Josh has some questions
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Rhymes With Orange, 11/10/24
Hey, everybody. Have you ever wondered if demons, the dark angels who have turned their back on God and now live in Hell, where they have the job of inflicting awful tortures on the damned for all eternity, have to go to school, like orindary children? Well, apparently they do. I’m just as surprised as you, to be honest. Doesn’t seem like it’d be up their alley in my opinion. They really strike me as being more into the cursing their Creator and inflicting inhuman suffering on his creations kind of thing rather than learning new information and skills in a supportive environment.
Dennis the Menace, 11/10/24
“Based on the fact that he’s walking towards Mr. Wilson’s house, I bet he’s walking towards Mr. Wilson’s house.” Do you even hear yourself, Henry? Do you and your wife truly have nothing better to talk about than this? That’s sad, man.
Crock, 11/10/24
Every once in a while I like to play the game of “What Year’s Topical Issue Is Today’s Crock Rerun About?” This one clearly is about “health care reform,” obviously. But, that doesn’t really narrow it down: was it from 2010? 1993? 1974? 1945? Could be any of them! This strip’s been around forever!
108 replies to “Josh has some questions”
Slylock Fox-“C’mon, Fox. Quit hasslin’ me. I’ve got to make money somehow.”
MW-“I’m glad to play a part because I’m a narcissist,” Mary thinks to herself.
FC-“Let’s change the locks and cut him out of our will.”
Crock-If you think this is bad you should see today’s “Cathy” it’s a comparison between 1972 and 2002.
Crock: Now, I don’t know how French Algerian society was governed. Maybe some random military officer really did have the power to just arbitrarily reform the health care system, checked only by angry phone calls from his mother. But I don’t think the Foreign Legion would be protesting for or against his reforms, and if they did, they’d probably find a better slogan than just putting “HEALTH CARE REFORM” on a big placard.
@Schroduck:
That’s not a protest, that is how news about current events is disseminated throughout Crock’s territory. Just dudes carrying signs bearing news items from town to town.
Today on Dennis The Menace: I learn that Dennis’s father canonically has three eyes, two of which are attached to his head, and one which orbits around him like an electron.
And today’s Crock: Now, I know that Johnny Hart was an outspoken Christian conservative, and in that context it’s easy to read this strip as him taking a shot at Obamacare; the character’s mother is presumably supposed to be read as correct in berating her son over it. But, if you forget the man behind the strip, and take what we see completely on it’s face: this is THE most milquetoast commentary on a controversial issue I have ever SEEN. The message literally becomes “reforming things makes some people upset sometimes”. Yep. Sure does. Bold, bold statement.
Also I just realized I know exactly when this Crock originally ran – 15 November 2009, one week after the House passed the ACA – because this is the infamous “Vermin Crock finally shoots himself in the head” strip.
Chix (sic): Bannerman apparently didn’t have the space to include a “try not wearing such a short dress” panel in her blame the victim series.
Dennis the Menace: Dennis looks awfully unhappy here — I’ll bet he isn’t actually running toward the Wilsons’ house, but away from his mom’s cooking! Because, you know, it’s bad, and includes vegetables. Okay, that wasn’t a joke per se, but it was just as funny as anything in today’s panels.
Crock: “She taught me some new words, like ‘pre-existing condition.’ And whatever the hell that is, I’ll be damned if I’m going to cover it!”
Mary Worth: Of course, any wedding that takes place in Santa Royale must end with ceremonial praise and gratitude toward Mary Worth, by official statute. It’s like the ancient law of droit du seigneur or prima nocta, except I’m pretty sure none of these old folks will have enough energy for sex tonight.
RMMD: A man in the background loses his appetite listening to this dribble and is left staring at his burger: Welcome to our world, Bud.
That’s funny, I always thought it was high school that was hell.
DtM: Canonically, he is heading towards the Wilson’s house. Have to assume, he’s looking for Martha to protect him from whatever ass-whipping he so rightly deserves.
