he’s free, his future wife’s free, the prince who cares about, and he brings the chain back as a reminder of the need for patience.
(In the 1953 story Woru also explains this is a lesson about humility, 20th Phantom having got himself captured by going in guns blazing and hugely vulnerable. This was relevant to the 21st Phantom, 1953 edition, as his troubles with the Llongo and the Wambesi amounted to being annoyed they wouldn’t stop the tribal war already! Don’t they know they’re embarrassing the white guy in the jungle? Although when he goes back, he mostly just demands the tribes talk to each other and doesn’t tell them how to be peaceful. Not The Phantom’s phinest hour but at least he figured how to use his reputation for good?)
Among the things Kit Junior and all criticize: if this is an important lesson the Phantom needed to learn, why not mention it when he’s growing up? Or in the Phantom Chronicles? Why entrust the story to a lone tribesman who might well die before passing the message on? And isn’t this more a lesson about perseverance, rather than patience? Are we sure this moral was narratively justified?
Kit Junior then thanks his father for teaching him and Heloise the things they need to know to be viable Phantoms. He mentions a story from 2006 — “The Jungle Trek” — in which he and Heloise are guided through a series of physical and, more, intellectual challenges. The only one he gets to here is a cliff-climbing exercise, where they lose their focus and come terribly near falling. Diana isn’t sure she wants to hear more, which, fair enough. Writing up this recap I see the thematic connection here, although I don’t have guesses about where that’s going.
Kit Junior, convinced that Heloise is just not coming back to the Deep Woods, plans to leave for Mawitaan despite knowing his sister’s trying to set him up with Kadia. But he comes back to talk with his father more. And that’s where we are today.
The current story in Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop sees Alley Oop named King of Moo. Longtime readers of the comic strip may wonder, doesn’t Moo already have a king and wasn’t it Guz? Even longer-time readers may remember, wasn’t Alley Oop fleeing King Guz after trying unsuccessfully to become King when Doc Wonmug first brought him into the future year of 1939?
Oh, uh … wait. Yeah. So, Tree Alley Oop remembers from a previous adventure that plants can communicate with each other. So why can’t Tree Oop, Tree Ooola, and Tree Wonmug command the local vines to envelop Odom. You wouldn’t think it that easy for vines to get a grip on a giant bug. But Odom’s a bit touch-starved and likes the hugging. At least until the hugging threatens to cut off his breathing and then he relents, turning Our Heroes back to human.
Odom reveals how he manages to do reality-changes greater than theory says he should: he doesn’t know. He was just an ordinary dragonfly, going about his business, thinking about George Orr, and then suddenly he woke up giant, superpowered, and ready to take over the world. Wonmug can’t buy this, not until he accidentally ejects Arval, a talking Larva, from Odom’s mouth. Arval’s a parasitic wasp larva, the kind that burrows into a being’s brain and controls them. Arval wasn’t out to do anything, he just crawled into this dragonfly and what the heck but together they were a nigh-omnipotent being and at that point why wouldn’t you try taking over the universe? Wonmug gives Arval a home in a little jar for safekeeping. And as Odom’s neither a menace nor really at fault for anything, Our Heroes let him go. And it’s back home to start a new adventure. (With a stop to reveal Wonmug keeps hitting the timeline-reset button after adventures, which feels like a very 90s Web Comic beat, given how it smashes any story’s suspense into just ‘can they get away’?)
That adventure began the 9th of January, our time, with Alley Oop and Ooola returning home to Moo. And Alley Oop gets to thinking about how he’s had all kinds of great adventures. He starts telling them to his Moo friends who love the stories even if they don’t know what he’s talking about. One of his friends suggests Alley Oop write a book. It’s a lot of work. There’s the book-writing. Also the paper-making and the ink-making and the binder-making and the book-publisher-making, and bookstore-making, and you see where this is a lot of work that could fail at any step.
None of them fail. He’s an overnight sensation with the most popular and only book in Moo. Before long he’s doing one-man shows to sold-out audiences. That’s barely started when he’s having other people pretending to be him for one-man shows to sold-out audiences. With huge sacks of money coming in, what else is there to do but let it go to his head?
So he buys a McMansion Cave. And you know what follows enormous wealth: undeserved power. Krash, President of Moo, has had enough of the corruption surrounding her office and wants to retire, taking Moo’s treasury with her. So she reinstates the monarchy, naming Alley Oop the King, and leaves. So that’s where we are.
The current lead villain in the Popeye side of Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye is Bunzo, whom you remember from … 1931. It was mentioned in the strip but you might have missed. Way back during Herbert Hoover’s presidency, when Popeye and gang first journeyed to King Blozo’s kingdom, Bunzo was General in charge of the army or whatnot. And wanted the kingdom for himself, certainly more than Blozo wanted it, so there we go. Then it turned out running kingdoms is hard, especially when you have Blozo and the people who put up with being ruled by Blozo on your side. Since then, the Popeye wiki tells me, he’s made other appearances like in that comic book series from twelve years ago and in the current story.
Yes, it’s another archive pull for Randy Milholland. He includes a footnote giving the dates, very helpful if you have the Complete Segar Popeye reprints, less helpful if you have to dig around the Comics Kingdom archives. (The story should be coming up in the next year, though, if Comics Kingdom doesn’t blow up everything in its redesign later this week.) Blozo, realizing power without responsibility is the best, has moved into CEO work, in the business of selling himself. And it’ll help him get going if he has, say, the ancient treasure of Plaidfoot the Pirate. And what can stop him, as long as Popeye is trapped inside Wotasnozzle’s unbreakable bubble?
Well, there’s Wotasnozzle breaking the bubble. And giving the bad news that Bunzo is searching for treasure using both Wotasnozzle’s robots and enslaved townspeople. Who can punch their way through all this trouble, besides Popeye and Rip Haywire? Fortunately we have a Popeye on hand.
Meanwhile in Olive’s story … all those many ghosts she keeps seeing let her know that the “old boatman” meant to escort them to the other side has disappeared. The gang find a cloaked boatman figure wandering around the harbor, though. Olive runs up to ask Charon what’s going on and … gets yelled at for grabbing Hel, a young woman who turns out to be Charon’s granddaughter. He’s on vacation, and she’s filling in to build character and whatnot. But she hasn’t seen a single ghost since taking up the oar.
Olive can not believe this. Petunia offers that maybe Hel will develop her own ghost sight. Hel decides that Olive Oyl will mentor her in the ghost-seeing and managing business, and we’ll just see what Olive makes of that, then.
Ann Parker, who entered the strip the last day of 2023 and has been the focus since, is in fact part of Nicholas P Dallis’s original cast of the strip! Mark Carlson’s excellent listing of major characters describes her as “[ often ] engaged in ill-advised romances. She graduated with a nursing degree but is rarely shown utilizing it”. Carlson offers examples, including romances to a man with “criminal connections”, being stalked by a psychopath who later takes her hostage, being engaged to a jewel thief, and finally deciding between a penniless two-timing playboy and a struggling young attorney. She last appeared in the strip in 1968, around the time of Judge Alan Parker’s wedding to Katherine, and the strip’s transition to being about Sam Driver and Abbey ParkerSpencer.
After 55 years she’s back and ready to compete for the Ham Gravy Trophy for Formerly Important Characters Forgotten By Their Comic Strip. If that doesn’t sound anything like what you’re reading in Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker that’s probably because you’re reading these words after around May 2024. If you are in that distant future, there’s probably a more up-to-date plot recap here. Otherwise, or if you’re looking for how we got to Ann Parker running for mayor of Cavelton, read on here.
And to answer your other question: the last several months Bret Blevins has been doing the art, in place of the ill Mike Manley. I don’t know why Blevins isn’t putting his name in the credit box. My guess is a contractual obligation, possibly something relating to health care, as the deranged United States model of employer-based health care causes many goofy results. But Blevins’s filling in is why the art looks different. Also the suddenness with which Blevins had to step up may explain some of the art panel reuse, like from the 5th, the 6th, and the 7th of January this year.
Judge Parker.
26 November 2023 – 17 February 2024.
After resolving more assassin stuff the Judge Parker cast was looking forward to a quiet holiday season. That got disrupted with April and Randy Parker’s house being swarmed by CIA agents again. It turns out April’s mother Helena Bowen Or Bowers is dead. Or believed dead. At least, her body was found dead. But the truck carrying her body to autopsy was stopped, the driver and security detail killed, and the body stolen. April, offended by the suggestion she might know something about the woman she lived with secretly for years, declares she’s had enough of the CIA suspecting her of knowing something and quits the agency.
After some Christmas family moments of happiness, New Year’s Eve arrives and some fresh family moments of awkwardness. Ann Parker is back, Randy understating things by explaining to April that they haven’t seen her in “over twenty years”. While April is on full double red alert, Alan Parker is happy to hear his prodigal daughter’s tale. She’s married — not to David, the guy she was with when last seen, before Lyndon Johnson quit the presidential race — but someone else. And she needs money, a lot of it.
She doesn’t get it from Alan Parker, not with a story like that. Also, while she was in the bathroom, he checked her purse and found an ID for “Doris Lachlan”. April surmises that Ann is doing identity frauds, and that there must be serious trouble if she’s going to her father now. She suspects blackmail. Also that she’s now killed the “Doris Lachlan” persona.
Which is what brings Don Barnes to the law detective offices of Sam Driver and company. He was married-ish to Doris Lachlan, who ran off with a lot of money they were supposed to split. Detective (suspended) Yelich is happy to go searching, figuring there’s a chance to find her before she flees or someone finds her.
Finding her at the train station is someone named Harrison, who’s angry about “Cheryl” and the money she owes him. She swears several times she’s saving to pay him back. His better idea is to go find this one house she visited while in this town “Cheryl” has no reason to visit, and get the money out of “old friend” Alan Parker. Yelich is close enough to find out about this abduction and warns Randy Parker to get his father out of there. Alan Parker refuses to leave, and Rene Belluso takes notes, wrong.
This week (the one that started the 11th of February, 2024) Dick Tracy looks different because it’s a Minit Mystery, drawn by guest artist Dee Fish. (And written by Eric Costello, who’s created Minit Mysteries for the strip before.) I don’t have a credit for Dee Fish as guest artist before this, but I don’t claim to be complete in my records or good at research.
