Thursday one-panels
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Wizard of Id, 1/8/26
The syndicated newspaper comics are, among other things, your #1 source for gender stereotypes so out of date that everyone has pretty much forgotten them, like “women love to drag their husbands to the opera even though men find opera boring.” Usually your source for these gags is The Lockhorns, where it’s at least vaguely realistic because they live a mere hour from Lincoln Center via the Long Island Railroad; I suppose you might think the Wizard of Id’s pseudo-medieval setting also makes it a good candidate for opera gags, if you were a philistine who didn’t know that opera originated in the 1600s and didn’t truly flower into the oft-parodied art form we see here until the baroque era. Anyway, this lady has a rare talent that she’s chosen to share with the world, and maybe it makes me a gender traitor, but I feel that she does not deserve to experience the painful and horrifying ideal of transformation into a bird, right here and now, at the height of her career.
Gearhead Gertie, 1/8/26
There was in fact a big NASCAR lawsuit settlement recently, and I’m gonna be real with you, I read some of that article I just linked to but couldn’t really follow what it was about and tapped out around halfway through. I don’t feel too bad about that, though, because I read enough to know that the dispute in hand was between the league and team owners and had nothing to do with anything that might get free tickets to fans, so apparently I understood it better than NASCAR superfan Gearhead Gertie.
Dennis the Menace, 1/8/26
I guess Mr. Wilson is supposed to be hinting darkly that Dennis may someday move on from childish menacing and become some sort of evil dictator or criminal mastermind and menace the whole world, but I think he’s letting his endless antagonism with the boy cloud his judgement. Dennis is actually pretty dumb, and I’ve seen no indication that he has the intention or the ability to better himself. It might still be annoying living next door to him when he’s an adult, but I think most of us will be safe.
156 replies to “Thursday one-panels”
DtM – George will soon be channeling Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey with, “Get the fuck out of . . . “
Wizard of Iz:
“That diva likes to hang out with guys from the Pi Kappa Alpha organization!”
“How do you know that, Wiz?”
“It ain’t over till the frat lady sings!”
Gearhead Gertie:
“I call fake, Gertie!”
“Why is that?”
“If the guy you’re talking to really worked for NASCAR, he wouldn’t have a placard on his desk that said ‘NASCAR’ !”
DtM: [notes two legal envelopes he just delivered to the Wilsons] Dennis as a process server? Kinda menacing, I guess.
There are some days when the real-life fates of Alice and Dennis Ketcham gives a sort of gallows humor to Dennis the Menace. This is not one of them.
Wait, Dennis the Menace is now supervised by Hank Ketcham’s son by his third wife? This is business as usual and also really sick shit.
Beetle Bailey : and Sergeant Snorkel seem to think they’re Dustin and Ed Kudlick today.
************
Luann : when I first saw that last panel, it didn’t immediately click that they were play-acting how upset it makes them to have
to do their jobsscheduling issues that prevent them from going on dates.I thought that they were reacting because they had walked into a patient’s room
(hopefully Mrs Horner)to discover they 1. were completely nude; 2. were laying on the floor, unconscious, possibly dead; 3. had an accident from losing of their bowels.************
Wizard of Id : comes off as a mad sniper here. Probably from the fact that these “at the opera” gags INSIST on putting the characters in the balcony seat, while today’s gag is “guy is fighting the urge to SHOOT the singer right then and there”.
@GarrisonSkunk (yesterday) “How goes the soda cleanse Rambling?”
I fell off and on here and there.
I’m still trying to keep off of it :3
But I did get an epiphany in my sleep, about keeping up on teeth brushing.
Telling me that it’s just as important as taking daily meds.
Toothpaste is medication, for my teeth.
And yeah, I still want to keep up on my soda lessening :3
This will be good for me.
Thanks for your concern Garrison ^^
The most menacing thing about today’s Dennis is the pair of big hairy testicles sticking out of the ground in front of Mr. Wilson’s fence.
Phantom:
“You’ve placed yourself in jeopardy, Patrolwoman! And not just in Ivory Lana….”
“Okay. I’ll take ‘General Alexander Haig-like efforts to claim that one is in charge’ for 400, Alex, er, I mean, Ken, er, I mean Colonel!”
GG: It’s comforting to me that NASCAR most likely finds Gertie as annoying as I do. Why haven’t they disappeared her? They’ve got the power.
MW: I don’t want to be judgy, but shouldn’t a good wife notice when her husband is morphing into a wild-eyed supervillian?
RMMD: The surgery isn’t going to take anywhere near as long as listening to Rex whine about having to have the surgery.
GT: Show me a best man who says, “You’re not dead,” and I’ll show you a bachelor party with a veritable army of strippers.
WoI: Why is the Wizard’s wife holding a croquet mallet in front of her face? Maybe she brings it to shut him up when he starts kvetching.
Dennis the Menace: Special for G.W.: That helmet ain’t for protection in case of scooter accident, if you catch my drift.
The Wizard of Id: Check yourself before you wreck yourself, Josh: Opera may have mutated into musical theater in the Baroque period, but I believe the “fat lady sings” trope comes from Wagner, i.e. late 19th-century Romanticism. Why accuracy in opera/comic mocking matters to me so much, I cannot say, but forgive me for my nitpickery.
GG: Realism in comic strips is a funny thing. We can accept that people live in a featureless brown void, and that their eyeballs float outside their head. But when we see a lawyer with a nameplate of the company they represent on their desks, we say “Woah there. Hold up. Does this cartoonist take us for fools?”
