The shirt … it is stripy … honh honh honh
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Panels from Hagar the Horrible, 11/17/24
“OK, we want people to know she’s a prostitute, so we’ll give her torn short shorts and fishnet stockings … but how will we let people know she’s a French prostitute? Can we do something with her upper half, maybe?” This sounds like criticism but it’s not. Perfect visual storytelling, informative and funny, keep it up Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC.
Dustin, 11/17/24
What really makes this strip for me is not that Dustin’s dad has to cut this evening short to go to bed so he can get up and go to work — we’ve all been there, “there” being a hell-world where are forced to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow and cannot simply be indolent all day if we so choose — but the way he does it. “Well, enough of this,” he announces to his aged father, who is unwell (see final panel “punchline”) and may not be around much longer. “I’ve done the math on whether my optimal choice is to hang out with you or slip into unconsciousness, and my conclusion is: smell ya later, old man.”
Dennis the Menace, 11/17/24
Wow, so the entire run of Dennis the Menace has been one of those ironic things where it turns out it’s a story written by one of the characters! Who knew Mr. Wilson had such artistic talents. Anyway, looks like today’s the day we wrap the whole thing up. RIP Dennis the Menace, 1951-2024, you taught me it was OK to be weird.
89 replies to “The shirt … it is stripy … honh honh honh”
Rex Morgan: Mr. Lewton, the terms you’re looking for are “anal leakage” and “excessive.”
Unfortunately for Mr Wilson, since his writing was not based on a pre-existing franchise, it was evaluated on its merit and “Dennis the Menace” was thrown out as boring and lazy.
Slylock Fox-Max, please. None of that made up slang that 9748377 use so they don’t seem out of touch.
Slylock Fox-Wow! Such flimsy evidence in today’s puzzle.
RMMD-And as a remind of who’s comic strip this is here’s Rex Morgan.
MW-The pets are there to offer advice on how Estelle and Ed can satisfy each other.
FC-Every dog’s aspiration to be Marmaduke.
RMMD: Oh snap, it’s Old Man Lewton! He’s the ornery nitwit who clued Rex in about Rene cosplaying as a swami who was curing chemtrail poisoning with his girlfriend’s psychic magic or some such. Does this mean Rene is back again? It’s completely 100% impossible with absolutely no exception, but on the other hand Rene is the only character anyone cares about and Beatty completely lacks the imaginative capability to create a new rival for Rex, so… yeah, Rene’s back.
JP: Oh heavens, Sophie’s dating someone nearly her own age and Neddy briefly considered contacting an old friend before deciding not to. Those two are so irresponsible. Not like Abbey, who adopted a child two years ago but hasn’t accounted for his worrying absence once in the past year and a half. Besides, it’s mid-November, which means Abbey and Sam are a month late starting their Christmas preparations, a grueling and miserable endeavor that totally isn’t just taking a couple hours to put up a tree and hang a few decorations.
Hagar:
“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi/ce soir?”
“Nah. I’m not sleepy.”
Dustin:
You know you’re a Plugger when a V-neck sweater is your go-to choice of haberdashery.
DtM:
“Hmmmmmmmm…’Telangiectasia: Why All the Characters in the Strip Have Burst Capillaries in One Spot or Another on their Faces,’ by George Wilson.”
Dustin: I find this strip kind of heartwarming. Having a literal dead-line has paradoxically freed Dustin’s granddad from fears about his mortality, and now he can do what he’s always wanted to – get blind drunk with his son.
Hagar: Oh, the fishnets and short-shorts are meant to mark her as a prostitute? I thought those were just more French signifiers.
DTM: Ironically Mr Wilson’s going to write the other Dennis the Menace, inspired by his childhood as a working-class British schoolboy with a taste for petty vandalism and homophobic bullying.
RMMD: “Stay calm?” The man is a full-time monolith.
DtM: Late in life, George enjoys fame as a best-selling author in the murder porn genre.
HtH: My first quick impression was that the Mademoiselle (oops, Madame) was bidding them farewell as they left. My next few moments were spent imagining just how many pieces Helga would chop Hagar into, and how it could be made funnies-friendly.
DtM: Be careful with the “write what you know” stuff, Martha. Comics have set the precedent that the way to write a bestseller is for your spouse to die of cancer.
