Tuesday quickies
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Gasoline Alley, 10/15/24
Wow, I guess I see why Sophie has a different teacher than the other two girls! I’ve been trying pretty hard to avoid learning any specific details about these nightmare children, but now we know specifically which two are the “smart ones” (hint: not Sophie).
Dennis the Menace, 10/15/24
Just showing us Dennis and Mrs. Wilson reacting to a picture we can’t see? What a tease! WE DEMAND THE HOT MR. WILSON PIC, SHOW IT TO US AT ONCE
Shoe, 10/15/24
“I wonder if a tiger ate him?”
125 replies to “Tuesday quickies”
Gasoline Alley:
“When’s Taylor going to get rid of that annoying Travis guy, anyway, Sophie? And his brother is even worse….”
GA – I’d think Sophie’s response would be the same in panel two: “Y’mean like Beyonce and Taylor Swift?”
DtM: Martha loves it when her evil minion provides her with insult ammo.
MW: Another successful brainwashing! Once Estelle gets her obligatory “Omnia Vincit Amor” tattoo, she’ll be ready for happily ever after.
FC-Once upon a time in a magical decade called the 1960s….
MW-“I would say you were thinking with something but neither of us has it,” Pierre says.
Six Chix-Too bad it’s not ‘joke’.
Gasoline Alley:
“Oh, yeah! Y’mean the watery part of liquid dairy products that remains after the formation of curds?”
“No. Don’t say it, Sophie.”
“Yep. The Milky Whey!”
GA: “No, I mean like the orbs of plasma undergoing thermal fusion in the vacuum of outer space!” “Oh, you mean like…uh…your mama! I’m sorry, that was over the line. Please continue…”
DtM: “And by good-looking I mean his vision was better. I’m sorry, I think my bad-talking is because of my attention-short at the teacher-place.”
Shoe: “I’ve got a quater-ton of steak and bacon going bad in the fridge! He really should warn me if he’s going to be gone more than a couple days…”
Prsonally, I’d like to see a picture of Mrs. Wilson when she was young; I bet she was a cutie-patootie!
RMMD:
Wow. Look at the front row, center. I didn’t know that Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett was a Mud fan.
JP: Neddy wants murderous revenge on Declan for what exactly? He lied about the reason for his estrangement from his family (which remains to be confirmed) to account for why he didn’t want them at their wedding, but that’s all he supposedly did to her. Beyond that, he allegedly mismanaged some money and ran out on the debt, but it’s implied he did this more out of incompetence and embarrassment than premeditated maliciousness. Not great, but this level of poor business management is hardly worthy of violent hatred. After all, it’s not as though he tried to force a bunch of senior citizens to perform demanding labor for slave wages inside scorching hot shipping containers after bribing government safety officials to look the other way and then fled into the wilderness while hiding behind his family’s money and influence and blaming everyone else after his miserable deathtrap sweatshop suffered an inevitable mishap that left countless people injured and dead, Neddy. Not that Neddy’s powers of observation have ever been particularly great, as evidenced today as she is presently slicing up and eating bite-sized pieces of a stack of napkins.
DT: I’m growing more and more certain that all that stuff last week with the phone cameras and stinky visitors isn’t going to matter at all. Someone really needs to go to the Dick Tracy Writers’ Clown College and teach these nitwits the difference between a proper red herring and a total waste of everyone’s time.
RMMD: Yvonne will be pleased to receive her weekly live performance of “Muddy Boots,” but most of this crowd is looking forward to hearing their favorite Truck Tyler songs, such as “That Day When You and I- Ow Fuck, My Finger!”, “The Road Keeps Calling M- Sweet Jesus, the Pain!”, and of course “Glenwood Mot- Aaaaaaauuuugh! Aaaaaaaauuugh! It Hurts So Bad, I Can’t Take It Anymore! Stop Clapping at My Suffering, You Dumpy Suburban Phony Country Fan Fucksticks! I Hope I Run Over Your Ugly Children with My Nissan Frontier! Fuck You! Aaaaaaauuuugh God, My Finger! (The Tralala Song).”
Shoe made me question things.
Are tigers anthropomorphic in this world, like the birds?
If they are anthropomorphic, would they still get urges to eat other sapient animals, like in Beastars?
Or would they just simply be pluggers?
Wait… do Pluggers and Shoe share the same universe? I mean both comics were created by the same guy so maybe?
Hi and Lois: Of course the blonde kids are excited to see the blond garbageman who they look exactly like and not at all like their “father.”. I’m not hinting that Lois had a couple of flings with him. I’m outright saying she boinked him and boinked him good.
MW:
“Let’s do a musical call-and-response, kids. We’ll start with you, Libby, and do something by the Beatles: ‘But if you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman…’ ”
“Meow!”
