What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? Why was that library woman killing people? October – December 2023

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.

So this should catch you up to late December 2023 in Dick Tracy. If you’re reading this after about March 2024 I should have a more up-to-date plot recap at this link. I’ll also bring news about the strip there, if I get any. And now, on to what’s not going to be one of my longer plot recaps, if all goes well.

Dick Tracy.

1 October – 23 December 2023.

My last plot recap came as another of the mayor’s old friends got killed. It was the start of this story, where people turn up with pinpoint stabs to their chest and ancient, rare manuscripts missing.

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!

Next Week!

We’ve had ghost cats in the sky and real cats on the boat. What’s on the agenda now? Selkies and hobgoblins? We’ll have more details on Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant sometime early next year, if the scrolls are speaking to us truly.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? What’s with the art in The Phantom? September – December 2023

Regular Phantom weekday-strip artist Mike Manley has been ill, and has had to take time off. Sunday artist Jeff Weigel stepped in, with strips featuring his work appearing from last week on. On his blog, Phantom writer Tony DePaul reports that Bret Blevins — who’s filled in in the past — will be on the strip full time for the new stor, “to begin soon”. (It’s startling to imagine the conclusion of the Wrack And Ruin story, which has been running since 2021, but there we are.)

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.

After the title card, though, I should catch you up on the weekday continuity in The Phantom for mid-December 2023. If you’re interested in the separate Sunday continuity, or are reading this after about March 2024, there’s likely a more useful recap here. And if any news about Manley, or other people with The Phantom, comes across my desk I’ll share it there, too.

The Phantom (weekdays).

24 September – 16 December 2023.

My last plot recap came at the start of this segment story, “The Journey Home”. And this week begins “The Epilogue”. It’s almost suspicious in its tidiness.

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.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 27th of October, 2023. I would assume that The Phantom has passed on a warning that Rhodia is looking to assassinate President Luaga. We know he didn’t do it as the Unknown Commander of the Jungle Patrol. But he’s had a lot of time unaccounted-for on screen and we can suppose he does the things it makes sense to do.

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.

Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom for the 4th of December, 2023. Can I just pause a moment to mention how adorable Devil is here? Because Devil is just so adorable here.

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.

Next Week!

Murder in the library! I forget whether there was in fact a library murder, but it was certainly book-themed. I’ll just check some things quickly and get back to you with Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy, all going well. See you then.

What’s Going On In Alley Oop? Is Everything In Alley Oop Just A Dream Now? September – December 2023

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.)

So this should catch you up to whatever things can be said to happen in Alley Oop as of mid-December 2023. I should have another essay up by about March 2024, if you’re reading after then and want a more current plot update. Or if you’re looking for news about the strip, in case there is any.

Alley Oop.

17 September – 9 December 2023.

Last time you’ll recall, Alley Oop, Ooola, and Doc Wonmug were stranded on a remote island that might hold on it the moss that grants immortality. After Doc Wonmug’s experience — making him live five years in an hour — Ooola spent an hour on some strange space filled with Platonic solids and boredom. Now it’s Alley Oop’s turn.

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.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 13th of October, 2023. Oh, just think, if Alley Oop had taken a philosophy class in which they covered the Ontological Paradox, he still wouldn’t have an answer, but he’d not have a more complicated answer.

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.

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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.

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And then the 6th of November started the current story. It starts with camping, but Doc Wonmug has a bigger idea in mind. All know, of course, of the butterfly effect, the notion that there can be effects too tiny to be detected but which make radical changes in the future of a system. Doc Wonmug has determined that it can’t be butterflies causing these great changes. It’s dragonflies.

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.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 17th of November, 2023. It’s curious to have two stories with whimsical instant reality changes in a row. They don’t seem to be connected, at least not by anything more than Sayers and Lemon finding it funny.

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.

Next Week!

The Phantom has escaped Gravelines Prison with Savarna, and hasn’t been near-mortally wounded! That whole Wrack and Ruin thing has come to nothing, right? Right? … So what could I have to say about Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekday continuity) next week? We’ll see!

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Who’s the guy capturing Popeye in a bubble? September – December 2023

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.

So this should catch you up to early December 2023 in Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye. If you’re reading this after March 2024 there’s likely a more up-to-date plot recap here. You’ll also find all my recaps of the various Olive And Popeye strips there, as I try to become the world’s premiere Popeye blogger against maybe competition? Enjoy, please.

Olive and Popeye.

12 September – 5 December 2023.

Last time you’ll recall, Olive Oyl has decided to help the ghosts she now sees all over the world. It turns out there are a lot of ghosts around Sweethaven. And we spend a good bit of time chatting with ones who mostly met their ends in ridiculous ways.

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.

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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.

Next Week!

Journey through time, space, and history-warping insects with Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop … unless something happens to change the timeline and the schedule!

Quick Measure of How My Week Is Going

Like most people my most reliable mental health gauge is how long it takes me to find all six differences in the day’s Slylock Fox puzzle. Most of this month, it’s been pretty good, really. Maybe above average. And yet today I was seriously entertaining the thought that perhaps one of the six differences in this underwater scene of — you know, it hardly matters what. It’s an underwater scene — might not be a gill. I don’t know where my head is. It’s probably somewhere in the second panel, missing.

Bob Weber Jr and Scott Diggs Underwood’s Slylock Fox for the 29th of November, 2023. Incidentally it took me longer than it should have to realize the octopus was the hero here and wasn’t just holding the woman in a body cage to imperil her, which is another guide to how much head I have this week.

What’s Going On In Judge Parker? How did Sam figure out everything about Ma Parker’s operation? September – November 2023

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.

So this should catch you up to late November 2023 in Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker. If you’re reading this after about February 2024 I keep all my plot recaps at this link, so there may be a more current one available. Also news, as for example James Bret Blevins’s taking over the art for Judge Parker while Mike Manley recovers from hospitalization. Hoping he’ll be all right soon.

Judge Parker.

3 September – 25 November 2023.

I last checked in just as a chance(?) car accident landed Sam and Abbey in the clutches of Pavel Lebedev, who’s threatening the entire cast with death unless Driver turns over April Parker’s mother. After a several month jump, the moment came. Sam Driver gets the call. Helena Bowen is at her daughter’s house. The plan is on.

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!

What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? Did Gil Thorp’s kid have an abortion? August – November 2023

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.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 14th of October, 2023. Oh, yeah, so Dorothy and Keri have gotten pretty tight the last couple months, bonding over those shenanigans after Nome King Ruggedo discovered the magic word to induce shape-shifting and tried to lead the animals of Oz in a rebellion.

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.

With luck, this essay should catch you up to mid-November 2023. If you’re reading this after about February 2024 odds are there’s a more up-to-date plot recap here. And now on into the world of high school sports …

Gil Thorp.

28 August – 18 November 2023.

Breaking things down by person rather than chronological order worked last time, so I’ll give that a fresh try.

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.

Anyway, Marty takes all this personally, even though only 95% of it is personal. But he has a dog and his support group, so, that’s something.

And hey, slumming basketball star Emmett Tays relied on the Celebrity Speed Trap to bring in special guest stars Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, that’s neat.

Milford Sports Watch!

Who’s playing Milford, and when? Or at least getting some mention on-screen? Here’s the league standings:

• Valley Tech ( 9 September)
• Oakwood ( 12 – 16 September)
• Central ( 23 September)
• Valley Tech ( 24 September)
• Goshen ( 27 – 30 September)
• Valley Tech ( 1 October)
• Jefferson ( 6 October)
• Unidentified ( 19 October)
• Batavia ( 27 – 29 October)
• Valley Tech ( 10 – 18 November)

Next Week!

What comic strip about the drama and romances of a small-town judge features all the international arms smugglers and super-secret spies running for mayor? Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker gets some attention from me, next week, all going well.

Or Maybe _Real Life Adventures_ Has Really Ended for Real, Life

After that late-September strip where Real Life Adventures seemed to announce its ending, only to continue without interruption, it appears Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich are ending the comic after all. The Daily Cartoonist reports, through the Cleveland Plain Dealer, that the strip’s finale will come the 17th of November. That is a Friday, which seems an eccentric choice. Wikipedia tells me the Plain Dealer still runs a Saturday print edition, though, so it’s not that.

Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich’s Real Life Adventures for the 23rd of September, 2023. A commenter claims the characters are representations of Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich, which is what I imagined even without checking.

The strip has been in weekday repeats since the 16th of October, including this week, although Sunday strips were new. And I guess we’ll see whether there’s a new panel for this Friday, or Saturday, or whatnot. No word on why the cartoonists are retiring, although the strip has been going for 32 years, and writer Lance Aldrich has turned 78, and there are only four newspapers left in the United States that even run comics, so it’s easy to make up a plausible story.

As to whether GoComics.com will run repeats? I guess we’ll find out this coming Sunday. Sorry. I never actually know much, but I’m happy to pass what I do know on.

What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Rene Belluso didn’t really reform, did he? August – November 2023

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.

Still, everyone in the strip who knows him is skeptical. I am too. We’ll see, though. If around February 2024 it turns out I was wholly right, or wholly wrong, you’ll likely see a mention of it here. And if any news about the comic strip breaks I’ll try to post it there, too. Meanwhile, let’s recap the last three months of Glenwood life.

Rex Morgan, M.D..

20 August – 12 November 2023.

Fergus “Mud” Murphy, reformed by Rene Belluso’s Mirakle Method self-help seminars, took his apology tour to Glenwood. The results were mixed. Truck Tyler told him to get out of his face, although Truck’s girlfriend Wanda suggested, you know, give the guy a chance.

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.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 21st of September, 2023. He seems sincere.

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!

I Do Not Spend So Much Time Thinking About _Beetle Bailey_ Squirrels to Be Mean

Of course now I’ve said that and people are going to think I don’t intend that. They’re going to think I mean the opposite of it. And not the gentle opposite, where they suppose I spend so little time thinking about Beetle Bailey squirrels as a show of meanness. No, I mean I don’t mean to be mean by thinking about … this sentence isn’t going in a meaningful direction, or it’s in too meaningful a direction. Rather than tell you what I mean — there I go again — maybe I should just say it.

So, Guy Who Draws Beetle Bailey. I’m sorry, I really did think you had it figured out, finding a way to draw a squirrel that matches the style of the strip while still looking like squirrels. And then yesterday we got this:

Neal, Brian, and Greg Walker’s Beetle Bailey for the 7th of November, 2023. In fairness, that squirrel has to have walked up to and past Otto so he has to have made the decision to ignore it, possibly because the squirrel has a three-day pass. Beetle needs to up the thinking on his shirk game here. He’s just being lazy here.

I’m sorry, this just hasn’t got it. I like the confident look in the squirrel’s face, yes, but the whole thing just isn’t working as squirrel for me. If you sized it up a little and changed the color scheme I’d give it good marks for a skunk, but skunks are not squirrels, as you know from that time Aunt Slappy tried to fill in for Pepe Le Pew. Also I just now noticed the copyright on Beetle Bailey is held by something called “Comicana, Inc”. This means something.

What’s Going On In Mary Worth? Did Saul Wynter leave Charterstone? August – October 2023

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.

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Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 11th of September, 2023. “All I ever needed was the love of dogs like Greta and Max, much better dogs than the Bella I had when I joined the strip. … What, too soon?”

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.

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Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 7th of October, 2023. A shared fondness for root beer isn’t much to prove a relationship, no. Ask her if she’s ever listened to The Beatles or if she likes the Scrambler ride at an amusement park.

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.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 17th of October, 2023. I take a lot of cheap shots at the strip so let me enjoy a moment of sincerity: this is a good, strong moment. Hillend looks and acts like someone who’s just had several identity-shaking hits in short order.

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.

Next Week!

John X. Who is he (The Phantom) and what is he up to? Even Lee Falk doesn’t know, so what chance do I have explaining Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom, Sunday continuity? We’ll see next week.

Why My _Mark Trail_ Report Failed To Include Pictures

So I want to apologize that I didn’t include any of the previous three months’ worth of Mark Trail comics in yesterday’s posting. I don’t know if I will. But I do figure to reassure people that I had a good reason not to include them. It was, you know, stuff. Got in the way and all that. Mostly, I had my article ready to go, but I didn’t have quite enough time what with pumpkin-carving and then on Tuesday getting both ready to play pinball and actually playing pinball. I had some good third-ball rallies, although not on the game I feel most confident on. I don’t know what to say there.

Anyway, to make things up for you, I would like to offer this space, where you might find a gigantic squirrel having a chat about the poachers or something like that. I don’t guarantee it, because, I mean, you’ve been here since 2016. But it might happen anyway:

Thank you.

What’s Going On In Mark Trail? Why didn’t the Ohio cops arrest Mark Trail? July – October 2023

When we last saw Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail, Mark and his father were escaping a disastrous press conference where State Senator Sam Smalls pronounced them rioters. It turns out that Sam Smalls was on the take, as the kids say in old-time-radio cop shows, and the Trails led the police to the evidence, particularly in trafficked exotic animals. So you can see why they decided not to prosecute the Trails for punching them and fleeing arrest.

If this seems unsatisfactory to you … well, I admit it feels like a gap to me too. I suppose it fits with the old story motif that the good guys are cleared, or forgiven, whatever their transgressions were. Remember how funny it was that time the Mayor of Townsville explained to the Powerpuff Girls that it’s still illegal to break out of jail even if you broke out to catch the people who framed you for a different crime? It wouldn’t be a joke if not for stories that used this gimmick.

I hope here to catch you up to late October 2023 in Mark Trail. If you’re reading this after about January 2024, or want to see my other Mark Trail essays, look here. If you want to follow on the Rex Scorpius adventures, keep on reading here.

Mark Trail.

31 July – 21 October 2023.

Stunt driver Rex Scorpius and his Mom carried Mark Trail and his Dad away from the alleged riot. At the Scorpius’s campsite they review what they know. Mostly, that it’s crazy Senator Smalls labelled them rioters and demanded their arrest. Happy Trail knows the genre he’s in. He figures Smalls is taking bribes from shipping company DuckDuckGooose. Seems reasonable, but how to prove it?

Mark Trail’s idea: make a big noise and see who starts shooting at them. From this I learn Mark Trail’s been reading a lot of noir detective stories. The next day he begins a live stream on … something … while riding in Rex Scorpius’s racecar. I don’t understand live streaming, sorry. But the plan is a success. The blend of high-speed driving and alarming news about train operations and vinyl chlorides draws in the viewers. And also Professor Bee Sharp.

I’d mentioned last time it was odd Bee Sharp, spokes-scientist for DuckDuckGooose Shipping, hadn’t appeared in the story. He turned up right after my last check-in to report how everything was great, what’s to worry about? But now he’s calling in to the Mark Trail drivestream to report: DuckDuckGooose faked him! They made an AI face and body scam of him to say whatever they want. He barely got paid to have his identity ripped off, while Senator Smalls got a freaking wildebeest from them.

So now the drivesteam has a target: Senator Smalls’s mansion to see if he has got a wildebeest there. They arrive at the same time as the cops and find, yeah, Smalls wanted a wildebeest (and other bribes) to see about loosening rail and chemical safety rules in Ohio. So the Senator’s in trouble and the Trails (and Scorpiuses) are not, and we’re to a happy end.

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Mark Trail’s current story began the 4th of September. But before that, let me share Cherry Trail’s stories. She’d started out with a story about bee colony collapse. The bees heisted from the statue of the Forest Pioneer were dying off. But once you’ve stopped poisoning them, what can you do? Especially when they mostly need easy food to build strength to overcome the mites preying on them?

Fortunately the Sunny Soleil Society has an emergency. This may seem like fortunate timing but, you know, Violet Cheshire has a lot of emergencies. In this case: she’s got way too much hibiscus, which the Sunny Soleil Society President is deathly allergic to. Cherry Trail has to get them out anywhere, and you know what’s good for Georgia bees? So that’s two problems that nicely cancel each other out, once you do a lot of hibiscus transplanting.