Hagar and Lucky walk through the red-light district on the Rue de Tictonne, AKA, street of a ton of spasms which I guess sorta fits.
HtH: Is our main character on a first name basis with the French lady of the night (Sue?) or is the sloppy text say “She”?
“Tictonne” (or, to be more precise, “tiquetonne”) is French for “tickles.” This section of town caters to a very niche clientele.
Where are you getting that the grandfather is unwell in Dustin? Isn’t this a peeing joke?
HTH- point of order- she’s not carrying a baguette.
So “Dennis the Menace” goes meta on us, which “Ziggy”‘s been doing for years. Who’s next, “Rex Morgan?” (Not “Mary Worth;” self-awareness is decidely not in her wheelhouse.)
JP. 21? I see Sophie is following the “Dawn Weston” college curriculum.
@Anonymous: Peeing jokes are only allowed in Marmaduke, Mother Goose and Marvin. It’s contractual.
RMMD: Yes, stay calm, Rex. Remember cousin Merle ain’t been quite right lately.
JP: “You’re right Sal- dah, I mean, Abbey!”
MW: “MEOW!” Translation: So are you two going to do the nasty or what? Why else do you think we’ve been sitting and staring at you this whole time?
Luann: Ha ha! Look at her, trying to nap on the couch where there’s hubbub all around her when she could have simply gone into their bedroom and shut the door! Wimmen, amirite?
Mary Worth Sunday Quotevestigation: George Eliot did say this, without the “is the,” in Chapter 19 of Janet’s Repentance (Scenes from Clerical LIfe). Wikiquote had the Brainyquote wording sourced to a reprint edition of some book of quotations that didn’t provide bibliographic details itself and that I thus consider nothing more than the Brainyquote of its day. It has been edited.
Meanwhile in the RMMD throwaway panels, June puts on a clinic in dismissing a doctor’s worries about someone’s wedded bliss. “No shit, Rex,” she says. “Now let me tell you how to do our jobs.” Mary should take notes.
DtM –“Martha, you won’t believe the dream I just had.”
HtH — Given the impressive display of semiotics, Rue de Barthes would have been funnier–though I originally read the street name as Rue de Tictok
Mr. Wilson frowns looking at the title of the strip, as he realizes that he can’t sell the punchline, that he’s really the author of this strip, as long as “Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace” is right there in large lettering.
Pluggers have incipient dementia. Funny, eh?
Marvin – Jeff hit a whole new level of assholery. I guess that’s the joke.
Thanks to decades of alcohol abuse, Pluggers have short-term memory loss.
Dustin: This is the first time I’ve noticed it, but Dustin’s Dad’s Dad is Rupert Murdoch. Are they watching FOX?
RMMD:
“And Merle Lewton has a mystery ailment he can’t quite describe. Oh…wait a second here…he just flatlined. Not to worry!”
HTH: There’s a Rue Tiquetonne in Paris.
MW: Ed and Estelle in bed, fully clothed, on their wedding night. Sexy!
MW:
I see Mary got coiffed at Santa Royale’s Smurf Beauty Salon.
MW: If this is the last time we ever see these three cloying, annoying, equanimity-destroying animals, it will be a giant leap for mankind.
CS: I’m assuming that when Ed asked someone in the household to hold the ladder for him, they all told him to drop dead.
Frazz: I rarely know what the hell these two are talking about, but I’m guessing today’s conversation means that Caulfield is boring.
Ziggy: Baja ought to love this one!
Thanks to decades of alcohol abuse, Pluggers have short-term memory loss .
MW – Estelle ended up with something she could live with…a zoophilia orgy.
DtM: After many rewrites, name changes, and even a gender change, Wilson molds his main character in the spirit Hank Ketchum originally intended when he publishes: The Ring.
HtH – Did they mis-spell “Tiquetonne” on purpose? Is there a joke in that, somehow? I’m confused. Tres confused.
MW: And now we know why these two just had to work out their differences and end up together – turns out they were made for each other as the only Santa Royale couple with a very specific cross-species exhibitionism kink.
Thanks to decades of alcohol abuse, Pluggers have . . . what? I did? Twice?