“…’you ain’t gonna make it with anyone, anyhow.’ Excellent, Libby! Now it’s your turn, Pierre. Let’s do some Drifters!: ‘On the…”
“Woof!”
” ‘…it’s peaceful as can be….’ “
GA: Culture has been frozen in time for the last 15-20 years or so, which is pretty helpful for the blissfully out-of-touch old men who make up most of the comic strip industry. Momma was referencing Taylor Swift a decade ago, Apartment 3-G did Beyoncé in 2010, and yet somehow these are two reasonable celebrities for tweens in 2024 to reference. For reference, this is like if Gasoline Alley in 2004 had some little kids think the biggest stars were Cyndi Lauper and Whitney Houston.
GA: For a while I thought that Ida Noe wasn’t actually evil, and was just an interpretation joke Josh made up like Marmaduke being a Hellhound and such.
But seeing her glaring at us, with narrowed brows from the first panel I take back what I said.
Mary Worth: Libby won’t dignify Estelle’s epiphany with a response. “Just look straight ahead and ignore the blathering idiot,” she thinks to herself.
Gasoline Alley:
I think that Sophie and her playmates all dosed with gummies.
I see Karen Moy is the featured creator on Komics Kondom this week. She’s very honest – admitting that she’s even worse than Mary Worth in handing out advice to her neighbors.
Sally Forth: Ted’s putting up “the most monstrously, horrifyingly spewing outdoor Halloween display ever.” That’s the polite way to say Marvin Miller is its centerpiece.
Six Chix: Can we get back to the sandwich fucking please? This EVILSCARYCLOWN bit is a bit too scary.
Oh man, I can’t wait for the new TikTok viral fad, inevitably called The Wilson Sit: Right arm tucked behind your back, left hand resting on your hips, ankles crossed. I urge you to try it yourself, Curmudgeonites! I’m doing it right now (while dictating this comment, obviously), and it’s… weird!
MW: Aaaaannnndddd cue Eshtelle finding Dr. Mr. Ed humping Dr. Sheila Speak-N-Say right there on the examination table back at the clinic… ‘I thought we were on a break!’
JP: Their waitress is thinking ‘first I gotta put up with Wanda and that creepy Truck dude, and now these two nitwits…’
Luann: Oh joy, this puzzle bit is our plot for the next three weeks, isn’t it?
GA: To be fair to Sophie, when I was her age(?) I only knew “Milky Way” as a candy bar, not a galaxy. And the big stars were Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. Are kids allowed to eat Milky Ways anymore? Need to buy Halloween candy soon…
Dennis the Menace: Missing next panels: Martha thinks back to when she could bounce a quarter off her young hubby’s taut abs and that azz…She hurries Dennis out the front door while she dashes upstairs to the hand-held shower massager.
Frazz: Correction: “Like FUNNY comic strips.”
CS: Evidently bitter that he didn’t win a Pulitzer, a sulking Batty isn’t even going to try anymore. A “fluster of leaves” isn’t even a malaprop or a pun. It’s . . . I don’t know what it is.
MW: “Yes, Pierre and Libby, maybe Mama made a mistake. I guess I should have subjugated myself totally to Daddy’s needs. It was silly of me to think my devotion to him should be reciprocated. Let’s go beg him to take me back. You know, if he can find the time.”
GA – The Algonquin Roundtable – 2024….
DtM – Perhaps not surprisingly Dennis, back then he was even a bigger asshole….
Shoe – Hey, you know how to get rid of 35-100 pounds of ugly fat, fast? Feed Cosmo to a tiger who’s not on a low fat diet….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
MW: Mary tells Stell;
“Don’t dwell on the missed engagement dinner. Think of all the other Wedding planning things you’ve shared. Like picking out the cake.”
He missed it.
“Well, the reception hall.”
He didn’t show up.
“The invitations.”
He couldn’t make it.
“Going through the registry list.”
He fell asleep.
“The guest list?”
Uh, uh.
“The wedding meal?”
Nope
“Honeymoon destination”
He said pick a place and he’ll meet me there.
Mary writes a note on a piece of paper and hands it to Stell. Stell asks; “Is this a counsellor?”
No, Tinder
Gasoline Alley: Okay, so Sophie is the not-smart one. Now who’s the one with the heart condition causing a ghastly gray pallor? Somebody needs to talk to her parents about life insurance for their little one.
Gasoline Alley – Sophie’s career counselor in high school is going to recommend “influencer”
Dennis the Menace – The syndicate, still hoping to milk the last of the comics IP train, is testing out the idea of a young Mr. and Mrs. Wilson prequel series.