DENNIS THE MENACE: I guess it’s a “rite of passage” here for us to all get a turn at doing this at some point, but…um…actually Josh, I think the “joke” is that Dennis parents guessed (correctly) that he’s probably running away from Mr. Wilson’s house, presumably after he cause some mischief. (Actually actually, the real funny part is figuring why Henry and Alice need to “calculate” this when it’s the explicit premise of the strip, but that’s a story for another time.)
MW: Mary is seething. “These people can’t read your mind, you know! I need public exaltation. OUT LOUD, you twit!”
RMMD: Enough about you, Wanda. Get those Morgan kids fed and out of there before they come up with some stupid scheme.
RWORANGE: My stepdaughter once asked, “If I were the Antichrist, would I know it?” I assured her that her demonic education would have begun long ago.
DtM: For crying out loud, draw the curtains and turn off your phones! Do you people never learn?
MARY WORTH: Incidentally can I mention how sad it is that Ed and Estelle apparently didn’t invite Tim Walz to the reception. Like come on now, Mary and company. Dude has had an especially rough week! Let him have this!
Fred Basset Spanish to English,
RwO There’s an odd little movie called “Dark Angel: The Ascent” that seems to be popular on streaming. It posits that, after being cast into Hell, the demons repent and become good Christians who devote themselves to their mission of punishing sinners, and raise their children to do the same. It’s not a great movie, but it’s worth checking out.
RWO – Live and learn, die and burn – no deposit, no return.
DtM – It’s got an Asmodeus kind of vibe to me. Maybe he’s off to build a Hebrew temple….
(Appropriately named) Crock – Medicare for all! That’s the filthiest thing I’ve ever heard, you commie shill….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
RwO: I like how in Hell Elementary they only have little fires scattered about, and no brimstone to be seen. Just goes to show that even in Satan’s realm, public school funding is still sorely inadequate.
DtM: Wait, is Dennis going towards the Wilson’s or away from them? It does make more sense in context that he is fleeing the scene after causing some kind of mayhem, but I find the other option funnier: Dennis speed-walking over with a grim sense of determination, Mr Wilson calling Henry before he’s even made it up the walkway saying “Good lord, Mitchell, he’s got that look in his eyes again! I’ve locked the deadbolt but I don’t have time to batten down the windows…!”
Crock: Ha, it’s funny because Crock is so hopelessly out of his depth with it comes to healthcare that he doesn’t even know the relevant policy terms! Boy, military command is great for winning battle but bad for delivering public goods, ammirite?
MW: Wilbur fumes inside. “Oh that’s just swell. You worked out your differences with HIM. But with ME, you got a restraining order. Thanks for nothin’.”
CS: “KA-SPLAM!!!” said no door-breaker-downer ever.
RwO: Was last night’s homework assignment in Introduction to Mental Torture to “come up with a torment designed to bring back particularly painful memories in your teacher“? Or was the student who put that apple on the corner of the teacher’s desk just showing some initiative?
RwO: I would guess demon kids like this have trouble giving each other noogies — those darn horns keep getting in the way.
Look Dennis the Menace Hasty Update Team. When they hand you a strip with Henry talking on a landline, it may seem clever to slap Henry’s floating hand and cellphone on the bottom of the penultimate panel. But why did he pull his phone out before it rang? Turning the handset into a black rectangle in the last panel would have been enough.
Crock — Sounds like CrockMom just discovered that Medicare “Advantage” is neither.
RwO — By staffing and maintaining the realm of eternal punishment, aren’t the demons an essential part of the canonical divine regime? If they refused to inflict suffering on those sent to them, would that challenge the existing order? So these little devils most definitely need to be indoctrinated with the ruling ideology in order to keep things as they are.
Crock leads a foreign legion outpost, right? I don’t want to pull the strings holding Crock’s internal logic together too hard, but he’s not actually any kind of politician or policy maker? Also he’s posted in the Algerian desert, far from his mom? Who lives in France? I’m pretty sure I’m just stating objective facts about the premise here.
@Craig!: re Crock: And today’s Crock: Now, I know that Johnny Hart was an outspoken Christian conservative, and in that context it’s easy to read this strip as him taking a shot at Obamacare; the character’s mother is presumably supposed to be read as correct in berating her son over it.
