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Archive: Dennis the Menace

152

Casual cruelty

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Blondie, 8/20/25

Blondie generally has its finger on the pulse of what old people are doing on the computer, which is why I’m a little disappointed to see that they’re fobbing off AI psychosis onto the kids today. Are the kids today forming unhealthy relationships with ChatGPT and its ilk? Sure, but it turns out that old people are also getting into the “convincing myself the robot is a pretty lady and she wants to have sex with me” game, with tragic results. Anyway, Cookie’s statement that not only do she and her friends talk to chatbots but that “it also talks back to them” is aggressively uncanny, it makes me feel like someone is trying too hard to convince us about their ignorance of this subject. “Ha ha, the chatbot talks back to you? What will they think of next? Will it be a sexy anime girl AI? Uh, I mean, that’s what I heard, from other kids.”

Dennis the Menace, 8/20/25

Gotta love how depressed both Henry and his guest look here. “Huh,” Mr. Holt is thinking in panel one, “I thought Henry liked me. I thought inviting me over here was the start of us becoming real friends, but he’s shit-talking me to his kid so I guess not.” Meanwhile, Henry in panel two is wracked by self-loathing. “Why did I say that? I never meant to hurt his feelings. Now he thinks I’m a petty gossip. I’m a fool!” Menace fucking accomplished, is what I’m saying.

Intelligent Life, 8/20/25

The syndicated newspaper comic strip Intelligent Life is usually about incredibly surface-level takes on geek media and culture. But what if instead it did the most generic jokes possible about office politics and “sales” or whatever? Would that be even less interesting? “Yes,” says everyone who’s read today’s strip.

172

Wednesday quickies

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Blondie, 8/6/25

Look, obviously Mr. Dithers is an asshole, but also Dagwood is talking to his wife on speaker while standing like six inches away from Dithers while he’s trying to work? The dysfunctionality of this relationship goes both ways, is what I’m saying.

Dennis the Menace, 8/6/25

Alice cringing and saying “My cooking, which you notoriously hate … is that why you’re so angry?” while Dennis stares sullenly off into space: this is by far the most menacing this strip has been in quite some time.

Slylock Fox, 8/6/25

Max is roughly the same size as this goat kid and wants to play video games with him … is it possible that Max Mouse, assistant police detective, is a child? This entirely reorders how I think about his relationship with Slylock, and not for the better.

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Go East, Perpetually 60-Year-Old Woman

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Mary Worth, 7/8/25

“God damn it,” you’ve probably said to yourself, repeatedly over the past few months, “Are we going to get a non-Weston recurring character in Mary Worth at some point, or are we trapped in some kind of No Exit-style hell with Wilbur and Dawn specifically?” Well, good news: Olive is back, everybody! Johnnys-[gender neutral]-come-lately may not remember that Olive was a little girl who lived at Charterstone, who had psychic powers and maybe talked to angels, though that could’ve all been a side effect of her “tummy brain.” She was largely neglected by her parents because they were so horny, though they did try to have her special powers removed by a doctor, but he later turned out to be a junkie, so they ended up not doing that after all. Then they moved to New York, and usually when people leave Charterstone and/or Mary’s immediate field of vision they’re dead to her, but she actually visited Olive in the Big Apple and bought her a watch, and also checked in with a guy she had previously sexually rejected in the context of high-stakes cake-baking competition, but that’s not really related to Olive so we’ll forget that for now. Anyway, Mary’s going back to New York City, baby! What psychic adventures will she and Olive get up to? Will she meet up with another former beau, possibly handsome Broadwaysman Ken Kensington, who she flirted with on a different trip to New York while Jeff was busy saving lives in Vietnam or whatever and only didn’t hook up with because New York’s traffic was simply too scary for her. I am excited, obviously! Very excited! Wilbur better not fuck this one up, somehow!

Dennis the Menace, 7/8/25

I’m not sure if Henry’s facial expression here is meant to indicate “Jesus Christ, George, what exactly are you doing with my son that’s causing a repetitive motion injury” or “Jesus Christ, George, I’m leaving at this hour of the morning specifically so I don’t have to talk to anybody, why are you talking to me about Dennis, who I very much do not want to think or talk about”

Bizarro, 7/8/25

Wait, so human skeletons are also the grim reapers for reptiles and insects? That’s not right. I object both on philosophical grounds and because seeing a drawing of a mayfly skeleton in a cloak would’ve been much funnier.