I get the sense that Henry is a lot pettier than we give him credit for
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Dennis the Menace, 12/7/25
I feel like Henry’s “He’s gone too far this time!” line actually explains a lot about this strip. Like there’s some kind of beef going on between him and Mr. Wilson that dates back years, before Dennis was even born. “That’s right,” Henry thinks, every time Dennis heads over to the neighbors. “You menace that asshole, kid. You menace him good.”
Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/7/25
I think one of the reasons that jokes about fire hydrants in comic strips with sapient dogs bug me so much is that much of the schtick of a talking-dog strip is playing around with the question of “what are the human equivalents to these objects or experiences in a dog’s everyday life?” but for whatever reason the ones that deal with fire hydrants always seem to rapidly lose their grip on whatever metaphor they’re trying to establish. But kudos to Mother Goose and Grimm for going beyond the hydrant into other realms of doggie existence, where the metaphors also don’t work. Take alcohol, for instance. Is toilet water like alcohol, for a dog? Well, no, not really. How about the kind of vaccines a dog would typically get at the vet? Are those like alcohol? No, that’s not right either, but keep at it, you’ll get there one of these days.
80 replies to “I get the sense that Henry is a lot pettier than we give him credit for”
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“I’m rabidly thirsty!”
Dennis the Menace-“Sleeping with my wife is one thing but I draw the line at keeping my son’s football.”
RMMD-Wait until the editors get their hands on the book.
MW-“I love him and he loves me. I don’t care what you say, Ian, but Sunny and me are going to Vegas to get married.”
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“But you were here last night, drinking to excess!”
“Well, you know — ‘hair of the dog’ !”
MW: Ian seizes the opportunity to cajole Toby into doing ‘butt stuff’.
S4th: Why aren’t they in Ronan’s spooky mansion?
DtM:
Now, that’s what I call a “broken play.”
Sunday with JUNGLE JIM!
I don’t want them to describe their sex lives!
DtM: Wasn’t Henry playing chess with Mr. Wilson like they were good buddies, just a while back?
DtM — I call BS–there’s no way that Henry doesn’t have Wilson’s number in his contacts and, instead of getting up from his relaxing chair, send him a “Y wnt u give D his [picture of a football] bck?????” Well, either that or the fact that he’s reading a physical newspaper. . . .
DtM:
“Now, you’re not supposed to let footballs just fly through windows, boys. You’re supposed to ‘Ketcham‘ !”
“Can we just call you ‘Stephan Pastis,’ Dad?”
Pear Harbor
– Thanks for the reminder, GA and JS. Anyone here alive then?
Christmas Prep
– FBoFW: Connie sounds jaded in panel 8 until we see Pamela’s snooty face in panel 6. Well done art.
– BLONDIE: The marathon. Eat protein the night before, Dag, rather than load up on carbs and stretch in the morning.
@The Quiet Man:
#4. S4th: and I honestly thought Hillary was reading to her younger self
Dennis the Menace: I guess the punch line is that Henry found a reason not to beat up the 70-year-old retiree? (Although I’m not actually sure who would win it that fight — Mr. Wilson has a pot belly but may still retain some residual muscle, given that he started school soon after Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the President’s Council on Youth Fitness test.
Mother Goose and Grimm: A person who’s exposed to rabies is typically given two treatments — Rabies Immune Globulin antibodies and the rabies vaccine — which together are known as a “rabies cocktail.” And I hope Grimmy will avoid ordering a frothy drink like a pisco sour or gin fizz, or everyone at the bar is getting one!
Mary Worth: Toby seems to be trying to “persuade” Ian to accept Sunny into their home by offering him some wifely affection. And Ian is like, “So I can choose sex, or to get rid of the bird? … I’m thinking!”
Slylock Fox: Today’s mystery involves an unusually violent crime for this strip — especially since it was committed by a chipmunk, an animal kids could actually encounter in the course of their day. So I hope they don’t become terrified that this tiny woodland creature might clobber them on the head with a stick, steal their money, and run away… but, hey, that’s the funny pages for ya!
Pluggers have finally discovered gift bags. They are truly remarkable beings.
@Activist:
#10. Correction- of course I meant PEARL HARBOR. My apologies, no disrespect intended.
Mary Worth:
“I’ll sweet-talk that gullible Scots leviathan,” muses Toby. “He’s so gullible, he was taken in by ‘The Legend of Greyfriars Bobby’ !”