This would make sense if Johnny Hart wrote Crock, but it was Brant Parker and, mostly, Don Wilder who wrote it.
Since I’m being asked and assuming it’s not a rhetorical question…No. I’ve Never gave it a thought. I don’t pay much attention to fairy tales.
I see that demon school still teaches the classics! First lesson, offering apples
H&L: I appreciate how Lois turns her back and bends over slightly as she awaits the obligatory goosing when Hi reaches around her to take the jar. Bonus points for framing her quip about his “sword” not working in kid friendly terms.
MW: These two have been dating “for several years”? I mean, yeah this strip plods along but I’m calling bulkshit: this is some serious retconning.
RWO – Sometimes I’ll look at a strip like this and try to plot the course that led to the final product. Here, the writer came up with a goof on the phrase “moral of the story” and then tried to determine the best setting for it. They figured a classroom hellscape in which an adult demon teacher showing a bunch of child demon pupils a book featuring a fox and a chicken would be optimal. The arbitrarily placed fires were just gravy.
DtM: “Judging from his speed and direction it’s got Creeper in Windowless White Van Violating a Restraining Order to Stay 1000 Feet away from a Playground written all over it.
@Schroduck: Wow, nice catch! Looking back at the other strips from that date, I’m surprised Josh didn’t do anything with “The presence of mashed potatoes in Hagar the Horrible means that Vinland extended much farther south than previously thought.”
@Craig!: Spot on on the blandness of the commentary. The conservatism might not even be there, because Johnny Hart didn’t do Crock, though it’s part of his extended family tree; Brant Parker (Hart’s artist on The Wizard of Id) was the original writer but left after a year to focus on TWoI. He was replaced by Don Wilder, who according to Wikipedia continued as the writer through 2011. Wilder died in 2008, which explains a lot about this 2009 strip.
RwO – And for all these years people have been worrying about unbaptized babies….
I guess Six Chix is trying to go for some sort of whimsical parody of demons.
Such as scenarios where demons are laughable card-carrying villains and try to use the word “evil” in every instance that they can. Words like ability? No, it’s “Evility.” Or this evening? It’s “This Evil-ning!”
Wow, I managed to do more clever wordplay than the Chix can, without even trying.
@But What Do I Know?: I remember someone asking:
“If The Devil punishes the bad guys, wouldn’t that make him a good guy?”
Also, it seems the whole “evil people go to Hell and good people go to Heaven” it really seems that God and the Devil have some sort of agreement going on.
Does Henry ever realize that he could put an end to these damn phone calls if just ONCE he told Dennis, “Don’t go to Mr. Wilson’s house anymore. Mr Wilson hates your guts.” ? Seems like at least one strip over the 70 years of this horror could use this as a premise.
@matt w: OK, Wikipedia no longer says that Wilder continued to write Crock after his death, as I was able to find an obituary for Rechin that explained that he took over the writing for his last three years. Man, that’s a sad sentence.
FC: I’ve tried to zoom in on that future family portrait, and I think I see Billy and wife, with kids, Dolly with some guy, Jeffy by himself on the other side, holding on to his dad. I assume that’s PJ at the bottom right, who was never allowed to grow up.
Crock: See, this is the problem with so-called “sound methods.” Kurtz never had to deal with this crap.
MW: Estelle and Ed dated for “several years?” No, they absolutely did not. Their only other story arc was about them starting to date. They barely know each other. That was a major plot point of this very story. I just… why say this? Why?
RWO- Do Devil schools have after school God Clubs? Asking for a friend.
@matt w: Then Rechin’s kid took over, got into a beef with Josh, and then decided that working on his Dad’s strip was depressing him and quit. So now we get these strips from beyond the grave, that didn’t even make sense at the time.
Luann: So you’re walking around the college campus, and you see a fellow student wearing a yellow t-shirt with an illustration of a computer mouse and the phrase “THINK B4U CLICK.” Take your time and guess what the intended message of this shirt is.
