Frogs! Science! Socrates! All the things kids like
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Dennis the Menace, 1/22/23
One of the biggest transformations in American life over the last generation is that children — including ones who are surprisingly old, or at least surprisingly old to me, a non-parent — have to be strapped into car seats in order to go anywhere. I remember being kind of smug when hearing that the Kids Today can’t go a long car ride without being entertained by a screen of some sort, but then I realized that unlike me at that age, these kids are essentially immobilized for hours at a time, so what can you expect? Anyway, newspaper comics are created by and/or cater to the aesthetic tastes and nostalgia of Boomers and older Gen Xers, so it makes sense that Dennis, a child who is absolutely small enough be in a car seat, is not in a car seat in this comic, even though Henry’s phone places the scene squarely in the present. At least he’s in the back seat, so he won’t be killed instantly by the airbag triggered when Henry inevitably drives into a tree while futzing with the GPS.
Shoe, 1/22/23
Shoe and the Perfersser make up the entirety of the Treetops Tattler’s editorial staff, so it seems a little weird that they’re both in court to cover this story. But it’s not every day you get to see an old man sentenced to die in prison, I guess.
Family Circus, 1/22/23
Literacy, everyone! It’s what transforms you from the idiot dipshit in the first two panels to the smug little fucker in the final one. Learn to read, why don’t ya!
167 replies to “Frogs! Science! Socrates! All the things kids like”
Family Circus Mashups: What’s Billy really seeing in the book? Could it be a bit disturbing? Click and see.
RMMD-Petey? A parrot? He’s gone. Flew away the first chance he got.
FC-One of the stories is about a white rabbit named Hugh.
Dennis the Menace: Henry could listen to spoken directions from his GPS, just like virtually everyone else in the world. But he keeps it in his pocket on “vibrate,” due to a weird sex game he’s playing with his very hot, very bored wife.
Shoe: In the treetops world — unlike, say, the hill country of Snuffy Smith — the penalty for egg thievery is pretty darn stiff.
Family Circus: Just wait till he gets to college, and he’s deconstructing the same darn storybook for textual signifiers and competing ideological themes. (Just kidding, that dope’s going to the same state school his parents went to, where he’ll get straight C’s in “Undetermined Business Studies.”)
Dennis the Menace : reminds me of how this one time, I was watching an old Flintstones rerun with my nephew, and the gag was that Fred and Barney were lost of a road trip to Rock Vegas, so they had to pull out their roadmap (made of several stone tablets), cussing about how hard it was to unfold a roadmap, find your current location, find your destination, find the proper route to take from your current location to your destination, and then fold the roadmap back to its initial shape so it can fit in the glovebox again (the skit focussed on how the very first and last steps of this process were the hardest). And so, I said to my nephew : “Look, they’re in the Stone Age; they don’t have GPS!”
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Hagar the Horrible (throwaway panels) : …isn’t there a theory that viking berzerker rages were induced by drugging warriors with fly agaric mushroom?
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Luann :
1) this is entirely Bwad’s doing and idea, no way Shannon is smart or attentive or focussed enough to pull off this kind of prank.
2) yeah, it makes sense that in the Luannverse, Anatomically Correct = No Gonads.
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Shoe : I’m assuming Shoe and the Perfesser are there because this jailbird is actually a relatively important personality, like one of Senator Belfry’s advisors or something.
Judging from the flashcards on the teacher’s desk, she’ll be teaching them about Bart Simpson before long.
DtM – Fifteen paces due west of the Lazyboy – ah – the pot o’ gold – with a plunger and everything….
Shoe – Hey – the public is equally enthusiastic about picking up the tab for your senior expenses and health care….
FC – I like the part where Moses commands the Vikings to smite the Ukrainians….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Marvin: As drawn, a kid Marvin’s age doesn’t “spit up.” Jenny is just in denial that her own son spits on her, often and with contempt, and she’s subconsciously resigned herself to the fact that this is her life.
And yet,
I’d rather read through a month’s worth of Marvin’s various bodily-fluid jokes (and kudos for bringing up spitting, that’s a new one) than another Blondie “women be shopping” worn-out clichés.
RMMD: Just when you think this arc will be medically related, it turns out to be about stolen car airbags.
FC: Learning to read (or not, who really knows?) doesn’t explain why Jeffy is still an imbecile.
Shoe: I always found it weird, when someone who does a specifically horrific crime, or crimes. Is sentenced to two (or more) life sentences.
That makes no sense to me. But it did give me the idea for a hypothetical comic.
A criminal is sentenced to two life sentences but dies in prison. Then it shows him reincarnated as a newborn baby in a hospital with loving parents and all that. Only for the police to burst in and arrest the baby to serve his second.
I thought that the second panel was about Billy’s problems with dyslexia, but I should never suspect “Family Circus” of being interesting
DtM: Illegal use of an electronic communications device, failure to secure a child in a child restraint and (presumably) making an illegal U-turn between panels six and eight. The cop watching Henry is thinking, “My horoscope was right! This is a good day!
In the first two panels, Billy is exposed to the Whole language approach to teach how to read and it is a complete failure. Only by old-fashioned phonics is he able to finally read and enjoy reading. Kudos to “Family Circus”, this is actually one of the few fields where “down with new-fangled methods, back to the old-fashioned approach” is actually the correct stance
Second chances are good!
For the second time in a week!
@The Rambling Otter:
A criminal is sentenced to two life sentences but dies in prison. Then it shows him reincarnated as a newborn baby in a hospital with loving parents and all that. Only for the police to burst in and arrest the baby to serve his second.
Please, don’t give our governor any ideas.
Today’s Shoe asks “What would Boris Johnson look like if he was a bird? And also he committed a series of crimes so severe he got 68 years in jail?”