Shoe – “I wonder if a tiger ate him?” – Dang, now I want this strip to be the moment Calvin and Hobbes returns and takes over Shoe’s distribution in the remaining newspapers.
Yes, she made Ed a free agent. Question: As great as this would be, would it top Wilbur’s AUGHHH! when he discovered Fabiana with “Cousin” Pedro?
Shoe: Where is Cosmo? Simple, a tiger put him in his tank.
RMMD: “Play Shit-Stained Underpants!”
GT: “Uh, here? Am I here? Where am I?”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Honestly? I doubt it. Goodness knows they’ve tried, but even all these years later I don’t think there’s been anything to top that moment.
MW – Karen discovered alliteration. Mama maybe made a mistake – meow!
Moy maybe makes many mistakes. Meow!
@The Rambling Otter:
My theory is that Slylock Fox is the early, energetic years of the animal revolution, where animals are just finding their place and setting up a new society. Dangers are everywhere, but so are exciting possibilities. Even the brutal regime that Slylock is attempting to enforce cannot sleep comfortably as the newly awakened animal citizens are too full of ideas and democratic urges to simply fall in line with the first order to take power
Pluggers and Shoe I consider to be years later, when everything has solidified and ossified. Shoe, which takes place in “East Virginia”, was a conservative breakaway society of birds who refused to become like humans and stuck to the Old Ways of living in the trees, but eventually gave in to the conveniences of technology and progress, and rejoined the rest of society. The Pluggers were the mostly mammal early adopters who took over the remains of human society.
In both cases, however, the established order and end of innovation has led to a stagnate and corrupt society. Shoe shows an elite world of political corruption, lazy and self-interested media, and institutional decay. Pluggers shows the working class disinterested in new ideas, innovations, and addicted to simple pleasures of fast food, ready to eat meals, and pride in mediocre work, mediocre lives, and a smug moral superiority of their “simple” lives as cogs in an international economic and political order they cannot understand (and would be too disinterested in trying to), but are utterly reliant on.
DtM: “Your husband is really ugly, y’know” is more ” just plain mean” than “menacing” but I’ll take it.
DtM: Portrait of the young George Wilson
Usually comic writers often become so overly enamoured by the word play they thought of that they make their characters smug and insufferable, Tom Batiuk. It’s a nice change of pace to have it result in a child so ignorant about the concept of stars in the sky when mentioned alongside planets that you fear she spent her life locked in a basement with nothing but Us magazines and old Halloween candy.
***
I like to think they’re just reading an ordinary book and Dennis is making this observation out of the blue.
RMMD: this has gone on longer than Woodstock and Mud hadn’t even played his first note.
Would the alternatives below for Dennis be more menacing or less?
1. Delivering that line to Mr. Wilson instead.
2. Telling Mr. Wilson that the young Mrs. Wilson was a hottie, going into graphic detail about the sexual acts Dennis would have enjoyed with her.
3. Same as #2 except delivered to Mrs. Wilson.
Gasoline Alley:
— “Our teacher wants us to write about the planets an’ stars.”
— “Stars like Gloria Swanson and Josephine Baker?”
— “Oh, right, you were born in 1918, just like this comic strip.”
— “Yes, which is why I also believe that the Milky Way galaxy encompasses the entire universe, because we didn’t have any scientific method of observing space any farther away!”
— “Oh, I get it — you’re not dumb, you’re just really old!”
— “Good job… you’ve finally figured out the true meaning of Gasoline Alley!”
GA: Sophie knows the dictates of her universe require one person to be blindingly oblivious to even the simplest things, and is trying to secure her place for the future. Unfortunately her universe is Gasoline Alley and there is no future, only the eternal vaguely-defined present.
Shoe: Is 35-100 pounds a good average weight for an anthropomorphic bird person? Trying to get a sense of scale here.
@Anonymous: Was me. Emptied the cookie jar and forgot to refill it.
Dennis: Ouch!
@seismic-2: Yikes!
Mr Wilson is suffering more from having had a good thing and lost it than if he had never had it. Desire and incapacity to let thing go are the source of suffering, Buddhism is very menacing
Good news, Cosmo is dead! Probably because of his unhealthy diet!
Gasoline Alley:
I don’t think Sophie is going to be the next Marie Slodowska Curie. Just sayin’.
@jroggs, JP: You missed that Neddy is a S-P-D, and someone wanted HER money.
Shoe – I was at the New Orleans zoo about eight years ago, and that day they happened to be having a 25th birthday party for one of their tigers. The took a piece of plywood and made him a 25 out of various cuts of meat. He also got bacon salt on some of his toys, and finally, they made him a popsicle out of all the wet sludge left over from cutting up meat, fish, etc. for feeding time. He looked pretty happy about the whole thing. Honestly, one of the better tiger parties I’ve ever been to.