Her new story, which began the 18th of September, started with her era’s greatest terror: someone asking if they might have a word with you. Someone’s been leaving accusatory notes about the kudzu on people’s properties. Cherry Trail’s the obvious if not only suspect, except the notes are in cursive so she’s out. Honest Ernest points them to Squirrelly Sandy, proprietor of the bakery and definitely someone who has a lecture ready to go about feeding squirrels peanuts. (Peanuts should not be a squirrel’s only food. But if you’re going to feed it to them, roast the nuts at about 300 Fahrenheit for a half-hour. This kills a fungus that could otherwise be a problem. Plus it makes your home smell of roast peanuts.) She’s quickly won over by Cherry Trail’s anti-what-is-this-Kudzu-Crusader’s-weird-deal energy.

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Meanwhile Mark Trail’s story features his son Rusty. Also Rusty’s friends. After they successfully were not eaten by the bassigator they’re looking for something even more paranormal: aliens. There’s a video of weird lights in the Lost Forest and weird rumors about something out there. Mark Trail leads the gang on an expedition where he gets to show off that he knows how to find north using a compass or moss. (He doesn’t show the analog clock face trick. Look it up, it’s wild.) Also that he can buy pizza anytime he wants.

They don’t find aliens. They do find a weird spot, though. It looks like a campsite, except someone left behind a goofy rubber horse mask. It’s too late from Halloween for it to be a lost costume. There’s cans of weird pink crystals. There’s emptied cans of beans. Mark Trails suspects lost campers, but where are they?

Rusty Trail figures out the mask. It’s from the silly show Prank Starz, where host Tadd Crass would prank people. You remember, it’s from like five or six years ago. Or more precisely, twenty years ago which somehow was already the 21st century shut up maybe it’s you that’s old. It turns out Crass, these days, is hawking Himalayan salt — explaining the pink crystals. And he’s got a survival guide, written “with the help of AI”, so you know it’s going to get people killed. Question is, has it already? We’ll see, in the weeks to come. For now, it’s time for the …

Sunday Animals Watch

Who’s showing up on Sundays, often with Mark Trail himself addressing us? These animals or nature-related events:

• Varroa Mites, 30 July 2023.
• Crows, 6 August 2023.
• The Ohio River, 13 August 2023.
• Bobcats, 20 August 2023.
• Algae and Sea Otters, 27 August 2023.
• Black, Brown, and Grizzly Bears, 3 September 2023.
• Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, and biological diversity on Earth, 10 September 2023.
• Kudzu and Goats, 17 September 2023.
• Spotted Lanternflies, 24 September 2023.
• Sharks, 1 October 2023.
• Spiders and Centipedes, 8 October 2023. Content warning: realistic depiction of a house centipede.
• Bats and White Nose Syndrome, 15 October 2023.
• Coywolves, 22 October 2023. (Coyote-wolf hybrids.)

Next Week!

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth has stepped up its game, going for wedding after wedding — and now pre-marital sex so far offscreen it happened when Tadd Crass was on TV! We’ll look at those goings-on next week, all going well.

Flash Gordon looks weird because it has a new artist. Spider-Man looks gone because it’s gone

So, the new revived Flash Gordon, written and illustrated by Dan Schkade, started this Sunday, the 22nd. The first comment I saw on it, yes, was someone complaining about the artwork and saying it looked like they’d hired the Mark Trail artist. I don’t see it, apart from the bodies being a bit more angular in a way that I think is just the fashion for action-adventure comic books. I don’t really know. It’s the first time in twenty years there was a new Sunday Flash Gordon strip. It’s just a bit of a shame it came in the middle of the repeated story, but if you haven’t seen the Jim Keefe story before you can get a Comics Kingdom subscription and read the previous rerun cycle.

Dan Schkade’s Flash Gordon for the 23rd of October, 2023. I assume we’re starting a story in media res. Many of the Flash Forward strips a couple years ago were little slice-of-life vignettes in what looked like Gordon-esque adventures. Dan Schkade’s was among them. But I’m sure it’s harder to think up a slice of a new story every day than it is to think up a story and draw pieces of that.

More interesting to me is that Monday saw the first new Flash Gordon strip since the early 90s. I don’t know whether this is the same story as the Sunday strips. There’s no information to be had on that yet. But I’m glad to see a new story strip join the fold. No guessing how successful it’ll be, but, c’mon, there’s all sorts of comics that came out of years of repeats to become viable again, like Little Orphan Annie and … … …

We can hope, anyway. Coincidental(?) to the new Flash Gordon, though, is that Comics Kingdom and Marvel Comics have given up the lie that they’re going to do anything with the Amazing Spider-Man. The Daily Cartoonist reports that King Features has stopped the newspaper distribution of reruns. And Comics Kingdom has taken the strip off its list of comics, and taken it off your Favorites page if it happened to be on it.

(Nobody snitch, but: as of the moment I write this, you can still read The Amazing Spider-Man from its URL; add a /2023-10-21 or such to the URL to read a particular date, if you have a subscription. No guessing how long this will last, but if you want to get some particular strip downloaded to your personal archive, this is your chance. Again, everybody be real cool about this, okay?)

What’s Going On In Gasoline Alley? What’s with the talking bear? July – October 2023

The current story in Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley hasn’t just featured Bear, the talking bear. He’s been the protagonist. We’ve met him in earlier stories, although I don’t remember him taking a role this central. It’s one of the less realistic aspects of the comic strip in Jim Scancarelli’s tenure. But it fits with the sort of genial, slightly cornball writing he favors. It feels very like an old-time-radio setup — see the era when Jack Benny had a polar bear in his menagerie — although I don’t remember an exact parallel. (Jack Benny’s polar bear, played by Mel Blanc, mostly made Rochester very nervous.) Anyway if this is going to throw you out of the extremely soft world of Gasoline Alley it’s maybe not the strip for you.

This should catch you up to mid-October 2023 in the doings in the great forests outside Gasoline Alley. If you find yourself in 2024 or even later and want a more current plot recap, there’s probably an essay more useful to you here. And now on with the show.

Gasoline Alley.

23 July – 14 October 2023.

Rufus was breaking out of the hospital last I checked in. Rufus and Joel went to a bear’s cave to hide from their hospital bills and that closed out the month.

From about the 1st of August the new and current story started. This focuses on Bear. Not the one whose cave Rufus and Joel have invaded, the one whose friends with fifth-generation family members Boog and Aubee and their mother, park ranger Hoogy Skinner. Bear runs across a lost kid, some toddler just old enough it’s alarming no adults are around. Bear starts asking the other animals, who don’t know anything and don’t want to be eaten by a bear.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 7th of September, 2023. Bear argues that Jones’s parents don’t care about him or they wouldn’t be missing. While I understand the feeling, this seems uncharitable. For all we know they were abducted into the current Judge Parker storyline and will be back as soon as they can escape. There’s no knowing.

Bear does find an abandoned campsite, and worse, one that’s started a forest fire. He runs with the kid to Ranger Hoogy Skinner’s tower. She already knows about the fire, and there’s helicopters dropping water on it already, so it’s nice that some of these aren’t big problems. The people registered at the campsite — name of Burns — are nowhere to be found. But there’s also no reports of lost children. The only hint of the kid’s name is that his shirt has ‘Jones’ written on the back, but a first name? Last? Athlete his dad likes? No one can say.

The Ranger has to contact the child protection authorities, or as the script refers to them, the agency people. Who come out, after Skinner has convinced Bear he should hang out in the woods out of sight. We follow him, so we don’t know exactly what happens except that Jones(?) cries a lot and runs away, into Bear’s arms. Bear roars, scaring the agency people off … for now.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 20th of September, 2023. If you’re wondering how the frightened, confused young Jones there finds a real-live grown-up roaring bear to be a comforting figure, please imagine that Bear is voiced by Bert Lahr. Now you want to be adopted by him too, don’t you? If that’s not doing it for you, how about Alan Reed? Daws Butler? Don’t worry, I can roll off familiar-seeming names until one of them lands. And so can Jim Scancarelli. Ed Wynn work for you? Yes, of course Ed Wynn works for you.

They’re soon back, though. They’re happy to let Ranger Skinner watch the kid for now. I mean, this is Gasoline Alley. The last character added who wasn’t a foundling was Walt Wallet, a hundred and five years ago. But they’re coming with wildlife authorities who want to put Bear in a zoo. And they’re already here! Wallet puts her ranger hat on Bear and they whip up the first explanation that comes into anyone’s mind: pretend that Bear is a Smokey Bear animatronic. This somehow satisfies everyone in authority, possibly because they’re busy with the great Michigan’s Adventure pumpkin heist.

