“Like this beatnik here, I know you really hate beatniks”

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out!

Dick Tracy, 1/19/23

Hey, remember “Wunbrow,” Dick Tracy’s pal with only one [eye]brow? He showed up in 1958 as a Tracy ally and agent of Batista’s dictatorship, and then, proving his ideological malleability, reappeared in 2016 as a Tracy ally and agent of Castro’s dictatorship, and now he’s a Tracy ally and agent of … the municipal government of Panama City, Florida? Anyhoo, he’s summoning Dick down to his new semi-tropical home because that’s where Kriptonite/Kyptonite murdered the art forger guy, with a speargun. “Don’t let them embalm the corpse!” says Dick, who can’t get off if he doesn’t get to smell rotting human flesh at least once a month.

Pluggers, 1/19/23

Look, it’s possible that a plugger might own a motorcycle, but nobody thinks that a plugger would own a set. They’re quite expensive and honestly that sort of ostentation is not pluggerish at all. I feel like these panels should at least present us with plugger descriptions that are slightly surprising, or give us some vague insight into the plugger lifestyle that we didn’t previously have. Pluggers aren’t going to go out and buy a matching pair of helicopters either, but I’m sure we can all agree that we don’t need that explained to us.

* This article was originally published here