RMMD: ‘This has been Health Check, sponsored by Polident. We now return you to the Price is Right, right here on CBS!’
MW: Ian, for all his fancy book larnin’, never learned the key to a successful marriage: never go to bed angry [that your wife brought home a random wild animal that is uncontrollably destructive and is of questionable provenance].
JP: It ain’t complicated, honey. You want Emil’s dick and you want it *BAD*!
S4th: Every storyline in the strip makes me want to slap my forehead and say “Not THIS shit again…”
MW Day N of Toby being utterly unconcerned about wrecked objects (and bird poop?). At some point this might actually push me onto Team Ian, but not yet…
BeetleBailey Did the writer just discover a thesaurus today? one with an antonym section for the entries?
Dennis the Menace:
“What exactly is that helmet of his supposed to be protecting, anyway, Margaret?”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: As long as we’re nitpicking, it’s “Long Island Rail Road,” not “Railroad.”
WoI — Can we compromise and turn Gearhead Gertie into a chicken instead?
Kudos for Josh for pointing out that the diva is a dedicated professional with extraordinary talent. Would it seem acceptable to fantasize about killing the players at a football game because you were bored? If you don’t like the opera, don’t go.
DtM: So Mr. Wilson stole Dennis’s helmet, hoping for a TBI.
WoI This is the first time I can recall this strip having any kind of image perspective. I guess in fast-forwarding to the Baroque era music they stopped off in the High Renaissance to check out Da Vinci.
GG: Huh, I always thought that NASCAR was a whole organization, but I see here today that it’s actually just one old guy. Does he have a last name or is this a ‘Madonna’ situation?
DtM: I think Mr Wilson means ‘potential energy’ in that Dennis is about to scooter right off an escarpment.
@But What Do I Know?: This also plays into the old stereotype of henpecked men being dragged to the Opera against their will by their shrewish wives.
Gearhead Gertie: I love that the suit Gertie called is just named NASCAR, like he’s trapped in an old-timey political cartoon. I hope he has a dangerously large cat named “Inflation” just off-screen.
@The Rambling Otter: I mean, I recently read a fan theory, that Statler and Waldorf of The Muppets fame were an old gay couple.
-Are completely inseparable
-They go to the theater together every night
-They tend to bicker sometimes (like an old married couple)
-One time, Waldorf brought his wife “Astoria” with him when Statler was home sick. The joke was that (design-wise) she was just Statler in a wig.
Blondie gives the helmeted doofus a gang sign in P1 to which he does not respond. She tells Maya to put the bag of protection money back under the counter.
FC: Don’t laugh. Jeffy now knows more about medicine than Rex Morgan.
they live a mere hour from Lincoln Center via the Long Island Railroad;
Or three hours via the Long Island Expressway.
@The Quiet Man: S4th: Oh no, did I miss Hil Doesn’t Want to Go Back to School, Ted Doesn’t Want to Go Back to Work and Sally Hates Winter and Whatever Job She Currently Has? I’ve gotta keep up!
GG: The man behind the desk appears to be a caricature of Steve Phelps, who was the real-life commissioner of NASCAR until he was forced to resign in the wake of… a lawsuit!
Things that make you go hmm…
RMMD: Rex informs a middle-aged clinic patient he has early onset Alzheimer’s. “Stop crying! You think you got a raw deal. I got cataracts!”
MW: Looks like we’re setting up for another nightmare sequence. Ian’s angry at the bird but also thinking about the Christmas tree — maybe we’ll get a weird version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” with Ian being attacked by all the birds, while nine copies of Toby dance with ten copies of hunky gardener Carlos Al(l)orca.
“Dennis has a lot of potential energy, as we shall soon see when I introduce him to a stream of antimatter.”
That poor guy is actually named Nascar, and he’s pointedly telling Gertie that she signed a binding legal agreement to stop fucking calling him already and the next step is a restraining order followed by criminal charges. Gertie’s husband is encouraging her, as he sees this as a way out of his endless nightmare.
To be fair, the Wiz* could be thinking about turning his wife into a chicken so he could leave without comment, which brings us to another fun trope in comics, when who can’t just have an adult conversation with their spouses about how a certain thing isn’t for them but why don’t you go with a friend and have a fun time?
*He could say he’s going for a whiz and use that time to scarf down an edible.
RMMD-And to top it all off Rex is upset that they won’t let him be the surgeon for the operation.
FC-“I don’t get it. I don’t see what Quentin finds so fascinating about feet.”
Wizard of Id: If a mezzo is singing in a legacy comic but not wearing the horned hat is it even opera?
Pluggers: Today’s snow-shoveling classic is being rerun because last week the Plugger had a heart attack from doing the same thing.
Gasoline Alley: Don’t move or it will start playing Take Me To The River.
RMMD: This strip is not a clever meta joke like in Archer about what year it is. How old is Rex supposed to be?
GG: Shouldn’t NASCAR have Gertie’s number blocked by now? Maybe have her picture posted in the box offices as a warning, like convenience stores (used to?) do for people who write bad checks?
WoI: I would think opera, with its sordid tales of romance and violence and female performers who historically did double duty as courtesans to wealthy patrons, would be a breath of fresh air after a steady diet of nothing but Church-sanctioned morality plays.
FC: Get your stinky foot out of my face, bitch.
FC: Really, and what do you call the cankle of your arm, butterball?
DT: Careful, Endless, Brooke McEldowney might get nasty if you come for his innuendo crown.
Dustin: Oh please, Meg, you’re not even wearing ear studs.