@Rube: Wait until they discover gift cards! They can buy all their Christmas gifts for $5 at Wal-Mart, and not even have to wrap it or pick anything out! And they can put it in a gift bag! I figure that’s due about 2030.
DtM: Writers advise avoiding “shoe leather,” the depiction of how characters get from one scene to the next. Just go straight from one interesting part to the other, they advise. These writers never had to fit a two-panel joke into a Sunday strip.
Mary Worth quote confirmed, from Your Magic Power to Persuade and Command People, p. 26. And I could get happily outside a cullen skink with neeps and tatties, though I’m not convinced Toby can pull it off.
Please tell me I wasn’t the only one who read “prettier” instead of “pettier” in the title of the post. I was really curious to read DtM and Josh’s comment on it based on that alone.
DtM: Given what Josh wrote explains a lot. Wilson is behind Dennis’ constant shit-talking his mom’s cooking.
“Like those cookies Martha made you, boy? You’re darn right they’re good and a lot better than anything your mom can cook up.”
@Weaselboy: No, you weren’t. I thought Henry was going to try to get his son’s ball back by seducing Mr. Wilson.
DtM: Dennis actively encourages a proxy war between his father and his neighbor. Menace level: geopolitical.
RMMD – Today, on Nonsensical Overemotive Hand Gesture Theater…
@Bob Tice: impossible, as you have Toby thinking in polysyllabic words.
Blondie: At first I thought, this’ll be great. Dagwood is training to finally get his revenge on neighbor Herb in a vicious, bare-knuckle holiday beatdown for borrowing and ruining all his tools. Instead, we get a, ho-hum,’Women be shopping’ gag. Someday, that mf’er Herb will get what’s coming to him. Someday.
@Bob Tice: @BigTed: Uh, folks, “distemper” is a very different disease from rabies. Still an important vaccine for your pet. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_distemper)
S4th Discontinuous from the Mon-Sat in a major way. They’ve done that before so I wasn’t too shocked, but it really does take the mom’s dialogue to show it’s Bettina and not Young Hil
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: The poor artist is begging the writer to make a plot – any plot – something to draw other than talking heads rehashing the “do you agree? yes!” of the week. It really shows how little happens week by week when even the Sunday recaps strip can’t show anybody doing anything.
@CanuckDownSouth:
I’m aware that they are two very different diseases, both very devastating to dogs and preventable via important, must-take vaccines. I’ve had dogs now for 55 years.
C’shaft: Are they talking about Crankshaft or Tom Batiuk?
DT: But what happened to Bogart? He’s the only character in this mess worth bothering about!
Dustin: No, I’m sorry. Dustdad is either a lazy myocardial infraction in the making who resents any and all kinds of dedicated physical activity, or he’s an avid enough biker that he has a tacky outfit for the purpose, but you gotta pick a lane.
JP: I would believe this if there was some large construction equipment outside the stable. Show a young kid a backhoe or a bulldozer in action and they’re set for the afternoon.
Luann: Okay, I laughed, if only because my grandmother passed a year ago and you would not BELIEVE how many “precious heirlooms” from the grandkids were chucked into the trash because neither the grandkids nor anybody else wanted them.
MT: Shouldn’t this have run in, say, early October when fall colors were peaking, and not in December when the branches are bare except for Christmas lights?
MW: “Neeps and tatties,” ie. mashed potatoes and rutabaga, seems like an odd side to serve with a soup. I guess Toby needed to remind Ian (and everyone else) that he’s very, very Scottish.
Pluggers put as little effort into doing things for their loved ones as possible.
RMMD: Geez, I don’t know…I mean, Chris Pratt is an obvious shoe-in for Iggy, but is any actress in Hollywood dull enough to play Autumn?
MGG – You can tell by the look on his face that the bartender is an anti-vaxxer.
FC: [Editor to adult Jeff] Try modernizing the strip a bit.
How’s this: ‘Jeffy can’t get manage volume control on his new AirPods.’
Eh, not that much.
DtM: ” How dare our retired neighbor who provides us with 40+ hours a week of free child care that he never agreed to do…oh.” As usual, Dennis’s parents somehow don’t see it coming.
MW: Not gonna happen. Parrots are known for attaching to one person and hating everyone else. And it’s not like Ian gives off a Saint Francis of Assissi vibe to begin with.
