Suburban ennui
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Hi and Lois, 4/7/25
Ah hell yeah, Hi and Lois is at it again, with “it” being a mostly punchline-free strip about the formless but omnipresent disquiet in the Flagston household. Hi isn’t sure what haunts him but he’s definitely haunted. Even while he sleeps! It never lets up!
Dustin, 4/7/25
Dustin’s dad is over at the opposite, more depressive end of the axis from Hi, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, frankly. Sure, he wants for nothing, but he’s got a dark hole at the heart of him that he can’t ever fill. That doesn’t mean he won’t try! If donuts can’t do it, maybe yelling at Dustin can!
Suburban Fairy Tales, 4/7/25
I don’t talk about this one much but I thought you’d be interested in knowing that the second little pig just got hit by a car and died. He fucking died. RIP second little pig, [comic doesn’t have Wikipedia article — try to figure out when it started publishing]-2025, you taught me that it was OK to be weird a bad idea to build a house out of straw.
69 replies to “Suburban ennui”
H&L: Last night I dreamt I showed up to class for an essay exam on a book I hadn’t read. It never ends.
I found today’s “Hi and Lois” relatable, so good for them…or bad for me…whatever.
yCurtis: “That’s okay, Dad. I didn’t ask him about his roofie allegations.”
RxMD: “Well, this doesn’t involve dogs biting stabby muggers, so we don’t have any Ring footage. This isn’t ‘Dick Tracy’, y’know. I’d like to give you advise on getting a lawyer, but all the readers are drowning me out about shutting the f*ck up and lawyering up.”
yS4th: It’s “Babylon 5”. Or “Deadwood” with the movie.
FLASH! AHHHHHHHH!!!!: The baby is going to eat the train-size serpent isn’t it?
RMMD:
“Honey, there’s an EMT in the street who bears a vague resemblance to Ted Lange’s ‘Isaac Washington,’ the bartender in The Love Boat, and he’s talking to a reporter. But I don’t think they’re talking about ‘open smiles’ on ‘friendly shores’ !”
H&L: “Ha ha, oh yes, how silly, you’re right. I certainly don’t have a one-way flight to some South American tropical paradise where I’ll never have to hear about spreadsheets or kids or fucking Sunbeam ever again. Let me just, uh, pack this suitcase for no reason. You just go back to sleep, and if you hear something that sounds like an Uber outside at 3 AM, ignore it.”
Dustin: Does Dustin’s dad actually have a great career? I mean, yeah, he’s a lawyer, but he only ever seems to lose cases and clients. The only difference between him and his son is that the father came of age in an era where you could still fail your way into a comfortable white collar job.
SUBURBAN FAIRY TALES: Also the reason you shouldn’t get your afternoon nosh from a garbage truck.
MW: Does Belle want Wilbur to screw her or adopt her? Either way, not the optimal choice.
RMMD: ” I told you to get a hobby, Mom. You know, quilting, scrapbooking. Trust you to muck it up.”
GT: Ow, my knees make those same noises if I do lunges.
Suburban Fairy Tales:
“He’s rushed off to day-trade some shareholding interests on account of the current economic dislocations that the tariffs are creating.”
“No. Don’t say it, No. 1.”
“Yep. This little piggie went to market!”
Dennis the Menace: I genuinely love the action in this. It’s like Dennis is atomic-powered. I can just imagine the sound effects as Dennis carroms around the room.
The Comics Kingdom website shows archived strips for Suburban Fairy Tales going back to 20 July 2020, so let’s just say that that date represents when it started being published. There, now that gives us one less thing to worry about.
Last week, Hi was dreaming about golf and the bedsheets were green. This week, Hi is having sad dreams, and the bedsheets are blue.
I’m starting to worry that Hi’s dreams are so bland and mundane that it’s weakened the boundaries that properly stratify the realms of fantasy and reality.
Dustin: Ed’s swinish co-worker might be passive-aggressing him by making sure “great” didn’t modify “wife and two kids,” but teasing Ed about his wife won’t work. Helen is way out of his league looks-wise, and her black heart full of evil is frankly a bonus, for him.
MW:
[Audience member] “Isn’t that song a duet?”
“Shut up! He’s ‘special'”
Dustin – Not only does Dustdad have a wife with boobs that hang to her knees and a son who will be a drain on him forever, he has been awarded a “World’s Greatest Lawyer” coffee mug, so, yeah, I can see why colleague Buck Tooth is jealous.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Actually, I think it says “World’s Okayest Lawyer.”