Now Hoogy Skinner has to watch over Boog, Aubee, Jones, and also her husband Rover. She does what you’d expect and hires Bear to babysit them all. (The pay is room and board.) And that’s our soft pilot introduction to Mr Bearvedere, coming this fall to the NBC Blue network! Looking forward to it!

Next Week!

You know who else is on good terms with a bear? Cherry Trail. I’ll check out what’s happening in Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail next week, all going well. See you then.

The Comic Strip Industry Is Why I’m Late Today

Sorry, been checking The Daily Cartoonist every couple minutes all day. Between the Betty Boop musical, and the Popeye fan film, and the Flash Gordon comic strip revival, I feel like I should be watching for the Outbursts of Everett True VR Experience or the They’ll Do It Every Time Funko Pops. The Howard Huge Collectible Card Game. The Kabibble Kabaret Expanded Cinematic Universe. The Big Ben Bolt line of retro-style Swatches. Whatever happens, I’ll tell you about sometime after I know. The other way around would be peculiar.

What’s Going On In Prince Valiant? What is Radolf’s deal and why is he in this? July – October 2023

The current storyline in Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant has the Prince and his son sent out to the western regions, in what’s now Wales, to sort out why it’s so unsettled that witch-hunters like Dialyodd are taking over. The problem is just enough Saxons invading that the locals can’t drive them off, but not enough that they can take over. And nobody has forces to spare so there’s no reason for the invasion not to just fester. And along the way destroy every bit of farmland to be found. Radolf, whom we’d now consider an expat Saxon, can teach the locals to feed themselves from that inexhaustible, infinite resource, the sea. But to do that, he needs people to not get hacked into bitty pieces by a war that no longer has a point or a way out.

So this should catch you up to mod-October 2023 in the strip. If you’re reading after about January 2024(!) there’s likely a more up-to-date plot recap at this link. See you then, I hope.

Prince Valiant.

16 July – 8 October 2023.

Prince Valiant and his son Arn were sent to Wales to figure what to do about these all Saxon invaders. Feeding the people once the invasion is over is easy enough, so the postwar settlement shouldn’t be anything hard. It’s overcoming the Saxton chieftain Baedwulf’s stronghold in Gwynedd that’s the trick.

So Valiant, Arn, and local leader Aeddan try a trick. They sneak into the stronghold, Valiant and Arn presenting themselves as Saxon emissaries carrying an urgent message for Baedwulf. The guards buy this, all right, and they’re able to get to kidnapping Baedwulf. Sneaking Baedwulf out, wrapped in a tapestry, works until a guard notices an anything, and then it turns into a chase scene that reminds us why we always ignored the encumbrance rules.

Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant for the 3rd of September, 2023. It’s reasonable that Valiant would have checked escape routes on his way in. So spotting a place where he could leap into the water makes sense. It’s jumping down Death Cliff that it’s stunning to see actually happen.

Valiant holds off the castle guards long enough for Arn and Aeddan to sneak out with their captive. And he makes a cool escape by diving into the high tide. Reuniting on shore, our heroes plus Baedwulf meet up with Gwynedd local Caitrin, her Saxon husband Radolf, and Radolf’s sister Bronwyn, who’d been one of the Saxon guards. Valiant’s goal is getting Baedwulf to agree to a peace where they can live here too, and eat and stuff, just stop fighting. Baedwulf’s suspicious, especially with the kidnapping and all. But he’s willing to talk through to dawn, when a fresh troupe of Saxon warriors find them. It looks desperate for Valiant and Arn, and the Gwynedd folk. But Baedwulf did cry halt, this Sunday.

Next Week!

According to the comic strip, next week “The Tide Turns”! But I won’t be there to summarize it. I’m planning a trip down to Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley, all going well. We’ll see how that turns out.

I Have No Idea What This _Compu-Toon_ Means and I’m Not Sure I Want to Know

I think I can parse out something like what this comic strip might mean, but I think it’s at least as likely that Simon here uses the Internet to re-experience not being able to see the tops of tables and having to pick from the part of the menu where none of the good foods are.

Charles Boyce’s Compu-Toon repeat for the 7th of October, 2023. Heck of a thing if the booster seat just means it’s emotional support, though, right? Rallying Simon for the day ahead?

And Now There’s a New _Flash Gordon_ Comic Strip Coming?

The Daily Cartoonist once more has news I’m passing along, slower and later, to people who likely read it themselves already. But, what the heck, especially since this should have an effect on my What’s Going On In … meal ticket.

That news: King Features hired Dan Schkade to draw and write new Flash Gordon comics. No word yet on when the new Flash will launch, though there being a press kit for it suggests “sometime soon”. D D Degg took a guess of January, which would coincide with the 90th anniversary of the strip’s original launch.

I figure to pick Flash Gordon up for my story strip recaps. It is supposed to run weekdays and Sundays, though there’s no word whether it’ll have separate weekday and Sunday continuities. I’d like there to be separate continuities. It’s such a good feeling to look at my deadlines and see a nice, easy once-a-week (or, for Olive and Popeye, twice-a-week) strip coming up.

That’s for the future, though. My plan for the next couple weeks is, barring a surprise, to take these strips in this order:

• Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant (10 October)
• Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley (17 October)
• Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail (24 October)
• Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth (Halloween)
• Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) (Election Day) (US) (If anyone notices. I mean, the only ballots are for like the lower house of New Jersey’s state legislature and I dunno, adjunct governor of Worse Dakota or something? Does anyone even remember?)

And if you’re interested in all my story strip coverage, this link should bring you to all my What’s Going On In … essays. And I had a good enough handle on the most recent Rip Haywire story that I’m thinking about it. We’ll see.

What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? Why did the crook warehouse burn down? July – September 2023

Leech Madsen set it on fire. The recently-concluded story in Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy climaxed, in part, with a fire at the telemarketing scam shop that the schizophrenic Audie runs. It starts in the server room. Madsen seems to have started the fire and then go to shake down Audie for the rest of the money to be had. This seems like a poor plan to me, as Madsen went and got lost in the chaos of the fire. But we have to allow even villains blackmailing other villains to sometimes make bad decisions.

Hope you enjoy catching up to early October, now. If you’re reading around December, I expect to have my next Dick Tracy plot recap done. That essay, and all my Dick Tracy recaps, should be at this link. And now, the story.

Dick Tracy.

9 July – 30 September.

Sprocket “Susan” Nitrate, onetime film scammer turned girlfriend of author Adam Austin, had a temp job working for a telemarketing scam firm. The boss, Audie, who keeps having movie-quote conversations with imaginary figures, has other stuff going on. He’d sent ‘Leech’ Madsen to pay off Anders, the guy who’d been supplying stolen telecommunications equipment. Madsen shot him, instead, and pocketed the payoff. And figures to get back to Audie and collect his own payoff too.

From there, though, we have a surprisingly direct plot. Dick Tracy and Sam Catchem hit up their street sources, looking for places that might be housing a suspicious lot of activity. This leads them to a recently-evacuated warehouse, the spot where Audie set up before moving above the TV station, the only other working building in the neighborhood. They also check security camera footage, good detective work that leads nowhere.

Mike Curtis and Shelley Pleger’s Dick Tracy for the 9th of August, 2023. An aspect of this story I like is that Susan/Sprocket’s an experienced enough hand at this that everybody recognizes she should be let to run things, especially in an emergency. It’s a subtle beat of how authority will break free of formal structure.

Anders, in the hospital, recovers enough to start naming names. The cops announce their lead on the shooting to the press. This gives Sabrina, the boss’s right-hand competent person, the tip-off to evacuate. And Susan discovers another reason to evacuate: the server room is on fire! And, more, Madsen is back, holding a gun on Audie. It’s all a big confusing mess. Madsen flees, but in the smoke and confusion ends up running into Dick Tracy and Sam Catchem. Madsen keeps on fleeing, eventually running into the Abandoned Blade Runner Building. Worse, the floor he climbs to collapses. He’s lucky to not fall directly onto a heap of concrete blocks and wood shards and rebar, but because he lands in a great heap of pigeon droppings.

