One-panel Friday
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Heathcliff, 12/5/25
I really enjoy today’s Heathcliff for the way it manages to remain legible despite its one-panel nature collapsing a whole sequence of events into a single moment. Heathcliff tosses a coin into the well, makes a silent wish, garbage begins to fall from the sky in great, repulsive chunks, and a bird remarks on it: it’s all drawn as happening simultaneously, but our minds can put everything in the correct sequence.
Dennis the Menace, 12/5/25
George has clearly been on edge all day, just waiting for Dennis to show up, and now cannot even relax over the course of what should be a pleasant evening. In a way, simply by doing nothing, Dennis has pulled off one of his greatest menacing episodes yet.
Family Circus, 12/5/25
I love how sad this lady looks! Like, when this child started climbing around on the couch behind her and nobody tried to stop him, she was probably worried he was going to sneeze on her or something, but then he said this and it was actually much worse.
37 replies to “One-panel Friday”
Family Circus:
Why exactly is Thel letting the kid stand on top of the couch and stare down at them like a vulture, anyway? — does she let Jeffy hang upside down from the rafters and sing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” like Peter Murphy from Bauhaus?
I like to think Jeffy was already up there when she arrived. He’s ALWAYS been up there.
Heathcliff:
Today’s drawing is really offal.
Hopefully that’s Heathcliff’s second coin, wishing to have more colors in the world than an IBM from 1987. Or a bunch of ham and sunflowers, it’s his coin, after all.
Heathcliff-“It’s raining garbage! Hallelujah!”
MW-Ah. Toby and Sunny’s relationship has reached the stage where Sunny tells Toby to kill it’s enemies.
FC-“So the cuffs and collar don’t match,” Mommy says coldly.
Wrecks Moregone:
Ten years later:
Winter: “I want to go out tonight and have dinner at Wanda’s place, Auuuuughie.”
Auuuuughie: “But I wanted to stay in and write.”
Winter: “I think we should take a break.”
Auuuuughie: “OK” (mopes)
Winter (after also moping, at midnight): “Let’s stay in then, Auuuuughie.”
Auuuuughie (putting on jacket): “Let’s go out for dinner if you want.”
Winter (furious finger in Auuuuughie’s face): “DON’T YOU DARE!”
Heathcliff:
“Look! It’s Shirley Manson, Butch Vig, Steve Marker and Duke Erikson descending from the heavens! — it’s raining ‘Garbage‘ !”
Family Circus: And that, friends, is why you never take your coat off when invited to a Bosom Party at the Keenes’. Always be ready to walk out!
FC: Jeffy’s arrival interrupts what had been a lively and stimulating meeting of the Society Of Women Who Wear Tight Sweaters Over Their Enormous Breasts
FC: I’d be more upset about Jeffy pulling her coat down off her neck to ogle her nape. Probably why Thel wears a turtleneck in the house.
HC: Nice job putting the Garbage Ape out of work so close to the holidays.
DtM:
“That little guttersnipe kicks me around like Tom Hanks’ Chuck Noland kicked around ‘Wilson’ in Cast Away!”
RMMD: ‘Now kiss me, you big lug!’ ‘Sorry, I really need to grade these papers!’
JP: I can’t see how this invitation could *possibly* blow up in Neddy’s face…
Heathcliff and Dennis the Menace: Somehow, the combination of “It’s raining garbage” and “Just because it’s dark out doesn’t mean the day is over” gives me comfort in these troubled times.
“Just because it’s dark out doesn’t mean the day is over.”
Mr. Wilson goes all Zen on us.
FC: I think Jeffy’s observation is much better than the one the Keene’s were originally going to go with: “You have a suspicious mole on the back of your neck that looks like squamous epithelial cells. You better get that checked out.”
Heathcliff Anyone else can’t help read that line in the voice of the Weather Girls?
DtM If I read this strip without any context I would assume that it was a scene fron a psychological horror story about an angry old man who kills a young boy. Actually, even with the context I’m leaning towards that interpretation…
FC “Down near your head”? What? Where is…you know what, forget it.
DtM: George realizes that burying Dennis in the Pet Sematary wasn’t a good idea.