FG: Yeah, if there’s one thing we here on Earth have never experienced, it’s rulers with a callous indifference to innocent lives.
Luann: Oh, I’ll give you an “UUUUUUGH”….
MW: Toby learned to tune Ian out a long time ago.
RMMD: Uh-oh, reciting from WebMD articles is the Morgan version of foreplay.
WoI – But it’s almost over…ya know…cuz the fat lady is singing….
GG – I want a piece of that airplane that just crashed….
DtM – Ne’er-do-well is written all over him….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
GT: That’s no mere mullet Kaz is rockin’, that’s a Kentucky waterfall.
And it was at this moment that he decided that he wanted a career in gynecology.
Wizard of Id – Is this their way of telling us that the comic strip is over?
All this talk about Opera has motivated me to watch Der Ring des Nibelungen
Hah, just kidding, I watched the Looney Tunes Short “What’s Opera Doc?” instead.
Even though I don’t exactly like Chuck Jones’ art style (at least not for the human characters who tend to have weird baby faces) I always enjoyed this short.
@matt w: I almost wish you hadn’t mentioned this about DtM–I’ll never look at this strip without thinking about the meta here. . .
But better to know than live in ignorance, right?
@The Rambling Otter: #44:
Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!
DT: “Really? You don’t look so bad for a hundred-year-old woman.”
Phantom: Nice outfit; looks like they’re sending Patrolwoman Han back to Jungle Patrol Day Camp. I guess she really is fifteen. “On Color War Day, try to get on Red Team. Just a tip.”
9CL: Day Two of Not-Amos and he’s already smitten by Edda’s lusty charms. She just randomly picks up dweeby guys in Central Park, huh?
Blondie: Weeks of stupid Super Bowl jokes to contend with. I may draw the curtain on this strip until February.
@jvwalt: I haven’t seen a picture of Steve Phelps so I cannot confirm or deny your interesting theory.
I’m just surprised that GG is up to date on the biggest story in NASCAR.
It was a great lawsuit — not only because of Michael Jordan but because it represented a new generation of teams against NASCAR’s old guard.
Especially the France family, which owns/controls basically every track and rule-making process in NASCAR and wanted to extend that power over the financial dealings of the teams.
Phelps was “forced out” because of the nasty things he wrote about just about everybody in e-mails and texts that emerged during discovery for the lawsuit.
There’s your lesson for the day: never put it in writing.
DtM
Tried to research how long ago it was when Dennis took to wearing a helmet while skateboarding. Because I def. remember when he didn’t. I guess it is more menacing that he has decided that staying alive as long as possible is more important than looking cool. By the way I stopped the research immediately when AI pulled up old strips showing his naked ass. I guess no helmet has a meaning I’m not hip enough to know about.
@The Quiet Man: I think The Price is Right is exactly where Crankshaft‘s tedious “bird feeder apps exist!” joke comes from. Because I’ve seen those given away as prizes.
BLONDIE: Let’s help Maya decorate her Gridiron Gooey Cake.
Bake 9×13″ cake any color, let cool. Frost with brown sugar frosting and cover completely with coconut dyed green. Pipe field border and lines with goey Carmel frosting, and place orange jellybean on field for kickoff. But what can we use for goal posts– toothpicks are too small and sharp for beer drinkers.
CURTIS: Plus, Dad, on seeing your small account your payers may cancel credit and require payment in advance.
FG: before just dging, Flash, before killing a bug do you remember the Golden Rule and think of its life goals and dependent egg sacs? If you don’t care, does that make you evil?
MANDRAKE: Speaking of bugs, we hope Narda put a mechanical one in picnic basket.
@The Rambling Otter: Yeah, 1957/58 was just around the time Jones’ designs really started getting the ‘look’ he’d maintain throughout the rest of his career. Arguably a throwback to his earliest days as a director where he was trying to ape the lush Disney style of animation and just like in those days things started slow-w-w-wing down again without a writer like Michael Maltese around to be a moderating influence.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Seriously? I haven’t watched that show with any sort of regularity since Bob Barker retired (may he rest in peace) and clearly I’m not missing much. I caught a glimpse of it about a year ago and it looked like a total snoozefest.
@MKay: re: MW:
Having read more than my share of Golden and Silver Age comic books, “driven insane by a parrot” may not be the dumbest super villain origin story ever, but it would be up there. I wonder what Ian’s gimmick will be, though. Your standard spandex, perhaps with a crossed-out parrot on the chest? A safari hunter get up? Some kind of animal that preys on parrots? I mean, that chinbeard of his fairly cries, “The Lemur.”
As promised, I’ve been subjecting unsuspecting friends to Bethany’s crying face. One asked “who dis” and I linked her to Josh’s post, which she got a kick out of, and she said she hated the art in Gil Thorp independently of me saying anything about it. So, there you have it, even non-mudges agree that the current GT art is terrible.
WoI: If you want to turn something into something else, just transform that guy in the other balcony(?) into a walrus.
GG: Even weirder, the lawsuit Gertie is referring to is a bunch of charges against only her.
DtM: Eh. I don’t see him growing up to be Sam Neill.
@Charterstone: Dune: Insane Ian proclaims “I will become that which I hated! AWK AWK AWK! The Parrot, bird-themed master crime boss, will –”
Toby breaks in. “Phone call for you from the DC Comics lawyers.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“The old Trojan Horse gambit”
“Oh! He’s in there?”
[On box: GREAT GIFT FOR SEXY BABES]
“Well, if he’s been packed in here with no air holes, he might just…”
“No such luck!”