Meanwhile, the fire. Susan (remember her?) oversees evacuating the telemarketing lair. And she leads Sabrina and Audie through the sewers finding, in the end, an abandoned lair with power and water. They thank her; Susan promises to not remember her at all.

Mike Curtis and Shelley Pleger’s Dick Tracy for the 23rd of August, 2023. Also an interesting beat: Susan gets away with her part in this scam. She’s among the few Dick Tracy villains to get away with it, and to have no obvious reason why she wouldn’t continue to. (The Pouch is the other one who comes to mind. He got away with using a popcorn maker to shoot a guy, back in the 70s, so he’s probably escaped justice? We’ll see.)

After a heck of a day at work Susan returns to her and Adam’s hotel room. Adam’s book contract thingy went well, and he’s ready to take an overseas vacation. Susan, equipped with a fresh forged passport, is ready to go too. The story comes to its happy end the 16th of September.

Although that was after a 15-day pause for another Minit Mystery. From the 27th of August guest writer Eric Costello and guest artist Mike Sagara told a little puzzle about a murder of a Knights baseball player at Weeghman Park. Get the references?

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The current story started the 17th of September and it’s looking like a nice little murder mystery. Someone killed Wilhelmina Caxton, yet another friend of the mayor’s, so you know there’s pressure to get answers quickly. No sign of forced entry, no sign of struggle, just stab wounds to the chest. Missing: a late 13th century manuscript.

Also dead: Dr Aldus Manutius of the Pfister Institute, who hadn’t been seen in eleven months or so but you know how these Institutes are, everyone figured he was busy on something or other. He’s also dead by stabbing. He had been cataloguing medieval manuscripts, last anyone saw him. And that’s what we know for now.

Next Week!

What is Wales going to do with all these Saxon invaders? Also, can we maybe use the seas to feed people? I check out Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant if all goes to plan.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (weekdays)? Why does Mozz care when Kit Jr decided to come home? July – September 2023

The weekday story has just started the seventh and final part of the tremendous wrack-and-ruin story. It begins with Kit Junior visiting the Skull Cave and finding everybody but Mozz gone. Mozz is low-key freaked out because to get from Arunachal Pradesh, India, to Bangalla he must have set out more than a day or two ago. And this whole story has been the course of two nights, one in which Mozz lays out his prophecy and one where The Phantom acts on it. We appear to be in the morning after that second night.

In Mozz’s prophecy, told the first night, The Phantom should have been suffering from a near-fatal gunshot to his hips. Over the course of several days he reveals Kit Jr’s location to Savarna Devi, who goes to find him and meet her old enemy, Constable Jampa. If Kit Junior was already going to Skull Cave when Mozz had his vision, though, then — what did he see? It’s hard to imagine Kit Jr getting to Skull Cave, finding his father not there, and heading back home in time to meet Devi there. But how is he here, now, if that’s not what “would” have happened without Mozz’s interference?

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 22nd of September, 2023. Not sure what Mozz is more upset by, Kit Jr appearing in possible defiance of his vision or that he didn’t see having an answer in mind in case one of the Walker twins should happen to pop in. Anyway wildly speculating here but I wonder if this is going to be a chance to fill in aspects of the wrack-and-ruin prophecy elided over before, such as the collapse of Kit Sr and Diana’s marriage and Heloise’s disenchantment with The Phantom project.

So this is what has me waiting to see the new day’s installment of Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom as it’s published. Any news I get about the strip, or updates on the Sunday-continuity story, should go at this link. And sometime around December I should have an even more updated plot recap.

The Phantom (weekdays).

3 July – 23 September 2023.

Last time I checked in with the daily story, the jailbreak was all but broken. The Phantom’s done everything he can to be sure if he’s injured he dies without revealing where Kit Jr is. Savarna Devi appears to be the woman of destiny. What remaining Rhodian guards are shooting at her can’t get near hitting her. She figures, why not try shooting even more people?

The Phantom arranges for the Bandar tribe to accompany the liberated prisoners. Most of them drive to Bangalla for an asylum I’m sure won’t cause further crises. But he, Devil, Savarna, and Babudan are on their own. And the warden who’s just seen the greatest jailbreak in Gravelines history catches them. Devil, Devi, and Babudan escape untouched. The Phantom, no; he’s shot in the hip, exactly as in Mozz’s vision. The Phantom’s done everything he can to make sure he dies, since he can’t get Babudan to leave him behind.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 14th of July, 2023. I agree with The Phantom, I would be much more comfortable with one last sweep of all the bathrooms and dresser drawers to make sure nobody’s left a charging cable behind.

The weird thing is he doesn’t die. The wound is around where he expects, but it’s not as deep as it “should” be. Even without the Bandar wound powder it’s healing up. He’s able to get back to Hero, his horse, and to ride to the Bandar camp. Where, among other things, Guran’s given Diana a tea to make her sleep. Between the amnesia powder and the sleep tea he’s got a potion of dubious consent for everything. Anyway, The Phantom’s back in safe territory and isn’t dead from his wounds or in danger of revealing anything he doesn’t want to. And that, the 16th of September, finishes “Dungeons Undone”, the sixth chapter of this story.

The seventh, “The Journey Home”, began the 18th and my clickbait introduction tells you everything going on there. So now there’s not much to do but look to …

Next Week!

Telemarketing scams! A Minute Mystery! A professor who’s been in his office for eleven months now! And yet another friend of the mayor’s been murdered. Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy gets the spotlight, if my plans hold up. We’ll see.

Turns out _Real Life Adventures_ just wanted that Nebus-blogger boost

For all my mild fretting, turns out Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich were just having a little giggle on Saturday. From today:

Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich’s Real Life Adventures for the 25th of September, 2023. Well of course I remember diagramming sentences. An abstruse thing where you apply a bunch of rules to turn a thing everyone understands into an impossible complicated figure? Sign me up. I’m not sure I liked anything more than getting to show implicit subjects or anything where you had a prepositional phrase dangling off of whatever made you draw a tree on the sentence line. No, I never understod what the point of diagramming sentences was, but I didn’t need to. There was so much joy to be had in the diagramming. Anyway no, I haven’t ever had reason to think I was anything but neurotypical, why do you ask?

So you can go on reading it as you enjoy in your GoComics page or your local newspaper. Unless, that is, your local newspaper is one of the many run by the Gannett (USA Today) chain, which has recently decided that all its newspapers will run comics from a set list of 34. It’s not an awful set of comics (although four of them — Peanuts, For Better Or For Worse, Family Circus, and FoxTrot weekdays are all repeats from a different century), but Real Life Adventures isn’t on them. My individual reading of the matter is that Gannett newspapers have the freedom to carry syndicated comics off the list, but only if they don’t use it. We’ll see.

I have never been able to keep straight what makes a verb “intransitive” and suspect it’s a hoax.

I don’t know whether _Real Life Adventures_ is ending

So I was reading through my GoComics page yesterday when I ran into this:

Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich’s Real Life Adventures for the 23rd of September, 2023. A commenter claims the characters are representations of Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich, which is what I imagined even without checking.

And yes, Real Life Adventures has been going 32 years and change. It seems like an announcement that the panel strip, mostly about family scenes, is ending. Or at least that one of the cartoonists is retiring. I haven’t seen (as of this writing) an article on The Daily Cartoonist. And the Sunday strip has both a 2023 copyright date and Wise and Aldrich’s names on it, and no hint of finality to it. However, Sunday strips have a longer lead time than dailies. And it’s also easy to change the copyright date when rerunning a strip. Monday might offer some hint, but I’m writing this very late on Saturday.

Incidentally, over on my untended mathematics blog I had cause to talk about mathematics topics raised in the strip. You might enjoy that if you want a better handle on what the comic strip is like.

What’s Going On In Alley Oop? Why did the aliens stop shooting at them? June – September 2023

I’m not positive. The space adventure that brought Alley Oop and company to the center of the Milky Way featured aliens shooting at Our Heroes. Our Heroes fell into another universe, where the counterpart aliens blew up. But then back in our universe again the aliens weren’t upset at all. The writing suggested this was a changed timeline, but Our Heroes didn’t do anything to change the timeline. Unless this was some alternate-universe shenanigans that went over my head I think the writers just lost track of what had been done. Sorry.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 5th of July, 2023. Oh, well, maybe this explains it all.