Dennis the Menace – So Josh has covered George Wilson’s younger photos before and… a lot of retconning being done in this strip
“How could have broken up with Ed? What was I thinking?” Estelle, you were thinking you had some self-worth. But Mary put a stop to that, didn’t she?
GA – Blatant rip-off of Shorty and Beanpole’s act.
C’shaft: You spend a solid month soapboxing about the power of the written word, and this is what you do with it…
Dustin: “And it was all downhill from there. All that crying to be fed and changed and held! I knew right away he’d never amount to anything.”
JP: Neddy knows the forces of her universe will never allow her to suffer too much from her own careless stupidity.
Luann: The nice thing about being a comic strip writer is that you can take your petty grievances that nobody cares about like “jigsaw puzzles are kind of frustrating, actually” and make an entire week’s worth of work out of them.
MW: “Meow!:” What do you mean “maybe,” you dumb litter-scooper?
“Woof!:” “Thinking” is a very generous term for what happens in that rusty hamster wheel you call a brain.
“Mr Wilson is so handsome in this picture!”
“Yes. He made a pact with the Devil, but fumbled it, so now he is getting older and uglier and the picture stays the same”
Is there some petrochemical poisoning in Gasoline Alley which makes all the schoolkids resemble dolls modeled after dwarfs?
Shoe: Tiger did not consume plastic bird like object.
FC – It must be Holier Than Thou Grandma Week. She’s looking especially mushroom haired today.
Mary Worth – Moy buried the lede. How did Estelle get Libby into that sweater without having her face clawed off?
Rex Morgan – He needs two hands to play guitar. I don’t know if that’s a medical issue or a musical issue.
Rhymes With Orange – It’s never good when a cartoonist uses a flag or other label to indicate where the comic is supposed to be. Polar bears and penguins would work for the arctic and Antarctica, but maybe that’s too subtle today. “Polar opposites” is a cute idea, however.
6Chix – OMG! The tear tattoo means she killed someone! I was so distracted by that that I couldn’t figure out what the joke is.
9CL – The first panel is a description of every 9CL interchangeable couple. Lolly’s expression in the last panel is almost as horrifying as a hellmaw.
MW: I have a strong aversion to people who walk their cats. But people who walk their cats WITH their dogs? Psychopaths, the lot of them
CS: in his obsession with winning a Pulitzer Batiuk has missed his annual Crankshaft is a asshole behind the steering wheel of a school bus series. And that’s a good thing.
@seismic-2: It’s been suggested here in the past that George is Dennis’ real father. “Dennis the Menace” launched in 1951 when Dennis was 6, meaning he was born in 1945. If Alice was a Hitler Youth who met SS-Obergruppenführer George after she eagerly joined the Lebensborn program, Dennis’ potential menace level just increased exponentially.
@Sequitur #Y177 – Sequitur, if you’re around – I didn’t want to insert myself into some of the unpleasantness yesterday. However – When I first read @Anonymous #Y161, I was taken aback and apparently took it the way you did. However, the quotation marks indicate that they were quoting Dick Cheney, and it does fit what one would say to a hermaphrodite frog. I think it would have been clearer if they had said, “Dick Cheney said…”
I apologize for getting involved, but I felt like I had to say something.
@jroggs: I think Neddy is upset because Declan is apparently after her money, but who the hell knows? Neddy gets her exercise by jumping to conclusions – she didn’t think through anything involved with contacting his family, and she’s taking at face value what they told her without thinking about whether it’s true. But those fluffy pancakes won’t eat themselves.
PHANTOM:. Rereading the author’s latest blog post, i see he refers to Ian Mollusk, the developer of Avatar, as a “bottom feeder”. I resent that. The first edible fish I caught were bullheads, and carp are tasty and nutritious when smoked. Besides, they clean up river bottoms and don’t go around eating cute little baby fish like the surface feeders do.
Is Kit going to ask Avatar, “And just what planetary body do you think you’re on?”
GA:. Yesterday Gertie played the fool to entertain the girls. So today Sophie strokes their egos. We little kids knew how to placate the big kids. Tomorrow Gert will ask them, “And just what planetary body do you think you’re on?”
Is there more to today’s Six Chix In Search Of A Punchline? I’ve checked four sources and they all are just a closeup of Halloween Chick looking in a fridge at the word clout sitting on a clown nose for some reason. I know in the past they’ve released various cuts of the same comic image to isolate any stray elements of humor that might accidently be present. Is there more to this, or is it just a failed “Sesame Street” segment?