FC – I think I had that question on my SATs: “Arm : elbow :: leg : ___
DtM: “Dennis is actually pretty dumb, and I’ve seen no indication that he has the intention or the ability to better himself.” And that precludes him from menacing the world as a dictator how? (Pls see any mainstream news site.)
Luann: Jeebus. Luann acts like she’s going off to the front, when she’s got like two word shifts now and one or two classes that a kindergarten-age child would have no trouble finishing with her busy schedule.
CS: Loathsome Lil just wants to be cool, like Crankshaft.
9CL: I guess Brooke realized having his young-adult character dating (literally probably) himself was problematic, so now he has to find some other pretentious weeny she can attach to.
RMMD- In panel #1,is that supposed to be June’s right hand? In panel #2, is Rex so upset about the cataracts that he’s gonna suck his thumb for a while? Otherwise, it should have been drawn pointing downwards.
Like opera, bowties weren’t really a thing until the 17th century either, so…this would place the time of the strip somewhere between the mid-17th to mid-18th century, long past the era of knights.
This would make the titular kingdom of Id a backwater hamlet about 400-700 years behind the rest of the world which… actually tracks.
I declare this comic free from historical inaccuracy.
@Ken: Also, Spiderman’s “The Vulture” looks pretty close enough.
@Old Man Shadow: Also putting into perspective that The Wizard can (I assume) time travel. So at this point, anything goes.
FC: We’re missing the second panel where Dolly kicks Jeffy in the face.
MW: Ian will change his mind when Sonny does something contrived, like prepare a perfect version of his favorite haggis dish.
Dustin: A regressive view of women in Dustin?!? Dustin?!? Color me shocked! Anyway, Dustin also gets made fun of, too, something that hardly ever happens in this strip.
@Anonymous, Luann:
4. All three.
5. Luann had a sudden case of incontinence..
Curtis: Future strip – “Thieves stole my mail and altered my check. Serves them right when they tried to buy a cup of coffee with it!”
WoI: Is this how Henrietta Beak came to be?
@Ken:
“LOVE TOW-BEEEEEE!” El Parrotto screeches, his papier mâché wings flailing uselessly as he plunges into Kelrast Canyon.
“Gosh!” says Airhead Girl, “I made those wings for him. Am I responsible for this?”
“Yes,” replies Meddle Maid, “you most definitely are.”
SH — avalanche taking out the new boyfriend?
@Charterstone: Dune: Airhead Girl and Meddle Maid high-five.
Dustin-Dustin is thinking about piercing Meg’s heart.
BC: Apparently, our distant ancestors had much thicker skin. These cave people have been walking around in the snow only partially dressed all winter, and not the slightest hint of discomfort.
HotC: Well, score another victory for the pickleball people. Props to the girl in the background, doing what she can to hold the line.
Wizard of Id: I don’t read the current WoI, but there’s a ton of anachronism humor in the classic WoI on GoComics; this week alone a modern-looking press corps asks the king about his running mate and his trip to Mexico, and references to Avis and Speak and Say toys:
https://www.gocomics.com/wizard-of-id-classics/2026/01/05
@Liam: #73: Nah, he really wants to pierce her hymen.
FC – And the cankles are the wrists.
Frazz – I’m wondering if Jef Mallett’s New Year’s resolution is for Frazz to be more respectful to Mrs. Olsen. In the past, a strip like today’s would end with Frazz and random kid cutting up Mrs. O behind her back. “Obviously, Mrs. Olsen hasn’t cut back on treats. She should take up running. Have I mentioned that I’m a runner?”
Gasoline Alley – That was a lot of buildup for an object that isn’t nearly as ugly as the characters.
Rhymes With Orange – Wilbur Weston sits up, his mayo sense tingling.
9CL – Who are these people? I’m not sure, but I think the female is Polly. What happened to the geezer she’s in love with? It looks like she wanders around and instantly falls in love (or what passes for love in the Brookeverse) with every random male she encounters. Boinking or talking about boinking will ensue before she moves on to her next thrall.
Gearhead Gertie – I seriously loathe this.
@Activist: Re the cake: how about using popsicle sticks for the goal posts? They’d have to be glued together.
That cake sounds pretty good, except that I’d have to scrape the coconut off. I can’t stand the texture of flaked coconut.
Those who wish to see the depths to which a vengeful wizard will reach attacking an opera singer are advised to seek out Tex Avery’s classic Magical Maestro. Why settle for chickens when any twisted version of reality is there at the tip of your wand?
I reject the idea that Gearhead Gertie would try to extract free tickets from Nascar! A superfan like her would absolutely insist to pay full price to finance her beloved sport!
Wizard of Id – I’ve always wondered how much of the “wife wants husband to attend high culture event” is tied to the early comics/film industry being so centered in New York City, where working class ink-stained wretches suddenly found themselves flush with cash and cultural clout and felt the pressure to engage in “high culture”.
Gearhead Gertie – That’s former NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps, who was forced to resign after some internal messages were released during the discovery phase of the trial. He no longer has the authority to make deals or settlements, and would appreciate Gertie stop interrupting him as he cleans out his desk.
Dennis the Menace – Josh has mentioned how The Family Circus reuses old art with seatbelts added to fit the safety standards of today. Something about that helmet on Dennis feels drawn over an existing panel.
@I speak Jive: One would think that Brooke would realize that, if he covers up any of his female characters’ hair, they are completely indistinguishable from one another. This very well could be Lusty Viennese Granny cheating on her opera-singing Nazi.