So this should catch you up to mid-September 2023 in Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop. If you’re reading from the distant future of, oh, mid-December 2023, there’s likely a more up-to-date plot recap at this link. I’ll also store any news about the comic strip that I come across there.

Alley Oop.

26 June – 16 September 2023.

The USS Gomblex, carrying Our Heroes plus a crew from Warth, was under attack. Their best plan to escape destruction was doing some tech stuff to the Time Cube and project the whole ship two hundred years back in time. It’s a brilliant success. They see the center of the Milky Way and, as should be, a giant cork plugging up the black hole that’s otherwise going to drain the galaxy.

Qqqc, the Warth captain, deploys a fleet of probes to reduce the pressure on the cork so it won’t be dislodged. What do you know, but this is exactly the thing that pulled the cork two hundred years ago, creating the crisis that the USS Gomblex picked up Alley Oop, Ooola, and Doc Wonmug to fix. It’s a nice bit of time-loop logic.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 21st of July, 2023. I like Qqqc, and would like to see more of them. But they occupy the same character niche as Doc Wonmug does, so it’s hard to have reasons to have the both together.

Unfortunately, the USS Gomblex falls into the black hole. It emits them into the Opposite Universe. The aliens are in the opposite universe too, and attack. When the Gomblex’s shields go down, the alien ship can’t help but explode with a !GNAB. It’s a bit of a confusing universe but it’s all dealt with soon enough. Another trip through the black hole and they get back to where they were … except there’s no black hole sucking the galaxy down. And the alien ship isn’t attacking. They want to talk.

Eric, from the Andromeda Galaxy, explains things. The USS Gomblex is on trial for trying to destroy the universe by opening the Milky Way Black Hole. They’re guilty, even if it was well-intended, and get fined two kilograms of gold. Still, it’s a reasonably happy end, and Qqqc makes kind noises about maybe working together again. I’d be up for it.

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And with the 31st of July the current story starts. Doc Wonmug, following a lead from Myc, thinks he’s figured the secret to immortality: moss. Particularly, the moss found on a secret tropical island which they helicopter to. After landing on Eternal Island, the helicopter explodes, threatening Our Heroes with a lifetime of living on a beautiful tranquil island.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 21st of August, 2023. I am curious how the mobile, talking plants and the talking boar are going to figure into all this.

There’s strange things about the island, though. Alley Oop gets what seem to be responses from the plants, everything from playing tic-tac-toe with him to dropping fruits in Ooola’s hands. Plus there’s a boar trying to point out how the animals talk too.

This doesn’t stop Doc Wonmug from finding the immortality moss. He bites it and disappears, to Alley Oop’s and Ooola’s perspective. To his perspective, everyone else stops. Or moves impossibly slowly, at least. He lives in this incredibly accelerated speed for five years, his time; for five minutes, Alley Oop and Ooola’s time. In that time he has a lot of wild adventures, albeit without any human interaction.

Ooola decides to give it a try. When she eats the moss, though, she experiences a strange alternate space. It seems to be an infinite expanse occupied by nothing but the occasional polyhedron. She can’t feel anything — even touching herself — and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else there.

Next Week!

The Ghost Who Walks has managed not to get himself killed breaking out of Gravelines prison! But are there sinister forces trying to drag him back to a lost grave and the end of the Walkers? And how is this going to set up the storyline going in the Sunday installments of The Phantom? Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom gets some attention from me next week, according to prophecy.

_Compu-Toon_ is being _Compu-Toon_ again, this time with oscilloscope monsters

People ask me whether Charles Boyce’s Compu-Toon is a real comic strip that exists for real, in reality, or whether it’s one of those comics that exist only for me to find baffling examples of.

I don’t know.

All I can say with Descartes-like confidence is that I keep reading it, and it keeps giving me Cow Tools moments more intense than any other comic strip ever does. For example, here’s today’s installment.

Charles Boyce’s Compu-Toon for the 17th of September, 2023. Thing is, clean up that monster a little and give him friendly eyes and you’ve got a good-looking imaginary friend. It’s not Dr Seuss levels of good, but it’s getting there and certainly usable for a daily comic strip. The last update of the Keypad Kid blogspot is a Christmas message from 2014.

The understated detail that makes this really capture my baffled mind: the monster in the reflection’s chest looks like an oscilloscope to me. But every oscilloscope I’ve ever seen has the screen on the left and the controls on the right. I mean of horizontally-oriented oscilloscopes. I’m aware there are oscilloscopes where the screen is the center and the controls underneath. Please stop writing letters. I don’t claim to have seen a disproportionate number of oscilloscopes for a person of my age and work history, but I know this bit of business. And yes, sometimes there’s controls on the left of the screen, but there’s usually more controls on the right.

Where this gets relevant is the monster’s oscilloscope-like display has the screen on the right. This is exactly like what you’d see in the true reflection of an oscilloscope-chested creature.

Why, of the many elements of this comic — the shoe-store seat that Irving sits on, the corner plant that looks like the only other thing in an endless void of floor, the wall painting of Madrid’s subway system — did Boyce decide to go for authenticity in the control surfaces of his reflected monster?

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Who is Patcheye and why should we care? June – September 2023

Among the characters brought back to Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s twice-a-week Olive and Popeye comic is Patcheye. Patcheye is a pirate ghost, introduced by Bud Sagendorf into the comic book back in 1963. Bud Sagendorf imported Patcheye into the main strip in a 1971 story. Comics Kingdom conveniently reran the whole story again late last year/early this year. So it’s easy to catch the whole thing if you want to read it yourself and have a subscription.

Patcheye’s deal is that the ghost of Popeye’s great-great-great-gran’pappy, waiting for a boy in the family to want to be a pirate. Swee’Pea declared that wish and so we got a couple weeks of Patcheye training Swee’Pea into piracy. Patcheye puts together a crew of Swee’Pea and Olive Oyl and in a rowboat takes on a battleship. It then becomes a story of getting Swee’Pea out of jail on the piracy charge. Patcheye then disappears from the story, returning only to leave in disgust when Swee’Pea is spanked as a naughty little boy instead of hung as a pirate. An underwhelming use of a neat idea? That’s the Thimble Theatre Plot Promise.

So this should catch you up to mid-September 2023 in Popeye’s comic strip adventures. Most of the action is in Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s twice-a-week Olive and Popeye. I guess I’m doing a follow-up to this around December 2023, that’ll someday be at this link. If all goes well. Until then, here’s what has gone on.

Olive and Popeye.

20 June – 12 September 2023.

Last time, in the Shadia Amin Olive-focused side of the strip, Olive Oyl and Petunia (Whaler Joe’s daughter) were spelunking in the Soulful Cave. (Whaler Joe is the guy who raised Popeye after Poopdeck fled and Popeye’s Mom, Irene, was lost at sea.) But Olive Oyl got attacked by a giant leech, and Petunia pulled her body out. Her dead body.

Luckily, as Linden (the Sea Hag’s intern) explains over the phone, it’s the Soul Full cave. It’s chock full of all kinds of soul and soul-location-management tools. Petunia’s able to find an altar of some kind that puts Olive’s soul back in … well, Petunia’s body. But Olive Oyl’s able to get this sorted out fast.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 25th of July, 2023. Amin’s page here. Much of the story has been in a lighthearted, bouncy tone for stuff about death and unquiet ghosts and all that. (For example, Olive Oyl gets back in her right body by threatening the Soul Altar Or Whatever with a hammer.) This is one of the quieter panels and unusually affecting. A bit of this sells the whole drama.

But not without a change. Olive Oyl can see the spirits of the dead around her. Not just the ones who won’t shut up being around, like Patcheye. She decides she needs to convey messages from lost souls to the living. And she puts together a gang to sail around Sweethaven and take care of this. Mae as bodyguard, Sutra as the person who knows Linden in case of annoying occult business, Petunia as marine biologist, Cylinda Oyl as assistant. (Cylinda Oil had been Castor Oyl’s wife but was written out of the strip in 1928, that is, before Popeye was introduced to it.)