“Shoe” decides that if it shows how horrible the crime the bird-man committed to deserve such a long sentence, it will ruin the joke. I argue it would actually make it much funnier!
RMMD “Petey! Petey’s in the back seat! He’s my pet python! If he gets loose, we’re screwed!”
JP: Ha haaa, Yelich is only getting Sam in deeper doo-doo. And now Sam’s gonna do the same thing to Abbey. Gotta love how self-destructive everybody in this strip is.
CS: I commend Pam’s restraint in her sarcasm. Most anyone else would say something like, “Are you fucking serious?”
@The Rambling Otter:
“A criminal is sentenced to two life sentences but dies in prison. Then it shows him reincarnated as a newborn baby in a hospital with loving parents and all that. Only for the police to burst in and arrest the baby to serve his second.”
As drawn by the Perry Bible Fellowship: https://pbfcomics.com/comics/life-sentence/
@Baja Gaijin:
Baja, anytime you make fun of Wilbur, it’s gonna win in my book!
RMMD: With no time left, June whips the Jaws of Life (travel version) out of her purse.
BG&SS: Wouldn’t it be funnier if the school were a scene of carnage and/or disaster when they got there?
MW: Bring it up AGAIN, why don’t you, Doc? Do you want her to sign a paper or something? “I hereby swear, pledge and promise that our date will be unsullied by any annoying person from my past.”
9CL: Putting aside the hideous insult to the late, great Cary Grant, why of all things would Amos balk at Edda combing his hair? Too intimate? This is a guy who gets busy on a concert hall stage as often as I eat dinner.
SHOE: Ha ha, it’s funny because The Pen for birds really IS a pen.
DtM: Note (in the silhouette panel) how the car is depicted traveling at such speed that it has all wheels off the ground, something unlikely to happen in real life, even on a rough road, but a traditional trope in comics. Like people’s hats flying off to symbolize surprise!
MW: Too bad the timing’s off. A double wedding of two of Wilbur’s exes to younger, more successful men would have been doubly humiliating, especially when Wilbur is seated at the pet table with all the various animals routinely featured in the strip.
“Are you gonna eat that Milkbone?”
DtM: Once again I feel like this strip has made a stab at being set in the present but is off the mark just slightly. Yes, people do indeed use their phones instead of paper maps, but there’s this other handy function that tells you when to turn and whatnot and also makes it less likely that you’ll drive into oncoming traffic. Technology is fun, huh?
Shoe: It’s funny because that guy is totally a murderer, right? Like, no-one gets 60 years without being a serial killer? Anyhow, good to know that the notorious treetop terminator will be behind bars. Maybe not some other residents of this community will brave teh streets and into Roz’s.
FC: I’m almost certain that the last panel is Billy just giving up on learning to read and instead just imagining a chaotic mix of characters and events as he stares blankly into the pages. He’s lucky: Jeffy doesn’t have the mental capacity to do even that.
I suspect that’s supposed to be Mr. Toad rather than a “frog”, but, hey, who reads, you know, “books”?
SFx: I thought Wanda’s skillet just looked smaller than the omelet because it’s further away, but now Slylock tells us it’s actually smaller. Of course, Slylock can walk over to the skillet and see for himself (or even measure it), but we, the audience, can’t. What happened to fairness towards the reader and always giving all the clues the detcetive has to the audience as well?
Or is there something more sinister going on? Comics for kids usually try to be pedagogic and teach things like constancy of size and the laws of perspective. Is this an underhanded attemot to unteach perspective and make kids believe that things that look smaller actually are? I can sense the stirrings of the next flat-earth movement here: the “perspective is a government conspiracy” theory is about to be revealed!
DT: Why is Art so formal, always calling Sue Reel by her full name? Is it to make sure everybody gets the pun? But he’s also got a punny name, and yet Sue keeps calling him by just his first name.
I can only guess that Sue (sorry, Sue Reel) somehow got written into her contract that she must always be referred to by her full name to hammer in the pun. A bit like other actresses have a no-nudity clause, she has a no-first-name-only clause. She may of course have a no-nudity clause as well, together with a bunch of other special clauses; I’d guess a no-mustache-damage clause is on the list as well.
Popeye: Looks like our little Ham and Dregs side quest is coming to an end. Everyone should have a Gloating Coat like Olive. The Sea Hag’s Intern has been a great addition to the cast.
Bear With Me: Chili is great for January, but it’s warm enough out to be in shirtsleeves, and I think Bob forgot this was being published in the Sunday comics…
Foxtrot: V for Victory!
JP: Hey, Sam. While you:re explaining it to Abbey could you please explain what the hell is going on to the rest of us?
DtM: Why would Mr. Wilson be taking a small child unrelated to him on a trip long enough to require a roadmap?
Jungle Jim: Special Agent Channing is a bit inconsistent. Only last strip, he asked Jim how many men he needed for his mission., and the intention was clearly to provide as much resources as needed. Now, he snaps at the request to bring a single woman. Why this change of mind?
1. As part of the patriarchy, Channing doesn’t think a woman can be of any use on a secret mission. “Dammit, when I asked how many men you needed I meant men, not any useless females!”
2. Channing suspects an ulterior motive. “A secretary? A female secretary? Why don’t you just admit that you want to bring your mistress?”
3. Channing is just grumpy that he was awakened in the middle of the night for something that could surely wait until the morning.
4. All of the above.
Jungle Jim: Jim needs to make up his mind about Kitty. When they were alone on a desert island and she all but threw herself at him, he coldly turned her away. Now that she has snubbed him, he wants to invent a post as “secretary” just so she can accompany him to Panama. And he tries to disguise it as “helping” her – hadn’t he better just admit that he’s lonely now that Lil has flown east?
EEK!: Hey, everyone! Cows like it. They LIKE IT!