After the 25th of February, though? The answer may be revealed by the alert people of The Daily Cartoonist. D D Degg observed that the Dick Tracy page at Tribune Content Agency Intellectual Properties Franchise Opportunities LLC GmbH Inc’s web site credits Charles Ettinger as partnering with Mike Curtis to make the comic. Ettinger was guest artist for a November 2017 story rerun in January 2022, and for some time at the start of 2018 guest-inked the comic strip.
There’s no word yet when the handover will happen, trusting that it will. Nor why Shelly Pleger, the current artist (and before that, inker), might have left. If I hear anything, it’ll probably be from The Daily Cartoonist, so you’d find out sooner from them. But you never know. If I carry this blog on long enough I’m bound to have a scoop someday!
They are. We saw Gil Thorp and Mimi signing the divorce papers the 29th of January. Before that we saw the two looking over photo albums agreeing they had good times, and Mimi asking if they’d still be friends. Coach Cami Ochoa mentioned how she thought Keri Thorp would be someone who loved having two moms. And coach Luke Martinez swore up and down that Gil Thorp would be the hottest bachelor in Milford. So this is as established as can be.
Formatting this as a celebrity gossip column worked last time too, so I’m going to keep that up. We got a title for Chapter Four: The Misdirect, the 27th of November, which means once again a story strip started a fresh installment right about when I covered them here. This is coincidence but an eerie one. Except that loose definitions make it all but inevitable.
So. Also broken up? Keri Thorp and Pedro Martinez, who’s been ghosting her — and staying in his room — since Keri’s abortion and the football accident that broke his leg. Keri thinks Pedro is trying to embarrass his father; Tobias Gordon wonders if Pedro’s embarrassed about blowing the game.
One person does cut through Pedro’s seclusion. Valley Tech Coach Paul Kim shows up at the Martinez’s one day, saying he needs Pedro’s help. Before long he’s got Pedro doing push-ups and racing peacocks, all the signs of being recalled to life.
Speaking of Tobias: the story of him and Rodney Barnes going to juvenile detention for selling vape sticks reached a natural conclusion. And a punch line that would have fit in the Neal Rubin era, too, which underscores how Barajas has loaded new motifs into Gil Thorp without abandoning the old. After a couple strips establishing them getting back to normal with their friends, Rodney mentions how his cousin is making a killing flipping shoes. “You’re on your own, homie,” says Toby, and they freeze mid-laughter while the credits roll.
Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 18th of December, 2023. Compliance officers, by the way, are the people who find out whether there are laws to cover a thing, and then tell people in the organization what they are. So I’m assuming there’s a thin-skinned class of people whining about compliance officers existing and now you can dismiss their very silly opinions right away.
With that story of teens in trouble resolved there’s room for a new one. This would be Inma Rimsha, who’s on the girls wrestling team that’s brand-new this year. We’re introduced to this with an opposing team’s coach demanding she not wear her hijab. We don’t see how that particular conflict worked out, but Gil Thorp spoke with the district compliance officer and confirmed that yes, religious freedom means women can wear hijabs if they want.
Gil Thorp urges Rimsha to invite her parents to a match. She’s not sure that’s wise, but it turns out they’re proud of her and she has what seems like a convincing win, which is great. But the other controversy comes thanks to Marty Moon, who asks Rimsha’s opinion about the protests outside. Rimsha says she wishes she were there with the protesters, supporting an immediate cease-fire. Taking a mild stand against genocide proves controversial, of course, but Thorp stands up for his student.
Gil Thorp also gets into a weird exchange with a Coach Hernandez, which is a name once used by mistake for Martinez and that’s caused me no end of confusion in the first drafts of these essays. It also has Thorp demanding Hernandez keep his hands off “your student’s parents”, which isn’t something we’ve seen out of Martinez. I have no explanation for this phenomenon.
Also, Coach Ochoa stumbled across a gimmick that seems to rally the boys hockey team. Chanting nursery rhymes sure changes the mood, going from one of facing imminent defeat to one of the opponents not knowing what’s going on over there. Again, something that wouldn’t be out of line in Neal Rubin’s day.
There, now. Does the past twelve weeks of storytelling make more sense to you?
Milford Sports Watch!
THe sports watch is getting all the more exciting and complicated as Barajas gets more elliptical about naming his opponents! So there are probably errors on this list. I will accept corrections and only sulk privately about getting stuff wrong, as always.
Valley Tech (20 – 25 November) (with a day off for Thanksgiving.)
Unnamed High School (6 December) (And yeah, another typo here, with ‘UUW’ allegedly standing for ‘United World Wrestling’)
From the comic strip people most complain about jumbled and unmotivated plots to … Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker! Am I going to have to separate these two strips so I don’t overload my rationalization engine? Anyway it’s your chance to meet a Judge Parker relative I don’t know if Marciuliano just made up or who actually used to be in the comic back in the Benjamin Harrison administration or what.
I can’t imagine that Rene Belluso is gone from Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.. While I sympathize with those who find the Wile E Coyote-like explosion of all his scams exhausting, I suspect that his is too good a bit of business to drop. At least not unless you have a more serious story to tell. And Beatty’s Glenwood is a gentle place. He may recede for a while, and I wouldn’t mind that as he’s had a lot of story lately. But I expect he’ll be back.
So this should catch you up to early February 2024 in Rex Morgan, M.D.. If you’re reading this after about May 2024, or news about the comic strip breaks, I’ll try to have something useful for you at this link. If I don’t, well, maybe I fell for one of Rene’s plots or I’m running late and need an extra day. We’ll see.
Meanwhile in a chance encounter Rex Morgan, M.D., finds himself doing some doctor work. His patient Lyle Ollman knows more specific Mirakle Method stuff than a guy who never heard of the thing should. It transpires that Ollman created the Mirakle Method, back in the 70s, as the Ollman Technique. But it didn’t catch on so how does anyone know about it now? Morgan advises Ollman to get a lawyer fast. Here, you can have one of his, out of petit-jury.
A couple weeks later, Cameron gets word from his lawyers about all this. He and Mud Murphy try to find Belluso, who’s fled their hotel. Ollman gets together with Cameron and Murphy and somebody’s lawyer and everyone agrees, you know, why mess up the money machine? Just give Ollman credit and royalties and everything’s cool. It is, perhaps, another case of Terry Beatty setting up an interesting conflict and then punting. But how would you feel if someone was willing to give you a dump truck full of money and in exchange you just have to let them?
New year, new start. Cameron and Murphy get Rex Morgan into one of their Glenwood Mirakle Method seminars, in gratitude to him for letting them take over his comic strip. Rene Belluso is there too, in disguise, and vows revenge on Morgan for however it is the good doctor has ruined his life again. As the seminar breaks up the scheming Belluso steps out into traffic and gets hit very hard by a car. A bright red one, too, the most dangerous kind. Fortunately, there happens to be a doctor in the strip.
Belluso makes it through, but he’s in a full-body cast. And doesn’t know whether to be more horrified that he’s stuck in that cast for six to eight weeks minimum or that he has Rex Morgan to thank for doctoring. And if that’s not enough Mud Murphy’s come to visit! The onetime hellion now worries sincerely for the person who, even if he was pulling a scam, helped him and maybe even other people. And hey, Murphy’s brought a special guest, Lyle Ollman, let’s give a big hand for —
Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 28th of January, 2024. For the sake of avoiding confusion I figure to keep calling him Rene Belluso, among other things because barring extraordinary reason you should call someone by the name they pick themselves. Also, I’m not sure whether he’s Jimmy Ollman or some other last name. I feel like if Ollman were Rene’s uncle on his father’s side, he would have said “after my brother died”. But that’s not an unshakable hook to hang the question of Rene’s birth name on.
Rene’s uncle? Because Ollman recognizes the man in the cast as Jimmy, his long-lost nephew. Rene protests, over and over, and finally just asks Uncle Lyle to leave him be. No such luck, and Ollman insists on giving Belluso unquestioning acceptance and welcoming. You understand his terror.
And that’s the standings as of early February. What’s next?
The Safe in the closed room is the means by which the Unknown Commander ordinarily receives reports from, and transmits orders to, his Jungle Patrol. A light outside the door lets the Jungle Patrol know there’s something to pick up. No one in Jungle Patrol has figured how the Unknown Commander gets into a locked safe inside a locked room inside Jungle Patrol headquarters, because the convention was established by like the 1940s when superhero stuff didn’t have to be all that rigorous.
Tony DePaul, the second (named) Lee Falk in the comic strip Phantom legacy, appears to be making some changes in this. Maybe. I don’t know; all I know about forthcoming strips is what DailyCartoonist or a comic strip writer themself chooses to drop. But the text of the story, and the Unknown Commander dropping hints about wanting to be a stronger presence with the Jungle Patrol, suggest that. Maybe some shaking-up of the secret orders routine is needed.
There’s charm in the old secret — a secret tunnel under the safe that leads to a nearby dry well. But, like, there’s a 1950s story where some crooks figured out the scheme and used it to give Jungle Patrol misdirecting orders. They needed to professionalize things a little after that. It is a risk to the soufflé that is a successful superhero universe to take away the more whimsical elements, though; good luck to Tony DePaul for taking it.
(I also don’t know how this change, if it is happening, will be reflected in the other, non-comic-strip sides of The Phantom. But the different publishers of Phantom stories seem comfortable with imperfect consistency and fans seem all right with that too, so they don’t need me worrying about them.)
As John X, The Phantom gets permission to check the Jungle Patrol’s secret maildrop in Mawitaan. While theoretically out of town, he sneaks back in as the Unknown Commander to pick up his mail and leave orders — and not turn the signal light on. And as a guy with more money than you’d think the jungle vigilante trade would bring in, he calls some construction workers in from the city. They have work orders to renovate Jungle Patrol Headquarters. And they know they have the Unknown Commander’s word, right there in the safe, where Colonel Worubu would swear there wasn’t anything.
As Colonel Worubu can barely believe it, the construction workers tear down walls, open up windows, and soon have The Safe surrounded by beams of light. Meanwhile, back in Skull Cave, the Phantom, in his guise of The Phantom, is rehearsing a script and checking that there’s enough shadows in this dignified-library set. Diana worries about the long dialogue he has to commit to memory, and the challenge of pausing appropriately for an unseen dialogue partner. He’s confident, though.