MW: A live action shot on location at the Charterstone walking path! Nice to get some outdoor exercise! Libby and Pierre can skip the gym today.
As usual they make the most of their limited dialog, revealing their innermost thoughts and opinions to all who care to interpret their nuanced delivery. True mastery of their craft.
Pierre is easing back into his usual play to the audience with a subtle “side eye.” Will we see a full eyeroll again? Time will tell…
@Liam:
#4. 6CX:. Yeah, I didn’t get today’s joke either. Either she’s got a spare nose in the fridge or she’s found that without makeup, her clout is on ice. True– I’ve been told many times people would pay more attention to me and my ideas if I wore makeup and dressed fashionably.
Shoe: Cosmo is almost as integral to his local economy as the Smifs are to Silas’ store, as evidenced by today’s strip. All daily comics have a relatively small focus, but even by that standard Roz seems to be planning on a short-term basis. Also this joke is very similar to many Blondie strips with Dagwood in Cosmo’s place.
@jroggs: Those are the fluffiest napkins west of the Mississippi.
@Philip: So young schoolmarm Martha was a groupie for barbershop quartets?
@Lord Flatulence: Dennis: Ouch!
__________________________
Dennis’s favorite Rutles movie.
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!:
#63. MW:. Wondering how the pay works for our Terrific Trio. If they each are paid according to the number of scenes in which they perform, Odin has to be starving. Or do the three work as one act and split the paycheck equally? Imagine this is a private arrangement as I don’t think Actors’ Equity touches this.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Is this a new technique?”
“Yes. Instead of paint I’m using Contadina tomato paste and parmesan cheese, on flatbread”
“Now it’s ready for a very special one-man show”
“Where?”
“First the refrigerator… Then in the oven tomorrow for lunch”
[With a tip o’ the hat to Stan Freberg’s classic radio commercials for Contadina tomato paste!]
@MKay: #3
““Omnia Vincit Amor” on one shoulder and “Feliciter Semper Post” on her other shoulder, above the tattoos of Libby and Pierre!
Mark Trail Mix: “Not so fast, Wingnut! Those lions are going to Sanctuaries!” “How do you even know what religion they are affiliated with, Trail?!?”
@Philip:
#49 DtM:. Great photo, Philip, do you have a date for the strip? Maybe it’s written on back of photo. Thank!
Late last night Josh said he is looking for FUNNY comments. As a boring person, best I can do is make serious, profound, supportive, enlightening observations. As if. Hope you and he don’t mind.
@Activist: re MW: You’ve hit on a sensitive point here. Odin is pretty POed that he and his two-legger have been MIA. While each client has an individual contract and base pay, additional compensation is based on panel appearances and speaking lines. Those MEOWs are worth somethin’!
So of course we’re lobbying to get Ed and Estelle back together! Plus we’ve got all that wedding merch ordered….
@Peanut Gallery: [With a tip o’ the hat to Stan Freberg’s classic radio commercials for Contadina tomato paste
__________________
The one where the Loan Arranger calls his Native American partner Tomanto?
@Daisy: #70: Now we need to think of a good tramp stamp for her.
@Anonymous:
#41. GA:. Darn, that’s pretty much what I said at #61. But you said it first and better,! Sure wish I could congratulate you by name.
6Chx, explained: Xunise baked a delicious clafoutis the other day and ate almost all of it, except for a shapeless fruity blob which she carefully stored in her refrigerator. Today she woke up with a bad cold (red nose) and wanted another piece, but saw the blob and said “oh, right” (“I ate it all”). Then she realized she couldn’t draw a recognizable baked French dessert so made a label to put on the blob. Then she realized she couldn’t spell “clafoutis” and gave up halfway through. Not sure why she’s saving that rotted apple.
It takes a lot of work to make the creepy talking doll possessed by an ancient, unspeakable evil the LEAST creepy human shaped thing in your comic strip, so… uh… congratulations? to the artists of Gasoline Alley.
9CL – So, it just now occurred to Alistair’s fiancée that AFTER the wedding her husband will no longer have the excuse that they aren’t married available for when he doesn’t want to boink.
And now she assumes that of course this nineteen year old male was completely asexual up until now, but as soon as the wedding vows are out of the way he will suddenly be as randy as Amos at one of Edda’s piano recitals.
Maybe he has postponed the wedding and subsequent intercourse for so many years because he’s not that into girls? Maybe he’s not into boys either? Maybe he’s not suddenly going to completely change his interests and become a raging libido?
@OId Man Shadow:
#78. GA. Just wait until the creepy AI doll writes their planetary paper for the older two tomorrow. Zits, anyone?
JP: maybe, just maybe, Declan just wants to tap that ass.