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On the Popeye side of things, there’s also an expedition going together. It has a less clear purpose. Mostly, Whaler Joe has been missing the sea, despite the pleasantness of Sweethaven and being with Popeye again. So they’re setting out on a little journey to see Sir Pomeroy, 10th Earl of Vauxhall, who I never heard of before this either. Turns out that apart from a guest appearance in the Bobby London era, he’s been out of Popeye since writer Ralph Stein left the strip in August 1959. He apparently was a British explorer with exaggerated mannerisms, which I’m sure hasn’t dated one bit since the end of the Anti-British National Liberation War/Malayan Emergency.

That’s the big development. The rest of the Popeye side of the strip has been about roping all of the sailor man’s family into a bunch that’s staying at Sweethaven. This includes Poopdeck Pappy, and Pappy’s mother, Popeye’s mother Irene, Popeye’s aunt Agnes Jones. Maybe even Agnes’s husband, Davy Jones, the spirit of the sea.

And in the main, Sunday-only Thimble Theatre Presents Popeye strip? Nothing much. Some fun one-off gags, with a nice mix of characters we know well and characters we haven’t seen since Herbert Hoover was President. Even an appearance by the long-forgotten Other Katzenjammer Kid. So that’s all fun but nothing that doesn’t explain itself. Except that a bunch of the Sundays have featured the wealthy Mr Kilph, last seen in the 1930s. He started as a philanthropist setting up Popeye boxing matches. He mutated into a villain setting up Popeye boxing matches, possibly because Elzie Segar forgot what Kilph’s deal was. Or because rich villains are fun to write and fun to beat. I don’t have any way of knowing whether Milholland is planning to go somewhere with this, but we’ve seen he is willing to do stories in the mother strip.

Next Week!

Who yanked out the plug at the center of the galaxy so everything could drain into the black hole? And how will Doc Wonmug, Alley Oop, and Ooola avoid responsibility for it? Also: hey, how about a trip to Creepy Animate Plant Island and some moss that makes you immortal but really fast? It’s time to look at Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop if the spacetime continuum doesn’t get all broken yet again.

It really looks like _Fred Basset_ has ended

Or it’s maybe possible that you might be able to snag a job drawing a mild, pleasant comic strip about an English dog. But since shortly after the most famous English basset hound in American newspapers celebrated its 60th anniversary the comic’s been in repeats.

The Daily Cartoonist, a better source than me for comic strip news, has an unconfirmed claim that Arran Keith — daughter of the strip’s creator Alex Graham, and the current rights holder — is looking for a new artist. This would seem like a chance for someone with a good clean line who likes drawing English gardens and is eager to build up a six-month lead time. However, the GoComics comment which says they’re seeking a new artist itself cites Google Bard. Google Bard, as a “conversational generative artificial intelligence chatbot”, is part of the wave of LLMs disrupting the epistemology industry, breaking the influence Big Facts has long held on Truth. It is less of a source of information about the comic strip industry than you personally are when you’re in the shower and remembering stuff about Broom Hilda.

The only thing that seems definite which I can find is an interview Allison Ferns conducted with Arran Keith for BBC Radio Sussex. (This is where I get the news about the comic having a six-month lead time. I fantasize some days of having a six-minute lead time here.) There’s no word of a new artist search, or plans to bring new artists in after a reasonable number of repeats. She instead speaks of “[doing] what Peanuts and happened with so many other cartoons have done” and repeat decades-old strips. This doesn’t preclude making new comics, if a promising enough talent appears. But it seems to me a very slender chance.

(The tune heard at the start of the interview is from the Fred Basset animated cartoon of the 70s, done by Bill Melendez studios.)

Guy Who Draws _Beetle Bailey_ In Squirrel Game Of Cat And Mouse With Me

And here I am, not being cat, mouse, squirrel, or beetle. Also not a Beatle but that’s complicated. As promised yesterday, though, I wanted to take a good look at Beetle Bailey and just look hard at the squirrel situation here.

So, first, I’m not disliking this. The squirrel heads are designed with a pretty strong triangle to them, which fits the way real squirrels look. The tails are a little thin, but not unreasonably so if they’re somewhere that doesn’t get very cold winters. I’m sure there are winter strips showing them dealing with 80-foot snowbanks, but we also have wintertime strips where Beetle’s in short sleeves, so the squirrel tails are fine. I would like you to admire that previous sentence as quite the heap of words.

Neal Walker, Brian Walker, and Greg Walker’s Beetle Bailey for the 7th of September, 2023. I know what you’re thinking: wait, aren’t the golf jokes in Beetle Bailey always on a Wednesday? No. Wednesday is the day for Miss Buxley jokes for some reason. Golf jokes can, and will, happen any day of the week.

The squirrels are shaggy in a way that I don’t think you’d see in Boner’s Ark. But the lines do a lot to suggest the tails as fuzzy and I get extending that to the whole bodies. The claws may be a little rough but in a way consistent with how the human fingers are drawn. And being consistent with the comic’s overall style is the goal, after all.

Now what I’m wondering is: how big is that golf ball at the base of Squirrel Tree? And why is there a golf ball teed up in front of him?

What’s Going On In Judge Parker? Is everyone in Judge Parker stupid? June – September 2023

No, absolutely not. And I think even people who can’t stand Francesco Marciuliano’s characterizations would agree that the characters are, at least, presented with rather good emotional intelligence, which maybe the most important kind. Still, the last couple months of story hinge on characters making decisions that the uninvolved onlooker might call wrong.

But these are also decisions characters made in the immediate aftermath of a car crash, one that totalled both cars. Even the smartest of us will be off their game right after that. And even if one is smart, one sometimes makes mistakes, especially in unfamiliar circumstances. I’ll get to the curious mistakes in time, but I also want to flag that just because a character screws up doesn’t mean they, or their author, is stupid.

I hope this catches you up to early September 2023 in Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker. If you’re reading this after about December 2023, there’s most likely a more up-to-date plot recap here. Thanks for checking in right now, though.

Judge Parker.

11 June – September 2, 2023.

Abbey and Sam were smooching again. It’s part of a whirlwind of ambivalence both feel about splitting up over a freak event. Sam suggests, and Abbey accepts, a romantic getaway. Or at least a getaway, in a remote cabin beyond the real of cell phones, Wi-Fi, or anything but the chance to figure if they do want to be fighting.

They’re barely outside cell phone range when their car smashes into another. Sam insists the other driver swerved into them. It seems unlikely to be on purpose. The other driver flees the car. In the backseat is an unconscious child. Sam decides on the best of their limited options: leave a note, take the child, and hike the fifteen or so miles to their cabin. There’s a land line there that should work. Not considered: hike the mile or two back to where there’s cell phone service. It’s a mistake, but one that’s very easy to make in the circumstances. They’d been heading to the cabin, they think of the cabin as safety, so the decision was made without being thought out.

Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 27th of July, 2023. Meanwhile, here, given the information Sam and Abbey have? I think they made the best choice they could have. Possibly walking back to where there was cell signal would have been wiser, although in that case the kidnapper would still have got them and they wouldn’t have been saved by the bear. Maybe by Mr Grey, though.

Another thing not thought out: what is a kid going to think when they regain consciousness being hauled into the woods by strangers? They’re going to run away, of course, dashing any hopes of getting to the cabin before it’s too dark. Sam and Abbey try and explain that they only took her because her father was gone. The kid says she wasn’t being driven by her father but by someone who works for him: “he was going to make my dad pay”.

So, a kidnapper. Who has now come back, ready to grab the girl again. Not answered: why did he run away from the car without the kid, only to come back for the kid? Since we know so little about the kidnapper’s personality, or available information, it’s hard to say. My best guess is he panicked after the crash and then tried to put something back together. It’s also not clear why he drove the car into Sam and Abbey’s. But if he was fleeing with the kid, and thought nobody was ever on this road, the accident is understandable.

The kidnapper’s facing them now, though. Abbey thought she heard something following them in the woods as they searched for the kid. It wasn’t the kidnapper. What she heard was a bear. The kidnapper did not learn the lesson of Mark Trail’s story about Sid Stump and his bear-fighting ranch. That lesson, you’ll recall, is “don’t get eaten by a bear”.

Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 28th of July, 2023. “So you say Francesco Marciuliano started out writing the humor comics, huh?”

While fleeing from this trauma Sam almost runs into a car. It’s driven by Mr Grey, the stepfather of Gunther over in Luann. The kid — Alina — recognizes him as Lev, someone who has something to do with her father. Lev Grey drives them all to the overly-guarded mansion of Alina’s father, Pavel. Pavel may or may not have a last name. He does have an oppressively jovial sense of hospitality, and gratitude for saving his child. He’s already learned something about Sam and Abbey, from the note left on the wrecked car, and has decided to give them a job. He wants them to bring someone close to them to him. He shows the picture. It’s Wally West. They have no idea who this is.

Pavel showed the wrong picture. He wants April Parker’s Mother. She’s murdered enough people in Pavel’s criminal organization he wants revenge. But with the CIA watching April Parker’s family around the clock, they can’t grab her. Ah, but if Sam and Abbey happen to see Ma Parker there? And take her to somewhere that Pavel’s men can kill her? Yes, that’s what their job is now.

Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 20th of August, 2023. I don’t know why Pavel assumes that Ma Parker is going to come to her daughter’s house. Anyway, between the Deputy Mayor’s drone coverup thing, and maybe making the deal with Norton to get Alan Parker out of jail (I forget if it was him or Randy Parker and it’s too hot and muggy to check my notes) and now this, Sam Driver is finally a compromised enough attorney that Rudy Giuliani is telling him to unwind some of this, fast.

Mr Grey brings Sam and Abbey back home, which is probably as well for their romantic getaway. They have no idea what to say about being roped into a crime spree like this. Sam consults Suspended Detective Yelich, who’s still got friends at the Federal Department of Backstory. Turns out Pavel might not have a last name after all, but he’s got enough of a crime network that he’s incredibly dangerous to cross, and any of Sam and Abbey’s family is likely in danger too. There’s nothing they can do besides sit tight, play along, and hope that Francesco Marciuliano jumps the action ahead enough months, see if maybe Marie or Sophie’s roommate from college is running for Mayor of Cavelton. And that’s where we are now.

Next Week!

Olive Oyl died! So what’s she doing with the rest of her life? I’m looking at Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye next week, is my plan. But we know what happens to plans.

What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? What’s this great idea you have for this essay? June – August 2023

My realization was that Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp is more narratively complex than, oh, Mary Worth. Not to diss Mary, just to compare to a comic strip with a strong single-story tradition. The strip has gone to a more fragmented narrative, often with two or more characters having their stories advance every week. My recap will be more coherent if I separate it out by character, then, and note how these lives interact.

Will it work? You’ll know in 800 words. Will I do it again? You’ll know probably about November 2023, when my next plot recap should appear here.

Last time I checked in we were getting to the end of the school year, and the baseball/softball season. Now back to Team Milford.

Gil Thorp.

5 June – 26 August 2023.

Gil Thorp finished his first year in Henry Barajas’s tenure pretty strong. The boys baseball team won the championship in fine, riotous form. Hold that thought. Gil is named the Jack Berril Coach of the Year again, and this time his family is at the dinner for the awards. Missing from Gil Thorp’s acceptance speech is Mimi Thorp, who’s out at the bar with new golfing best friend Ericka Carter. Mimi and Ericka have been spending a lot of time together. One late night Gil Thorp asks Mimi whether she and Ericka are in love. We haven’t heard that answer.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 12th of July, 2023. This summer also saw Gil Thorp and Ericka meet for the first time, and seem to get along well. I’m not sure what to take of Ericka warning that they were missing Gil Thorp’s speech, rather than Mimi. The Thorps do seem to be getting along enormously better than they were last year this time.

Also at the banquet? Ex-Coach Luke Martinez, there to declare his surrender to Gil Thorp. Thorp notes that he never accepted Martinez’s bet, last year, to have the Coach of the Year run the other out of town. And, come to it, has a coaching position Martinez might be able to fill. Everyone else thinks that’s a terrible idea. Emmett Tays asks whether Martinez can be worth this much trouble. Characters from other comic strips come in to tell him this is gonna be a disaster. “Fair dinkum onya innit,” asks Ginger Meggs, who could use a job himself. “Blooming Perth!” But why should this be a disaster other than Martinez’s inability to be even a little bit normal about Gil Thorp?

And that comes to the final baseball match between Milford and Valley Tech, the championship. Martinez’s Korean exchange student, Kwan Tak, had five solid innings. Pedro Martinez, having surrendered to his father’s demands that he play obediently, relieves. He also lets two runners on base. Martinez goes out to demand to know if his son, his son, is throwing the game. The question is received as well as you might think. As the fight grows more heated the rest of Valley Tech’s team walks off the field. Whether they forfeited or simply forced the coach to leave doesn’t matter. Milford won and Valley Tech fired Martinez. (Valley Tech hired assistant coach Kim as athletic director.)

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 27th of June, 2023. Later in the summer we see Luke Martinez sleeping on the sofa in the living room and admitting he’d done something stupid. It seems independent of this, although his wife does warn he’s on strike two. I don’t know who that is recording this to be a viral video about a coach going nuts on his own son. But I know it’s someone recording correctly, in landscape format, so it’s probably someone old.

But Gil Thorp likes fixing up people. And he got to know what it’s like working with Martinez over several weeks coaching kids at Milford Juvenile Detention. This lead up to a streamed, charity football match that between donations and sports betting raised $150,000. A fraction of it’s even going toward paying kids’ restitution fines. Gil Thorp is glad people might benefit, but ever-angrier that the jail was profiting off the kids. Tobias Gordon offers a touch of wisdom straight from the heart of my Generation X. He’s “just preparing us to play college ball”.

Also, Toby Gordon and Rodney Barnes are in juvenile detention for several weeks. Marty Moon finally ran that story, supported with his pictures, of Toby and Rodney selling vape sticks. While they keep socializing it’s the tense way that friends who are justifiably pissed do. Toby is angry he gave in to Rodney’s plea to sell “one last case” of vape sticks, the one that got them caught. Rodney is angry Toby told school principal Dr Pearl they were saving to buy a car, rather than athletics fundraising. As Jacob Mattingly picked up, before I did, no sense dragging the sports teams into their scandal.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 21st of July, 2023. We also haven’t yet seen who won, and who told Gil Thorp, if that’s happened yet. But as you can see from this, there’s a lot of threads going around.

Over on the side of things where I’m not sure who’s coaching, girls softball also did great in the playdowns. They went to state championships thanks to a hit the bottom of the last inning by Keri Thorp’s bully/crush Dorothy Wolfe.

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The new school year started, our time, the 7th of August. Kwan Tak is staying in exchange another year. And talking with Inma, who probably has a last name, about how she’s the first person he could come out to. Her parents are way overdoing Inma’s birthday party, renting out the museum for a sleepover. Luke Hernandez Jr and Jami Thorp look forward to have time to continue their Dungeons and Dragons campaign sometime. They’re young. They’ll learn. Mimi Thorp is off on the golf circuit.

And Luke Hernandez shows up for his first day as Milford wrestling coach. In the suspiciously well-funded athletic department he spots a photo of a random old guy hung in a spot of reverence. Commenter Charks explained Pop was the school custodian, from 1958, the original storyline. Pop welcomed Gil to Milford, and encouraged his rebuilding of the team, the year its only win was against unbeaten Valley Tech. It’s where Gil Thorp learned to be okay with losing.

And now I think you’re all caught up.

Milford Sports Watch!

One thing I know I am doing is keeping track of what other schools Milford is facing down. This gets easier over the summer. The season as I make it out looks like this.

• Cosinchaus High (12 June)
• Cromwell High (14 June)
• New Haven (15 June)
• Valley Tech (21 – 22, 26 – 27 June, 1, 5 July)
• Madison (23 – 24, 28 – 30 June)
• Valley Tech (26 August) I know, that seems like a long gap to me too, but most of the interim was purely Milford or Juvenile Detention stuff. Summer, you know?

Next Week!

Abbey Spencer accepted Sam Driver’s offer for a romantic getaway and see if their relationship can survive his suspicions. I’m sure that’s all worked out great for them. Off now to read three months’ worth of Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker and summarize it for you, next week, all going well.