HnL: “I’m having a dream about my boring and mundane life. It fills me with ennui. Then I find out I’m awake.”
Dustin: Ed Kudlick regrets taking only three of the last four donuts.
SFT: You will believe that a pig can fly.
H&L: It’s funny because Hi’s dreams about fleeing his shitty family turn into nightmares where he misses his chance to get away from them, forever.
Dustin: There’s a lot that I don’t like about this strip, but I have to admit, the art is good. Today, for instance, they’ve managed to perfect capture the look of a guy who you absolutely hate in spite of the fact that he’s pleasant and nice, in a way that makes you realize that maybe the problem is with you. I mean, most people would realize that, not Dustin’s dad, obviously.
SFT: Poor stick-loving bastard. I guess in sptie of the glasses, he wasn’t the smart one.
It’s weird to me when Josh reads strips like Suburban Fairy Tales, Gearhead Gertie, or Alice that I wouldn’t touch with a pole of indeterminate length
MW: Belle’s insidious plan of driving a wedge between Dawn and Wilbur is working perfectly. Heh heh.
FC: “We don’t like cats who perform in drag!”
Dustin: A hole at the heart of him that he can’t fill, eh? Sounds like a doughnut is the perfect metaphor. The fact that he is denied even that satisfaction is the final, crushing irony.
If we’re going by when the creator first started making Suburban Fairy Tales, then 2005.
https://francisbonnet.com/archive/sft/suburbanfairytales/07042005/
RMMD:
“Are you okay, mom?”
“My boyfriend may or may not have murdered a man. No biggie.”
MW: Which Austin Powers movie is it with Dr. Evil and Mini-Me performing “Just the Two of Us” while Scott seethes? Did Moy watch that right before writing this plot?
Dustin:
There’s two paunchy men;
Each wanting the last donut.
Passes for humor.
Luann: Wrong! It’s glurgeku.
CS: Oh, no! Rocky was their ringer at the bus hog-tie!
9CL: Did Brooke have another stroke? Am I having a stroke?
MW: Everyone in this story makes me sick. Belle is a batshit-insane lunatic who fantasizes about murdering Dawn…over Wilbur! Wilbur, despite being a dotard, can’t possibly be missing all the enormous red flags, but he’s putting up with it and even actively encouraging it, all in hopes of getting some sexy-time. And Dawn, presumably the sympathetic victim in this story, is giving off all these weird-ass daughter-wife vibes.
I hate all of these people.
GT: “Compelling? How were they compelling?”
“Off the record, my kid’s health is problematic.”
“That never bothered you before.”
“Okay, lawyers were involved too. And guns. And money.”
“So the %#€£ has hit the fan?”
MW – Belle may be evil, but I don’t think Dawn has to worry unless Wilbur breaks out into “Country Death Song.”
SuburbanFairyTales: Wouldn’t #2 mean the lesson learned is don’t build a house out of sticks?
[overthink]Or maybe the real lesson is to build with whatever materials as long as you follow good engineering principles. After all, we regularly make wood-framed homes, and there is the niche method of haybale construction… [/overthink]
RMMD: I despise everything about this storyline. Stalker is stalking just for the sake of being a pain in the ass to Summer and Augie. He makes belligerent noises despite being too scrawny to back those noises up. He apparently apparently has no job because he’s free to stalk anywhere and anyplace. Now he’s apparently dead but we’re not told. Did EMS make any attempt at resuscitation? We don’t know. If Stalker is dead has there been any attempt at defending his dignity? Stupid
@astroboy: Yeah, I usually defend Dawn as a normalish girl of her age, but it’s a bit off to do a romantic duet with her dad and getting mad because his girlfriend horns in. The girlfriend made a pretty explicit death threat, she should get mad about that!
@seismic-2:
This is the oldest archive I can find on the artist’s Web site:
Yes, I am the kind of weirdo who will actually page through years of archives to find this sort of thing.
@Tim Kynerd:
PS I see now that someone with the same initials as me, but who isn’t me, reached the same conclusion here.
SFT: If you believe in fate, having the name ‘Number 2’ is a bad omen.
@BeckoningChasm: You are correct. Either way, of course, it’s a lie. Thanks.