@jroggs: Made-up list of Truck Tyler hits or the Billboard magazine “Hot Country Hits”?
You decide.
Gasoline Alley: Starting to formulate a theory that Gasoline Alley is called that because it’s got massive issues with toxic gases and substances leaking into the town’s environs, since chemically-induced brain damage would at least explain why every person in this comic is a goddamned moron of some stripe or the other.
Dennis The Menace: Fighting with all my strength to resist the urge to type “sexy mr wilson” into Google.
Shoe: The bird people of Shoe are so addicted to making lame sarcastic witticisms that they do it even when there’s literally nobody around to hear it. No wonder they all look so fucking miserable all the time.
GA – Sophie, being the pretty one, is already practicing her mama’s advice on how to attract boys and not scare them off with brain-talk. The other two, not so blessed by nature, will probably have to settle for being engineers or sumpthin’.
@seismic-2: That’s awesome. Gave me my biggest guffaw today among many snarks that are guffaw-worthy today. Thanks.
DtM: Take your menacing saddle shoes off the sofa, kid!
@Activist: Philip’s Dennis the Menace strip is from June 9, 2019.
I just spent far too much time wracking my brain to figure out the 1924 equivalent to today’s “Gasoline Alley” joke about Taylor and Beyonce. Because that would probably be the first time it was written in this strip, one year after the Milky Way candy bar was invented.
To be fair to Sophie, “Milky Way” is a perfectly acceptable name for a candy bar and a pretty stupid name for a galaxy.
@Navigator:”Milky Way” may seem like a stupid name for a galaxy now, when light pollution makes it easy to distinguish visible stars, the ones that can still be seen with the naked eye, but our ancestors saw a massive pool of light, like spilling milk.
@C Badger: At first I saw wacking my brain, but that would have to be Judge Parker or Blondie….
MW: So in all this time Dr. Ed has not made a single effort, none, to get back in touch? Hmmm … Maybe daddy’s happy the way things are. I’m glad she has her fur babies to sop up her sobs.
@C Badger: Ruth Etting and Annette Hanshaw?
Both of whom figure prominently in my Spotify list; pop music was excellent stuff when trad jazz was a factor in it.
Dustin: “God, and after that, he was crying and whining and begging to be fed! Even when I put him in his bed with a bottle of milk, he couldn’t figure out how to put it in his mouth! His generation is full of such lazy pricks!”
@GarrisonSkunk: Dennis’s favorite Rutles movie.
_____________________________________
Excellent callback.
Six Chix – ♪ Clout… clout… Let it all out
These are the things I can do without
@GarrisonSkunk: I don’t know if that’s a real one, but I wouldn’t be surprised!
I just found the commercial I had in mind on YouTube.
Photo of a cool-lookin’ dude in a football uniform, AKA Mr. Wilson: https://joshreads.com/2012/03/dennis-eternal/
Photo of beefcake, AKA Mr. Wilson: https://joshreads.com/2007/11/misery-overload/
@Flipper:
#86. DtM:. With all the bandages on his arm, it looks like teen George was a cutter. Glad his pony-tailed girl friend helped him to a better place.
DtM: “Mrs Wilson, are you a witch who sucks the life force out of her mates? And if so, can I join your coven, or do I have to wait till I grow up? Jeepers, I don’t know if I can wait that long.”
love is… getting on so well with her parents that you’re completely ignoring her.
JP — Mel’s Diner? Outside of Phoenix? With Alice, Flo, and Vera as waitresses? “Kiss my grits!”
Crankshaft-“I’ll get my flamethrower. All this talk recently of burning things makes me want to burn something.”
@Schroduck: It helps that Taylor Swift has remains a viable musical act and actually became the biggest music star on the planet in the span of 15 years. Given comic strips, it’s far more likely for them to mention, I dunno, Meatloaf?
@Rube: When I was a kid, there was Felix the Cat cartoon where all of the world’s cows went on strike and refused to give milk. So Felix went to The Milky Way to get milk for his cereal. (And only for his cereal, because fuck everyone else)
But of course this was “The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat” despite how fun and charismatic it was, it was considered a failure and disowned by the current owner of the franchise.
He said it was due to strife in the studio, too many bakers with too many ideas clashing with each-other. But the show itself came out fine, so really…
Today’s Gasoline Alley art, along with the whole current storyline, is pretty deranged and grotesque.
DT: Well, that’s the “mystery” part of this Minit Mystery sorted out — it was this person! Great job, Dick, now try not to get shot, maybe get their name, and we can wrap the whole thing up.
FC: “Are you so unfathomably old that you remember the ancient days of myth, Grandma?” I hope Dennis is somewhere taking notes.