@31 gardenornament:
Not only that, Kitty just flounced!
@Sequitur: Indeed she did! Jim is obviouslsy shaken – being snubbed is one thing, but being snubbed and flounced is a hard blow!
@Sequitur: “Hey, everyone! Cows like it. They LIKE IT!”
Cows can have a milking fetish? Who’d’ve thunk?
Shoe: After the convicted criminal is taken to his new forever home, do we call him a bird yardbird, or a yardbird bird? And if he becomes a snitch, will we find out why the caged bird sings?
A grudging compliment to Shoe for using a word that evokes both penal incarceration and a fenced area for domesticated birds.
MW: So now we getting Sunday Quotes from FABIO?? How about this one, then:
“There’s not enough money in the world to make me do something degrading.”
FC: Once upon a time there was a mountain. At its peak was said to be the greatest treasure of all humankind, though what exactly it was, no one could say for certain.
“I tell you, Mr. Rabbit, as Emperor of Rome, I must know what it is,” said Charles of Luxembourg. “We must outfit an expedition to seek those unknowable heights and find what wealth or wonder rests there.” Mr. Rabbit twitched his whiskers in agreement.
But they were not the only ones chasing dreams of riches. “I didn’t win eight league championships by letting other people get past me,” said the nefarious Browns’ center Frank Gatski. “Mark my words, Mr. Frog, we’ll be the human/ well-dressed animal team that gets to the top of that mountain first, no matter who we have to drive into the turf to get there!” Mr. Frog ribbited his approval with a sinister blink.
Both pairs of treasure seekers immediately set to work. Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, first reached out to his friend Demosthenes, who used his peerless oratory skills to convince the bloodthirsty Norsemen to seek the fabled mountain across the seas. Preferring the reliability of American grit and determination, the evil offensive lineman Gatski dickered with Davy Crockett, who agreed to traverse the wild frontiers in search of the mountain.
Alas, both efforts resulted in failure. The seafaring Vikings were harrowed by avaricious pirates, greedy divers, and covetous magic snowmen at all turns, and were forced to give up their quest without finding a single clue about the mountain. Meanwhile, Davy Crockett was caught sneaking out of his house late at night by his wife.
Defeated in their endeavors, Charles IV, Frank Gatski, and their nattily-attired animal companions commiserated with each other. “I, the ruler who held the fractious principalities of central Europe together for decades!” cried Charles. “Me, the guy who won and played in more football championships than any non-kicker/ punter in NFL history!” “We will never know what splendor awaited us at the mountain’s peak!” They then heard a gentle chuckle behind them. “But friends,” said French chemist Louis Pasteur, “Surely you must have known that the greatest treasure of all is knowledge! …knowledge! …knowledge…”
“…Knowledge…” muttered Baudouin de Sidon, knight in service of Jerusalem, as he opened his eyes and sat up. “Mon dieu, what a strange dream, and with such a lame and disappointing ending. Wait, where am I, again?” And then the brave soldier of the crusader kingdom despaired, for he had passed out from thirst during the battle at the Horns of Hattin, and before the day was out he would be slain by Saladin’s triumphant warriors. Time passed; nations rose and fell, people lived and died, and mankind continued to dream. Though to this very day, if the mountain treasure truly exists, it remains there still, unclaimed and waiting. The End.
Dustin: Life is just so unfair, Ed. Best if you put your head in the oven now.
JP: “Oh, I can get him to talk, Sam. You got a ball peen hammer and a corkscrew I could borrow?”
“Boy,” the kids think, “imagine how exciting it will be when we’re finally able to read that enormous sign over the teacher’s head.”
@Baja Gaijin: #1
Wilbur in a Speedo!!! Billy is permanently scarred now.
DtM: Not only not in a car seat, not even wearing a seat belt. Henry best pray he dies in the upcoming collision, or he’ll be dying in prison with nothing but a senior-citizen murderer bird to keep him company.
FC: That is quite an eclectic assembly of stories – pirates, scientists, philosophers, knights, Playboy…
@Daisy: “Wilbur in a Speedo!!! Billy is permanently scarred now.”
Agreed, but Mary dressed up as Wonder Woman is almost as bad. What kind of monster would subject a poor, innocent child to such abominations?
FC: I see Billy has grabbed a book from a Florida approved reading list.
@Baja Gaijin: “Family Circus Mashups: What’s Billy really seeing in the book?”
I agree with what Daisy wrote about the Wilbur one, but I think #1 is most in character for Billy. Even after his teacher has tried to teach him to read, it’s still just a jumble of letters.
Luann: I know the running gag with Brad and Toni is that they derive pleasure from feigning sexual urges, but they’re really stretching it when they’re basing their ribaldry on a ’90s-cool snowman with saggy moobs.
JP: Setting aside the off-page feats that allowed Yelich to find Judge Duncan’s hidden son (without encountering Judge Duncan himself, apparently), this can only be a good thing. About the only information Sam has been able to discover is that Duncan is a very shady and untrustworthy person, suspected as a junkie, drug kingpin, and very possibly the murderer of his own family. Getting Lil Dunk away from him is very much for the best, since even if the kid can’t or won’t tell them anything useful, he’s still a child who would be in even greater danger with his supercriminal father. But because our protagonists are written to be as stupid and counterproductive as possible, Sam is deeply upset about this. Worse yet, Sam has no interest in hearing out Yelich’s explanations, as he is instead beelining to his miserable wife to get chewed out for the hundredth time during the past two days. Though to be fair, Yelich was only gone for about ten minutes without access to a vehicle and is talking about “the night the judge’s family was killed” when the murders actually happened yesterday late morning or early afternoon, so maybe he’s just drunk again and merely stole some random terrified teenager from the neighborhood.