HtH: Did the Hagar creative team recently take a trip to Paris? Are they trying to make it into a business expense, with the recent rash of “Rue de Tictonne” and “Maison d’etre” and “I miss Paris!/dancing bears” jokes? Or are “Hagar is in Paris” jokes a regular feature that flies under my radar? Or did Hagar move to France when I wasn’t paying attention?
Mary Worth: Too late, Mary. “She ultimately ended up with something she could live with” should have been your wedding toast.
@astroboy: it shows these two are *really* lost, having ended up in the Hamlet of Saulieu instead (which has, according to the interwebs, a Rue Tictonne)
Just because I have a stripe,doesn’t mean I ‘m “easy”!
Dennis is gonna take Mr. Wilson to court for using his name and likeness without permission, and Mr. Wilson will swiftly discover that NOTHING is more menacing than the US copyright system.
@Bob Tice yesterthread 176: Oh Indiana wants him for murder. I had figured “Oh Lord I can’t go back there” was a pretty normal sentiment about Indiana. (For the purposes of Western Pennsylvania pride I will pretend I mean the state, not the city/county in Pennsylvania.)
@matt w:
I am actually a devotee of McKean County/Bradford’s Lodge at Glendorn, where my family and I have stayed many times, wbich I believe to be in western Pennsylvania about two and a half hours from Indiana, PA.
@Pozzo: Tictonne is the cleverest thing in a HtH for years. It takes a lot for a little joke in some of these strips to break free from their surroundings and work on their own merits. I’m actually impressed.
MW:
“Ed, did you know that Pierre here is a devotee of the protagonist of Calamity Jane, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Pillow Talk?”
“Why is that, Stell?”
“Because every dog has its Day!”
I just read the Komics Kondom profile of John Rose and have read the other profiles they put up there. I like the common theme, especially with the illustrators, of how they fell in love with cartooning and the comics at an early age and found a way to make it a lifetime vocation/avocation.
Friday I attended the funeral of someone I got to know at the pre-game suppers for various sportsball sports. He was 80 and still going as a radio engineer for the visiting radio broadcast crews who came to town. His obit talked about how he started tinkering with radio equipment when he was a teenager and made it his life’s work and was a ham radio operator.
Whether it’s cartooning or radio tinkering (or keeping score of baseball games), I always think it’s cool to see these youthful hobbies become a lifetime thing. And for John Rose and others, it gives them the honor(?) of being snarked on by us.
So one of the running jokes in the early days of my and my friends’ comic-strip commenting forum was that George Wilson is actually Dennis’s real dad (note the similarities between Dennis and George’s rounded features, in contrast to the rather sharp-featured Henry and Alice). This running joke eventually ran it’s course, along with the slightly darker one that George fought for the Axis in WWII, but today’s strip has me feeling vindicated.
Don Abundio, translated:
[Towel: REDUCING SALON]
[Sign: STEAM ROOM]
“Lose any weight, Don Abundio?”
“No…”
“And stop checking out my ass!”
RETRO TECHNO:
– FBoFW- Ah, remember the terror of the old days before we learned Document Recovery?
– BLONDIE – Ah, remember our innocence in thinking violent gaming had no effect on our behavior? Were politicos even then slipping kids messages… hmmm.
Dustin: In the complicated hierarchy that is the relative loathsomeness of Dustin characters, Dustgrandpa may be one of the few who surpasses Dustdad.
HtH: I’d like to know how the apache dancer costume became the universal visual shorthand for “French.” I would have chosen a bicorne with a tricolor rosette myself.
Dustin: “Have you tried Flomax?
“Yeah, but your mom and I don’t like the retrograde (dry) orgasms. Anyway, sleep tight.”
“It’s okay, Dad. I’m wide awake now.”
@Cleveland Mocks: re MW: I’m just gonna pretend you didn’t say that – and I’m sure not gonna let the Terrific Trio see it! I’ve disconnected their internet for today. Sure, they’re pros and all, but no need to hurt their feelings! When they’ve put their heart and soul into this extended performance, carrying the load for the entire Mary Worth universe!
Well, be careful what you wish for – there’s talk that Estelle, Ed, and their family will be playing a much-reduced role after moving from Charterstone. We’ll just see what happens to this comic if that happens! Of course Willa is a crowd pleaser herself, but even her charisma can’t overcome the annoyance and exasperation of the inevitable Wilbur story…
Hagär the Horrible: How do you keep a comics nerd in wighat suspense? I’ll tell you more, but first show me where the Rue de Tictonne is..