Did you make your guess? Well, you’re wrong. The correct answer is… something about the environment being harmed by online purchasing. I think. To be honest, I had originally planned to break this comic down further, but the longer I look at it the more incomprehensible it becomes. So instead I’ll just share a select GC Trufann comment:
“Yup, cut the cord, I have.” – a person making an online post under her real full name
@BigTed: It’s been codified in Santa Royale’s “All Hail Mary Worth” ordinance.
@pugfuggly: Hellementary?
DtM: Dennis’ escapades have forced his parents to memorize the trigonometry required to triangulate his position and the physics required to find his velocity and acceleration. Once he’s grown up and left the house, his parents will have him to thank for their new careers as mathematicians.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Ready, Polonio?”
“Ready!”
“I still don’t think that eating radioactive rolls is going to give him the powers of Godzilla!”
I always figured Henry and Alice were too busy fornicating to pay much attention to Dennis.
Do the Sunday strips have a different artist than the weekday strips? Notice Dennis’ missing neck in all 3 panels he appears in. The weekday strips artists are more careful about vital body parts.
Crock: I’m not very well versed in Crock lore, but isn’t it established that Crock dumped his mother in a nursing home, from which she still manages to create all sorts of mischief for himself and others? I’m just saying, “health care reform” sounds a lot like a euphemism for “the nurses are stealing her medication and selling it on the black market to make ends meet.”
DtM: Breaking the “180 rule:” not menacing per se, but visually annoying.
@MKay: #12
“ RMMD: Enough about you, Wanda. Get those Morgan kids fed and out of there before they come up with some stupid scheme.”
Like taking all of the eggs out of the diner’s big refrigerator.
FC: It is also a rerun.
https://old.reddit.com/r/newspapercomics/comments/1gnuo95/todays_family_circus_vs_family_circus_strip_from/
C’shaft: I expect a lot of Crankshaft’s nightmares involve government authorities breaking down his door.
Dustin: “Oh, boo-hoo. I suppose you’ll be asking for your fancy ‘workman’s comp’ like the soft entitled Millennial you are next? Get back to work and lose an eye like a man!”
HotC: Come on, teacher! Whole cookbooks have been made based around fictional universes. A simple Google search for “Krabby Patty recipe” will yield several promising results. I’m sure there are a couple of students who wouldn’t be missed if you employed them in making Soylent Green with your class. Be creative!
MW: No, it just feels like several years.
Mary Worth – The praise for Mary is only one panel, and it’s – GASP! – in a THOUGHT BALLOON! This will not stand! It’s mandatory that there has to be at least three weeks of effusive praise for Mary from every character, and then another week of Mary patting herself on the back while she does her victory lap.
Quick! Someone do a wellness check on Karen Moy.
FC – Everybody sing! “Cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon…”
Prince Valiant – The artwork is always great. I love the last panel.
FC: At least one consolation for lonely, elderly Thel. HTT Grandma is long dead and buried.
JP: Is Neddy turning Asian in the last panel?
JP & RMMD: C’mon, everybody. Let’s see who can do their best Jack Nicholson diner temper tantrum from “Five Easy Pieces” impression.
@Sequitur #Y110 – I am extremely thankful that I didn’t see that cake last night. That’s abominable.
JP: I wonder if one of those celebrity pictures on the walls is Truck Tyler?
@jroggs:And did Luann’s T-shirt magically appear on her with no transportation? In reality, cheap clothes that are made in Third World sweatshops, shipped to North America, worn once, tossed in a charity bin, then shipped to Africa, are a serious environmental and social issue.
I don’t know why they drew speed lines on Dennis when his parents had an entire conversation and he seems to have barely moved even three feet.
Dustin: This whole week has gone from mocking Dustin for not having a job, mocking Dustin for having a shitty job, and now presumably mocking Dustin for quitting his shitty job.
Dustin is the Sisyphus of newspaper comics.
Dennis The Menace: Like Dennis’ blank, vacant stare as he supposedly runs like crazy, as if he were some kind of robot built to look like a kid. Which would explain his immortality and the fact that he acts like no child on the face of the earth.
Crock: This is classic newspaper comic political “satire”. It pretends to be about current issues by dropping buzzwords here and there but carefully avoids giving any actual OPINION about those issues to dodge even the slightest of controversies, in the process rendering itself borderline nonsensical. A certain arch-conservative duck that shall go unnamed would disapprove, which is honestly a compliment.