Dustin: Ed refuses to accept the fact that even though he provides his daughter with the means to be at his beck and call on thirty seconds’ notice, 24/7, she may not want to reply instantaneously. Life is tough.
Lockhorns: Loretta is sitting at a Victorian era secretary desk while staring at a piece of paper. I’m guessing the author has heard about “ghosting” and thinks it must have something to do with haunted furniture.
@gardenornament: #45
Ha! I can see Billy showing his grandma that picture and asking her to dress like that! And that will of course lead to scandalized grandma sternly lecturing Thel (that hippy) about the questionable children’s literature she gives her kids.
@Hibbleton: #23
I would have loved to see that! And to see Libby hissing at Wilbur yet again (and maybe peeing in Wilbur’s chair) would be priceless. :-)
Family Circus – The Rise of the Cowlick
DT: I realise that “The criminals in Neo-Chicago are stupid” is hardly news, but I do feel it’s worth pointing out that Art Dekko’s estimate of how long he should pretend to be visiting Paul appears to be based on Paul actually being there. Now, granted, he has no way of knowing that the circle of
narrative convenienceskilled police detection is already closing around him, but he must know Paul’s body is going to be discovered, in Panama City, eventually. At which point, any claim he’s made to have seen Paul since then just makes him look guilty. He should be estimating how long it takes to go to Paul’s, knock on the door, and then come back and tell Sue “There was no answer, it’s Very Mysterious.” Which is probably only one cup of coffee.FC: I feel like putting up a big sign saying “Learning How to Read” so all the kids who can’t read yet know what today’s lesson is going to be about is missing the point somewhat.
MT: Okay. Let’s do this.
1) Giant squids, or portions thereof, have been washed up on shore for ages. The scientific name Architeuthis was coined by a Danish zoologist in the 1850s, so obviously he didn’t think it was a myth. The phrase “believed to be a myth so powerful it inspired the kraken” is stunningly incoherent, and appears to be an attempt to turn “a real creature that inspired the myth of the kraken” into a claim that the squid itself was believed a myth. And the Japanese expedition that was specifically trying to film this real creature that the researchers knew existed in its natural habitat was in 2004, and just produced still photos, not film. The video came from a Californian team in 2006.
2) As far as the coelocanth goes, there’s a massive difference between “believed to be extinct” and “believed to be a myth”.
3) The 1850s date for the first sighting of a gorilla in the wild by a Westerner appears to be accurate, but I’m not aware of any evidence that they were considered a myth before that; again, scientists were studying their remains for a while before they encountered a live one. (The “hairy people who our translator called Gorillae” described by Hanno the Navigator in the 6th century BC were considered a myth, but it’s not clear they were actually gorillas, or indeed weren’t actually mythical. The fact zoologists were reminded of the story when they saw gorilla remains, and therefore decided to name them after it, is about as significant a “Mythical creature turns out to be real” moment as the fact there’s a dinosaur whose scientific name translates as the Dragon King of Hogwarts.)
The overall impression I get is that Jules thinks zoology considers any animal a zoologist hasn’t personally seen in the wild to be “mythical”, and then used this claim to justify “So, since zoologists are so stupid, anything could exist! Even that thing in a roadside ‘museum’ that is clearly made of papier mache!” Thanks, Jules, you’ve finally ruined Mark Trail Sundays.
Pluggers: Once again Pluggers prove that their down-home wholesome way of life is superior. You can’t get high sniffing an iPad, can you?
@Hibbleton: “ MW: Too bad the timing’s off. A double wedding of two of Wilbur’s exes to younger, more successful men would have been doubly humiliating, especially when Wilbur is seated at the pet table with all the various animals routinely featured in the strip.
“Are you gonna eat that Milkbone?’”
IS the vet younger? Everyone in this strip but Mary usually looks about 30-40 no matter their stated age.
@jroggs: Excellent work.
SFox: We wait all week for the latest exploit of the diabolical, delicious jewel thief Cassandra Cat, and we end up with a bull dyke beaver and the Case of the Stolen Eggs.
@jroggs: #39
Absolutely brilliant!
Dennis The Menace: “Son, I hate to point this out but you haven’t been particularly menacing lately. I mean, come on, “just like a pirate”? Really? When are you going to start being a hellraiser again?”
Shoe: Only Shoe would think an old man being sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in jail after committing some kind of horrible crime is good fodder for a silly joke.
Family Circus: Jeffy can’t actually read by the end of this strip — that’s forbidden to all but Daddy on the Keane Compound — he’s just learned how to pretend he can so he can lord it over the younger kids at school.
@28 Kody Keir: on Popeye: I agree: everyone should have a gloating coat. Les Moore has one in charcoal.
The Family Circus: What kind of asshole gives their infant/toddler a story book with only text and doesn’t make it the Bible?!
Jungle Jim – Jim watches as Kitty flounces from the room. “Damn, that girl can flounce!” Jim thinks.
“She’s a sweet kid,” says the Manager. “I hear she lettered in flouncing at Vassar.”
Jungle Jim – Channing continues, “I get ideas at 3 o’clock in the morning, too! Get a load of this one: If I bleached my hair white, I’d be a dead ringer for Andy Warhol.”
The Family Circus: Speaking of Socrates, if you give a man only shadows of reality, he will eventually return to his cave. But if you raise a moron on platitudinous stories, turns out he’ll draw comics for the rest of his life.
CS: I have a hard time imaging Jeff as capable of breeding.
@Peanut Gallery: “The New Man for the Panama Job” was the name of my soca album.
@MKay: “ 9CL: Putting aside the hideous insult to the late, great Cary Grant, why of all things would Amos balk at Edda combing his hair? Too intimate? This is a guy who gets busy on a concert hall stage as often as I eat dinner.”