HtH: Honestly, at first glance I thought she was a mime.
Also Hagär the Horrible: “Don’t be a rube! She was talking to me, you can see she has no fishtail!”
@Pozzo: When I was a kid, watching “Married… with Children” Al would sometimes talk about going to a strip club called “The Jiggly Room”
Pure innocent me thought that he was going to hang out in a room literally full of (or even made of) Jello.
@Activist: I’ve been playing videogames all of my life, and I don’t have any violent behavior whatsoever.
Or maybe it’s because I never played those games where you run around blowing everything up with guns with blood and gore everywhere.
(Oh wait, I actually have played a few of those)
Regardless, that’s just a myth as there are many many wholesome, peaceful videogames out there. Many that promote pacifism so I don’t know what people are talking about.
Pluggers: Please! It’s okay if he goes to mailbox several times a day! It’s the only exercise he gets.
HtH: Well, this is an odd one. The waxing crescent Moon rises in the morning, *after* the Sun. But here it is, dark as night. What a puzzle!
@The Rambling Otter: I’ve heard that the stereotype of the French wearing striped shirts and berets comes from entrepreneurial types who would take their bicycles on the ferry from Calais or thereabouts and spread out across southeastern England selling fresh dairy products. (Hence, Marcel Marceau’s mime character is supposed to be just an ordinary working Joe.) This lady could be a cheesemonger, is what I’m saying, and wouldn’t that improve the joke?
MW: Sid Agent to the Animal Stars never agreed to that porn rider, right? Right?
C’shaft: “God dammit, Lillian, we’ll never get Dad to ‘accidentally’ break his neck if you keep sabotaging it like that!”
JP: How much holiday prep does Abbey need to do? She doesn’t entertain anyone beyond her daughters and her daughters’ current drama, and there’s no decorating beyond the tree. Hell, she probably hires a service to take care of the tree.
MW: Mary’s only okay with this because she doesn’t know about Ed and Stell’s multi-species polycule.
RMMD: Rex knows that whoever deals with the kids will have to pretend to be sympathetic when the little ankle-biters start wailing over needle sticks. With Mr. Lewton he can just zone out until the old man is done describing whatever symptoms he’s having and then say “Take some ibuprofen and lose fifteen pounds, pay your bill at the front desk.”
Dustin: Ha, ha, it’s funny because you think it’s about getting up to pee, but Dustin’s grandpa is actually checking on his investments in the Nikkei, Bursa Malaysia and Karachi Stock Exchange! He’s got millions in futures! (Neither Dustin or his father will see a penny in inheritance.)
MW: Awww… this is just like in “The Room” where while Johnny and Lisa are having sex and the cat comes into the bedroom and attempts to jump on the bed.
Oh no wait… replace “Cat” with teenage male of no relation that just randomly goes to and from their house…
Hagar The Horrible: In a funnier strip unbound by newspaper censorship standards, this would lead to a coitus scene where the mime-themed prostitute silently mimics sex acts with Hagar and Eddie.
Dustin: Nice to see Dustin’s Dad’s shitty personality is, in fact, passed down from his father. The Dustin’s Family family is a long, proud line of assholes passing their dickhead teachings from prick to prick along the generations.
DtM – It appears that Mr. Wilson is a forgetful Plugger. He has suspected for a long time that his young neighbor has communist ties and meant the title to be “Dennis the Red Menace.”
Mary Worth – Wow. I thought it was creepy when the Van Hoesen twins watched their parents boink. This is both creepy and stupid.
Meow! Barf!
Rex Morgan – A medical issue! It’s hard to believe, I know. However, keep in mind that all through the appointment Rex will actually be thinking about the free meal he’ll get at the Truck-Wanda wedding reception.
Frazz – The more arm flailing, the more inane the topic of conversation. Don’t forget that these people think they’re superior to everyone.
Pluggers – He checks the mailbox twice even on Sunday.
See Mother Goose & Grimm for synchronicity.
Lockhorns – Hoest and Reiner get to write off a trip to Italy as “research.”
Curtis: If I had to guess which long running family themed newspaper comic would be the first to show one of its characters having an orgasm I probably wouldn’t have ever guessed Curtis. He did it though so congrats on breaking that glass ceiling?