Tony DePaul and Mike Manley and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom for the 21st of January, 2024. Colonel Worubu’s hesitation feels a little like a riff on how a hardcore fanbase can loathe innovation in their focus, particularly on sentimental or fan-folklore-rich items. But it also makes me feel bad for Colonel Worubu since, jeez, the Unknown Commander doesn’t mind showing himself to this contractor but won’t even let the patrol’s day-to-day officer in chief look directly at him? Also I wonder whether the construction supervisor was hired because he was a contractor who could convincingly deliver points The Phantom wanted Jungle Patrol to hear, or if he’s an actor hired to play the construction chief.
From here, we enter my speculations. It looks like we’re being set up to have John X and the Unknown Commander perform a dialogue where the Jungle Patrol can see they’re not the same person. (This would have been so much easier if it were still possible for the Colonel to hold the speaker end of a phone up to the receiving end of another and vice-versa.) And it looks like we’re being set up to have the Unknown Commander delivering video orders from a duplicate of his Jungle Patrol headquarters, a scheme that can’t fail as long as nobody accidentally breaks the bust of William Shakespeare on his desk. But this is all my speculation and I don’t want to brag but my predictions for story strips are batting, like, 0.075 lifetime.
The current, but concluding, story in Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth includes some hilarious behavior presented as just the way vegetarians — particularly, vegans — talk. It’s a bit over the top, people clinking their fake-meat burgers together and toasting about how they’re saving the planet. I understand if you roll your eyes at this and don’t stop. However. One of the people, Sonia, involved as a 20-ish year old, an age where you might get into vegetarianism/veganism and, for that matter, wanting to have a world that isn’t set on fire so a company with a fire-monitoring subscription service can increase its revenue stream. It’s an age where you get a lot of new convert energy and it’s a bit much but usually passes. More, this new convert energy is being exploited by Brad, who’s encouraging it as a way to get in good with Sonia’s mother. So besides normal soap-opera-strip preposterousness we have someone doing that thing where some people just have to make life worse. Anyway, that’s why I’m giggling but not faulting Karen Moy for writing this.
This all should get you caught up to mid-January 2024 in Mary Worth’s storylines. If you’re reading this after about April 2024, you can probably find a more up-to-date plot recap here, among the essays. If you don’t, well, we live in complicated times. Now on to the ways of heterosexual pair bonding!
So he does, reminding Kitty how back in the day they both really liked that one Deep Blue Something song. And, with some time to think about it, Kitty’s open for another date. This time it goes better. They start sharing some cinematic experiences like horseback riding and driving home singing Stevie Wonder.
At home, interrupting their kiss, is a guy named Brad, a man with a hat I bet is inadequately laundered and whose age I could never figure out. Brad has some great “Fight the System (TM)(C)(Do not steal)” t-shirts to run by Sonia. Kitty explains that Brad is “just a friend” but Keith can’t believe that, since who would want to be a friend to that? The point is fair, but Kitty insists she just puts up with Brad because Sonia likes him. And c’mon, when you get to know him you agree he could be worse, I guess.
Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 17th of December, 2023. Oh, settle down with the ‘Save the Planet’ stuff, child, Bluff Burgers are owned by a company that’s owned by a company that’s owned by another company that’s owned by the Unilever/Nestle Consortium for Advanced Evil, and they’re manufactured from a brand of soybeans that Monsanto implanted genes in that transfer into every plant in a 45-kilometer radius so they can sue farmers for copyright infringement.
Sonia cooks a double-date dinner, serving meatless ‘Bluff’ Burgers that Keith identifies as ‘probably some sort of matter’. Sonia and Brad meanwhile toast the burgers at each other chanting ‘Meat is murder! Save the planet!’ like the hew-mons probably do somewhere. After this spectacle, Keith declares he’s going to bow out so Kitty and Sonia can spend more time with whatever Brad’s deal is.
The next day a heartbroken Keith stops in at Big Beef’s All-Burger Cow Slaughter Emporium for their Anti-Vegan Burger with extra dead animal and cheese. And who’s there but Brad, chomping down on a bacon-ham-and-corned-beef deluxe and fries covered in five kinds of beef tallow. And, luckily, talking to his friend about how he doesn’t care about the environment or anything, he just figures plant-based-buttering Sonia up will get him in good with Kitty. Keith sits down, takes Brad’s chicken-fried bacon X-treme, and informs Brad that he can break up with Kitty and Sonia on his own or have his non-caring ways revealed to them.
So, Brad tells Sonia he’s volunteered with the Green Peats teaching the people of Bangladesh how to eat rice and he has a rescue jerboa he has to pick up in Madagascar and he can’t see them anymore bye. Kitty decides to pretend she believes this, and Sonia growls and stares at her phone when Keith visits. Ah, but then, he picks up Sonia’s guitar and plays a couple tunes by this obscure songster named Stevie Wonder. Sonia’s enchanted and starts to consider that maybe her biological father has a respectable side too.
So there’s not much more to do besides start thanking Mary Worth for Mary Worthing it, and that’s where we seem to be this week. Come back in a couple months and we’ll see if we’re still there.
Dubiously Sourced Mary Worth Sunday Panel Quotes!
What does BrainyQuotes mistakenly credit people with saying, and when did the Sunday panels quote them? Here’s my record of the Sunday sayings:
“The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.” — George Carlin, 29 October 2023.
“Better to fight for something than to live for nothing.” — George S Patton, 5 November 2023.
“There is nothing impossible to him who will try.” — Alexander the Great, 12 November 2023.
“If you forgive me all this … if I forgive you all that … we forgive and forget, and it’s all coming back to me now.” — Celine Dion, 19 November 2023.
“All is fair in love … love’s a crazy game.” — Stevie Wonder, 26 November 2023.
“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.” — Oscar Wilde, 3 December 2023.
“But I’m not sad, I’m just disappointed … and I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.” — Glen Hansard, 10 December 2023.
“Rather be dead than cool.” — Kurt Cobain, 17 December 2023.
“It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything.” — Plutarch, 24 December 2023.
“Ring out the old, ring in the new, ring, happy bells, across the snow; the year is going, let him go; ring out the false, ring in the true.” — Alfred Tennyson, 31 December 2023.
“Music is love in search of a word.” — Sidney Lanier, 7 January 2024.
“All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.” — Andre Breton, 14 January 2024.
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” — Aristotle, 21 January 2024.
Next Week!
The Ghost Who Walks, in his guise as the Unknown Commander of the Jungle Patrol, is testing Colonel Worubu’s patience with the unthinkable! Changing the secret chamber holding the vault with which he communicates with his multinational armed force! Is this the harbinger of an open-office plan? Or worse, if such a thing is possible? Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) gets some attention next week, all going to the Unknown Commander’s renovations plan.
Well, first, let me do the greatest service possible in this modern era and tell you why that’s something worth your click. First, DePaul writes about the just-concluded Wrack and Ruin story in the daily strips, which just wrapped up over two and a half years of imaginary and real story. And he gives some context to the new story, which started this week, and seemed to tease that the whole Wrack and Ruin might have been a dream, which people would have spent years complaining about in my blog, as if I had any responsibility.
And that comes to the alarming news DePaul has. Comics Kingdom is redesigning their site, again, and has plans to unveil it next month, which I make out to be two years since the last time. DePaul is optimistic, having news that readers will be able to scroll seamlessly through stories going back to 1936(!). This would be a great step forward for The Phantom. And for all the comic strips that get accessible, deep archives like that. Me, I’ve been on the Internet long enough that I cannot remember the last time a web site redesign meant the things I do all the time got easier. Or even stayed only as hard as they were. I’m guessing if it doesn’t demand more clicking around, then it’s sure to demand more network traffic to deliver pictures.
Surprise! Much like the rogue planet of Mongo I’m sending this new What’s Going On In … essay plunging through what had been a nice balanced system. Mostly since I started recapping Olive and Popeye I had this nice balance of three daily and one weekly strip, and that felt nice and harmonious. And then King Features, through the work of Dan Schkade, tossed in a new daily strip. I’ll figure where it really goes later. For now, I’ll just throw my usual weekly schedule farther off schedule.
So as alluded, Flash Gordon restarted as a daily strip, with Sunday recaps, the 22nd of October. And it is starting from an early Flash Gordon adventure, where Our Heroes catalyze the peoples of Mongo into overthrowing Ming. We’ve seen this before, but years ago, even just in the comics. Whenever I do pass by Mongo again I’ll put a plot recap — or news about the strip — here. In the meanwhile here’s what we missed:
Flash Gordon.
22 October 2023 – 14 January 2024.
We opened in media res, Flash Gordon piloting a small ship through the great battle the Allied Mongothic Nations lead against Ming’s flagship. Gordon smashes through the ship and all Ming’s Supernumerarian Guard to free Prince Barin from Ming’s torture. They barely start to flee when the bomb in Gordon’s ship destroys Ming’s gravity generator. When Ming stops the fleeing Gordon and Barin, Barin declares this to be his fight and shoves Gordon, and the reader, into the escape pod.
Days later Gordon recovers. Ming’s dead, or at least vanished. Also vanished is Barin, a fact that becomes Gordon’s new mission. For the wedding of Barin and Ming’s “faithless” daughter Aura is the only political settlement that could plausibly prevent civil war on Mongo. And Barin hasn’t been seen since the crash of Ming’s flagship.
Dan Schkade’s Flash Gordon for the 5th of November, 2024. A minor but wonderful point is that the Sunday strips are recaps, yes. But they’re recaps from a point of view. Flash Gordon himself, in my examples this week. But it’s not always Flash. The recap perspective jumps around, including to antagonists such as Bones Malock (in Borrower’s Firth) or the free airmen’s action reports, or in one case the flight log of their windcraft. It’s a clever twist.
Fortunately Dr Zarkov has whipped up an act of superscience to help: energy traces on stuff from Ming’s escape pods. He, Dale Arden, and Flash Gordon set out on a secret mission to track Barin down. The trail leads to Borrower’s Firth, so open up your space opera RPG manual to “treacherous thieves’ flea market city”, please. Zarkov spots the first real clue — the Frigian snowblade that Barin hoped to slice Ming’s head off with — and blows their cover. A lot of the Firth folks liked having Ming rule them and resent the alien usurper, you know?