But, never of his own free will. Edda is always portrayed as forcing herself on him during the concert, and Amos just passively watches her until it gets to be too much for him and he crumples into a heap.
And today has confirmed that Edda squints her eyes and pretends she’s with someone else. Because even a man who has been dead for forty years is a better prospect than getting busy with Amos.
@32 Sequitur: Of course cows like being milked. When their milk bags get overfull, the cows cry and scream in pain. This was told to me by a dairyman.
Jungle Jim – “I never wanted to be a waitress, but it’s the only job I could find,” sobs Kitty. “Every day I check the Help Wanted ads, but there are just no openings for Adventuress. I blame That Man in the White House!”
LUANN – Shannon has been around for well over a decade now. Like a piece of sand in an oyster’s shell that creates a beautiful Pearl, she has single handedly saved us from an arc where Brad and TonI conceive and then raise a baby of their own. Shannon occupies the ‘horrible brat’ niche in the Evansi’s misanthropic landscape. There is nowhere for a baby Bwad to go. Brad and Toni get Hot and Heavy to Make Babby has been hinted at but, thank Dog, never consummated.
Pirates! Vikings! Snowmen! A football player! A rabbit in a top hat! An anthropomorphic frog! An old lady! Damn, that is one dense and meandering story Billy’s reading.
The fuck is this story book about.
@51 Daisy: I wonder what Holier Than Thou Grandma dressed as Wonder Woman would say? Seriously, I blanked out.
@Dan: It’s Smith’s Compendium of Stupid Shit.
DtM: Popping in with the “actual parent of current minors” context: while infants and toddlers are required to be strapped into five-point harnesses, Dennis is old enough to use the car seat belt with a “booster” seat to get him in the optimum position for the shoulder strap. Or it would if Dennis’ seat had a shoulder strap, which it clearly does not. Meaning the car Henry is driving is an early 1980s model at the absolute latest, and has so many operational and safety issues that any kind of restraint system is a moot point.
FC: Billy still can’t read, but he’s old enough to understand the concept and so sits there visualizing the sort of random abstract images he assumes the book would provide.
@gardenornament: re: Jungle Jim: “An icy stare and a flounce, eh? Let me speak to the manager!”
9CL: Honey, there is not enough blurring in the world to make Amos look like Cary Grant, or even a late Millenial/early Gen-Z equivalent that Brooke absolutely refuses to look up because he cannot accept that modern twenty-somethings might have different interests and reference points than he does.
DT: So, his plan is to go and “visit” with the murder victim, keeping up the pretext he’s alive, and just assuming the body will never be found and blow the whole ruse wide open? I’m not sure Art has thought this through.
Dustin: “Well, Meg does live with us, you could just talk to her…”
“Look, the only reason I agreed to this fancy-schmancy razzle-dazzle cell phone technology was to have even LESS engagement with our children!”
JP: ANOTHER explanation? Strap in, it’s going to be another two weeks before we circle back to this point…
Luann: This just in: Brad has bought fully into anti-transgender rhetoric.
Dennis the Menace brings to mind Ring Lardner’s famous lines:
“‘Are we lost, Daddy?’
‘Shut up!’ he explained.”
FC missing panels 5-6: Billy goes home and is given the only real story book, God’s story book.
Family Circlejerk – Billy struggling to read “cat” reminds me of a story attributed to the illiterate Shoeless Joe Jackson. When a fan yelled, “Hey, Jackson, can you spell cat?,” he is reported to have retorted, “Hey mister, can you spell shit?”
Unfortunately, Billy could never produce a rejoinder that clever.
(And that being said, I’m ashamed to say that I enjoyed today’s Family Circlejerk. It is a nice message to promote reading. Hopefully, by tomorrow they’ll be back to having Jeffy shit his pants.)
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: Brad’s just been putting it in the wrong hole. Toni doesn’t point it out because Dirk taught her that it was correct.
“This is the right way, bitch. Unngggghhhh. Everybody does it this way.”
“Yes, Dirk.” (Turns the page in her magazine)
@Ettorre: The Electric Company taught phonics on TV. I arrived in Kindergarten already knowing how to read. (Forming the letter “S,” however presented its own unique set of challenges).
MW – Estelle is going to go home and give Artheur a second chance.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – This may be the most action we’ve seen since that woman dumped a kid in the Morgan’s house and then ran like hell.
@MKay: RMMD: They do call June “Jaws,” but for a different reason.
Shoe: Is that supposed to be a birdified Boris Johnson?!
Also, there’s an unused bird gag about the defendant being ‘up before the beak’, that’s perfectly set-up there waiting and just left hanging, and I really don’t know how to deal with that.
@Baja Gaijin: I’m thankful that I wasn’t eating breakfast when I saw the last two.
@Ettorre: I don’t know if schools still do the “A is for apple” version of phonics, however. I don’t have any connections to schools now, but when my son was in grade school in the mid 1980s they used a different system to learn to read. Pictures on the wall were labeled with a letter, but the illustrations seemed to be unrelated to the letter. I remember that “M” was illustrated with a child eating ice cream, with the sound being the “Mmmm!” the kid would make when enjoying the ice cream.
I don’t remember the name of this reading system or know if schools still use it, but I doubt if they do “A is for apple.”
@Baja Gaijin: Gaaah! [Hides under kitchen table]
That one’s a keeper for when you want to instill pure horror on everyone.
Pluggers- For pluggers the smell of fresh newsprint is a great palate cleanser to remove the stench of the sloppy shit he took earlier.
FC: I can almost hear the teacher gasp in pain with every word, as her entire waistline has somehow been squeezed into a small dog collar she’s using for a belt. “Learn How to Read Before I Pass Out”, is what the sign should say. Or maybe “Somebody Call 911”.