Wary Morth:
Oh now I see how this will go. Weelbur and Bats In The Bellefry have identical profiles, so it’ll turn out they’re really long lost siblings and can’t be a couple. Weelbur, broken hearted, departs Charterstone to roam the world, and is kidnapped by pirates in Nigeria. Dusk and Bats In The Bellefry bond over their mutual misery and become a couple. Mary congratulates herself despite never having shown her face throughout the story. The End.
Wrecks Moregone:
“What’s going on is I’ll become famous! Soon I’ll be appearing on the evening news! My murder trial will make me a celebrity!”
H&L “Last night I dreamed that I shot the course record at The Masters, but I forgot to bring a pencil and couldn’t write down my scores. And I was naked.”
GT: Welcome back to Henry Barajas’ Mystery Theater, where every few days, Henry offers readers a chance to guess what the hell’s going on. It’s usually disappointing when you eventually find out, but it’s the journey, not the destination.
JP: A college student needs coffee to stay awake? How quaint.
RMMD: “Kelly, the guy I let sleep over at our house last night might be charged with murder. Uh, gotta run. I’ll fill you in later. Please don’t worry.”
Luann:
A week of Inner Beauty
Sitting abed
Spouting “poetry”.
Bored,
You will be.
This guy is in the same office, wouldn’t he be a lawyer as well? The “You have a great career” doesn’t really hold up if so.
Unless, this guy is…
-Some sort of assistant
-A building security officer
-Someone who SOMEHOW manages to be a worse lawyer than Dustin’s father.
Oh, nothing. Just Lois crawling deeper under the blankets as she realized her husband is losing his grip on reality.
***
I like Dustin’s dad’s mug, “Worlds Okayest Lawyer”. Even he knows he ain’t shit, and not even an okay dad.
***
On the bright side, pig #3 gets a new shirt now.
@Hibbleton: one of them is suet.
MW: Maybe Wilbur isn’t oblivious, maybe he knows EXACTLY what’s going on.
I mean, I can see Wilbur liking the idea of two people battling over him, it makes him feel important.
Something unnerves me about how these two pigs are completely nonchalant that their brother at least got into a horrible accident. The older pig just looks more annoyed if anything. I guess in a reality where sapient-eat-sapient and its perfectly legal, they’re just glad that he died on their terms.
Dustin-Dustin’s Dad is going to cut someone.
Slylock Fox-Max is such a bad thrower that the sock fell well short of Slylock.
MW-All those boobs on stage and the place isn’t even a strip club.
MW-Get off the stage!
FC-That’s also why they are having pigeon for dinner.
CS: Batiuk is determined to make this “transfer portal” thing funny if he has to beat it to death himself.
SFx: And then Max said, “Nice try, Fox. Tell you what. YOU put a rock in one of YOUR socks and throw it over here, and then I’ll throw it and the map back.”
MW: After hearing Wilbie and the Wilbiettes just butcher this Bill Withers classic, the audience filed out slowly and silently.
Hi and Lois – Lois took psychology courses in college, hence she knows a little about dream interpretation. Hi’s fear of missing a flight is about missing an opportunity to leave his current life behind. Lois knows that he’s going nowhere, and she’s there to remind him about it.
Dustin – Ed doesn’t care that there are no more donuts, he’s upset that his coworker has a medically-significant receding jaw that makes him unable to chew with his mouth closed.
Suburban Fairy Tales – I, for one, support Suburban Fairy Tales pivoting toward a darker, more Brothers Grimm oriented take on their characters. The world is full of dangers, and the children in their pedestrian hostile suburbs need to learn the truth!
SUBURBAN FAIRY TALES: The pig wanted to “catch the garbage truck” so he could eat from the garbage truck??
It’s not like he’s holding a garbage bag. If his goal is gorging, how would that even work? Would he root around in some organic-debris part of the moving garbage truck until the garbage truck was at the landfill or wherever, and then get out and call an Uber to go home and then get charged extra to clean the stank out of the Uber?
@cheech wizard: You know your papa loves you, good children go to heaven…
@The Rambling Otter: Looking annoyed is kinda Number One Pig’s “thing.”
SFx: Slylock is going to keep Max’s sock as a “map holder,” and poor Max will end up with one blistered foot.
9CL: Thorax! What have we done to deserve this?
“So, uh, we are omnivores, and I’m guessing he’s pretty tenderized now. You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Sigh. I’ll get a frying pan, you get a spatula.”