@jvwalt: Indeed, Mr. “NASCAR” does appear to be the recently-ousted and generally disliked Steve Phelps.
Alas, Phelps does not have the stark and defining features of past NASCAR leaders. Back when Mike Smith was drawing his pre-Gearhead Gertie NASCAR strip StockCartoons, he used to very distinctly draw then-NASCAR president Mike Helton with his big bristly mustache and had his bushy eyebrows covering his eyes completely.
The core of the NASCAR dispute, as I understand it, is that NASCAR’s membership fees were so high that it was hard for the teams to make any money. Imagine if one or two NFL teams went belly-up every year—up to and including the Super Bowl winner. Apparently that’s how NASCAR was operating.
@Philip: New York was also flush with first/second generation immigrants from Italy and Germany and other opera-producing countries who attended as a matter of course, it being their culture. See Moonstruck (1987).
DtM: One comic that ran in Josh’s absence showed Dennis at a convention with a couple of Star Wars cosplayers. Looks like the new plan is to just pretend he’s Anakin Skywalker. Menace level: sued by Disney.
GG: The guy on the phone looks like Barry Bostwick but I guess he’s supposed to be NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps. Whoever he is, I can’t see Gertie suing her beloved organization.
C-Shaft: Don’t forget that it makes exactly the same sound when a squirrel is on the feeder. New frontiers in uselessness. Of course Crankshaft is leading the pack.
DT: They can try and convince us that Endless is Breathless Mahoney’s sister, but she comes off more as someone who saw Madonna’s double entendre-dropping Breathless in the 1991 movie and said to herself, “I could do that.”
Dustin: Dustin is going to hire a Hervé Villechaize lookalike to follow him around for a day?
GT: Nice to see that prison work has left Kaz’s glorious golden locks undimmed, even if he’s probably been wearing a wig for years.
JP: You get an idea of how sheltered a life Sophie has led when you see that she thinks she’s about to invent ghosting.
Luann: Yeah, I dunno. Making loud anguished noises in the halls of an assisted living home—like now, for example—seems like a bad idea.
MW: This is building up to a twist where Sunny saves Ian’s live, isn’t it? I haven’t worked out how, exactly. Maybe swatting a falling AC unit out of the way? But all the signs are there.
RMMD: O what a joy it will be for patients to see Rex while he’s in the midst of this epic wallow in self-pity.
6C: No, I do not got junk science, as you put it. I do have an example of lazy cartooning that I might like to see removed.
I probably say this every time they do this, but I hope Luann and Phil stay together if only so they don’t annoy the rest of the populace.
Keep on never texting or using Discord! Keep going out for coffee once every three months! You can (not) do it!
LUANN: Hey if it would make you guys feel better, I certainly have an anguished “UUUUGH” I can offer your relationship.
@The Quiet Man: Yes, I’ve seen web-enabled bird feeders as an item up for bids. And IIRC, as a minor prize for games like Any Number.
I’ve only watched one episode of TPiR this season, for the debut of some new “pick numbered balls and win a bunch of money” game. The game was obnoxiously sponsored by DraftKings, or some similar sports gambling entity, with lots of branding mentions. Individual pricing games having title sponsors just crossed a line for me. Especially when that title sponsor is for quasi-legal sports wagering, something that’s already being shoved in our faces way too much.
I’m as pro-gambling as anybody, and I realize that TPiR runs on the same risk-and-reward choices as gambling, but that just felt …wrong. I’m not interested in the “Bullseye, sponsored by Kingshot” era of TPiR. And it’s a little bit sad that the show apparently needs this kind of revenue.
Wizard of Id: Looks like it’ll be several more centuries before some operatic genius invents harmonies. Or sets.
Dennis the Menace: Given the way his green helmet clashes with his blue jacket, red overalls and purple scooter, at least the colorist seems to believe Dennis has the potential to someday become a Batman villain.
Mary Worth: “Ian, in time Sunny’s presence will grow on you.” “Eh, I’m in bed with my wife, she’s kissing me, and nothing is growing on me! Can’t you see that’s why I’m annoyed and frustrated?” “Yes, I noticed. Can’t you see that’s why I’m bonding with a parrot?”
DT: Endless 1 Dick 1 – with a tie game, we’ll now move to parting remark – when she finally gets into the car. Each will fire off one more zinger.
FG: Moving a whole planet through space just to test some weapons? I guess Ming really doesn’t like to travel. He wants the universe brought to him.
GT: Not worried about the story, just enjoying the logical framing, good art. Nice to know there are very capable people who do care!
JP: We have so many loose ends that the whole fabric of time and space of the JP universe is threatening to unravel. Isn’t there a fugitive daughter, JP’s alcoholism, missing CIApril thriller, what ever Sam and other guy is doing, Charlotte and Neddy – good move there for those two to team up to avoid being further sidelined, and now this – I gotta find myself thread.
Phantom: The colonel is threatening to banish Patrolwoman Han from his clique? Is this what happened to Rudolph and the reindeers? Doesn’t the colonel realize without people with gumption like her, the whole Jungle Patrol will fold like a wet piece of tissue paper when General (who outranks a colonel) Chum actually decides to act like the kleptocracy gangster warlord he always dreamt of being.
RMMD: At least make that one eye all milky so that Rex can get some sympathy.
DT: “That’s weird, you have the same surname as the woman I mistook you for. Are you related or something?” World’s greatest detective, right here.
GG: I feel like there are three stages to being The Worst Kind of Fan:
1. You don’t just talk about the thing all the time, you are incapable of talking about anything else and will warp any conversation into being about the thing. Gertie obviously reached this point a long time ago.