Shoe: I haven’t been able to find it but I recently read an obituary for a federal judge who once told a defendant in a similar situation “Well, do the best you can”.
PV: And the arc ends with Morgan doing a little souvenir hunting.
Phantom: And the arc ends with the lion/human creature getting her gun back and trotting back into the labyrinth.
@Dennis Jimenez: DtM – Fifteen paces due west of the Lazyboy – ah – the pot o’ gold – with a plunger and everything….
Whenever my wife and I are out hiking, when we encounter a latrine, I drop a waypoint in my mapping app. Right now I have toilets and latrines marked on two continents and expect to add a third this year. So I’ll be prepared on whichever continent I find myself incontinent.
@I speak Jive: My mother taught me to read before I entered kindergarten. Dad reading the newspaper and talking to the kids about what he was reading (On occasion, he would read from the ‘funny pages’).
Damn. I’ve had a good life.
In school, we used some system I remember having trouble comprehending the idea of “schwa”.
JP – The Golden Girls weren’t talking about Apartment 3-G. They were talking about this train wreck.
Brooke McEldowney could take lessons from this in making it up from one panel to the next. And Ces should know that I’m rolling my eyes harder at this than I’ve ever done with Mary Worth.
Pluggers – Oh, no, the newspaper tore. I better get some glue to fix it. I really, really like the smell of that.
Rex Morgan – June has time for PTA? She probably whines about all the fund raising crap and then takes the order forms in to the clinic, where all of the employees have to buy something if they know what’s good for them. Michelle has enough crappy wrapping paper and waxy candy to last for years.
9CL – It won’t work. Cary Grant had a chin.
@Mysterious Shirtless Lawyer: Needs more motorcar.
@86 I speak Jive: on Wonder Woman WTT Grandma: You were horrified by her with a blank speech bubble. Imagine when someone provides something horrific for her to say!
@gardenornament: Never mess with someone who not only stole Dick Dastardly’s moustache, but wears it better than he did.
@I speak Jive: “9CL – It won’t work. Cary Grant had a chin.”
Good point! But Edda is hardly an objective viewer, and she did have to squint a lot to see the resemblance.
Apart from that, kudos to Brooke for managing to produce a somewhat funny and quite inoffensive strip. It doesn’t happen too often nowadays.
PV: YES, dahlings! It IS me, reprising my role as Morgan le Fay’s ride! It was a hectic couple of days, you’d better believe! And it is surprising that they’d go to all the expense and trouble to get me back to Medieval Times for just a one panel appearance – although it was a stunning full body shot, I must say. It seems that their regular cast of Horses are all too skittish of Morgan to allow her on their backs. Honestly, they’ve spent too much time in that primitive, superstitious era. I’ve always felt that Morgan and I share a sympatico vibe – It’s like we communicate on a transcendental level.
Anyhow, I’m back in Modern Times where I’m still serving as a mentor and advisor to my young Wild Stallion protege. He is making remarkable progress under my tutelage, as I help him develop his considerable talents to their fullest potential. You should see his dance moves! It’s been truly gratifying to have such a willing and eager pupil….
@richardf8: DT: “Never mess with someone who not only stole Dick Dastardly’s moustache, but wears it better than he did.”
The only thing that’s missing is some moustache twirling, true villain style. Of course, Sue isn’t really a villain, she just works for one. At least she isn’t one yet. Bwahahaha.
Lio – Potential coulrophobia triggers in this one, but really it’s just Lio leaving a joke shop after treating it as a haberdashery. Could be NSFBG.
@Daisy: “Ha! I can see Billy showing his grandma that picture and asking her to dress like that! And that will of course lead to scandalized grandma sternly lecturing Thel (that hippy) about the questionable children’s literature she gives her kids.”
Yes, those comics are the devil’s instruments to corrupt our innocent children! Imagine, a strong female character who dresses like that. Grandma isn’t sure what’s the worst, WW’s clothes (no skirt or even trousers, and there’s no way she can wear a bra under that top. Scandalous!) or her un-ladylike behaviour (that’s probably even worse).
Perhaps it’s just as well that Grandma hasn’t seen any of all the bondage-fetishy scenes where WW gets tied up.
@100 gardenornament: Check out the link in @73 Baja Gaijin.
@TheDiva:
“Or it would if Dennis’ seat had a shoulder strap, which it clearly does not. Meaning the car Henry is driving is an early 1980s model at the absolute latest, and has so many operational and safety issues that any kind of restraint system is a moot point.”
It looks like a late 70s or early 80s compact, so the strip probably uses recycled art. I wonder was Henry was originally holding in the second panel – or could that one be new? But since they took the trouble to edit the second panel, I’m surprised they didn’t at least draw in a seat belt for Dennis.
Luann – Is it just me, or does that snowman look like Darby Conley?
@Baja Gaijin: Yikes. I can’t think of anything for her to say, either. The mental dissonance is just too much.
@73 Baja Gaijin:
I think her go to expression is “Well, fuck my tits!”
No? No.
@Baja Gaijin: The problem is the Lasso of Truth. DCCU Wonder Woman also has a sword, so I could see HTT Wonder Grandma brandishing it and saying “Time for Sword Drill, children!”
Where is Dennis going with Mr. Wilson that maps need to be taken out? Not that it matters, because I’m pretty sure Wilson put that “pirate” idea into the kid’s head as they take Amazon packages off people’s porches.
BLONDIE: “Good thing we still in live in 1955, before ‘Women’s Lib’ did such things, as, I dunno, let women have JOBS as CATERERS where they MAKE THEIR OWN MONEY, when that joke might have worked*”
*It never would have worked
BLONDIE (2): I know, I know, I’m being too too critical. So much so that it caused me to overlook the fact that the “joke” also doesn’t work because Dagwood’s* food budget is probably 10 times more expensive that whatever dress his wife bought (“trying to look ‘attractive’ and ‘pleasant’ for me. The bitch!”)
