The white gloves are a nice touch
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Dennis the Menace, 6/17/26
I can see why Dennis thinks that Henry, who wears a bow tie everywhere and thinks that you should change into a polo shirt when it’s time to do manual labor outdoors, would be good at owning a horse, if by “good at owning a horse” you mean “wealthy enough to own an animal that’s very expensive to purchase, house, and care for, and that does not provide any economic benefits in modern society.” He’s wrong, though: the Mitchells live in a modest suburban home and all their meals are prepared by Alice, who is by all accounts terrible at it but the family apparently doesn’t have other options. Your dad doesn’t have horse money, Dennis! He barely has dog money!
Luann, 6/17/26
“Lily and Brenna remind me of two other girls I know! Girls with similar names! Those girls are you and me, by the way. I made sure they’d draw us in the last panel so that people know that’s who I’m talking about, because I don’t respect our readers’ intelligence.”
Mary Worth, 6/17/26
Remember when Tommy was the type of guy who earnestly thought-ballooned about having his own meth lab? Well, now he’s the type of guy who earnestly refers to a bathing suit as “skivvies.” It’s true what they say: jail changes a man, for the worse.
Crankshaft, 6/17/26
I’m sorry, is this strip trying to sell us the idea that Harry Dinkle’s dad, who would’ve been alive well into the 20th century, invented the concept of uniforms? No. Absolutely not. I refute this. I refute this!
70 replies to “The white gloves are a nice touch”
Dustin: You’re a plugger when your professional enemies know they can buy you off with a dozen glazers, not the jelly-filled or frosted with sprinkles. Plain glazers.
Gil Thorp: The final panel is the worst stepping ever.
Rex Morgan: I’ve heard people’s heads swell when their egos get puffed up. I’ve never seen it happen, that is, until Mae Mae in Rex Morgan today.
“Mr. President, two of the unaccounted-for clones have survived, and made contact with the Original Luann! I’m not sure we can keep a lid on ‘Operation Why God?’ for much longer!”
MW: First the haircut, and now “skivvies.” All that’s left is for Tommy to start spouting useless trivia, and will know he’s becoming a Were-Jared.
@Lauralot: we’ll, not will. I swear I can type when it’s not before 8 AM.
Dinkle’s Shitty Band: The Bellhop Album.
Crankshaft: Actually, his father invented something much more important than uniforms to the Funkyverse: the last panel pun that’s not really a pun but just the same word with the same meaning.
JP: *Start* wandering off?!?
GT: Huh, color budget must have run out for that third panel…
Dinkle Sr. got into a bitter feud with the Ink Spots over who came up with the brilliant idea of “wearing matching suits”, but it ended in a wash.
“Crankshaft” is turning into a strip about old guys reminiscing about the past, without bothering with, you know, jokes. I never thought I’d say this, but c’mon crankshaft…you’re right there — make with an abysmal pun.
“Lily reminds me of myself! She’s an idiot.”
RMMD-“We’re just good friends.”
MW-Skivvies? I’m sorry but it’s not that kind of a beach. You have to wear proper bathing attire.
MW-You should see Dawn dive for pearls.
FC-And now here comes the marching girls in their skimpy outfits.
Henry smiles. “You know how hard it was to find a kid’s cowboy outfit and a hobby horse in 2026? And he actually LIKES them! Ah, what a little fuckhead. Gonna see what he does with a magician costume, next!”
“Look, Mitchell, I’m serving you one more drink, then you’re cut off. Another Pink Gin?”
Crankshaft: “Unfortunately, it turned out that playing sharp isn’t desirable, musically.”
Mary Worth:
“Dawn, you should have a separate shopping cart for each one of those two cartons of Grade A Jumbos that you took off the shelves.”
“Why is that, Tommy?”
“Because Mary Worth says, ‘Never put all your eggs in one basket’ !”
Crankshaft: What is the joke here? Is there a joke here? The exclamation mark suggests there is, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it would be. Is it that he wanted them to “look uniform” by wearing uniforms? Is it that he wanted the band members to look “sharp,” and sharp is a thing musical notes can be? Or is the joke that newspapers are still publishing this tripe, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them?
MW: Meanwhile in NYC, Olive’s tummy brain floats a premonition in the air: save Tommy from drowning! She desperately telepathically contacts her marine mammal pals to be vigilant on breakers patrol!
Luann:
Okay, so the one on the left in the second panel is not going to be the next Marie Curie.
