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The Phantom, 10/5/24

One of the more, uh, problematic aspects of the Phantom lore is that the Phantoms have been resident in Africa for 23 generations but have maintained their power over the superstitious natives by keeping contact with their ancestral Europe and bamboozling the poor locals with advanced Western science and technology. That’s why today’s strip, in which he refuses to believe that this robot could possibly be a robot and starts banging on the outside with a rock demanding that the guy inside come out, is pretty funny. On the other hand, the real Elon Musk had a big reveal of a humanoid robot that turned out to be a guy in a robot suit, and then later did a big reveal of another humanoid robot that turned out to have a guy just off screen operating it by remote control, so maybe I shouldn’t be quick to make fun.

Gasoline Alley, 10/5/24

By saying “the black one’s best” but also “the grey tabby’s mine”, little Ava Luna, or possibly Aubee or Sophie, who can tell, is submitting to the patriarchy’s dictates that male siblings should have first choice of everything. This isn’t the sort of girl-power pluck and gumption she showed back when she time travelled with the help of an evil talking doll!

Dennis the Menace, 10/5/24

Uh oh, it appears we’ve made an error over here at Dennis the Menace HQ! This was supposed to be the punchline for a panel showing Margaret and Dennis dancing. But then we realized that that would never happen, so we replaced it with a panel of some kids standing around and holding books while looking at Dennis. But then we never wrote a new punchline for it. Our bad!

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There’s nothing I enjoy more than reading your funny comments and selecting my favs! Speaking of which, here’s this week’s top contender:

“Those are some odd choices for fantasy heroes. Prince is an inborn trait. Pirate is a type of criminal. Cowboy is a job, same as tech support, so he should be on the Actual Hero side if you like beef and dairy products.” –Anonymous

And here are the very funny runners up!

“Love me, love my thousand dying dogs.” –Gerry Quinn

“Thrill to the slightly stiff finger drama! Gaze in awe as ‘just wearing a splint’ probably fixes it! Gasp in terror as the slim prospect of surgery still remains! Wonder briefly about the patient’s romantic life!” –Chance

“Narration box clearly doesn’t think trigger finger is a real condition.” –Dan

“No, Truck, it was as recently as Friday when June Morgan distinctly told you that if the splint and medications don’t fix it, then next they’ll try cortisone injections, and only if that fails too then they’ll resort to surgery. Is this story arc so boring that even you don’t bother to read it any more? (Yes.)” –seismic-2

“I stick by a theory I recently posited that Camp Swampy is a big psychological experiment by the Army to test the boundaries of soldiers under duress from poor leadership. Can a cook order a private to guard the food specifically against his immediate commanding officer? The results will be studied in a dark room of the Pentagon, and the findings will inform future tests.” –Philip

“Is this a feline retelling of the nativity story?” –johnny lt

“I too like to verbalize my frustrations over a breakup by sitting my pets down at the dinner table, cry-eating ice cream in front of them, and expositing to them precisely what’s going on. Although I don’t know about putting my elbows on the table. I’ve still got some dignity.” –Amelie Wikström

“So, after every meal I take these Herbalife supplements. Let me show you our exciting new product line!” –Peanut Gallery

“If you gave a printer a handjob to completion, would it ejaculate ink or paper? Today’s Beetle Bailey answers that question at least.” –Schroduck

“I’m not sure why, but I find those extra m’s on ‘yum’ really off-putting. It’s a sandwich, man, get a grip.” –pugfuggly

“Sometimes you have to appreciate how some comics are just a job that you have to churn out by a deadline when the artist has blank pages being spit out by the, sure, we’ll accept that’s a printer. A few lines on the papers to indicate something is actually being printed? That’s precious golf time!” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Dagwood read the Book of Exodus and decided that putting pepperoni above his front door was a way to tell the angel of death ‘Please take my first born, but leave my pizza alone!’” –Ettorre

“Blondie shamelessly caters to its readers’ fantasies: having kids who are impressed by their parents’ bullshit.” –matt w

“Truck Tyler Featuring Mud Mountain on Guitar With Special Opening Act Shorty and Beanpole. There will be no refunds.” –Liam

“I was stressed about wedding planning … now I’m stressed that you brought over a dozen muffins just for the two of us.” –Hibbleton

“George and Martha Wilson are a 99-year-old male and 95-year-old female being admitted to hospice services jointly with a terminal diagnosis of E.905.1 Lack of Style. They currently reside at 2253 Pine Street, next to Alice and Henry Mitchell and the Mitchell’s five-year-old son Dennis, who serves as the Wilson’s Power of Attorney.” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“‘Ed ghosted me, Mary. I guess he just doesn’t have the rizz. Skibidi … Sigma?’ ‘Oh, Stella. I vibe you, gurl.’ Somewhere, you hear the souls of millions of Gen Z cry out in agony and then are silenced. Their youth is behind them. Their future is newspaper comics.” –OId Man Shadow

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Mary Worth, 10/4/24

Look, Stell, you’re clearly a vibrant, attractive woman with an active romantic and sexual life. Nevertheless, you’re a woman of a certain age, with “certain” meaning “not young,” as evidenced by the fact that you fell for an extremely common elder scam not that long ago. There’s nothing wrong with being on the older side, of course, but it’s important to have some self-awareness and not try to deploy unfamiliar youth slang, OK? Take “ghosted,” for instance: this describes a situation where you’re seeing someone with various possible degrees of seriousness, or are at least gearing up to do so, but then they abruptly cut off contact with you and stop replying to your texts/emails/DMs/other communication attempts. It very much does not describe a situation where your fiance cancels on you for a social event at the last minute, but does so by sending you a text at the time explaining why he’s doing it. You used the word wrong and that’s just how it is! Mary doesn’t know any better, but the youth of today do, so please choose your words more carefully next time in case they overhear you. We would’ve allowed the use of “ghosting” in this context if Ed had died (for instance, by doing emergency surgery on a corgi while exhausted and accidentally slicing his femoral artery with the scalpel and bleeding out on the floor of his own clinic) and, desperate to still make the engagement dinner, he showed up as a ghost. That’s not the usual use of the term but I don’t think anyone would’ve given you trouble. But he didn’t do that either, he did the first thing I said (didn’t show up but explained why and then you saw him not long afterwards, which is also antithetical to the whole “ghosting” concept).

Dennis the Menace, 10/4/24

Ha ha, it’s funny because Mrs. Wilson is admitting the sad truth: she and George are just going through the motions, living but going no further, not experiencing the style and verve that make life worth living. It’s like it only took a few minutes of respite from Dennis’s low-key menacing for them to look the true existential menace square in the face.