RMMD: Augie’s already planning his next novel: a sci-fi epic featuring “Winter,” a scaly, five-breasted reptilian mutant. He anticipates no problem with this. Augie is so stupid.
@Bob Tice: I apologize. I misread comments going towards rabies as confusing the two. Sorry.
Sly: Thanks, chipmunk, for voicing our thoughts. Just make a run for it.
HiLo: Nice to see Beavis and Butthead making a cameo appearance at the mall.
@The Quiet Man: Sally Forth features separate, stand-alone comics on Sundays.
DtM: I wonder how long Mr Wilson has been standing there, glass shards slowly piercing through his slipper and into the soles of his feet, just waiting to deliver that sarcastic remark.
MGG: What I find funny about this scene is that Grimms seems to be thinking that line, not saying it. So either he’s asking himself if it’s actually possible to get that metaphorical drink, or in this world dogs don’t talk, geese don’t dress up in housecoats, and everything about this strip is 10x more bonkers than it seems.
RMMD- How about Alexis Texas ?
Dustin: Megan needs to take her dad shopping.
MW – Meanwhile Sunny is thinking “Cullen Skink!? Tatties and Neeps?! all I ever get is pellets and lettuce!” Dinner ends when Sunny raids Ian’s dish.
@Weaselboy: You were not the only one. I read it that way too.
Pluggers love keeping the gift bag for reuse, but that doesn’t mean they’ve thrown out their used wrapping paper.
Crankshaft: If you’re keeping track, “bitchy” is not allowed in newspaper comics.
Gasoline Alley: Is that cat auditioning for “New feline in Mary Worth“? Because it might be an upwards career move.
MG&G:
“No, but try this new drink, on the house!”
“What’s it called?”
” ‘A Farm Upstate’ .”
RMMD: I could see Judy Holliday as Summer.
Slylock Fox: I’m impressed that Slylock hasn’t called CBP on Ramon already.
H&L: First, teach the kids to leave their bedroom in case fire or emergency. Second, lock the kids in their room. Third, lock your own bedroom door.
One of my peeves is comics that mix speech balloons for adult humans with thought balloons for animals and babies yet both supposedly work as communication with others so I guess we’re to assume that horrifying telepathy exists in these worlds and nobody says anything about it. However, if a thought balloon was just a thought balloon, it makes this comic actually amusing if it’s just a bartender staring at the dog sitting at his bar with a big stupid grin on its face, unaware that its joke wouldn’t make sense even if anyone could hear it.
***
Do distemper shots make dogs high?
***
I just realized that Henry is the least threatening man in comics, and this is a medium with Dagwood Bumstead, Beetle Bailey, Wilbur Weston, and Jon Arbuckle.
@Bob Tice:
#28. But t haven’t you heard? Social media says both vaccines might lead to canine chicken pox. /s
That was my Grandpa, a generous man with others but frugal with himself. At Christmas, he would fold up and keep the wrapping from all the presents, but he gave out his presents with a paper shopping bag.
He did work in “Batty,” our name for his creator who is hoping for a FIFA Pulitzer Prize.
Dennis the Menace: I like the trans-rights panel in the lower-left corner. Not sure how it ties into the strip but, you know, surprise me!
@Dr. Larry Erhardt, yCurtis: Now THAT’S how you take a running gag to the next level. Well played!
yLuann: Seriously, kid? You missed ALL of the Spiderman origin stories?
@Weaselboy: I read it that way as well.
I’m wondering if that was originally spelled Prettier (as a typo) and Josh quietly fixed it at some point without us knowing?
@Weaselboy:
@Victor Von:
Well, with the trans-rights colours in the lower left, maybe Henry will become “prettier” if you know what I mean.
Not to get too analytical about a joke that isn’t that funny anyway, I think the MG&G joke is actually built around the idea that vaccinations are in no way equivalent to alcohol. Grimm heard he needs a distemper “shot” and went to a bar to get one, thinking he was in for an enjoyable experience in getting intoxicated in a social atmosphere. In fact, he needs to go to the vet and get stuck with a needle. He’s in for an unpleasant surprise, ha ha! In short, a comic could do the same joke with a human, as long as the human is dumb enough to misunderstand the polysemy of the word “shot.”
@TheDiva: On RMMD: Megan Fox? Kristen Stewart? Dakota Johnson?