Six Chex and A Cat Named Isla Grace In Search Of A Punchline : “Thinking up jokes is hard!” “Why not just sell your alotted space to advertise that cool new web comic about a werevixen, VIXEN PARK? Just search ” Vixen Park Pilot” on YouTube!
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©2024 4DFox Productions All Rights Reserved
Baby Blues: Halloween was more than a week ago. Who is visiting pumpkin farms in the middle of November?
Bizarro: I’m not entirely certain how the plumbing works in the NYC skyscrapers but I don’t think everything flushed down the toilets just sits in the sewer right below the street.
Curtis: He’s finally working up the courage to ask her to the orgy.
Slylock Fox: Is Weirdly even committing a crime here? If someone wants to buy an expensive bottle of water is that a police matter? I want to know more about the large dog creature that appears to have had the top of its head cut open and stitched back together.
Family Circus: As if Jeffy is ever going to have the ability to learn to drive or the skills to live independently. He’s going to be living with you until you die or he goes to prison.
Dustin: Really enjoying that image of Dustin hurting himself stupidly.
@ectojazzmage: Dennis The Menace: Like Dennis’ blank, vacant stare as he supposedly runs like crazy, as if he were some kind of robot built to look like a kid. Which would explain his immortality and the fact that he acts like no child on the face of the earth.
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And Margaret is the bratty kid next door determined for some reason to prove to the world that D.E.N.I.S. is a robot.
Cue the theme…. “He’s a small Menace……”
@ectojazzmage: Dennis The Menace: Like Dennis’ blank, vacant stare as he supposedly runs like crazy, as if he were some kind of robot built to look like a kid. Which would explain his immortality and the fact that he acts like no child on the face of the earth.
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And Margaret is the bratty kid next door determined for some reason to prove to the world that D.E.N.I.S. is a robot.
Cue the theme…. “He’s a small Menace…….”
@jroggs: The evils of internet shopping?
Nah.
I’m going with my original, dirty-minded premise.
Oh, and MW?
BLEARRRRAAAAAAGH!
JP: I’m going to see the manager, Sophie. That creepy old guy in the booth across from us, the one that looks like that washed up country-western star Truck Tyler, won’t stop staring at us.
My main takeaway from today’s Crock is that we’re hearing about “his” health care reform, which suggests that this strip takes place in a universe where either the 1958 or 1961 Algiers coups succeeded, and the French military now controls Metropolitan France and has redoubled its efforts to suppress the FLN. This presumably explains why the strip is still running today.
DtM: Wait, isn’t the point that he’s running away from Mr. Wilson, not to him, after some unnamed but family friendly act of menace?
Sunday Phantom: Yes, I’m back this week, dahlings, if only in a throwaway shot to establish the scene. It took forever to get those stupid Cattle rounded up and off the set. Once they were out of the way, they asked me to work with the Horses for the battle scene choreography – I’ve of course had experience in Prince Valiant with that! These Barbary Horses they’ve hired are surprisingly fast learners, and were able to learn their moves with no trouble. Not like some snooty Arabians I’ve worked with. And that Mare who did the death scene! What a poignant performance! I think she has a real future in gritty, dramatic roles. I’ve recommended her to Sid, and I gave her his card. This may have been her big break.
And a big thanks to Sid for providing that West African Crocodile on short notice! Lyle added just the right ambiance for the final panel. He’s asked about some of my Mane ‘n’ Tail skin care products… this may be a real challenge…
@Peanut Gallery: How do you say “swish!” en Espanol?
MW: “years”? Only if she’d been cheating on Wilbur. The dramatic fallout will
be awesomenever happen.Has there ever been a likeable character in Mary Worth? There was that Ted guy who pressed his bulging wiener up against Mary’s hoo-haw when he hugged her.
Ripley’s Believe It, Why Not?: the tragic final chapter of “The Adventures Of Fatty Raccoon”.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Has there ever been a likeable character in Mary Worth? There was that Ted guy who pressed his bulging wiener up against Mary’s hoo-haw when he hugged her.