CS: “Transfer portal” actually made me giggle. If the rodeo uses mailboxes in place of traffic cones Ed’s gonna bomb out.
FC: The kids, I’m sure, love The Lion King, but God forbid Kittycat take up The Circle of Life.
Dustin: In oligarchies, kleptocracies and other structurally corrupt polities, elites often find that there is not enough room at the top for all of them, then face difficult decisions about who to push out of preferred status. [Glances at financial headlines] I’m just going to leave this knife here and remind Ed and Tom that to the strong and the swift and those willing to grab destiny by the short hairs go the donut.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: (The loser gets stabbed. And Dustin.)
DtM: Jay North, who played Dennis on TV has died at age 73.
Dustin: In times like these, it’s important to count your blessings. For example you, dear reader, are not Dustdad. Furthermore, you are not the poor donut-eating soul who is envious of whatever he thinks Dustdad has.
H&L: You don’t have to tell Hi he isn’t going anywhere, Lois, he knows. Oh, how he knows. Just let him pretend he has something to look forward to that will interrupt his endless hellscape of suburban mediocrity, all right?
@TK: going for 20 years? Someone call Malcolm Gladwell… to have done something for two decades and still be this bad is some sort of achievement.
Dustbin – Dustin Dad has everything a guy could want. Except tact.
Don Abundio, translated:
“They’re showing my new film! I just want to catch the ending”
[Sign: TODAY JUAN S. PERFIL IN “THE DEBATE”]
“Did you see the ending?”
“I don’t understand it… So far, I’ve lost every time”
@Cleveland Mocks: Barajas will never admit it, but he’s soft rebooting GT to address some of the recent criticisms.
Questionable Discontent:
For some reason I am beginning to have a slight inkling that Anh might be bisexual. Do you think it’s because of subliminal hints in the comic somewhere?
@Everything is Better with Monkeys: Gladwell is very familiar with his own ability to do something for decades and still suck at it.
Hi and Lois I: “Oh, and Thirsty was naked.”
Hi and Lois II: Maybe every Hi and Lois should end with “Yes, but you’re not going anywhere.”
MW- OK, we know Belle is insane- I mean who wants to sleep with Wilbur? But acknowledging the Karaoke applause like you’re a headliner is some batshit cray cray.
GT: “Plus my girlfriend’s government job was cut and anti-DEI sentiment means its hard for either of us to find employment, so you know, beggars can’t be choosers.”
JP: And yet somehow an international move is on the table.
Luann: Dammit, Luann, haiku is more than just the line and syllable count. It centers around an observation or insight, often one drawn from the natural world. Like this:
Luann writes haiku
Her poetry nauseates
Like the skunk’s odor
MW: Face it, Dawn, this was a foregone conclusion. You’re just Wilbur’s only offspring, while Belle is a theoretically attractive woman willing to touch him. He’ll gladly hold you down so she can run her knife through you.
RMMD: “You’ve killed again, haven’t you Mom? God dammit, and I just got used to this new identity!”
I respect Dustin’s Dad’s mug.
He knows he’s not great. He knows he’ll never be great. He’s okay. Just okay. No arguing before the Supreme Court. No famous cases. But on the other hand, no billboards on city buses.
He is utterly mediocre. Just competent enough to burrow his way into a law firm and dwell there working on middling and boring cases until he dies at his desk and is discovered a few days later after people start complaining to HR about the smell in the office.
And he’s okay with that.
Now we know where Dustin got his lack of ambition from.
SFT: For those who came in late – Pig #2 is not chasing the garbage truck for food. He’s trying to retrieve the pieces of an ugly statue he accidentally broke. Pig #3 had bought it at a garage sale, and it turns out it was worth a million dollars. I guess you would have had to be there. And he’s probably OK.
I’ve started following this strip recently. It’s mildly funny, and Pig #3 is in a romantic relationship with Wolfette, an atypical wolf. It’s only three days a week, and I find it an amusing distraction from real life.
It’s worth noting the pigs in SFT frequently, frequently die. Life is neverending torment for their lot.
Hi and Lois: Secretly traveling to see your second family is more stressful than Hi ever thought!
Dustin: On “The Simpsons” last night, Homer was the only one in Springfield who didn’t get thin on Ozempic, because he likes food too much. I don’t know why this strip about two rotund men fighting over a donut made me think of that, but it did.
Suburban Fairy Tales: On the brighter side… mmm, pork chops!