@CanuckDownSouth:
No need to apologize! — not everyone knows there’s a difference. Comment in!
@TheDiva: RMMD: Geez, I don’t know…I mean, Chris Pratt is an obvious shoe-in for Iggy, but is any actress in Hollywood dull enough to play Autumn?
________________________
The actress who starred in “Les Story” and gave him her Oscar for Best Actress.
@The Rambling Otter:
Yes, didn’t you see Wilson’s thought bubble in today’s strip? “Checkmate, bitch”
DT: Is this really what a general snitch would do? Risk his life for Dick?
Dustin: So the board game has been put away for will it complete on Monday?
JP: Yay, play on the bulldozer!
RMMD: Once the book sells, Reese Witherspoon will probably option it. Augie will find all of these demands on who plays Summer is what ultimately breaks them up.
Mr Wilson not only covers his living room furniture with plastic, he puts plastic over his front bushes. One of these days they’ll find Dennis’ body wrapped in plastic and buried beneath Blondie’s twin peaks.
MG&G :Its nice seeing Abe Vigoda getting work, despite being dead.
Garfield: I wouldn’t say I found this funny exactly, but it did make me think “Yep, that’s what living with a cat is like,” which isn’t a spot Garfield hits very often, so kudos for that, I guess.
HtH: I notice the hotel prices are given in kroner, which is both historically inaccurate (the Norwegian krone was introduced in 1875) and inaccurate to the lore of the strip (which generally forgets it’s meant to be set in Europe at all and uses dollars). In fact, the strips with dollars are actually somewhat more accurate, since the currency prior to the krone was the rigsdaler, equivalent to the German reichsthaler, which is the origin of the word “dollar”.
MG&G: Does this metaphor work? No, of course not. But is it funny? Also no. Would it be funny if the metaphor did work? Unclear, but I’m leaning towards a “no” there as well.
MW: You know what? My expectations for this strip are so low that I am genuinely impressed that Moy has looked up a Scottish dish that isn’t haggis. I agree with TheDiva that the neeps and tatties are an odd choice — if we’re sticking with the stereotypes, I’d have gone for oatcakes with crowdie.
RMMD: “I’m the star of this thing, how could I not love it?” Um, because that’s literally the thing you were mad about, Summer, remember? No? Gee, it must be nice to be able to let go of your trauma through the simple method of being unable to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time.
S4th: Um, I know there’s often a disconnect between Sundays and the weekday continuity, but apparently in addition to two Hilaries at Stately Ronan Manor, there’s an extra Hil and Sal spending the holidays with Jackie? They couldn’t even have her doing this over video chat?
SFx: So, the tiny chipmunk picked up a huge branch, clobbered an animal three times his height over the head, grabbed his wallet (and where is it now? It’s not like he has pockets!) and fled, despite still being here? We’re not told how Slylock came to the conclusion that the thief must be one of these two animals; was it because not assuming that seems like it would involve more work?
DTM: Is that? Could it be? Yes, it is! An angry Joey in Dennis the Menace! That’s like finding a four-leaf clover!
MG&G: So … do the bartender and Grimmy have some kind of Shining-type mental connection going on? How does this work?
@54 treetown:
This coming week it’s like the board game never existed.
@41 ValdVin:
Perhaps less lazy pluggers wrap their gift bags in used wrapping paper.
MW: “…please don’t report Sunny to bird management.”
“Too late I’m afraid.”
The door bursts open, ten masked agents wrestle Sunny to the floor and drag him away.
Phantom: Isn’t it high time for this ghostly 80 year old Flying Fortress to softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again? Or are we going full Twilight Zone and having the OSS flyboy disembark and interact with the contemporary airfield personnel? “Gawrsh! Lookit all them flashing lights!”
Sunny continues to work on Ian’s frayed nerves when under gastric distress he opens the bathroom door and finds Sunny taking a bath in the sink. “TOBY!”
DT: Lawrence Talbot sez: Don’t mess with Bogart, evildoers. If he bites you, YOU turn into a werewolf, too.
JP: “Yeah, well, I didn’t see you coming, either. Aren’t you supposed to have a job in Norway?”
@BigTed: Slylock Fox: Fun fact – in the earlier incarnation of today’s puzzle, the perpetrator was actually Rat (yes, the real Rat of PBS, not Reeky Rat or Rodney Rat or a derisive nickname for Max Mouse).