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Buck Owens and Roy Clark:”This week on Hoo-Haw, we would like to salute Mary Worth’s hoo-haw!, Population:1!
SAAAAAAAAAAAAAALUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE!”
Cue the Hoo haw Honeys!
RwO : Who brought an evil apple for the teacher?
@UncleJeffers: Slylock Fox: Is Weirdly even committing a crime here?
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Maybe its a reference to that episode of “Leave It To Beaver” where Ward and June got mad at Beaver for having the gall to sell bottled water to the neighbors.
@Peanut Gallery:
Por supuesto que Don Abundio es este tipo de persona. Cuando trabajaba como barista tenía clientes así. Que fuera difícil y peligroso preparar sus cafés con leche hirviendo no parecía preocuparles. ¡Muerte a los tiranos!
@GarrisonSkunk: Has there ever been a likeable character in Mary Worth?
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Nope,just Dr. Jeff.
@GarrisonSkunk: Sorry, Scratchy, I intended to quote you,but missed.I’ll try again….@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Has there ever been a likeable character in Mary Worth?
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Just Dr Jeff occasionally, and Wilburp Weston that weekend we dont talk about when the party salmon went bad and everyone got drunk on samenella.
MW: If Mary Worth time is equivalent to real time—and that’s a big “if”—Estelle should have said she and Dr. Ed have been dating for almost two years, not three. They did have a first date in November 2021, but it was ruined by a nasty karaoke sing-off between Estelle and Wilbur. Wilbur apologized to Estelle and gave her Pierre, so of course she took him back. They then went on a reconciliation cruise that led to Wilbur drunkenly falling overboard. Estelle and Dr. Ed didn’t begin dating again until she took Libby and Pierre to him a year later in January 2023.
@Mikey: DtM: Wait, isn’t the point that he’s running away from Mr. Wilson, not to him, after some unnamed but family friendly act of menace?
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According to the settlement of the 1947 lawsuit Mitchell v. Wilson….Dennis must give fair warning to Wilson whenever he runs towards him, namely yelling, “HEEEEEEY MIIIIIIIIISTER WIIIIIIIIILSON!” and you thought it just a wacky catchphrase! Now you know the REST of the story!
DT: Dick Tracy, the newspaper comics industry’s most pro-police strip, would like to officially say “But not the transit police; those guys are idiots.”
JP: “Look, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just an ordinary story of boy meets girl, girl tells boy she’s not looking to date, boy invites girl to party in the Hamptons, girl accepts but reminds boy it’s purely platonic, girl immediately assumes boy hasn’t accepted this, boy’s brother saves girl from drowning, girl discovers boy’s uncle murdered boy’s father who looks exactly like girl’s adopted father for no clearly established reason, boy’s brother is so impressed by this he takes to texting girl every ten minutes.”
“Okay, fair enough. By our standards, there’s hardly any red flags there at all.”
(Oh good grief, it’s just occurred to me that both the Driver-Spencer girls recently blindsided a guy with news of his father’s death. But Neddy did it so he’d be too confused to answer back when she dumped him, while for Sophie it was the start of the relationship!)
MW: Moy finds exciting new ways of misattributing quotes (or rather BrainyQuote or whatever she uses does so, and she repeats them unquestioningly). This is technically a quote from Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucius, but he specifically says he’s quoting another philosopher, Hecato of Rhodes! (It’s also an aside in an essay about whether a wise man needs friends; I’d normally discuss whether Moy is taking the quote out of context, but Seneca doesn’t give us the context himself!) I don’t want to make too big a deal of this, though, because I’m sure if either man was somehow aware of this error, they’d probably be stoic about it.
PV: As Val ponders the best way to find the snake people again, Gallchobar suggests going back to the place where the snake people live. I know I say “Val isn’t very bright” a lot, but it keeps being true! Also, those were clearly mermaids, not selkies, but I suppose once you’ve decided the Tuatha Dé Danann are “snake people”, the rest of Celtic mythology is up for grabs as well.