2. Having made everyone around you completely sick of the thing, you are irrationally angry with anyone who dares to express a lack of interest in it. Yep, we’ve seen that as well.
3. Despite believing everyone should be a fan of the thing, you also secretly believe it really exists for your benefit and yours alone. I’ve seen this a lot in the Doctor Who community, but congratulations to Gertie for taking it so much further than anyone else. Obviously if there’s been a NASCAR lawsuit, that should benefit her somehow! Things can’t happen at NASCAR that don’t affect her, that just doesn’t make any sense!
JP: “Maybe it’s easier to give up on the relationship now rather than worry something might happen to it later. Huh, I guess it’s not that complicated, just massively self-absorbed.”
SH: Okay, so imagine you’re Bill Holbrook. You came up with the idea that Pam is having some self-care time in a hotel while Alex goes mountain-climbing. Obviously, that on its own isn’t a story. Do you:
a) Come up with a comedy-of-errors type plot around Pam needing the hotel staff to think the room contains a human woman looking after a cat, rather than a single shapeshifter?
b) Assume that sorts itself out, and instead write a story where the hotel room is haunted or something? (I considered “earthquake”, but nothing shakes except the glass.)
I know which one I’d pick, but I’m not Bill Holbrook.
When the comic “Funny Online Animals” debuted, it showed the “This is fine!” meme dog (supposedly) feeling in a rut about his meme celebrity position.
I thought it was going to be a thought-provoking comic about how being a celebrity isn’t what it was cracked up to be. But in reality the entire comic was a clusterf*** of nonsense and weirdness that wasn’t even funny.
Checking up on it, it’s no longer on Comics Kingdom. I don’t know if it ended or moved or what… but I did find a comic called Nibbles and Scratch about two cats. One who recently went on a date with a guy, a human. Which squicked me out and I really don’t know why.
I mean, I wrote an novel with one plot thread being about when dating other sapient beings, that appearance, race, and even species (as long as they can walk and talk at the same level as humans) doesn’t mean a thing, its what inside that counts.
I mean the cat was anthropomorphic, but the fact he was the size of a regular cat and wore no clothing probably had something to do with the squickiness.
I guess I may be a hypocrite…
@TheDiva:
Gertie is actually getting into the whole spirit of the matter – trying to get something for herself!
@Treetown:
Fortunately it works like World of Warcraft idle animations — when the characters aren’t part of the day’s action, they just stand in one place swaying slightly, without changing or being affected by anything. So we can come back to the Judge in a month (a year, a decade) and he’ll still be the aged alcoholic we last saw, allowing that plot thread to be picked up.
FLASH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!: “….in the meantime, he was taking up two handicapped parking spaces. Truly evil”
Are there no pluggers in Florida? Given general demographics, it seems as if there should be about 1.2 million of them. Or do you lose the plugger designation if you live in a place that’s warm and pleasant? If you had little to gripe about but still managed to complain all day long, I’d think that would give you some kind of super-plugger status — something we internet commenters can all aspire to someday.
A&J: A&J has always been and is wonderful, but I hope the baby won’t dominate from now on. The small vertebrate I really want to see is Luddie, and I want him to be either indoors or under close outdoor supervision. It has been strongly hinted that this new home has a lot more wildlife than the old home.
Mr. Wilson is simply worried that Dennis’ strangely responsible choice to wear a helmet is an effort to forestall massive brain injuries until Dennis is old enough to scramble his frontal cortex with grain alcohol and street drugs, thusly prolonging his reign of petty nuisance.
@Horace Broon: You left out an important stage between 2 and 3: most of your friends and family abandon you. Which I think is a large factor in why ultrafans come to believe their fandom exists only for them: their fandom has already consumed everything else in their lives.
@BigTed: Many Floridians are also Pluggers, in the same sense that many methheads also smoke weed. It’s technically true, but since they’re already answering to a much worse version of the same basic flaw, you wouldn’t bother pointing it out.
@BigTed: One of the amusing features of CSI: MIAMI re-runs, which I sometimes watch during kitchen work, is the absence of old people. Whether the gruesome/innovative murder takes place in a downtown nightclub or in the Everglades or on a yacht in the ocean, almost every human being in sight is young, trim, and hot hot hot.
Also, there are grizzly bears in the CSI version of Florida, apparently dropped off by helicopters for the purposes of the scripts. Maybe the grizzly bears have eaten all the Pluggers.
@Ken: Bwahaha! Now I’ll picture Alan swaying slightly for weeks on end with the bottle in his hand. Works for me!
@Banana Jr. 6000: Now you’ve got me wondering if pluggers smoke weed. (More likely, they just rub on CBD oil and wonder why their joints still ache.)
@Poteet: All I know about “CSI: Miami” is David Caruso standing over a body and taking off his sunglasses while Roger Daltrey screams “Yeahhhh!” But if there are also hot people and bears, it might be worth a closer look.
@BigTed: Imagine if Slylock Fox was a CSI: Miami style show.
(Slylock walks up the crime scene)
Slylock: What’s going on here
Max: We found a male deer brutally murdered, we cannot find any identification whatsoever
Slylock: (Takes off sunglasses) I guess for now, we can call him a John Doe…
(YEEEAAAHHHH!!!)
FG: I’ve always wondered about those wandering planets common in a lot of science fiction. What do they do for a sun when they’re bopping about from solar system to solar system? Maybe Mongo was the same distance from the sun as Earth (known as the Eden Zone, necessary for life to exist) but always on the opposite side which is why we never saw it. That’s also a commonly used sci-fi theme.