GA: Because I’m cursed with an inquiring mind, I did wonder “What is actually Sophie’s deal? Does she have tragic but heartwarming learning issues, is she not in school at all for some reason, or is she just meant to be kind of stupid?” So, off I went to the depths of the internet, and what I discovered was that a year and a half ago, Sophie was a head shorter than the others and spoke in monosyllables. She’s supposed to be the Jeffy of this group, if not the PJ, but at some point they all started being drawn as looking the same age. (Also, there was a Dick Tracy crossover at that time? And Josh covered it right here? Wow, I really find it hard to care about Gasoline Alley, because I don’t remember that at all.)
JP: Unsurprised that Neddy is already planning her podcast appearances. Sooner or later, it always comes back to how she totally deserves to be super-famous somehow.
Phantom: The damn thing’s still not dead? I was really hoping the rest of the week would just be Stripey confirming it really was just one of those strange thinky-machines he’s heard about and then pontificating about it a bit, maybe with a cut back to Mollusk.
Pluggers: The only time I want to see the word “booty” in Pluggers is maybe International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
S4th: I like to imagine Sally is saying how mature Ted is being in the weary voice of someone who knows that this is just a set-up for him to not be mature at all, but is trapped in her role.
SH: Okay, this has been happening for a week now, and I have to ask: is this even a thing? My coworkers like seeing photos of my cat, but none of them have ever asked to borrow her, and I don’t imagine that changing even if I inexplicably took her to work one day and she somehow saved them all during a storm. Also how does this work? Is it Feryl who hands her over? Do they never wonder why Pam doesn’t do it herself? (Well, they never wondered where she went during the storm either, so I guess that tracks.)
@jroggs: But the Whelans strongly implied that the whole relationship was a scam to get her money. And if you can’t trust two people you’ve known for ten minutes and who have their own reasons for disparaging your fiance who they haven’t spoken to in years, who can you trust?
Blondie: The joke — to use the term loosely — would have worked better at least during the covid years, at least when “working at home” would have been newer and on everyone’s minds. Better years late than never, I guess.
Hagar: Hagar and Eddie sit on a hilltop and make their plans on what to divvy up after they sack the town where Dennis the Menace lives.
Flash Gordon: “galvanic cutlass”: Bones hung on to this one despite the order to replace all galvanized metal blades with plastic. Sometimes the old stuff is still the best,
FG: The Seattle Times commenters seem to think that Ming Himself is going to come prancing out of that gunship, but I’m holding out hope for Zarkov and Bok. I just hate long separations, don’t you?
Speaking of the Times website, how long are they going to be running those god damn 1960ish Popeye animated cartoons over every strip? I hated those things when they were NEW. On the other hand, they were all produced by Gene Deitch, father of underground comix guy Kim Deitch and creator of The Cat, the single-panel comic for jazzbos that ran in The Record Changer magazine in the 1940s.
Shoe: “Tigers can consume 35 to 100 pounds . . .”
Cosmo is surely w-a-y over 100 pounds – more like 300-ish?
He could feed the whole pride . . .
@Activist: By “looking for” I specifically meant when doing the COTW. I support comments of all types being posted, as long as they don’t get abusive or annoyingly contentious! (Was reading past 100 over the past few days specifically bc things were getting annoyingly contentious, as per your observation yesterday)
@Ukulele Ike: FG: Hope you’re right and it is Zarkov and Bok. If Ming does get brought back again then the fresh (and entertaining) approach of a post-Ming world where the rulers of different areas are going around wondering “what are we going to do now?” will be lost. Which would be a shame.
Adult Jam Bread. Guess why it’s called “adult.”
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: This is my favorite 9chickweed story ever, because it enabled me to stop reading the comic.
DtM: The artist doesn’t take a flyer on what a young, attractive George Wilson would look like, but we do happily get a look from Martha that says, “Listen kid, I’ve been psychoanalyzing my husband since before you were born.”
GA: Absolutely mesmerized by the way these girls are talking with their hands. In the last panel Aubee(?) is simultaneously telling Sophie to steal third and casting the shadow of a cat’s head on the wall. Sophie, for her part, begs the reader to “Stop! In the name of love.”
Hi and Lois – “Why do the kids like the garbagemen so much?”
“The garbagemen give them the kind of joyful interactive play that we never could.”
9CL: Another Brooke-tastic Tuesday with Polly (green sweater, needs a hobby) and Lolly (purple sweater, needs a pair of tweezers.)
C-Shaft: After several weeks of Les Moore’s Fahrenheit 451 gambit and its dull fallout bad puns about fall foliage come as a blessed relief.
DT: Tracy meets the Shadow! The Shadow pulls a gun on Tracy! Tracy is suffering from the worst gastric distress of his life!
