Category Archives: Weekly Weird

The Impaling of The Brow

Posted on by

Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark. Impaled on an American flagpole, sadistic WWII spy and Dick Tracy villain The Brow gets poked by poetic justice. More grisly villain deaths from Tracy creator Chester Gould here.

Gould’s Dick Tracy is my lifetime favorite strip, which I have already recounted in our About Panels and Prose section. I have covered Dick Tracy from many angles since starting this site years ago. You can find pieces on Flattop, Flattop Jr. the arch conservatism of Gould and his here, as well as assorted short takes on Tracy here.

“Fake News” Hot Off the 1894 Presses

Posted on by

The Weekly Weird. In 1894, Puck magazine took aim at the rising influence of increasingly sensational and less costly city newspapers. Here, Frederick Burr Opper, who would go on to be one of newspaper comics’ founding fathers, called out Joseph Pulitzer in particular as a purveyor of “fake news.” More on the full cartoon here.

Elmo Gets Hairy

Posted on by

Force-fed a new brand of cereal by his kidnappers that grows hair uncontrollably, Cecil Jensen’s country rube Elmo is awash in a pool of his own tresses. More on this strange late 1940s satire here.