While Our Heroes escape the scrum, it’s not without taking some damage to their ship. Fortunately, Arden pocketed an entropic anomaly, a glowy space egg capable of powering a city. Or through a whipping-up of superscience, a couple days of aircraft power.
In the jungles of Valkr the space egg runs out of power, and they crash land, as is Flash Gordon’s custom. Zarkov stays behind to superscience the egg and see if anything turns up. Gordon and Arden flee a space beast, as is their custom, and get saved by Imperial Airmen. Airmen who ask if Gordon and Arden want a life free of the Emperor Ming. They’d crashed in the jungle years ago with no way to contact the outside world. Their leader, Airman Sojas, has set up a cozy little space where Ming doesn’t exist.
And how do they take the news that Ming doesn’t exist anywhere? At least is deposed? … Not well. Sojas, not without reason, accuses them of being Ming’s spies and demands trial by combat, as is the custom. Gordon’s ready to fight but Sojas demands to fight Arden. This hardly seems cricket but, you know, new continuity, new art style, new rules. Gordon gives what advice he can, which amounts to “ … and then wait for something to turn up”. Turns out it kind of does, as Sojas leaves himself incredibly wide open and ready to get slugged in the gut.
The free airmen offer what they know: a sand skimmer did arrive a couple days ago, and a lone man emerged, spending his days fishing and alone. Who can it be but Prince Barin? Our Heroes run off to retrieve him.
He doesn’t want retrieval. He wants to mourn his disgrace. For Ming’s torture had, in fact, broken him, and Barin had surrendered. Just as Gordon’s ship crashed into the flagship. Gordon consoles him, and brings him back to the world of the living. Also to their windcraft, where Dr Zarkov’s sure to have whipped up some superscience to get them out of this fix.
Dan Schkade’s Flash Gordon for the 7th of January, 2024. And an appealing strip for how it encapsulates the previous week’s reality/art shifting, and Schkade showing off that while you personally might not care for the art style, he doesn’t draw it like that because he can’t draw “better”, that is, the way other people did. And it climaxed, neatly, on the anniversary of the comic’s debut, which is great.
Not so much. Actually, he’s got an ambush. Airman Sojas, driven mad by the idea that Ming might be gone, wants to bring it against the person inflicting the news on him. In the fight, Sojas stabs the Entropic Anomaly egg, and you know what that means, I’m sure.
So yeah, naturally, this sets off a burst of reality changes that last until the egg runs out of entropy or whatnot. Which would be a minor bother except that Sojas has grabbed Arden and Gordon figures he needs to get her back before reality does something really messy. And so we get a fun weeklong chase sequence, with the strip — art style, character models, even the format of the lettering — taking a tour of some of the many incarnations of Flash Gordon. This includes Alex Raymond’s original styling, the serials of the 1930s, the cartoons of the 70s and the 90s, the 1980 movie, and more eras of the comic strip up to Jim Keefe’s run, which ended in 2003 and had been the source of reruns up until last year. This climaxed with a retrospective the 7th of January, and the 90th anniversary of the strip’s debut. Good pacing.
The 8th of January saw a new day, and new story: Barin is returned, the day of the wedding, ready for finally something to go right. And it does, right up until an intruder does that usual stuff. It’s Ming II, come to claim the throne that his father had disinherited him from. Gordon kicks him out, and the wedding succeeds. But Ming II figures there’s no reason he can’t better his position and that’s sure to be a future development.
Next Week!
You know who’s not stuck on an alien planet some unknown bearing from Earth? Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth, still planned to be reviewed next week. Unless something happens! Probably not a fresh Flash Gordon recap. That would be a little much.
Meanwhile, Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail already has a tag, and a bunch of essays, going back to before she even took over the comic. This essay should bring you up to mid-January 2024 in his adventures. If you’re reading this essay after about April 2024, there’s probably a more up-to-date recap there. Meanwhile, though, here’s what I do know:
Cherry Trail teams up with Sunny Soleil Society head Violet Cheshire, and local baker Squirrelly Sandy Sandy’s the last person to have gotten a note, written in purple ink. They set out looking for who might write cursive notes in purple ink and — oh, Sandy’s squirrels attack Violet Cheshire. Under barely any pressure at all Violet confesses the whole deal: she was bored, she wanted to be out in nature and found an excuse to have Cherry Trail do it with her. And that, the 18th of November, closes the Kudzu Crusader Caper. All in all, this wasn’t too tough a case for Inspector Bazalo.
Cherry — and Violet’s — next adventure started the 27th of November, with the two planning to clear out an hold hall and put on a show. In the hall is every bat in the world. Violet, of course, hires Honest Ernest to clear the bats out, and he gets scratched or maybe bitten by one. Now, it’s not likely that any one bat has rabies, and it’s not likely that any one bite will infect you. On the other hand, if you are infected, then anytime up to a year later you can wake up one morning feeling a little off, and then close the day out dead. So, at Cherry and Violet’s insistence, they go to the emergency room, to get Ernest his shots, and there happen to meet Mark Trail over in his plot, which I’ll get to now.
Rusty Trail, head full of ideas of aliens, doesn’t believe his father’s hypothesis that all the weird stuff they found was from a lost camper. So he sneaks out in the middle of the night to find the truth out there. Mark Trail, happening to overhear, follows. They find the lost camper, though, someone named Connor who’d followed former prank-show star Tad Crass’s AI-written camping guide to his regret. Mark Trail feels relieved they saved this guy, but what about everybody else?
Mark Trial decides to run nature retreats and teach people how to camp in reasonable safety. His friends at the De-Bait Team are glad to give support. Connor, signed up for this retreat for some reason, is less glad. Ranger Shaw is there, looking for something to fill the void in his life since his wife’s out of town. Mark Trail realizes there’s stuff going on with the men of Lost Forest he’s not nearly up to dealing with.
De-Bait Team member Cliff suggests a nature hike, something giving all the guys a chance to talk things out. Mark Trail’s not clear on why you would go hiking and talk when that offers very little chance to catch fish and not talk. Anyway, Connor, trying to bait a hook, tears his thumb apart instead. Thus the emergency room visit which brought together the peanut butter and chocolate of Mark Trail’s and Cherry Trail’s plots.
Mark Trail finally accepts Cliff’s proposal, and takes the gang on a hike. It turns out to be a great way to get guys talking about their feelings. Mark Trail has heard of feelings, yes, but he’s not sure he’s up for experiencing them himself. The hike turns into a group hug so fast Mark Trail barely knows what happened or why, and he’s a bit relieved when Eli, one of the campers, gets scratched by a stray bat. Back to the emergency room.
Cliff meets the situation with optimism not unlike mine in the situation: the suggestion of danger will draw more people in next time. And Mark Trail is coming to realize these retreats might be more useful to their participants if they’re about sharing feelings, much as he likes going fishing to not talk about feelings or anything else. Mark Trail thinks a little about why that is, but the important thing is: the campers are up for fishing. Good news for everyone but the fish and the bait.
And this brings us up to mid-January, in plotting.
Sunday Animals Watch!
Coywolves, 22 October 2023.
Armadillos, 29 October 2023.
Fireflies, 5 November 2023.
Autumn Leaves, 12 November 2023.
Turkeys, 19 November 2023.
Rabies, 26 November 2023.
Foxes, 3 December 2023.
Birds’ magnetic senses, 10 December 2023.
Reptiles and Skin, 17 December 2023.
Reindeer, 24 December 2023.
AI computing, 31 December 2023.
Horses, 7 January 2024.
Largemouth Bass, 14 January 2024.
Next Week!
You know who’s not risking an attack by rabid bats? Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth, to be reviewed next week. But be warned: there is someone who just happened to notice you had a guitar here and knows a couple of songs he could play if nobody minds?
The unsatisfying answer is they hitched a ride with Slim Wallet. Why was Slim going to Charlotte? He wasn’t, to start with; he was driving back after dropping off some tires. Rufus and Joel, taking over the driving, got lost. Slim took back over and drove them to the mall, where he was supposed to play Santa. As to why Charlotte as opposed to any generic city? My guess is Jim Scancarelli wanted to show off his great skyline photos of the place called “The Queen City of the West” by people who went on too long and accidentally named that WKRP place.
So that encounter — let’s date it the 16th of October — is when the main story of the end of last year started. Rufus and Joel figure to walk back home. It’s a longer walk than it was running out into the woods. They hitch a ride with Slim Wallet, returning from the Queen City after dropping off some tires. On the drive back to Gasoline Alley Slim gets so tired he asks Rufus and Joel to drive, while he sleeps in back on the truck bed.
Rufus and Joel decide to get on the Interstate, and before you know it they’re on I-77 and heading into Charlotte. They hit a pothole hard enough Slim falls out of the truck, but don’t notice until they make another orbit of the city. Slim’s angry, but awake, so there’s something to be said about being thrown out onto an Interstate. They pick him up again, and he drives, not to home, but to Gasoline Alley Mall.
Because it’s now Christmastime and someone’s got to play Santa for Frank Nelson at the department store. Slim was signed up for it, but with his road injury he’s not up to kids on his lap all day. Joel, the shorter and fatter one, has to take his place, while Rufus is his elf.
The kids are from the Gasoline Alley kids crew, finishing with Jones, who turns out to be able to say stuff after all. And then some woman I don’t recognize thanks him, as Santa, for spreading the true meaning of the season and whatnot. After that, some brat of a kid yanks on Joel’s beard and that’s enough of that for everyone.
The 26th of December saw a big bit of news. Baleen Beluga and T-Bone, waitress and cook at Corky’s diner, are engaged. They haven’t set a date yet. And then from the 2nd of January we got … Slim, a grown man, failing to use the washing machine correctly. Where is this going? I don’t know, maybe they’re going to stretch and make it to Raleigh/Durham.
Next Week!
My schedule has me talking about Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail. But what if — and I’m just thinking out loud, silently, while watching The Price Is Right on the DVR — I looked to the world of Mongo instead? What might happen? Check in next week and we’ll see what happens. If it does.