S4th: Okay, I joked about this during the Hallowe’en storyline, but these people really do seem to be preparing to appeal to the God of the Corn for a good harvest via a) sacrificing the newcomers, b) “ancient fertility rituals” hem hem, or c) both. This town has officially gone Full Summerisle.
@UncleJeffers: Family Circus: As if Jeffy is ever going to have the ability to learn to drive or the skills to live independently. He’s going to be living with you until you die or he goes to prison.
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Billy will bake Jeffy a cake with a dotted line in it. “Just spread the dots on the floor and hide in the community toilet.Your cellmate Snitchesgetstitches, will cover for you.Just let him have his way with your mellonhead, you know what I mean!” (Blank stare)…..no…of course you don’t, look who I’m talking to. New Plan: Just stay in the toilet and pretend to be a turd while Snitches makes HIS escape.”
DT: Listen, Homicide Lady, I happen to think Water Matthau did a pretty good job as a transit cop in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. At least he managed to capture Martin Balsam without shooting him dead.
@Horace Broon: but I suppose once you’ve decided the Tuatha Dé Danann are “snake people”, the rest of Celtic mythology is up for grabs as well.
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Aren’t those the old Russian people who live well past 100 because they eat Danann™ yogurt?
@Rube: Though honestly–and I know Rechin Jr. misses his dad very much and I trust he will never read this comment, which will disappear in a couple of weeks when Josh closes this post–that’s kind of a hopeful escape. It wouldn’t have been a fulfilling life to shackle himself to his father’s old IP which brings up painful memories and also isn’t good. I hope he’s enjoying his own projects. Here’s a bunch of Edgar Allan Poe cartoons he drew.
@Craig!: Re DtM, bwahaha!
I’ll add a (very little) bit to the RwO comments by asking what happens if one of those children is caught in a lie, punishment or praise?
“My hell hound ate my homework.”
“That’s the sixth lie we’ve heard from you this week. Here’s a gold star.”
PV: Wow, my back hurts just from looking at the everybody-sleeping-on-rocks-and-hard-ground panel. Owwwch. I would need to carry a Singing Air Mattress.
@Horace Broon: I was just coming to say that I thought Wikiquote was being pretty ungenerous in filing this under “misattributed” because of the attribution to Hecato. The quote does come from Seneca even if he says he got it from another guy whose text we don’t have. Do we know Seneca wasn’t himself brainyquoting?
I’m sure somebody else has said this, but Dennis is speedwalking away from the Wilsons’ house, not to it.
@Jeffmcm: Speed walking – it’s a meth thing, right?
DtM: Judging from his speed and direction, Dennis is a vector. So I guess we’ll see if George Wilson bought into all that anti-vaccine stuff.
DtM: I grew up in a relatively free range time and I can’t recall ever leaving the house when I was a kid and not being expected to at least give a cursory explanation of where I was going. Of course the Mitchells are probably hoping that Dennis will join a thieves’ ring and disappear for years.
RwO: All the demon boys look like they’re going to be bald throughout their lives and I’m sorry, that’s going to have negative repercussions in the buying souls department.
@60 UncleJeffers: on Baby Blues: Who visits pumpkin farms in November? People whose time machines have flux capacitors bought off Temu.
@71 Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Has there ever been a likeable character in Mary Worth? Yes. The antimacassars in Saul’s house. Lampy. Bummy McBummerton.
@85 matt w: I looked at Junior’s artwork. He’s in a far far better place than Crock.
C-Shaft: Sad to say, the prospect of Ed Crankshaft being dragged off for drug trafficking will remain what it is: a dream.
Dustin: The title panel, wherein the Kudlick family members do everything in their power to avoid looking at each other, really tells you all you need to know.
JP: The most interesting thing going on here is how the Village Bistro sign is telling the Village Bistro awning, “This! This is how it’s done!”
Luann: Haha, it’s funny because she still sent away for a shirt that looks like a catheter on a field of pee.
MW: Don’t look now but Mary and Estelle are practicing telepathy in the most Mary Worth (read “boring”) way imaginable.
Phantom: Grim sight in the last panel, but kudo’s to Sid’s equine client on keeping it professional. Every actor has to start somewhere.