Hi and Lois: I think that preparing a home for an open house is actually one of the responsibilities that real estate agencies perform and that is one reason why people hire them to help them get a house sold. That’s why people are willing to pay such a high cost for that kind of service, so they don’t need to do it themselves.
Beetle Bailey: I am 100% certain the artwork showing explicitly Zero’s bare ass in the final panel has been used before. It’s not something you see and easily forget.
Slylock Fox: There’s a lot happening today from the mouse who’s horny for a human Barbie Doll who may also be sentient and Casandra Cat who really only commits crimes to flirt with Slylock. Finding out though that Count Weirdly feeds his minions something called creature chow out of a can might be the most interesting revelation. I’m assuming it’s a Soylent Green kind of situation where some of these creatures are occasionally butchered and turned into food to feed the rest.
Baby Blues: Silly and funny. I laughed.
PV: Excellent art (as always) and Val finishes his story.
Phantom: Excellent art (as always). 18th century Stripey Pants finishes another chapter in his forthcoming book “Stupid Campaign Tactics By Primitive Militaries”. Next week! More Bloodshed!
Slylock Fox: Some kid drew “Catnap” from “Poppy’s Playtime 3” even though it’s nowhere near as horrifying as the original design it still haunts my soul.
Also, looking up Catnap on the Poppy’s Playtime Wiki, there is a cartoony in-universe drawing that looks nearly identical, the same smile, same pose…
Way to be original kid.
Dustbin – With one more panel, they could have completed the joke:
Dustdad: No problem for me. Every morning at 1:30 I pee like a racehorse and at 3:30 I shit like a goose.
Dustgrandpa: So what’s the problem?
Dustdad: I don’t get out of bed until 5:30.
@Little Blue Bicycle: re MW: No, no… the scene is disgusting, barf-inducing maybe… but it’s not porn, or even workin’ blue! The two-leggers are fully clothed and are having congress of some sort within the legal bounds of matrimony.
The fact that our clients are able to maintain their composure, performing the scene as it was scripted, is a testimony to their professionalism as well as their good business sense. As I mentioned before, their scenes may be cut significantly in the future, so they wanna rake in the moolah while they can…
@The Rambling Otter:
#59. BLONDIE: You’re exactly right, seems like no study accounts for 100% of subjects (eg, nicotine and cancer). But my reading is that violent games make most aggressive keep da more aggressive and timid kids more timid. But it’s been a while so I should check later research. Glad you’re still gentle!
@UncleJeff:
That’s not very curmudgeonly but a welcomed change of pace
DtM- turns out his book is mostly Alice Mitchell fan fic
Dustin: Did you know that some doctors recommend treating an enlarged prostate with the ED drug Cialis? Gramps should be out there on the apps taking advantage of his medicated state, or trolling retirement homes for hot grannies, instead of sitting around with his boring middle-aged son at night talking about pee problems.
Dennis the Menace: My theory is that the Wilsons actually have a normal-size suburban yard — not as enormous as, say, Hi and Lois, but big enough that kids could potentially play in it. But George decided to put in a fence just a few feet from the house on every side, so it looks uninviting to any energetic, rambunctious neighborhood children who might happen to consider coming by. What he didn’t count on was Dennis, who would be drawn into the house itself by Mrs. Wilson’s grandma energy and constant supply of fresh-baked cookies, or Mr. Wilson’s own slow-burning exasperation, which provides a special kind of entertainment. So now he’s writing an instructional manual for other retirees hoping to keep a child-free home into their twilight years. Dennis the Menace: What I Did Wrong and How to Avoid It isn’t a very catchy title — but then again, Mr. Wilson doesn’t realize that no one over 12 reads books now, anyway.
@Activist: With the big shopping season approaching, I have been having flashbacks to the days when I worked 2 holiday seasons at Toys R Us when they were at their peak.
Video games were just getting mass popularity and, IMHO, that’s where TRU sowed the seeds of its own decline.
TRU wanted to continue to be a “family-friendly” store, and we wound up having screaming fights between moms wanting to buy “Donkey Kong” and the kids who angrily wanted “Mortal Combat”.