*Note that I said Dagwood’s food budget. Not the families.
@The Rambling Otter: You’re a bit late. https://pbfcomics.com/comics/life-sentence/
@The Rambling Otter: You’re a bit late
@Dan:
Wow! Someone actually drew it! xD
@KrisTM:
I literally had no idea (despite I guess being an obvious joke) xD
Jungle Jim: Damn it, Bradley! A woman will just slow you down! Haven’t all of those Hollywood jungle pictures taught you that women always trip or turn their ankles and have to be carried out? What? It’s her or the deal is off? Well, OK. Just make sure she doesn’t wear open-toed spiked heels on the trek.
Pluggers: Smell of fresh newsprint? His carrier must not be a heavy smoker as mine apparently was. When I used to get a print paper it smelled like stale cigarette smoke.
@Mysterious Shirtless Lawyer: I saw Froggy the Gremlin from 1950s kiddie tv.
Pluggers: Today’s Pluggers reminded me of how kids today know nothing about huffing the fumes off a freshly mimeographed copy. If a kid today saw the classroom scene in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” they’d wonder why everybody is sniffing the handout assignment and wouldn’t get the joke.
MARY WORTH: Um…Estelle? As a reminder, the LAST time Wilbur ruined your date is when it you guys were “over with” remember?
Estelle: Now that my ex is my ex, without me setting any kinds of boundaries and/or restraining order against him, It’s sure to go better now! Anyway, here a nice sandwich shop we can get to for our date. I’m sure Wilbur won’t show up there!
DUSTIN: Why it’s almost like dumb middle-aged men with no lives spend more time looking at their phones then teenage girls are stereotyped to do!
@UncleJeff: I was in first grade in the mid 1950s, and I vividly remember the teacher showing us the page in the reader and telling us that the word under the picture of Sally was “look.” I think that instruction involved teaching us to sound out the letters in a word. I was very fortunate in that I picked up reading pretty easily and that I loved to read.
I don’t remember this, but my younger sister told me that we used to play school, and that I would go over the basics of reading. She could read before she started school and ended up being moved to a different classroom.
@Baja Gaijin: It’ll probably be a lame platitude or involve referring to Thel as a harlot.
Seriously, that mash-up is great (as in horrifying), and I hope it shows up again.
@2+2=7: MW: Wilbur is relentless in his assholery
@106 richardf8: I didn’t draw this; Joe Giella did. Take it up with him.
@119 I speak Jive: Hm. How about this word balloon?
MW: Pierre: Yay! You and our handsome, kind, understanding vet have a dinner date tomorrow at 7:30!
Libby: Where are you two going to eat?
Estelle: ??
Pierre: Is it time for me to get another pill? I like the way they make me feel.
@UncleJeff: The fun part of knowing how to read before you start attending school is that it prepares you for twelve years of staring at the walls while the teacher tries to get everyone in the classroom caught up.
Atomic Erection is what happens if you leave your Viagra too close to a U-238 sample.
RMMD: June, there are people at home starving. Please reexamine your priorities.
@Dan:
Simpsons did it! Simpsons did it!
MW: Don’t most people carry their animals to the vet on a leash (dog) or in a carrier (cat)? Especially if they are trying to handle two pets. Instead, Estelle carries both in her arms, as if they cannot walk on their own, or would escape if they had a chance. This reminds me of Buck and Mindy’s daughter whose feet must never touch the floor. I think maybe Estelle is spoiling those two.
@127 Millie: In Estelle’s case, carrying her two pets is protection against an ambush hug from Wilbur. It’s not far-fetched; he has a history of hiding in bushes, spying on his exes. Were he to hug her, he wouldn’t be able to make much skin contact, with the additional advantage of Libby going full on bezerk, biting, scratching, and/or peeing on him. Having written that, I’d like to see it.
DtM: Dennis reminds his dad that Mr. Wilson can navigate through ancient paper maps while Henry himself can get lost with a GPS holding his hand. A basic menace, but no less effective for that.
FC: From the jumble of images emanating from his head my educated guess is that Billy is still illiterate and just guessing. More shameful things than that, I guess.
Shoe: My guess would be that they’re both at the trial because the defendant is a relative of Sen. Batson D. Belfry. They’re covering the case to see if he’ll make a corrupt deal to spring family from prison, but at this point their sympathies are such that he’ll look bad if he doesn’t.
@TheDiva: 77
I wondered if we would hear from you today. As a colonoscopy veteran, I know from experience that the cleansing the day before is more harrowing than the procedure itself. Drink up!
Dennis: nice little joke today, too bad about Ferdinand’s “art.”
Family Circus, 1/22/23: scene (panel?) 3; “a apple”?! Not AN apple? “Learning How To Read lerns ya ta speek “me gots a apple”
@Baja Gaijin: #128: I want Libby to stick to Wilbur’s face like the embryonic alien did to John Hurt’s in “Alien”. Instead of planting it’s seed Libby can just piss down his gullet.
@Guillermo el chiclero: I concur. Unfortunately I don’t have the images to make that happen.
@Baja Gaijin: #73
GASP!! I am sincerely impressed and aghast! Although grandma would sure be the talk of the local senior center for weeks if she dressed up like that for their annual Halloween shindig! Yowza!!
Dustin: (Relatively) new technology means new things to complain about, although it gets old very quickly.
JP: “Enough of your shenanigans, Detective Yelich! You take George Michael back to the Bluths right this instant!”
Luann: Was the Al Capp estate recompensed for the appearance of a dingy Shmoo?
MW: Pierre and Libby’s faces never change. Are we sure that’s a vet she just made a date with and not a taxidermist?