Oh, surely not. She loves the hero of Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant and would get less screen time without him. But in the interlude between the two stories this plot recap covers, we do get word from Camelot and it’s going surprisingly well ever since Valiant got away from it. Maeve and Aleta make an awesome regency. The Eastern Saxons have been held to Londinium. Nathan is, well, Nathan. Ingrid is, well, Ingrid. The coffee crop failed but everything else is bountiful. So there’s no reason they should hurry home. Heck, if you get the offer why not take a trip to Hibernia or something? Australia maybe? Valiant hasn’t been to Australia yet, has he? Maybe try there?
So this should catch you up to the end of the year (2023, our time) in Prince Valiant. If, for you, it’s after about March 2024, you may find a more up-to-date ancient scroll here. Or any news about the comic strip, in case some breaks out. It hasn’t produced any drama to speak of that I’ve heard about in years but you never know, right? Back now to the time of King Arthur …
Prince Valiant.
8 October – 31 December 2023.
Prince Valiant and his son Arn, sent out to what’s now Wales to fix all the warfare with Saxon invaders, were trying out kidnapping. Baedwulf, leader of the small band of Saxons who’ve been making life hard for the Gwynedd folks, likes the spunk Valiant and Arn show here. And he and Caitrin, one of the Gwynedd locals who’s married a Saxon, lay out the sad facts. Camelot hasn’t got the manpower to spare to drive out the Saxons. There isn’t enough geld in all the Danes to get the Saxon mainland interested in sending reinforcements. They can keep bleeding each other to death or they can stop fighting and have fish fry together.
Eating without death sounds good. There’s some fiddly little details to work out and Valiant’s amazed to watch how much fun Arn has doing that. And then Galahad arrives, bearing news from Camelot. Turns out since he, Valiant, and Arn left things have been going great. He can head go out any way he likes, away from Camelot.
Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant for the 19th of November, 2023. This turn of events brings up something I didn’t realize I was missing in Prince Valiant, but the appearance of the ambiguous, ominous mystical world is doing a lot to make the story more real and vivid to me. I’m not saying I want the strip to entirely become one of magic and fairy stuff, but bit of that makes a great boost.
And there’s reason to head out. Baedwulf and Caitrin’s sister Bronwyn saw an omen over some boat construction. Baedwulf says a beautiful cat appeared on the boat, and then in the sky, Freo, goddess of love, appeared. Bronwyn says no, it was the demon Cath Palug, harbinger of despair. Caitryn interrogates Bronwyn, establishing that the cat departed to her left. So that’s great, because that means they’re blessed, not cursed. And Baedwulf declares it’s a sign he must go to Hibernia, to present his betrothed — Bronwyn — to his lord and see if this whole “food, rather than death” thing sounds good to them too.
So it’s a journey to the west for Valiant and Arn, and more, including a stowaway cat. There’s what Baedwulf insists are selkies in the water, but you’ll get a certain amount of that on any sea voyage. A change in the wind pushes them off course, though, and they come ashore in a deserted fishing village. Well, they’ve got whole hours before sunset and probably Valiant’s Singing Sword just does that vibrating now and then. You know how they are.
Next Week!
Which of five generations of characters is going to be Santa Claus this year? And why the heck are they doing it in Charlotte, North Carolina? I ask the tough questions about Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley next week and probably come out learning about some weird Lum and Abner clone I never heard of before next week.
Well, she was a serial killer, so if Xaviera “Ex” Libris weren’t killing people she’d be failing her role. But we never did get a direct explanation of her motives in the just-concluded story in Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy. Instead, we got a solid story of detective work, Tracy and gang going over what they knew and what they could tease out from that until it pointed to, admittedly, the character who people talked about a lot more than she seemed to contribute to the plot. We do get a few bits, at least. Theft of rare books is right there; most of the murders we hear about were to acquire rare books or to kill someone who was leading the cops to her. There’s the hint there may be some ancient family relations tied into this. We never get a deathbed confession of Libris having been after, say, the one book her great-grandfather wanted and could never buy. There’s room for that, if you want that rationalization, though.
As promised above, this is a fairly direct story of detection and deduction. If it ever lagged, it’s because Dick Tracy and his team, all of whom did stuff, reached the legitimate ends of what they could figure on one path. And my opening told you who did it. It was clear enough from a bit after her introduction that Ex Libris was the villain, but we had to read along to figure how she was doing it, how she was going to get caught, and what was supposed to be so ugly or weird about her. You know, that Chester Gould theme where people look as horrible as their morals are. She never does look bad, though, just uninterested in the people demanding time away from her from her pharmaceutical-industry ownership and her antiquarian-book library. And the killing and robbery, she wants to get that done too. But you empathize.
The threads that get us there. Sam Catchem learns the teacups at Wilhelmina Caxton’s murder scene have a small saliva sample from an unknown person. He eventually goes undercover as a waiter to snag drinking glasses that Ex Libris was using, which provide the samples to place her at that scene.
Lee Ebony finds an informant within the world of Tracytown’s bookbinder community. Half a year ago Xaviera Libris came in wanting the early-20th-century binding on a 13th century book replaced. But wanted the previous owner’s book plate discarded, something rarely done as you need those to show provenance. The informant has the old cover, just in case. And keeping his promise that she wouldn’t see him again, he gets murdered right after. Stabs to the chest.
Lizz Worthington-Grove finds a case from months ago, just across the state line, of someone murdered with the same stab in the chest. Electronic toll records place Libris’s car over the state line when that murder was done.
Mike Curtis and Shelley Pleger’s Dick Tracy for the 10th of December, 2023. I wonder if fencers are ever bothered by how whenever they’re in pop culture they’re either Captain Picard or a killer. I guess they have it better than ventriloquists and wax museum owners do. Ooh, you know, a wax-museum-owner who fences and does ventriloquy at open mike nights would be an unstoppable pop culture villain.
Sam finds, in security camera footage, a hooded figure with two cases approaching Caxton’s place. One’s the sort of rare book case that Libris explained to Tracy a competent rare-book thief would need. The other is a long, slender carrying case of unknown purpose. And he has later footage of Libris carrying the same two cases
And Tracy has the final insight, checking just what sport it was that Libris was an Olympics alternate for (information given way back in October, reader time). It was epee fencing, Now there’s a plausible-enough-for-the-comics explanation of how she’s killing and why it’s by pinpoint chest wounds. All that’s left is to confront her in her impossibly fabulous library.
She’s ready to attack Tracy with sword and rare-books case. But he’s wearing a blade-proof vest and a case-resistent hand. She’s only foiled when she runs up the spiral staircase too fast or something and falls to her death. Problem solved, including the need for a trial.
We do get a week of Tracy reflecting on the waste of all this, of people hurt and professional lives ruined and knowledge lost. Even the sadness that the heirless Libris’s library, one almost as good as The Phantom’s rare books collection, will be auctioned off and broken up. It’s more somber reflection than I’m accustomed to in these stories. It’s not a bad note to have, though.
And this wraps things up in suspiciously good time for my plot recap here. On to the next adventure!
I don’t have any details on Manley’s condition, but DePaul does say “there’s more to come from what I hear. Not good … ” It’s not the sort of merry hint I like to bring, but that’s what we have.
The important thing about all this was getting folks back where they belong, so far as Destiny will allow it. We got some points that might set up future stories, though. First is Bangallan President Lamanda Luaga giving asylum to the prisoners freed from Gravelines. It’s a courageous move: Rhodia — any nation — would feel humiliated by such a jailbreak, and to have most or all of the freed prisoners right next door could be an irresistible temptation. The second is that Rhodia was already plotting the assassination of President Luaga. And hoped to suborn Savarna Devi into doing the murder. Rhodian Admiral Leopold Braga was scheduled to visit Devi in her cell the day of the jailbreak for her final answer. Which, from the safety of the ride home, she says would always have been no.
Back at Skull Cave is Kit Junior, who it turns out had an irresistible temptation to return home. The idea came to him, turns out, the moment The Phantom stopped to listen to Mozz’s prophecy of Wrack and Ruin. Kit explains he was careful about his track, taking a path that went through Guwahati (in northeastern India), Delhi, Rome, Casablanca, Mombasa, and more, which is all the more impressive when I thought it had only been two, three days tops since this story began. But then the essential power of The Phantom is having time to get stuff done and not be exhausted at the end of it.
The Phantom briefly tries to keep Kit from talking about the Mountain City with Devi, but realizes better. In the prophecy, Devi meeting up with Kit and then murdering Inspector Jampa instigates the bombing of the Mountain City. But if Devi learns where her onetime enslaver was and succumbs to the irresistible temptation to murder him? And Kit’s nowhere on the same continent? Why would this go beyond Devi and Jampa then? And so The Phantom decides to trust in things working out like they ‘should’.
But, like someone or other said, even a miracle needs a hand. And, particularly, they have to keep Kit from being in the Mountain City anytime Devi might murder Jampa. Diana has a plan and it’s oddly matchmaker-y of her. Kit surely won’t go back to the Mountain City without seeing his sister Heloise. And Heloise won’t let him leave without meeting Kadia. And, heck, could Kadia be a potential partner for Kit Jr? So over weeks, we gather, Heloise keeps teasing that she could come home anytime, but not now, and Kit does put up with this.
And for Devi — she seems to have a fine time, allowed into the world of the Bandar, and Skull Cave and all its cool stuff. And, in an echo of what she swore in Mozz’s prophecy, thinks of how she is done killing. And, last week, Kit unknowingly said something which set Devi leaving immediately. We may infer that she learned something which placed an irresistible temptation in the way of her giving up revenge. We don’t know how that’s to work out.
This Monday, the 18th, started the epilogue, Kit trying to convince Heloise that he’s leaving next weekend whether she sees him or not, Heloise calling his bluff. And Heloise wondering if she and her mother can make Kit-and-Kadia happen, in case that’s a thing that should.
By authorial intent? Probably not, no. But we’ve had two stories running now (with a tiny interlude) where, in the first case, all the meaty action was apparently a drug-induced hallucination. In the second case, there’s a lot of retcon-inducing time shenanigans going on. So in principle it’s been a long time since we could trust that what’s happening in Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop is the for-real actual events of things happening to the Alley Oop of Universe 2. (The classic, pre-Lemon/Sayers character, is Universe 1.)