RMMD: Sara Morgan, silently relieved to have passed on the duty of saying uncouth but necessary things.
S4th: Did Ces write this before or after we started referencing “The Lottery” and The Wicker Man in this venue?
WofI: Beer dates back to ancient Mesopotamia, about 4,000 years in the past. Your “funny” anachronisms are supposed to go the other direction, fellas.
@GarrisonSkunk:
“onomatopeya”
@Violet:
The Discreet Charm of Don Abundio (February 17, 2023):
“Lady Veronica brought her new entourage”
“Does this remind you of a certain Buñuel film?”
“Yes”
“We’re done for!”
@Liam: Slylock Fox-“C’mon, Fox. Quit hasslin’ me. I’ve got to make money somehow.”
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Oddly enough, Thats also the immoral to the Devil’s story.
@seismic-2: Oooooh, that’s deep.
@matt w: Here’s a bunch of Edgar Allan Poe cartoons he drew.
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He forgot PoeGo—- A possum Poe saying “We have met the enemy and he is Josh Fruhlinger.”
Luann: Timely — ten days into No-nut November, Luann is vowing not to click her mouse too often.
@GarrisonSkunk: …or this one from Family Circus Sideshow: Poe chowing down on a oak……..Poe-Ate-Tree.
@Peanut Gallery:
I saw that in my Spanish class in high school and I couldn’t tell what was surrealism and what was just me awkwardly processing a film in French (of which I know nothing) with Spanish subtitles. Similarly, my cousin was reading The Stranger in French about the same I was reading it in English, and I was able to reassure her that her French wasn’t nearly as bad as she feared, and it really was just like that.
@Peanut Gallery: “The hell with this party. Let’s go grab a bite at a restaurant with a corpse laid out on the dining table in the next room.”
@Violet: A really fun film for gibberish translingual dialogue is Clouzot’s Wages of Fear (1953). I felt really stupid for the first hour, wondering why I was absorbing NONE of the French or the Spanish conversations, until we got to a scene where a Frenchman was talking to an American. And I realized that everybody in the movie was speaking non-native languages, and speaking them REALLY BADLY.
See also Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937) the Great War film where the characters shift from French to German to English and back again, and reveal they could all use a few more Berlitz courses.
Rhymes with Orange – “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is not only a pangram (a sentence that contains all the letters of the alphabet), but a key plot point in a demonic fable of how a fox got in the henhouse.
Dennis the Menace – Dennis is definitely running away from the Wilsons house after doing some actual menacing, but due to syndicate censorship, we are denied the actual story in favor of a hinted aftermath.
Crock – Given that Crock leads a minor outpost French Foreign Legion, he would have zero impact on health care policy, except to serve as a scapegoat for the current French administration to filter the blame of their famously restive population that takes any rollback of their state health and retirement benefits as reason to riot.
All this talk, and all the articles I found read the end of Crock while nailing down who was writing and drawing it in it’s last years, made me look up the final strip and I found it kind of moving and then unsettling? Poulet getting a medal, Grossie and Maggot dressed up nice for a fancy meal, the men finally freed from the hot box, Figowitz and Quench the camel enjoying a feast (I thought Figowitz might be always crawling across the desert but even worse, he’s at the outpost and Crock won’t feed him), and somehow most of all the Lost Patrol finally finding the base–it’s like Kevin knew what an unpleasant world his dad had created and was trying to redeem it. And then it turns out to be a dream; not the world, but the redemption! (Though the last few dailies suggest that the Foreign Legion is getting to go home in real life.) None of which at all reflects on Bill Rechin’s relationship with his children, who it was extremely clear from these articles loved him very much and he loved them, but still you can see why Kevin (as he said) didn’t want to try to either ventriloquize his dad or take over his world for himself.
@The Rambling Otter: My apologies, it seems that Six Chix, Rhymes with Orange and Bizarro seem to be nearly interchangeable at times. Although Bizarro is actually funny here and there.
Crock: Pretty sure that whatever health care system the French Foreign Legion had in 1912 was better than the way the United States does things. And now, starting in 2025, things are going to get even worse.