Ahhhhhh! Where did the entire store go?! Bring back reality, Tommy and Dawn! Or…you know what? I’m not sure what I want, here.
Crankshaft:
“hen, in an effort to become kind of an antimatter ‘New Vaudeville Band,’ they shaved nearly all of their facial hair and did a cover of Winchester Cathedral!”
DtM:
“Guess what, Dad? — this is the horse from The Godfather!”
Crankshaft : …I have no idea where this storyline is going with this, if anywhere. Currently, my best guess is that Dinkle *IS* aware of all the similarities he has with his dad, he just has contempt for him because his dad was a failure and he is successful.
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Dennis the Menace : Interesting to gaze into the past, and see that “DAD I WANT A PONY” used to be unisex, if not outright boy-coded?
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Dustin : Every man has a price… and apparently, for Ed Kudlick, that’s barely 30 $ (Including tax).
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Luann : and Bernice have the ‘personalities’ and behaviors of two 7 year old girls.
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Safe Haven :
Yesterday : I’m asking you for help because I consider you my human friend, whose unique human experience allows me to understand human society.
Today : Ah, I essentially consider you to be just a mermaid who changes into a human from time to time.
RMMD: In the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the character Dawn Summers, who is perpetually struggling to cope with the facts that she serves no value to the broader group and that she’s constantly being kidnapped by the monsters of the week, sings the first two lines of what ought to be her own her heartfelt solo song. “Does anyone even notice? Does anyone even care?” And then she’s immediately kidnapped by a demon, demonstrating on a meta-textual level that she’s not even interesting enough to have her own musical number. I’m imagining Rex Morgan trapped in the backrooms of Milford, singing the exact same lines, only to have one of his kids throw up or feed the dog chocolate or whatever else.
Luann “Wow! It’s amazing – other people aren’t just unformed blobs before they get to the teen years!” What’s even more amazing is how Luann has managed to avoid discovering this till now.
DtM:
“I got this from a vendor at Houston’s oldest commercial airport, Dad.”
“No. Don’t say it, Dennis.”
“Yep. It’s a ‘Hobby‘ horse!”
RMMD: In the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the character Dawn Summers, who is perpetually struggling to cope with the facts that she serves no value to the broader group and that she’s constantly being kidnapped by the monsters of the week, sings the first two lines of what ought to be her own heartfelt solo song. “Does anyone even notice? Does anyone even care?” And then she’s immediately kidnapped by a demon, demonstrating on a meta-textual level that she’s not even interesting enough to have her own musical number. I’m imagining Rex Morgan trapped in the backrooms of Milford, singing the exact same lines, only to have one of his kids throw up or feed the dog chocolate or whatever else.
DTM Own a horse? Dennis, the jockeys don’t own the horses…
Luann: “One of them is dumb as shit. Just like me!”
MW So I’m guessing that Tommy’s going to almost drown, Dawn will be forced to give him mouth-to-mouth, and then they’ll finally….keep nattering like morons.
@Lauralot: That’s it. No more posting before breakfast.
MW: Hopefully, they’ll both drown, or be eaten by sharks.
DtM — Dennis suggests the Mitchells should buy a horse. Menace level: Extreme!
MW — No, Tommy, don’t say you can’t swim just before an outing to Chekhov Beach. . .
Luann: No, no, Brenna. Don’t say toilet, say bathroom bowl, and don’t say toilet paper, say bathroom tissue.
Anyone of Boomer age will get that.
CS: sharp uniforms don’t save flat tuning
BLONDIE: Even today, Dag is a legend in his own time.
BF: you go girl rl. Heck, if Susan can, we can too. (That’s a dare)
FBoFW: women be shopping, but guys be “checkin’ out”. Ne’er the twain will meet.
FG: so is this ruler a Ming minion or is she homegrown? Must be tense living the in a sky city when you don’t have wings.
GA: Snuffy lives!
RMMD: is Mae Mae smiling because Doug’s self promotion is funny or because she appreciates his rescuing her from prying queries? That is, is Doug an ad man or is he a hero?
Dinkle can’t sell this bullshit wordplay anymore.
Pluggers have blotted out the memory of that hobo they killed for the fun of it and hid in a storage locker three towns over.