His experience is very different. He wakes to find he’s late for work. Also married. And apparently named “Allward”. He drives aimlessly through empty streets to find what the heck he does. He casually wishes he worked at that hot dog stand and the stand owner hollers over that he’s late for work. Alley Oop then says how it would be more interesting being a rich person working in that building, and the hot dog guy says to get out of here and go to his fancy-pants office job.
You see how this is going. Everything Alley Oop expresses a desire for comes true, however ludicrous, down to being boss, making his assistant a kid, making his wife a dinosaur (briefly), and then, what the heck, being immortal. He pretty soon outlasts centuries, then humanity, then the Earth, and floats in space forever, at least until a mysterious void slurps him up and spits him out … seconds later, stuck back on the island. Doc Wonmug speculates the mushroom Alley Oop ate gave him a very vivid hallucination and tries it himself … and, yeah, has Alley Oop’s hallucination for himself.
Well, they’ve had enough of this, so use the helicopter Doc Wonmug built out of coconuts and all to leave. They ignore once again the walking pig who knows where the everlasting moss is, which, that’ll happen.
From the 30th of October started a weeklong interlude. Doc Wonmug takes the three of them to Frank’s Spa, on discount. It’s a very disappointing experience.
Worse, it’s not just that dragonflies are changing the future. He believes one has evolved that’s changing the past. It’s even hitting Our Heroes, changing their outfits and Doc Wonmug’s hair color. Turns out it’s a giant dragonfly, one capable of capturing Doc Wonmug in its grasp. And trapping Ooola and Alley Oop in its lair. And calling itself Lord Odon.
Lord Odon has big plans, jailing Doc Wonmug and Ooola and turning Alley Oop inside a ball. Yes, just like in that one Underdog adventure with the aliens who are magic flying-saucers who want cake. This can’t stop Our Heroes, though. And Doc Wonmug determines by … eh, you know, reasons … that this can’t be just the dragonfly’s powers. There has to be something more. It’s this little control gadget that sure looks like it. Doc Wonmug mashes the buttons and gets things back to normal for them. He’s about to destroy the timeline shifter when Lord Odon flies in, whacks everything, and next thing you know Doc Wonmug, Alley Oop, and Ooola are trees.
And that’s my cliffhanger for this one! How will they get back to being animate? And how long will that take? … Probably something ridiculous and not too long now. I would also not be surprised if Allen Cooper, the analogue of Alley Oop from the all-villain Universe 4 has something to do with all this. That’s if the timeline-changing machine gets an explanation; it might just come and go as these things will. You know how it is.
Don’t know yet. Popeye and his gang arrived on an island, in search of Plaidfoot’s Treasure. The party’s arrival was noticed by the robots serving some mysterious, not-yet-seen figure. We haven’t seen their face or an obvious gimmick. It’s not just my lack here; from the comments others haven’t reached a consensus. The Grand Archivist is the only guess people have and this doesn’t feel like his vibe to me. And, we’ve seen, Randy Milholland is willing to draw on the entire roster of every Popeye villain ever in the comic strip, cartoons, or old time radio for his appearances. We’ll see.
This coincides with a series of the Olive strips drawn by Ryan Milholland. Milholland’s been drawing the Thursday, Popeye-focused strips, as well as the Sunday strips for Thimble Theatre Presents Popeye. But for the gap between Shadia Amin leaving — in late August, with Olive and company declaring they’re going on an adventure — and Emi Burdge taking over in early October Milholland drew both sides of the strip. (I don’t know how far ahead the scripts were written, or how they were coordinated during the transition.)
Emi Burdge’s Olive and Popeye for the 14th of November, 2023. I agree, this sure seems like it’s got to be Charon they’re talking about, and the character acknowledge as much today. But is it? … Probably something sillier than that. Does it have any link to Popeye and his adventure and the mysterious figure there? I don’t know. Seems imaginable, but I’m not sure how.
From talking with the many, many, many ghosts wanting her attention Olive finds a mystery: the “old boatman” who’d escort them to the other side has disappeared. And the ghosts are desperate. Also, Olive’s desperate for a night’s sleep. One sympathizes. Also along the way we the readers learn that Cylinda Oyl can see and talk to ghosts, something that Mae can’t. That or she’s just saying that every now and then and got lucky.
Meanwhile on Popeye’s side of things. He and his fathers — Poopdeck Pappy and Whaler Joe — meet up with Pommy. Sir Pomeroy, 10th Earl of Vauxhall, I’m told by the Popeye wikia was a regular adventure partner back in the 1950s, when Ralph Stein wrote Thimble Theatre. He’s new to me too. Pommy’s investigating, first, a town rampaged by some kind of thing. Also the map to Plaidfoot’s Treasure. Plaidfoot the Pirate said it was a treasure sacred to a race of easily-fooled monsters he swiped it from.
So here’s where they’re noticed by that shadowy figure mentioned above. The figure knows who Popeye is and that he’ll ruin everything. Also the figure has Professor O G Wotasnozzle in captivity. And some of Wotasnozzle’s rather cute robots serving him. The figure sends the robots, who’ve captured Popeye in a bubble. And that’s where we stand, this week.
Sam Driver and Gloria Shannon managed to extract the strip, for now, from both Pavel Lebedev’s crime family thingy and the CIA’s scrutiny. This by trading to them all the data available about Ma Parker — Helena Bowen, I learned her name was — and her own international crime racket. This is information neither group could get on their own; so, how did Sam Driver and Gloria Shannon find it?
Ma Parker gave it to them. Yeah, this isn’t said explicitly. But we’re told Helena Bowen wanted to get April Parker her own life back. And that Bowen and Sam Driver planned out the resolution we saw. This isn’t the simplest case for Inspector Bazalo, but it’s also not his toughest case.
Suspended Detective Yelich knows nothing of Driver and Shannon’s plan. Neither does April Parker. And neither do the readers. This is the part that left me unsatisfied. It’s exciting watching a risky plan swing into action, but if you don’t have any idea what the plan is, you can’t know whether it’s going wrong and whether our heroes are in unexpected danger. It all goes to plan, so far as I have any idea what the plan was.
Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 9th of October, 2023. I have fallen out of the habit of reading the comics snark blogs regularly (just no time, lately), but I’m going ahead and guessing that a lot of merriment was made with Yelchin wanting to know how he’s in the dark, possibly with comparisons drawn to the readers being in the dark and maybe Marciuliano himself being in the dark about what was happening and why. Anyway, good narrator work that first panel there.
What the plan was: Sam Driver escorts Helena Bowen out of April Parker’s house, wehre Lebedev’s man can see him doing that. But, since the CIA’s been watching the Parkers’ house, they arrest Bowen, and Sam Driver, first. Lebedev’s man reports Driver’s failure, in time for Shannon to taser him senseless and throw him in Yelich’s trunk.
They race to Lebedev’s mansion and offer a trade. A USB drive with a full map of all Helena Bowen’s organization in it, in trade for being let alone. Lebedev confirms enough of the information to believe the rest. And he says it’s a deal, which Shannon and so Driver believe, for some reason. Word goes out to all the cast to come out of hiding. This seems premature to me, but I guess Marciuliano knows how dangerous things really are for them.
Meanwhile in super-secret ultra hyper CIA jail, Sam Driver bargains for his freedom with the same data. Lebedev is sure to go after Helena Bowen’s operation, and here’s her operation. They can make a deal, right? And while the CIA has both Sam Driver and his USB drive, they agree to let him go, albeit under heavy scrutiny. There’s a similar arrangement between April Parker and Agent Shadewrap.
Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley and James Bret Blevins’s Judge Parker for the 16th of November, 2023. What I would have liked to know is whether Bowen approached Driver, or whether Driver found some way to contact her. We’re given a motive for Bowen to turn herself in — regrets at the end of her life, wanting her daughter to have a life with her own child — but not why this became something she acted on. Given we’re told Yelchin did some work, it would make sense if Driver et al found how to contact Bowen and pressed her to a decision. But I don’t know, and I wonder if Marciuliano does.
So as of this week, April and Randy Parker are back together at home again. The extra cast are also back, or going back, to their homes. And Sam Driver and Abbey Spencer are reunited, and all it took was several months of terror.
Incidentally: so, was the car accident that first brought Sam and Abbey to Peter Lebedev’s attention legit? Or was it staged so the two wouldn’t have reason to question how they ended up on the hook for April Parker’s mother? I can see a case to make either way. If the accident was an accident then Lebedev put together his blackmail plan in the time it took to drive his daughter home. If it wasn’t an accident then we have to wonder who volunteered to crash his car into the one other car on the road. Not unthinkable, especially if the accident was worse than it was supposed to be. The guy getting eaten by a bear has to have been an unplanned accident either way.
Next Week!
After Lebedev realizes Sam Driver gave all this same information to the CIA and orders the entire cast killed? I take on some more lighthearted fare with ghosts and a monster-abuser in Shadia Amin, Emi Burdge, and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye. Don’t miss it!
Yeah. Well, I guess there’s a sliver of deniability if you suppose this wasn’t a home pregnancy test, but, c’mon. Keri and Gil Thorp have a quick family meeting with Pedro Martinez, while his father’s busy with the Milford football game. And in less time than it takes everyone to thank Mary Worth for suggesting they talk about what’s bothering them, Keri is recovering in a hospital bed.
So that is the big news and big development in Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp the past three. I, too, am amazed how much it was not built up as a Very Special Episode. It’s also a reversal of one of the few famous Gil Thorp stories, from back in 2002-03 when Left Behind novelist Jerry Jenkins wrote the strip.
And yes, Keri and Pedro had been taking precautions. Keri mentioned having an IUD, at minimum. It’s just that the only sure method against pregnancy is laminating your body with at least 15mm weight plastic and never removing yourself from the box.
Keri Thorp and Pedro Martinez’s brief pregnancy you already read about. There are hints that the event might lead to some important further family developments, though. Keri’s abortion brought Mimi Thorp back from the golfing road. Mimi’s been almost entirely absent from the strip. Her strongest presence was learning she can’t live without Ericka Carter. And that coworkers are, in fights, giving Gil Thorp beef about his marriage failing.
Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 12th of September, 2023. I’m not sure whether Martinez is out of line here. Yeah, he’s fighting over what is, at heart, a disagreement about work plans. On the other hand, this it is an argument about they should do for a half-hour at work. It’s not exactly a personal quarrel, except that the context makes it so.