Phantom: I guess that’s supposed to be one of the “lesser humans” Teydra was talking about, but it looks more “baboon that wears gold jewelry and spends three hours a day at the gym.”
SFx: Between flannel shirt, jeans, and hockey hair, the beaver couldn’t be more stereotypically Canadian. The only question is whether the undershirt is a Loverboy tee or Honeymoon Suite.
WofI: He’s stuck himself at a desk from an old one-room schoolhouse, so he’s probably not omnipotent. He mistakes dissociative disorder for schizophrenia, so he’s definitely not omniscient.
@135 Daisy: Wait until you get to comment #121!
What kind of half-assed author names a collection of various stories “Story Book”
@pastordan:
Well… there’s a guy in a toga who could possibly be one of many elderly biblical characters.
And a Arabian guy on a camel. Could be one of the three wise men, for all I know.
FC: Those long sea voyages make a man awfully lonesome (horny). That pirate in the book is getting ready to kiss his parrot. Just what is Billy reading?
Here’s the first word the kids learn in Family Circus.
@141 Sequitur: I thought they learned that word from their mother, not the teacher, although she definitely knows the word.
@142 Baja Gaijin:
They certainly heard the word but the teacher shows them how to spell it so they can use it on the Comics Curmudgeon site.
Dennis: Hey, at least Dennis rides in the back seat. When I was his age I rode in front. Without seat belts.
@144 White Rabbit: Is this turning into a “I know I’m old because…” thread?
Did anyone notice one of the things Billy is reading about is Froggy the Gremlin? Are the Keane kids allowed to plunk his magic twanger?
@UncleJeff: If someone else already mentioned this I apologize, but the real-life jurist behind today’s ripped-off “Shoe” punchline is one Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866-1944), former federal judge and first Commissioner of Baseball (and silent enforcer of the sports early 20th-century color ban).
Blondie-Why should you care, Dagwood? I’m pretty sure Blondie used the money she earned from her job.
Frogs! Science! Scrotes!
FC: When I was a kid my parents bought me a Golden Books children’s encyclopedia set, chock full of illustrations. Bil Keane must have bought his kids the same set way back in the early 60s because the viking ship and pirate who looks like he’s about to kiss his parrot in Billy’s montage are definitely swiped from it.
@J.J. O’Malley: thank you!
I now remember hearing that line from watching Ken Burns Baseball.
FC – “Yay! Mom and Dad finally gave up and bought me a book with pictures!”
@152 Peanut Gallery:
“Hmm. These pictures don’t look anything like the pictures in the magazine daddy keeps hidden under the drill press in his workshop.”
@TheDiva:
Honestly the Mitchell car looks like a modern-day SUV, with the amorphous rounded shape and futuristic skinny head and tail lights.
Which is shocking to see in a newspaper comic.
Maybe Billy is like me. Who’s got time for dense tomes when there’s all these great picture books available?
DTM: As many mudgeons have pointed out, Henry has not put Dennis in a child’s car seat or booster nor made him strap in. Yet Henry has his seat belt on. And, in panel 5, he has chosen to drive on a bumpy road, potentially causing serious injuries to his unsecured passenger with no danger to himself. Pretty menacing on your part, Henry.
DtM: Has anyone else noticed the ridiculous Henry size to car size ratio? He is totally too big for that car.
MT: If the Salmagator is a myth, why is Mark standing next to a Salmagator he’s killed,stuffed and mounted. Bet he’s testing out his “it’s a myth” defence before using it at his upcoming trial for killing an endangered species.
‘What if it’s not a myth?” – then you’re going to jail, my friend.
RMMD: June will have to handle the scene of that accident on her own. Even the sirens have stopped. She could call her husband, the doctor, to assist, but she knows the kids probably have him roasting in the oven by now.
MONDAY!
Family Circus: Jeffy looks like he has to go to the bathroom REAL BAD but was told to wait.
@Baja Gaijin: THANK YOU for the June hair change yesterday. I was literally amazed at how much better her hair looks without that horrible hank in front. Your revised ‘do is not likely to sweep the nation, but I could stand to look at it. Impressive.
FC: Billy’s collection of book characters would find it extremely difficult to pass the Bechdel Test. It looks to me like it’s a dude who is holding the candle, so the only real possibility I see is if the (female?) camel were to talk with the (female?) parrot.
@Melody Mare, to Camelot and back: As one of your many devoted fans, I am thrilled to see you again! Your full-body shot is by far the best thing about today’s strip. Thank you for agreeing to return to PRINCE VALIANT.
The spooky portrayal of Morgan today is not really fair, to my way of thinking. She led a justified effort to do to Dialyodd what needed to be done. And it looked to me as if Dialyodd was shown as not being very nice to Horses, apart from his burn-humans mission.
I hope that Morgan will enjoy her down time in her castle. And your Wild Stallion sounds interesting! Please let us know if he takes any roles that we might see in the future.
@161 Poteet: I was beginning to worry about you. Glad you liked it.
@Sequitur: “I thought they learned that word from their mother, not the teacher, although she definitely knows the word.”
Teacher does a pretty good job at demonstrating the word, though of course she’s not quite up to Thel’s level.
@Poteet: “Billy’s collection of book characters would find it extremely difficult to pass the Bechdel Test. It looks to me like it’s a dude who is holding the candle, so the only real possibility I see is if the (female?) camel were to talk with the (female?) parrot.”
Yes, there’s more things than the teacher’s fashion choices which date this cartoon to the sixties.
@boingboing: “Family Circus, 1/22/23: scene (panel?) 3; “a apple”?! Not AN apple?”
I think it’s supposed to be short for “a as in apple”. The start of a list like
a – apple
b – banana
c – counterfeit
d – dodecahedron
e – eclecticism
and other easy words for the kids to learn