I once dragged a girlfriend to an opera. She wound up liking it, but, all the same, do I have to surrender Man Cards, now? Can I keep some if I promise to listen to Pantera for the rest of the night?
@The Rambling Otter: I kind of see him as Lt. Drebin from “Police Squad!”
Laugh at Dennis’s helmet all you want, he’s clearly about to pull the lever that destroys Alderaan.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Goes all the way back to Jules Verne, whose Hector Servadac aka Off on a Comet (1877) told of a section of Europe ripped off by a comet’s tail and ferried about the solar system, with dozens of people still on it. Also his Propellor Island, about a man-made landmass owned and inhabited by American millionaires, which larked all over the Pacific Ocean.
@A Grave Mind: “Don’t tetch that LEE-ver….you’ll blau us all to ETOMS!” — Dr. Septimus Praetorius
“Remind me why we installed that thing in the first place.” — Dr. Henry Frankenstein
@Treetown: Worubu is a chain of command guy and only looking at whether Han did what he told her to do. The guy in the purple bondage gear seems to believe her actions were justifiable. Maybe one day he’ll stop being a dick and say so to the rest of the Jungle Patrol.
@BigTed: “In Color” !
I haven’t seen Garrison yet today, I hope that my skunky friend is okay.
@The Rambling Otter:
Nibbles and Scratch looks a lot like how they did Brian the dog (and a bunch of other dogs) in Family Guy.
And it bothered me a little to see all these humans just having sex and relationships with a design like Brian.
@I speak Jive: 9CL: You can tell that this woman is a Burber, because she is imploring a man whom she just met to tell her that she’s sexy.
Luann: As always with this strip, their behavior is straight out of middle school. They have declared themselves boyfriend and girlfriend, but otherwise they barely see each other and nothing happens between them.
@Ukulele Ike: Don’t go publicizing that mobile island idea – some of these billionaires might think it is a good idea. A modern heat resistant habakkuk, made out of floating plastic debris, flotsam and jetsam topped off with an airfield.
@treetown: Too late; search for “seasteading institute”. However, most of the plans never get past the CGI stage.
There was the Satoshi, but that was an ocean liner, and stopped being mobile when the venture ran out of money. It turns out there are actually very few bitcoin billionaires, and even fewer of them want to live in a 300 square-foot cabin with no cooking facilities.
@I speak Jive:
#79. Jive, scrapping green coconut off cakeball field perfectly fine as many starter teams play on dirt. (The underlying frosting is brown.) (Penuche frosting is great for a change up)
@Ukulele Ike:
To have that new world of gods and monsters?
When will Gertie stop bothering Nathaniel Nedwood Nascar, just because of his last name?
I, for one, would gladly go see “Extra Crispy Carman” if the well fed female turns into a chicken as she sings the ending high note.Does that make me a bad guy?
@The Rambling Otter: I haven’t seen Garrison yet today, I hope that my skunky friend is okay.
____________________________________________
Here I iz!* Sorry to be late, I’m up for the role of
Miz Mam’selle Hepzibah’s brother in “Yo, Pogo!”-the musical. Thank you for your concern of my being temporarily missing,Rambling!
*In the “Pogo” tongue.
Late Thread Cuisine: Everyone loves bacon, right?
@Banana Jr. 6000: I repeat, seriously?? In that case I declare the show dead to me. The games might be gambling in certain ways as you say, but they are self-contained with clearly-explained rules. They don’t expect you to have some kind of clairvoyance about the ability of this or that player, they don’t open the door to rigging the other games on the program (see ‘prop bets’) and they are still (probably, for now at least) subject to rules governing fraud and misrepresentation stemming from the quiz show scandals of the 1950s.
If the show has come to this, no wonder Drew Carey looked and sounded like he was sleepwalking through the show the last time I saw it.
Man, “crappie” is just gonna be too damn easy, here, no?
I want one.
@treetown: @Ukulele Ike: Don’t go publicizing that mobile island idea – some of these billionaires might think it is a good idea.
_________
It was a plot point in a “Get Smart!” episode, “Schwartz’s Island”, what could possibly go wrong?
@The Quiet Man: The show was already dead to me when Bob Barker left.
Drew Carey, to quote my Mom “I hate Drew Carey, he looks like Dilbert”
And with Dilbert personally, I’ll quote Jeri Ryan (who played Dilbert’s talking 7-of-9 alarm clock)
Dilbert: How do I turn you off?
7-of-9 Alarm Clock: You’re turning me off already
With Alex Trebek also gone, and Family Feud turning into a hardcore sex gameshow (forgive my exaggeration)
The only true gameshow left is Wheel of Fortune. I meant, Pat Sajak and Vanna White are still there right?
@The Rambling Otter: Well, okay, to be perfectly fair, I don’t hate the character Dilbert, or any of the other characters, or even really the comic itself (especially back when it actually used to be funny)
JUST Scott Adams.
I will probably never read the comic again, but I don’t blame the comic for what Scott Adams did.
Edit: I still think the animated sitcom was hilarious, but I probably won’t watch that ever again either.
Thanks Scott Adams for destroying those memories…
@Baja Gaijin:
No even bacon can save this dish.
@Baja Gaijin: Why’d they use a name for a fish?
This Wizard of Id strip is an all-around tragedy. The Wizard was hoping they’d turn him away at the door, given his typical refusal to wear pants or shoes, but the opera house staff were too afraid of his magic to give him what he secretly desired.
