Slylock Fox, 1/10/21

This is at least the third time this mystery has appeared in Slylock Fox: it showed up in 2013, with exactly the same art albeit with different coloring, and had previously appeared in 2011, with different art but the same basic mystery and solution. My earlier commentary on those strips in both cases was predicated on the same scenario: that Shady Shrew had enslaved sapient silkworms and was forcing them to manufacture clothes from which he profited. But I must be mellowing in my old age, because my first thought today on reading the strip was “But wait! What if Shady has actually developed a new plant-based silk substitute, liberating his fellow animals from toil? Did you put that possibility into your ratiocination calculus, Slylock? Of course not, but Shady doesn’t need your approval! Society will hail him as a hero, at least until the plants become sapient too.”

Dick Tracy, 1/10/21