The Evil Inc villains think their new manager, Cassie Cruz, has been leaking information to the superheroes. She needs to find the REAL mole before it’s too late.
Evil Inc – February 18, 2025
By Brad J. Guigar
[Panel 1]
(Setting: A break room with a window showing a cityscape. Jeremy and Cassie Cruz are sitting at a table, discussing a possible mole.)
Jeremy: Could the mole be someone from the Silver Agency crew?
Cassie Cruz: No... They’ve been in orientation all this time. They wouldn’t have access to high-level intelligence.
[Panel 2]
(Setting: A company orientation room. Employees, including Gluetrap, Malocchio, Giant Tess, and the Night Mayor, are sitting in chairs. A sign in the background reads “SAFETY FIRST – THEN PULL THE TRIGGER” with smaller text referencing workplace romance.)
Gluetrap: What about workplace romances?
Giant Tess: The company frowns on dating among employees.
Night Mayor: That’s not gonna stop me from asking a smokeshow like Lightning Lady out on a date!
(Yellow narration box: “…Or any intelligence, for that matter.”)
[Panel 3]
(Giant Tess responds to Night Mayor's comment.)
Giant Tess: If you got a date with her… The company would go through a series of Tex Avery-style reactions… including bulging eyes, floor-level jaw drops, a carpet-like unraveling tongue…And “Awoogah-awoogah!” sound effects.
[Panel 4]
(Penultimate Silent Panel)
[Panel 5]
(Giant Tess looms over Night Mayor.)
Giant Tess: …And then it would frown.
(End comic.)
© 2025 Brad J. Guigar. All rights reserved.
evil-inc.com
Quote
The Evil Inc villains think their new manager, Cassie Cruz, has been leaking information to the superheroes. She needs to find the REAL mole before it’s too late.
Parting shot
https://substack.com/@guigar/note/c-93212360
https://www.patreon.com/c/guigar
The LA Times has an excellent
story about the future of the comic strip, as seen by the likes of Berke Breathed, Cathy Guisewite, and Wiley Miller. They are appearing at a panel discussion in LA on Sunday.
I can’t say it better than Mr. Breathed: “
‘I don’t think you’ll ever see another ‘Calvin & Hobbes,’ ‘Bloom County’ or ‘Doonesbury’ again,’ says Breathed, 48, who received the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1987. ‘The popularity of those strips was built on a young audience great comic strips are not built on the backs of aging readers.’
“Part of the problem, Breathed and other cartoonists say, is that newspapers, when choosing their comic strip lineup, put too much emphasis on the opinions of aging readers. As a result, stalwart strips such as ‘Peanuts,’ which continues to run as a reprint since the death of Charles M. Schulz in 2000, and ‘Blondie,’ which was created in 1930 by Chic Young, tend to remain entrenched on comics pages.
“As middle-of-the-road as ‘Blondie’ is, it’s surprising to learn that it has come to represent a divisive topic in the comic strip community. Young passed away in 1973, and since then ‘Blondie’ has been carried on by his son, Dean, and is known as an example of a ‘legacy’ strip.
“‘As an art form, comics are threatened by legacy strips,’ Breathed says. ‘The fact that papers are running [legacy strips] throughout the country is a sign that they’re desperate to cling to the readers they think they need, and they’re afraid to take risks and find the new talent.’”
To complete the vicious cycle, syndicates gauge the timidity of newspaper editors, and as a result, choose only the blandest offerings to syndicate.
That means even the bravest newspaper editor has a watered-down selection to choose from if he or she actually wants to find some new talent for the comics page.
In response, Denise Joyce, president of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, “
says that while comics are not the huge player they used to be 20 or 30 years ago, they are definitely on the minds of features editors.”
“Regarding legacy strips, Joyce admits it’s difficult to replace them without making their fans angry. As a compromise, Joyce says her paper is running some comics online and Web-linking to others.”
Of course, once their newspaper readers discover comics published on the Web, they’re bound to discover a much wider world of comics that aren’t available in their newspapers, aren’t they? Comics that are neither watered-down nor timid.
So, in a way, people like me are indebted to the myopia of people like Ms. Joyce.
You keep sending them, Ms. Joyce, and I’ll keep keeping them.
Read the whole story.