I’ve been wondering how many of those kids voted last week.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
#73. DUSTIN:. At first glance thought it was a prostate joke. But I have same schedule as Gramps, and as a woman my prostate is as absent as ever.
HtH: At least they didn’t show us her unshaven armpits.
Lockhorns: They’re vacationing in Italy! And their Sunday strips always have a couple of bangers.
@Oscar Goldman: Thank you.
Always give credit where credit is due.
Back to the snark: Trudeau isn’t ready to deal with the election results.
SF: Sally’s sister can’t handle a customer surge which would be the MERRY CHRISTMAS! Dream of every small town merchant I know.
A&J: I was raking leaves yesterday. I can relate.
@Activist: :3 I’m glad I am too
I mean, in the videogame Undertale. Whenever you encounter an enemy, you can either kill them or befriend them.
If you kill them, the game outright guilt-trips the player by telling your character what an horrible person they are and you can encounter grieving friends and families, and eventually they break the fourth wall and tell the very players themselves that they’re a murdering b******
Also killing too many characters “permanently” locks you out of the golden ending, even if you start a new save.
Befriending them (which is harder than it sounds) rewards your kindness and you can get the golden ending this way.
Lots of games do this, and then there are farming games that are just well… farming. Like Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley. Completely innocent. Not even getting into the pure wholesomeness that is Animal Crossing :3
I’m rambling, my apologies ^^;
We know that Mr. Wilson has been trapped in an unchanging hell for almost 75 years now where he is damned to be tormented by a young boy who inexplicably likes him until the end of time (or until the IP is no longer profitable for the syndicate). Canonically though, Dennis is a 5-year-old child. Unless Henry and Alice are monstrously neglectful parents, it’s safe to assume that Dennis has been allowed to roam about outside unsupervised for less than a year (and that they live in a world where it’s safe to let 5-year-old roam about outside unsupervised). This means a grown man is sitting down to write a book complaining about a kid he’s probably only known for a few months.
***
Huh. Dustin’s dad grew up with an asshole father and instead of trying to end the cycle decided that he had to miserable, Dustin should be too.
***
Maybe I’m too innocent, but I didn’t pick up on the woman being a prostitute. At least Hagar saved us from an increasingly horrified Lucky Eddie realizing that someone with a gross human bottom half. Lay some roe that he can inseminate then maybe you can make a few Euros, lady.
FC: I’m kind of distracted from the cute “Sam thinks he’s all different kinds of dogs” bit by the fact Jeffy’s managed to lose PJ in the woods. I’m not surprised, but I”m distracted.
JP: “Did we even have an October this year? Who can keep track? If another storyline starts soon, then before you know it, it will retroactively have been late December the whole time!”
Pluggers: I like the look of confusion on the Plugger’s face, like it couldn’t possibly be that he just didn’t get any mail today. He signed up for every free newsletter he could find, so he can believe that someone cares he exists!
PV: So … does this make Val rightwise king of all Hibernia, somehow?
RMMD: Two medical stories in as many months? And this one will actually involve Rex? What’s next, Judge Parker featuring Randy Parker in a courtroom?
SFx: Sly ushers the suspects outside before Max shows them his dongle.
Macanudo: Enjoy it while it lasts and no.
Mutts: I was wondering where there are still restaurants with formally dressed waiters, booths, and actual service. Then I realized the cat i’ the adage had stormed all the way across town, gotten in, and demanded food from his elderly owners. After that I realized I may need to get out more.
Hagar the Horrible – While most people’s interest in Parisian dark history begins and ends at the catacombs deep underground and gargoyles of Notre Dame high in the air, true fans of the city delight in an old story of a French prostitute that was drowned in the Seine, allegedly by a jealous mermaid.
Dustin – No rest for the wicked.
Dennis the Menace – “The Menacing” that took over the world for a dark decade, finally to be broken by The Resistance, would leave many unanswered questions as to how the world could have fallen into such a terrible state. But thanks to a recently discovered manuscript written in the hand of a childhood neighbor, future historians will have a documented first hand account that at least gives some answers to the origin of the terrible tyrant.
HtH That stripd shirt definitely accentuates les tetons.
LUANN: My thanks to Greg and Karen Evans for providing me somewhere to direct people when they ask me to explain the trope known as the Idiot Plot. It really doesn’t get more blatant than today’s strip.