Pluggers: Pluggers’ mattresses have huge plugger-created craters. Why? Is it: Pluggers are so fat they crush the mattresses’ springs from their ponderous weights? Pluggers are so poverty-stricken they can’t afford to buy new mattresses when they collapse from too many years of use? Pluggers are so sickly they can’t notice the discomfort of sleeping on uncomfortable mattresses. Or, pluggers refuse to pick themselves out of their ruts, both mental and physical?
Six Chix: Your existential dread won’t show were you to buy a full-length blouse versus the crop top you’re wearing.
Sally Forth: I’m loving this storyline.
Chix (sic): [Woman in see-through dress] Is my existential dread showing?
[Girlfriend] If by ‘”existential dread” you mean your bush, yes.
Look at that disaster! Wishing well? More like wishing badly!
Family Circus: Is this little tableau the prelude to the afternoon’s Jut Off between Thel and Blondie? That’d be a great missing final panel.
Jeffy seems to have taken menacing lessons from Dennis. Considering his past history, I’m not sure if that makes him more or less menacing.
Heathcliff — Let’s just hope the eponymous cat never gets hold of a monkey’s paw. . .
DtM — Let’s just hope the eponymous menace never gets hold of a monkey’s paw.
FC — Let’s just hope that Jeffy never gets hold of a monkey’s paw.
Heathcliff: [Second coin drops in well] [Men begin falling out of the sky]
FC: Come on Jeffy. The woman came here to support your mother after she had her right breast amputated so she can use a bow like an Amazon. The least you can do is show a shred of manners.
The Family Circus 1: “Why is that kid on the back of the sofa? Why am I here? Why am I trapped in 1975? Why won’t God let me die? Why???”
The Family Circus 2: “Oh, also, Mommy — did you know the side of your face was falling off, down by the cheek?”
The Family Circus 3: Worst attempt to distract from the Folger’s crystals in her cup ever.
FC: If I were the lady in the wearing the Tin Cup necklace, I’d be less sad and more terrified of the heavy-lidded homunculus commenting on my impending mortality, presumably with a voice hollow with the ennui of the timeless aeons it has observed.
Frank & Ernest: C’mon, if you’re gonna to a Diogenes gag, do the bit about him jacking off in the forum.
MW: So this bird is just shitting all over the place, often directly on Toby, while she’s preparing food, right? If I were Ian I’d be taking an hour-long, 200-degree shower too.
Pluggers: Pluggers are so overcome with dense with habit and routine that they practically cosmic singularities, warping the very fabric of space-time to its breaking point. Also they sleep in twin beds for some reason.
Dennis the Menace:
O Lord, support us all day long,
until the shadows lengthen,
and the evening comes,
and Dennis is hushed,
and the fever of life is over,
and the Menace is past.
Then in your mercy,
grant us just one safe panel and a holy rest,
and peace at last. Amen.
—Evening prayer of George Henry Wilson
FC: “Don’t bother taking your coat off; I have a feeling you won’t be staying long.”
Also Dennis the Menace: Look at that look on Martha’s face in panel two! George’s day is about to be over, or at least all his lights are about to go out, once she gets her hands on that frying pan in the other room. Self-inflicted menace level: Very High.
Hmmm….
There was an episode of Supernatural, with Sam and Dean investigating a fountain where wishes literally came true if you threw a coin in.
Little girl (tosses a coin in): I wish my teddy was alive!
Her mother (tosses a coin in herself): Yeah, and I wish your father and I were in Bali.
The parents vanish, and we have a human-sized talking Teddy bear taking care of this little girl (everyone just assumes he’s wearing a fursuit)
Of course the bear is kind of a jerk, he robs convenience stores for beer for himself and food for the girl and he swears a lot. The girl is so pure and innocent that she doesn’t mind.
The reason for the teddy bear being such a jerk is that he’s having an existential crisis. He knows he’s an abomination of nature and the entire situation horrifies him.
That was only one sideplot of that episode.
Dennis the Meanass: am I really the first beady-eyed nitpicker to point out that the strip jammed TWO panels into its normal one-panel square, thus violating “one panel Friday”? Josh, Dennis is even menacing YOU!
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women: Bring on the bosom party!
@Lord Flatulence: @Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women: Pronounced ba-zoom, no?
Every day Mrs. Wilson looks forward to a visit from Dennis, and… that’s sad. That’s really sad! Get a life, lady!
Dennis to Jeffy: “You have done well, my young apprentice!”