Those fights? They’re provoked by the existence of Luke Martinez on the Milford coaching staff. To his credit, Martinez is trying to behave, emitting apologies at a rate of hundreds per day. He’s got a lot he feels awful about. His inability to be normal about Gil Thorp has strained his marriage. And it’s alienated Pedro. Pedro, meanwhile, took a bad hit defending Valley Tech’s perfect season in the big game against Milford. Last we saw Luke he was rushing onto the field to be with his son who is, note, on the other team. Yes, it takes more than a moment of normal affection to break through (justified) grievances. But a bit of rain can end a drought, so, we’ll see.
Also on the apology tour: Marty Moon. Everyone at Milford is angry at him for snitching on Toby Gordon and Rodney Barnes just because they were selling vape sticks. Pedro Martinez is angry for his family drama reasons. But Moon’s even getting a cold shoulder from new Valley Tech coach Paul Kim.
Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 18th of November, 2023. I feel like there’s something weird in Luke Martinez coaching against his son, but I don’t know what the expected standards are for high school athletics. Maybe I’m overly fussy, since I’m in competitive pinball and that has a crazy network of competitors, tournament officials, and even game designers being the same people.
Kim’s perfect season does suggest maybe Luke Martinez isn’t as exceptional as he claims. In this case, though, Kim hasn’t got anything against Marty Moon. He just thinks this town is really, really weird about its high school athletics. Man has a point. I come from central Jersey, where high school sports rate at about a two, but Milford’s letting them cruise at around 186,244.
Along the way to this week’s plot recap Rene Belluso, the old reliable miscreant of Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D., had a big emotional outburst, inspired by his own “Mirakle Method” of self-improvement and actualization and such. Is this the event that’s caused him to re-evaluate his life and become a respectable and less interesting member of story comics society?
Too soon to say. I appreciate that Terry Beatty likes to write a gentle strip where mostly good things happen. But it seems very consistent for Belluso to be putting on a pose to take advantage of people, in this case, because he’s stumbled across a great money-making opportunity. However, the first step of this involves turning himself in for various past scams. So he’s taking the pain first and leaving the reward for later. Belluso is the human world’s equivalent to Slick Smitty, yes, but it’s not like he gets his scams exactly backward.
Murphy accepted with grace one of life’s hard lessons, that you can’t force someone to accept your apology, but you gotta apologize anyway. His evening in the motel’s interrupted by Rene Belluso, “Professor Augustus Mirakle” himself. Fergus listed Professor Mirakle, Belluso’s most recent scam, as co-writer for “Swingset on the Moon”, the cornerstone of Murphy’s new career as children’s singer. And now he wants his money.
Murphy says that his agent, Buzzy Cameron — more on that later — has been holding Belluso’s share. He can write Belluso a check anytime he wants. And how is Belluso supposed to cash a check when he’s a wanted man? Well, the Mirakle Method might just help Belluso straighten out his life and get in good with the authorities.
Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 8th of September, 2023. Cameron mentions how he’s not sure how long he was in the trunk, which is an amusing way of acknowledging the loose relationship between reader and in-strip times. It then feeds into talking a lot about how bad Cameron’s shirt smells, which doesn’t get as many laughs from me as I think Beatty was hoping for.
Belluso sneers at this, because he knows: the Mirakle Method is just a heap of gibberish he put together to target self-help marks. Murphy’s insistence that the thing works doesn’t move him. What does move him is the prospect of money. What he hopes will move Murphy is doing something really stupid, like kidnapping agent Buzzy Cameron.
Cameron and Murphy agree to Belluso’s demand they withdraw, in cash, enough from Murphy’s accounts to cover his royalties. While waiting for the bank to open, the two nag Belluso into trying out his own Mirakle Method and see if he can’t get his head on straight. It takes a whole minute for Belluso to break down, sobbing, having discovered his Daddy Issues and mourning that he hit on a real, legitimate therapy but wasted it treating it like a scam.
So Cameron and Murphy offer a deal with, they somehow believe, the reformed Rene Belluso. If he’ll give permission to use the Mirakle Method they’ll sell it, and he can collect royalties, ready for him once he’s out of prison for whatever the heck it was he was wanted for exactly. Oh, trying to shove Hank Harwood Jr off a CRUISE SHIP. Right.
Well, they make the deal, bonding over how they’ve all done prison time. Murphy for general rowdiness. Cameron for tax evasion, and I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the Approaching Plot Point klaxon. There, got it cleared. Belluso goes to jail in an event worthy of extended coverage on the local news. The Harwoods and the Morgans both react with wonder and doubt that this could ever be legit.
Still, the long night ended, Murphy and Cameron head out again and run into Rex Morgan, M.D., who’s startled by the apology he gets. And Truck Tyler, enjoying his 18th hour on that same cup of coffee, says Wanda’s talked him into doing something with Murphy’s cartoon thingy. Ah, but the cartoon thingy is on hold. Murphy and Cameron — who’d like to represent Tyler, if he’s willing, which he’s not — have an infomercial to make.
Some indefinite time later, after Mud Murphy’s run for mayor of Cavelton, the Morgans come across Murphy’s infomercial. It runs complete with Belluso confessing that he created the system as a scam but discovered it actually helped people. Despite it being an extremely long commercial, and having had enough of Rene Belluso, they watch the entirety. June, like everyone else, can’t believe this. Rex concedes that it’s probably not illegal, since they don’t seem to be selling anything besides feel-good speeches, and maybe it can do someone some good. He wouldn’t pay for a session, though it seems a lot of other people would.
And that’s where we stand in mid-November 2023.
Next Week!
My greatest narrative recap challenge: Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp gets its innings, so I get to figure out how to explain three months’ worth of that. Watch me as I accidentally say I have to take an extra three days to write this all out!
Show some respect, little one. That guy with the typewriter is Lee Falk, the creator of The Phantom and its sister strip Mandrake the Magician. Legend in the serial adventure comic business. Falk died in 1999, but his name remains in the credit box on the comic strips, I assume out of sentiment rather than because he had Bob Kane as his agent.
For some time now Tony DePaul has used Lee Falk as narrator, providing recaps and transitions and background material to readers who joined us late. I’m charmed by it. This story’s seen more of Lee Falk The Character than usual, including his speaking to the reader as though he weren’t sure what the story was. Tony DePaul has never been shy about discussing what he’s attempting in a story, as anyone reading his blog knows. So it can’t be DePaul wanting to find some way to talk about his writing process. The story as it’s told is about The Phantom himself creating a story, his audience being the Jungle Patrol. I imagine as we see more of it we’ll see some thematic echoes between Falk deciding how the story works and The Phantom working on his plans.
And that story we’ll see — well, I should pause a moment. The weekday Phantom, as well as Judge Parker, are going to be looking different for a while. Mike Manley, the regular artist, is ill and it looks like an extended absence, says The Daily Cartoonist. Bret Blevins (with lettering by Scott Cohn) have been filling in for a couple weeks on The Phantom, as they did for a while last year too. Jeff Weigel, who does the Sunday strips, is supposed to take over the weekday strips for the duration starting from later this month. Blevins has also taken on drawing Judge Parker, and I don’t know how long that’s to last.
This story, by the way, is set some time after the conclusion of the story going on in the weekday strips. This gets neatly teased when Jungle Patrol folks as John X for more information about Gravelines, and he says that story’s not yet over. I’m amused.
Somehow, The Phantom sees an angle to prove John X isn’t the Unknown Commander, and maybe burnish the Unknown Commander’s legend some, since after a couple centuries not being seen even experienced Jungle Patrollers start asking questions like “how does this work exactly?” So we learn, from flashback conversations with Diana, that he’s been going into Mawitaan and meeting people with Ajabu Engineering (“You Imagine It, We Build It”). And he’s readying some spectacle for the Jungle Patrol’s benefit.
Meanwhile, what he tells Colonel Worubu and the Jungle Patrol staff is that he’s not sure but someone he thinks was the Unknown Commander died in a mission in Ivory Lana. And, sure enough, nobody’s been picking up the daily reports in the Unknown Commander’s vault, nor has the light signalling fresh orders turned on. As John X, he tells Colonel Worubu of how much the Unknown Commander depends on him and his expert judgement. And he scouts Jungle Patrol headquarters, looking for a good way he-as-John-X can vanish and set up whatever he-The-Phantom has in mind.
How will this all pan out? I don’t know. I imagine we’ll have some insight in twelve or thirteen weeks, whenever I get back to this strip. In the meanwhile …
Next Week!
Why are we watching infomercials in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.? You’ll have to check back here to learn or catch up on the comics yourself. We’ll see what happens.
Saul Wynter has moved out of his apartment, the better to share his storylines with Eve Lourd (Halloween screen name, Eve Gourd). It seems like he’s got fewer obvious stories to tell, though. He’s got a new pet, a new outlook on life, a new bride. I’d like to think he has more stories left, since he’s got that charm, but if he didn’t it’s not like his life story would feel unfinished.
I hope here to get you up to the end of October 2023 in Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth. If you’re reading after about January 2024, or any news about the strip breaks, I should have a more current and relevant essay at this link. Thanks for reading.
Mary Worth.
6 August – 28 October 2023.
Saul Wynter’s dog Greta was saved from the dogfighting ring. The people to thank here are Eve Lourd, and her dog Max, who did persistent searches. Also the dogfighting guy who left Greta’s cage unlatched so he could go be a drunken lout or something. Also Greta for running away. Last on the list: Mary Worth, who told Saul Wynter, correctly but without evidence, that his dog was stolen to be a bait dog.
So you understand why the strip then spent about sixteen months of Dr Jeff praising Mary Worth for the dog rescue. Also to Mary Worth saying oh, she’s just an ordinary person with particular skills in turning salmon into beige polygons. But yes, if only everyone could be like her.
Saul Wynter’s story got a new chapter starting the 21st of August. On a date at the beach he proposes to Eve. She accepts. What the heck, there hasn’t been a wedding in this strip since … earlier this year. All right, but it was a long time since the one before that.