Dennis the Menace:
The eyes on that hobby horse are creeping me the fuck out. The problem is not just that they are disturbingly human, but that they are more than human—as you can see in this very panel, human eyes in this universe are often just featureless black dots. Did Dennis break into an alternate dimension, one less cartoonish than his own, and brutally decapitate a horse to make a plaything? Because that sure would be menacing. That’s not even the worst of it, though. Look at those eyes again: it’s looking up at Henry. It’s still alive. The plaintive look in those all-too-human eyes beg him for the only salvation that it can hope for, the sweet release of death. Do it, Henry. Even Dennis wants you to do it—it’s why he’s buttering up your horse-handling skills, for a mercy killing is the ultimate act of compassionate horse care. Do it, Henry. Do it before the eyes start crying and fill the world with their tears.
@Anonymous: Well, “successful” in that he had a comfortable life despite never being given the Les Moore-level adulation he clearly felt he deserved because Daddy didn’t give him enough attention once upon a time (‘What do you want, son?! We just came out of a flippin’ Depression and now we’re at WAR! I could be dead in a ditch somewhere in Europe right now! These gigs are what’s keeping food on your table!’).
CS: I know others have pointed this out, but that’s an outside storage unit with minimal climate control. All those ninety-year old relics are going to crumble into dust when touched. Er, to be clear, I mean the photos and papers in the cardboard boxes, not Harry, Lillian, and Ed.
@Lauralot:
#27. Lauralot, go ahead. Typos show you’re one of us. Anyway, it wasnt you, it was auto-incorrect.
MW: My irrepressible imagination is swinging between Tommy in a striped 1920’s number and Tommy in a thong. I could do with less imagination.
RMMD: You’re a born ad-man, Doug! As you speak, people from both coasts are leaping onto their private planes.
LUANN: So, she’s literally saying, ” The stupid one is me!”
BB: Oh, c’mon. You could have left out “golf.” Throw us a bone!
GT: No angst. Everyone’s happy. Keri must have gone home early.
@Activist: re:FG – IIRC she was part of the anti-Ming alliance and married to Barin’s brother, who died defending their realm against a monster awoken as part of a scheme by the Hawks. And I think she’s perfectly aware that the Hawks were behind an assassin who was supposed to kill her husband but in a mix-up killed Aura’s brother instead. Her conquest of the Hawks is understandable for the survival of her kingdom and is part of the whole “once Ming was (apparently) gone, will Mongo devolve to chaos?” storyline
Crankshaft:
Finally we learn the story behind Harry’s pathological obsession with selling candy to pay for high school band uniforms: in order to live up to his father’s legacy, he bought the entire class tailor-made uniforms every year. Bespoke clothing doesn’t come cheap, so if all of Westview had to get type 2 diabetes to soothe his daddy issues, well, that was a price he was willing to pay.
I can’t parse Dawn’s escalating invitations to Tommy as anything but a come-on. Has she no respect for his relationship, which he’s been frantically mourning since what’s-her-face left town? And how desperate would you have to be? “My ex, who was a jagoff to me… incompetent wannabe drug dealer… ex-jailbird… needy dweeb… not actually available… BINGO!!! I’m in!” Brace yourself for yet another failed relationship, Dawn, as your judgment hasn’t improved one whit since the last time.
MW – Skinny dipping is what she’s talking about, you dolt, not skid-marked skivvies? This is your chance to see if Dawn favors au natural or hardwood floors. All that meth has dulled your senses to nuance.
“All the 7-year-old girls have very distinct personalities.” Great, Luann. Maybe they can show you how to get one.
Dennis the Menace: “Horse ain’t got no owners, Dennis, only users. Talking about shit, smack, skag, H. And now if you’ll excuse me, Omar coming.”
Next week: Olive’s “tummy brain” activates and she catches a flight to wherever the heck this strip takes place to save Tommy from drowning.
Mary Worth: I’ll bet Tommy doesn’t know any good swimmers either, not in those skivvies.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: A roommate once got invited for a drunken night swim (I know) on/around a water-ski jump in one of our local lakes. The crew inviting him included his future wife and at least one other ridiculously hot coworker, so he was not about to allow the lack of a swimsuit to ruin his evening. Instead, he borrowed/stole a brand-new pair of my actual skivvies, using them to slide repeatedly down the jump. He brought them back the next morning, stained green from duckweed, with a promise to wash them. “That’s all right…you keep them” I said. College, man.
DtM: “Gee, Dad, you look like the kind of guy who should be shoveling horseshit.” – Is that menacing or just insulting?