@57 Ken: Is this what Ian’d look like as a super hero? What do you think, @64 The Rambling Otter and @70 Charterstone: Dune?
@Baja Gaijin: The amount of glistening… did they spray oil over it all, even the parsley, or did they shellac it for posterity?
@Baja Gaijin: Perfect!
@Naked Bunny with a Whip: That’s always been a weird paradox. Like with Twilight Zone’s “It’s a good life”
If the parents stood their ground and taught the kid what he was doing is wrong, or made him sit in the corner to think about what he did, he would learn that he can’t just run the place with an iron fist. Maybe he’d gain some empathy.
Yet at the same time, they CAN’T discipline him, because they’re terrified of him/his powers.
@128 A Grave Mind: Sooooo, you don’t think they look “crappy”?
@132 Anonymous: Did you see the bacon?
@133 taig: Not the fish, the plural of the word “crappy.” And I did that; the original name isn’t as funny.
@136 CanuckDownSouth: Aerosol polyurethane.
@The Rambling Otter: Statler: “Give me one good reason the Wizard shouldn’t turn this singer into a chicken.”
Waldorf: “What’s the point? She’s already laid an egg!”
Statler & Waldorf: “HA HA HA HA HA HA”
@The Rambling Otter: Well, you’re half right about Wheel of Fortune… (just in case you weren’t being facetious).
@The Rambling Otter: I remember the animated show, and while I can think of a handful of moments that gave me a laugh it was just too dark and ultimately depressing for my taste. This was around the time I started getting turned off of the Simpsons too after they went almost all mean all the time.
As for the comic, find the old printed compendiums from before Adams lost the plot at some used book store. That way he doesn’t see a cent in royalties!
The bastards may have won, but enjoy what you want, however you can, for as long as you can.
@The Rambling Otter: Although, I did like that Johnny Bravo parody where he was babysitting the Twilight Zone kid, who in part of a running gag kept sending him to The Cornfield which was:
1- A literal cornfield, with banjo music playing whenever he’d appear there.
2- 10 feet away from the house, so he’d just walk back inside and continue trying to babysit the kid.
All three segments of that episode were Twilight Zone parodies, they were all hilarious.
The others dealt with him on an airplane, with an EVIL SCARY CLOWN on the wing (I won’t spoil the ridiculous twist)
And a silly parody of the evil doll episode.
@The Quiet Man: I have one of those big double-bound Dilbert collections. I got it around a decade ago, I think that was before Adams lost his mind.
I have a similar collection of The Far Side too. Except I believe with The Far Side it’s the “complete” collection (if one doesn’t count the “new” ones he’s been doing a while back)
And yeah, I haven’t checked up anything with Wheel of Fortune for ages, so I an literally in the dark with that.
And with the Dilbert show, it was dark yeah (now that I think about it) lots of black comedy, but in a way that doubled around and became funny for me, to a point but I still had my limits. But I didn’t really care for the first season. I mostly have memories for the second season, personally.
@A Grave Mind: It is my only weakness.
@The Quiet Man: See for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT9OP5s1JnM
The new game is called The Lion’s Share, and is sponsored by BetMGM. Whose logo is a lion.
@Banana Jr. 6000: MGM/The lion takes a share of the profits, Subtle….
@Baja Gaijin: Very nice! But that costume must have an industrial-strength girdle built in…
@Baja Gaijin: You can see my confusion, right?
@Baja Gaijin: Wilbur Weston can be Mayonnaise Man?
Better than Molasses Man, who was so slow he was accidentally run over by a steamroller (The Weird Al Show)
Maybe Wilbur has a utility belt that shoots out mayonnaise?
AND…. I just unlocked a memory, of an old videogame mod.
In Skyrim a modder who wanted to appeal to people who were afraid of Spiders, by recoding the giant spider enemies as bears. They have no walking animation so they just slide around while in a T-Pose. But they still shoot webbing… from their um…… the less said the better.
That was scarier than the spiders.
@The Rambling Otter: I don’t know whether to tell you who the new host is or leave you in blissful ignorance.
I know much of what I saw of the Dilbert show was the first season. I didn’t realize it even got a second season, it must have been shifted around in the time slots.
@137 The Rambling Otter: Thanks!
@147 Ken: Probably. Maybe it’s trick photography?
@148 taig: No. I’m not a pescatarian either.
@149 The Rambling Otter: I am NOT making a Mayonnaise Man graphic. No way, no how.
@Baja Gaijin: @The Rambling Otter:
Um… I came back online after realizing what I had said, and how suggestive it sounded.
I mean, if only it wasn’t about Wilbur (of all people)
I just got a little impulsive with my rambling.
Well anywho, take care all of you ^^
GG: Is Mr. Nascar related to “Doug Dimmadome, (owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome)”?
@The Rambling Otter: Or he’s an AI hologram, created to represent the embodiment of all things Nascar.
I would say Nascar wouldn’t have the funds or even technology for such a thing, but I imagine that Gertie donates thousands of dollars to support Nascar a week, giving them the means.
DtM: glad Dennis is dumb. A dumb guy could never end up being a dictator and a menace to the world.
JP: I was in Norway during the winter for a few days long ago and it was fabulous. I went from place to place seeing everything I could in those few days, and though my brain got a little scrambled, the museums alone were worth it. And the people, wow. On an ordinary Oslo bus ride, I saw a girl so beautiful that I still remember her. Norway in winter seems to be wasted on Tweedledum and Tweedledummer.