Mary Worth happens to see the two shopping for wedding rings. It’s no surprise she spends most of her days hovering around the wedding ring store. She’s invited to their courthouse wedding, a small affair attended by the minister, the happy couple, Mary Worth, and someone appealing their ticket for having an unkempt lawn. “It’s all native flora, it’s better for the environment,” they say. They have a Mark Trail Sunday page for support and everything.
But Saul and Eve come back home, to toast each other. Saul speaks of how he never imagined marrying again.
The 17th of September saw the end of that story and the start of the current one. A large, mustached man named Keith Hillend is moving in to Saul Wynter’s old place, now that he and Eve are going to be sharing storylines. He’s engagingly befuddled by Mary Worth’s insistence on helping and inviting him to events and delivering surprise packages of beige shapes. All she can get out of him is that he’s a retired Marine and cop and that he hasn’t got any family.
Mary Worth’s not even out the door when who knocks on the door but family? Sonia Fabar presents herself, claiming to be his daughter. Mary Worth excuses herself so she can go make Tex Avery eyes at the family crisis to come.
Is there a crisis, though? They both like root beer, after all, and Kitty Fabar is someone he knew twenty years ago. She explains a bit of herself: she’s studying to be a social worker and she wants to learn how to stick it to ‘The Man’. Particularly the military and the cops. Hillend is aghast. Without the United States military some of those Latin American nations might go a century or more without a right-wing coup. And without a cop, who are you going to have shake their head sadly and say if they find your bike they’ll return it but it’ll be five business days before we have the form your insurance company wants for your claim? Sonia storms out, wanting nothing to do with a violent, oppressive killer.
Hillend, for his part, is devastated to learn he has a daughter, and the daughter hates him. He finds Kitty Fabar and meets her for lunch. She reveals she kept him out of Sonia’s life because he would want to marry her. She didn’t want to marry at all, or marry a Marine who was already married to his job. Hillend tries to argue he had the right to know she was carrying his child. Kitty leaves, saying this was a mistake and she’s sorry Sonia contacted him.
And that’s the gentle but legitimate relationship drama as it stands now, the end of October. Will Sonia come to see there are good cops who aren’t actually on any police force anymore? Will Hillend come to see why marginalized people have reasons to distrust the part of the State with guns and a code of silence? We’ll see over the next several months.
Dubiously Sourced Mary Worth Sunday Panel Quotes!
What great things did people not say, but that Mary Worth’s Sunday page said they said? Here’s the recent lineup:
“Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.” — Aesop, 6 August 2023.
“The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.” — Albert Schweitzer, 13 August 2023.
“Anyone can be a small light in a dark room.” — Miep Gies, 20 August 2023.
“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” — David Viscott, 27 August 2023.
“My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.” — Winston Churchill, 3 September 2023.
“If you find someone you love in your life, then hang on to that love.” — Princess Diana, 10 September 2023.
“No matter how hard the past is, you can always begin again.” — Buddha, 17 September 2023.
“I want you to be concerned about your next-door neighbor. Do you know your next-door neighbor?” — Mother Teresa, 24 September 2023.
“Be curious, not judgemental.” — Walt Whitman, 1 October 2023.
“Most things in life come as a surprise.” — Lykke Li, 8 October 2023.
“You can disagree without being disagreeable.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 15 October 2023.
“Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson, 22 October 2023.
“The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.” — George Carlin, 29 October 2023.
![[ Flash cautiously enters a remote alcove in the vast cave prison ... ] Bok: 'You're in the wrong place --- ' Flash: 'Easy. You beat me clean, Bok. That's rare. I want to know the guy who did it.' Bok: 'No. You don't.' Flash: 'You didn't want to kill me. I saw it. Come on, what's your story?' Bok: 'Hhh. Same as everyone else. I went against Ming. We were First Dragonman Infantry. We got sick of dying for him. Stood up. Ended about how you'd think.' Flash: '... I'm sorry. ... For what it's worth, Ming's gone now.' Bok: 'Neat. ... Look, go sleep. Heal a little. or don't, it doesn't matter. They're gonna make me end you either way.'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/flash-gordon-2024-03-05.jpeg)
![[AEGIA watches the rocket train to Frigia vanish into the horizon ... ] Prince Vultan: 'SO! You've caught the real killer. What'll you DO with her?' Aegia: 'Afraid of what she might tell me? I saw you on the drone, whispering into your hand. I surmise the assassin, invisible, sought your confirmation that her target was in sight ... mistaking that you meant the hated Prince Ming, not the beloved Prince Ronal.' Vultan: 'Huh! So why make Flash take the fall?' Aegia: 'Better a man with no country than a head of state, Prince Vultan. I note you did not speak in his defense ... ' Vultan: 'BAH! He's Flash Gordon! He'll wear out any jail you put him in!' Aegia: 'Ha. Do not concern yourself with your wayward assassin, your grace. Prisoners go missing all the time.'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/flash-gordon-2024-03-16.jpeg)
![[ When Keith deletes the email with Sonia's DNA results ... ] Keith Hillend, thinking: 'I'm happy the way things are ... everything's going well. Why rock the boat?'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/mary-worth-2024-02-19.jpg)
![[ Tensions ride high as Mark Trail faces some security issues. ] Tad Crass: 'Get his recorder!' A guard snatches the recorder from Mark Trail's hand. Mark Trail: 'You can't have it!' Crass: 'I don't want this journalist hooligan to write about anything we've said here!' Mark Trail: 'Hey! My family gave me that recorder for my birthday!' (The guard just looks smug.) [ Don't mess with Mark Trail's birthday gifts. ]](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/mark-trail-2024-03-25.jpg)
![[ Boris Sirob, international terrorist, has plans to kidnap Oliver Warbucks. ] Sirob, addressing Harold and Winifred Gray: 'All right. Your ride will be at Warbucks' at 8 pm. No problems?' Winifred: 'Don't fret, Boris. That flatfoot Tracy won't be any problem.' Harold: 'As far as he's concerned, we're just the dumb housekeepers.' Sirob: 'Splendid.' [ Elsewhere ] Dick Tracy: 'You working late, Warbucks?' Warbucks: 'I don't keep banker's hours, Tracy. What time is it?' Tracy: 'Just about 8.' Harold and Winifred Gray, breaking into the room and holding pistols: 'Hello.'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/dick-tracy_2024-03march-10_mike-curtis-charles-ettinger.jpg)
![[ Detective Yelich talks with an associate of Randy's sister ... ] Yelich: 'So what exactly did you two do together?' Don: 'Mostly small cons. But recently we scored big. *Too* big, it seems. Suddenly we had a lot of heat on us. So we thought it best to cut and run.' Yelich: 'But she ran off without you instead?' Don; 'With our entire take. But as quickly as she makes money, she spends it ... probably why she came back home, to drain some relatives of their cash. I can only imagine the sob story she told them.'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/judge-parker_2024-02february-04_francesco-marciuliano-bret-blevins.jpg)
![[ When Kitty invites Keith over for dinner, Brad joins them at Sonia's insistence. ] Kitty: 'Thanks for making dinner tonight, honey.' Sonia: 'MY PLEASURE, Mom! Meatless 'Bluff' Burgers save the planet!' Sonia and Brad touch their burgers together, like clinking wineglasses, and together say, 'Meat is murder! Save the planet!' Sonia: 'You're so cool, Brad!' Keith hacks and coughs as he eats a bite, and thinks, 'Gosh, this fake meat is *awful*!' Sonia thinks: 'And you're hopeless *and* uncool, Keith!'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/mary-worth_2023-12december-17_karen-moy-june-brigman.jpg)
![[ When Keith tries to win over a disinterested Sonia ... ] Keith: 'How's school going?' Sonia, not looking up from her phone: 'Hmm.' [ He notices her guitar ... ] Keith: 'Is that *yours*, Sonia? I always wanted to be a guitarist ... '](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/mary-worth_2024-01january-05_karen-moy-june-brigman.jpg)
![Squirrelly Sandy, who has two squirrels on her shoulders: 'The Kudzu Crusader last struck near my house.' Cherry Trail: 'Hey, I've been in this area before. When Sassy hurt her paws on that bad lawn chemical ... near Violet's house!' [ Violet shrinks into the background. ] Sandy, holding up a note and a sprig of kudzu: 'Here's the note and vine the crusader left. It's written in purple ink!' Cherry Trail: 'How mysterious! Who could possibly write in purple ink?' Narrator: 'Fun Fact: The word Violet also means purple!'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/mark-trail_2023-11november-15_jules-rivera.jpg)
![[ The office of O Cormac Desmond, ASA. ] Tracy: 'You see, it's the method that ties everything together, Owen. It would take a great deal of skill to stab someone just once through the heart with a bladed weapon and kill them. The kind of skill a varsity and Olympic trials epee fencer would have. We have enough, I think, for a search warrant ... and for an arrest warrant for first degree murder.' Desmond picks up the phone: 'Desmond here. Who is the magistrate on duty?'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/dick-tracy-2023-12december-10_mike-curtis-shelley-pleger.jpg)
![[ One man is tased. Another is shocked ... ] Yelchin, looking at Shannon, who's just tased a henchman who now slumps over him in his car: 'How long were you waiting out there with a taser?!' Shannon: 'Was following this guy following you. Now help me get him into your trunk. We gotta be somewhere.' Yelchin: 'How is it I got all the data but I'm the one in the dark right now?'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/judge-parker-2023-10october-09-marciuliano-mike-manley.jpg)
![Marty Moon, narrating: 'Pedro Martinez needs to pass or stop the clock!' [ He's tackled, and there's a snap from his knee. ] Moon: 'Pedro is not getting up from that one.' Luke Martinez, shouting: 'Mijo! I'm coming for you!'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/gil-thorp_2023-11november-18_henry-barajas-rod-whigham.jpg)
![[ Mud guides Rene through the 'Mirakle Method.' ] Murphy: 'Now think of what you always *wanted* but never *got*. Tell me what it is.' Belluso: 'I don't think I *want* to.' Murphy: 'Does it *hurt* to admit? Are you *afraid*? What *is* it, Rene?' Belluso, holding his hands to his face and crying: 'MY FATHER NEVER LOVED ME! HE WAS COLD AND DISTANT! MY MOTHER AND I WERE AFRAID OF HIM!!'](https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/rex-morgan_2023-09september-21_terry-beatty.jpg)
Another Blog, Meanwhile 