Dustin: The inevitable point in the mixer where those with whom Dustdad is mixing decide to go mix with someone else.
GT: Not sure what the policy is on bringing unwanted attention to new students who just got out of juvie, but the teacher certainly seems to be skating on thin ice.
HtH: Lucky Eddie is a distant ancestor of Ben Franklin but hasn’t quite got the aphorism down to be catchy enough.
JP: I assume that Neddy and/or Ronnie have their phone out waiting to catch Flo in a “Kiss my grits!”
MW: In this iteration “Meow!” means “enough with the alliteration already” and “Woof!” means “better.”
@Little Guy: @I speak Jive: @Horace Broon: Oh, I completely agree that’s where this story is going. If we didn’t have baseless suggestions to go off of, we wouldn’t have anything at all, and I mean that sincerely with no sarcasm.
Marciuliano failed to set up anything with Declan. It’s not like it would have been hard, either, even with Marciuliano’s “make it up as you go” methods. Just hold off on the story! Do a plot with Abbey and Sam or focus on Ronnie and Kat’s issues or anything else, and in the meantime sow some seeds. Declan goes on a lot of “business trips” and is often impossible to contact, a mysterious second cell phone slips out of his pants pocket when Neddy is
doing the laundrycalling Marie and telling her to drive eight hours to come do her laundry, Neddy frequently has to pick up checks at restaurants when Declan’s card “doesn’t work;” stuff like that. Then we’re primed for a story like this where it’s ultimately revealed that Neddy is just one of many of Declan’s “fiancees,” or maybe he wooed Neddy initially planning to scam her but ended up falling in love with her and now things are really complicated, or whatever. At the very least we ought to have a more concrete idea of how long they’ve been together, because around six months this is still somewhat plausible while past the two-year mark (as it is in real time) it’s just absurd. But man, we got nothing.@Artist formerly known as Ben: re: DT: Huh. I was wondering why Tracy was wearing that mug in panel three….chagrin at the hitman getting the drop on him, or the only facial expression guest artist Howie knows how to draw? If it really is gastric distress, Tracy might as well go ahead and relieve himself; he IS standing waist deep in the sewer.
Meanwhile, the hitman shot Marcus from the end of an alley, so he must have been carrying a long gun. Did he just drop it in the poop water? Or did he borrow that magical pistol from one of McEldowney’s WWII Annie Oakley sharpshooters?
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: 9CL: And now she assumes that of course this nineteen year old male was completely asexual up until now, but as soon as the wedding vows are out of the way he will suddenly be as randy as Amos at one of Edda’s piano recitals.
To be fair, this is what Christianity teaches teenagers in order to try and prevent them from engaging in premarital sex: after years of nonstop “sex is EVIL” teachings being pounded into your head to condition you into chastity, the second you say the vows a switch will flip and you and your new spouse will be all over each other.
@Schroduck: I was wondering if Scancarelli was at all tempted to replace them with, say, Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan, but of course learning new funny celeb names would delay tee time.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: I was going to say something similar about today’s 6Chx, but I somehow couldn’t picture Bianca Xunise in plaid pants and a teal polo shirt out on the golf links.
Haven’t been contributing much this week because La Chiclera and I took a few days off to visit historic Natchez. Damn, it was a whole week of HTT Grandma over at Family Circus, too. BTW: Natchez natives are called Natchoosians. Sounds like one of the Star Trek aliens. Drove the hundred miles up river to Vicksburg to tour the Civil War battlefield. Other than that the town’s a dump. After the Yankee Army trashed the place it looks like they didn’t bother to fix it up. Natchez is kind of like a little New Orleans, minus the stench and bums. They even call their town the Little Easy. Found a barbeque place with Wilbur Weston’s name all over it, the Pig Out Inn. One of their plugger sized signature sandwiches was the Bubbaholic, beef brisket topped with a slice on gouda cheese, garlic aioli, and mac and cheese on a sourdough bun. Then we found this Mexican-Cajun fusion place called Fat Mama’s, where you can get tamales, Cajun boudin, and a Cuban ham sammich. Had good luck on the slots at the casino, doubled my stake the first night and tripled it the second. That’ll make up for the speeding ticket I got in some podunk south of Alexandria, Louisiana. On the way back to Texas stopped at the Boudin King in Jennings, Louisiana. George Jones must’ve eaten there a lot because they used to keep a shrine to The Possum on one of their walls. Had some fried, breaded boudin balls, no casings. Should be back snarking tomorrow.
@123 Guillermo el chiclero: If we don’t hear from you, we’ll know you were devoured by Dagwood Bumstead in your sleep.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Had been wondering about you. I was hoping you were having fun, and am glad you were.