Mary Worth bolding strikes again, but if someone said, “It’s been so hot lately. Care to join me?” you’d have to assume it was a direct pass, right? Like if not a scene from a porno. Two people talking like a porno and not actually screwing. And come on Mary Worth, you have lots of things you’re good at. You don’t need to cop Luann’s style like this.
Hi and Lois: Trixie looks way too smug about sitting in a sandbox that animals definitely have been defecating in and does she think using that 80 year old Looney Tunes dialogue is cute? I do appreciate just how angry that cat looks about being kept from its toilet though. It’s been using it regularly for months and it really needs to go!
Pluggers: New one. Pluggers are hoarders who can’t throw anything away.
“So, his whole ‘uniform’ concept wasn’t making him much money, but he had a great idea. He fostered unrest in Serbia and convinced a group of radicals to assassinate the Archduke of Austria-Hungary while he was on an ill-advised trip to Sarajevo. That’s right; Dad really gave Ferdinand a ‘Black Handed’ compliment! Anyway, then came World War One and the uniform money started to roll in.”
MW: Was this dialogue written by AI? No, because AI dialogue would sound more human,
DTM: I think that’s a repurposed golf clip of Henry.
Henry looks like he just started his own landscaping business and thinks a clean and presentable uniform is the key to making a good impression. He might just introduce the concept of pony play to Alice later though.
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Lily and Brenna… run. Run as fast as your little legs can carry you and don’t stop until you get home. Beg your parents to send you to therapy immediately and save yourselves a future as characters in Luann.
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Tommy’s going to almost drown, isn’t he? He could actually drown, but that would mean some actual trauma for Dawn and this comic isn’t equipped to deal with human emotions.
CS: Hey, going by those old photos Larry Dinkle was quite handsome and dashing, especially with that pencil mustache. Why is his son so dumpy looking and ugly?
Cranky: John Phillip Sousa beat Dinkle by a hundred years.
@Guillermo el chiclero: That’s just part of the Funkycurse.
Mary Worth: I thought about Tommy and Dawn’s budding relationship for half a second (pro tip: do not do this) and found myself wondering about how the writers handled Tommy’s girlfriend’s departure. They clearly want Tommy to seem like a good guy, so why not have his significant other leave him, not just move to another state for a while?
I have to assume they’re sowing the seeds for future drama. Tommy forgetting that he can call or email people in other states is plausible, so I assume the former love interest will barrel back into the strip, furious that Tommy ghosted her. Is “too dumb to understand anything other than solipsism” a viable defense? Or will Tommy’s semi-infidelity lead to the Fro-Yo Wars we’ve all been anticipating?
@Guillermo el chiclero:
Luann: As a Boomer, ever since Archie Bunker it’s been “terlit” to me.
@Lawyerbob: True, but at least it’s (slowly) going somewhere. Compare with the previous two weeks of Mary Worth of Dawn babbling “feel good about yourself.” For that matter, in Judge Parker the girls have been doing “I’ll miss you” for a week and a half.
Don’t swim out too far, Dawn. Doctor Jeff and Mary might be taking a sunset cruise, and you know he can’t see over the bow of that monster boat.
I have always found Dinkle incredibly irritating, but I finally feel some sympathy with him: he’s clearly bored and irritated by all this stuff, just like me!
I have met two young girls just like us! The smart one is incredibly condescending with the airhead one and this completely reframed how I see out relationship. I would incredibly mad at you, but now I understand how irritating must have been dealing with a young me
“Even at age 7, the girls have very distinct personalities. When will I get mine?!?!”
@Tabby Lavalamp:
Is Henry going to borrow his son’s cockhorse?
Yes, that thing is actually called a cockhorse :)
@Twinkles the Elf: “Um…they’re friends! Have you not been listening to the 2,000 times they’ve been emphasizing that over the past couple of weeks?! Ugh, you’re just like how Brandy is going to be when she comes back and totally misinterprets seeing Dawn give Tommy a “just friends” handjob.
DtM: The farmer and the cowman cannot be friends in the struggle to control the vast open spaces of the Old West. Dennis tries to persuade Henry to quit growing crops and join him in ranching, but if that fails, a range war is coming. Pretty durn menacing!
Tommy is pretty and muscular young man, that’s why seeing him all sexy in a bathing suit will squash Dawn’s blossoming crush for him. Her horribly warped Oedipal mind will only be attracted a big lump of flesh, hair and fat in a speedo
Come on Dennis, try be menacing! You have a horse’s head! Make Mr Wilson an offer he can’t refuse!