@Weaselboy: Henry Mitchell: I feel pretty! I feel pretty! I feel pretty, and witty, and gay!
@Hibbleton: “Sunny continues to work on Ian’s frayed nerves when under gastric distress he opens the bathroom door and finds Sunny taking a bath in the sink. “TOBY!” ”
-laugh track plays in the background-
“Mary Worth will return after these messages from our sponsor Splak”
@TheDiva:
you would not BELIEVE how many “precious heirlooms” from the grandkids were chucked into the trash because neither the grandkids nor anybody else wanted them
You would not BELIEVE the ongoing family fights from when my grandmother died because she promised the same “precious heirlooms” to multiple children and grandchildren. I sincerely believe many of the fights are not because anyone actually wanted the junk, they just didn’t want their other siblings or their siblings’ kids to have it. I didn’t want any of the junk so as a result I may be one of the few family members that everyone still talks to. The downside is I have to remember who is fighting with who and over what.
@Horace Broon:
MW: YES! I looked it up because a skink is a small reptile – snake like reptile with tiny little legs.
At first, I thought, wow, Tobey is getting creative her eating reptiles or was that to help Sunny?
Phantom:
Thanks, Ghost. Now I can finally go home and marry my high school sweetheart.
Uh, you do realize she’s probably been dead for twenty years, along with everybody else you knew? But on the bright side, thanks to the GI Bill, you’ll get to go to college for free and snare a low interest home mortgage.
@TheDiva:
RMMD: Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, Cameron Diaz. If age isn’t an issue: Bo Derek or Pia Zadora.
@Treetown: Cullen skink seems to be a chowder variation, based on smoked haddock.
I would have served the irascible fat lout a tureen of Scotch Broth — thick lamb and vegetable soup with barley — because it’s delicious, and becuase I would be able to say “I made you Scotch Broth….because you’re a Scot-American! Get it, huh? You get it? Huh? Huh? You bird-hating surly fat Scotsman, get it?”
Late Thread Cuisine: It’s not cullen skink or bashed neeps.
@CanuckDownSouth re: RMMD: “The poor artist is begging the writer to make a plot – any plot – something to draw other than talking heads…” Terry Beatty is handling both jobs and his writing philosophy seems to be that there’s no action or conflict that can’t be presented mundanely or avoided, altogether, so it will be talking heads all the way down.
Was anyone else using the USA Today web site for comics? I finally gave up on it the other day. I liked the previous menu navigation and the large-size onscreen presentation, but they re-designed the site the other month and it’s like they self-destructed. The first few weeks, it would one show the current day’s strips and you had to sign in to see any previous days. Heck, no, for me. They finally gave up on that, but the script would screw up at least once a week and either not update the strips or duplicate them. Also, the initial connection to the site brought up a full-screen ad that had to be closed on order to get to the menu. This week, the final straw was the ad popping up for each strip that’s selected from the menu. I switched to Seattle Times for now, but the strips are smaller on their page and I have to squint sometimes. Don’t mind me, just venting a little.
@Baja Gaijin:
I’d take the cullen skink even if it was made with real skink.
@Anonymous: My grandparents were born in the 1890s, retired to a 62-acre farm in hill country between Cleveland and Akron in the ‘50s, died in the early ‘70s. I remember a big farm auction where their lifetime of accumulated shit was sold off, some of which I would have killed in retrospect to get my hands on.
Huge 5 gallon crockery jars; no idea what they used them for. And especially their 1930s Zenith wooden console radio, with the luminous green dial that slowly lit into a spooky glow while the vacuum tubes were warming up.
Henry is constantly emasculated by his troublesome son and his sarcastic wife, so he thought he could prove his manhood against an old man. Unfortunately, even decrepit Mr Wilson is manlier than Henry
@Ukulele Ike:
Some of the items that incited long standing feuds:
1) The broken cuckoo clock, that the cost to restore was more than a new one
2) The “silverware set” that was really plated silver and at that point mostly plated tarnish
3) The wardrobe that was more dry rot than wood at that point. As far as I know it did not lead to Narnia, though in retrospect I should ask my cousin where he got that Turkish Delight.
4) Costume jewlery. So much bickering over genuine faux pearl and cubic zirconia.
@73 Baja Gaijin:
It’s not cullen skink, it’s sullen stink.
We had skink lizards where I grew up in Florida but it also has slang meaning.