Quick takes on still more babies and other terrible children
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Marvin, 11/20/24
Good news, everyone! Marvin? The terrible baby? The one who does all the pissing and shitting? Well, he doesn’t know about sex yet. Yet. Fingers crossed he never does.
Beetle Bailey, 11/20/24
Uh, Sarge, pretty sure that jeep belongs to the U.S. Army, and therefore ultimately to the American taxpayer? Which, I guess you’re one of those, but so is Miss Buxley.
Dennis the Menace, 11/20/24
Dennis believes that he and he alone possesses free will and is not bound by unbreakable fate; in his mind, he is the world’s sole protagonist. Folks … not to overstate this, but that’s about as menacing as it gets.
81 replies to “Quick takes on still more babies and other terrible children”
DTM: Henry is trying to get his son started down the dark road of the occult. He is jeopardizing his son’s eternal soul. Now, that is top tier menacing!
Luann: I see Luann has stumbled open the Euthypro dilemma. Perhaps she should major in philosophy.
Dennis’ dad belongs to the Book-With-the-Title-on-the-Back of the Month Club.
GT: Man, that Valley Tech defense must be savage! Just look at all the dents in those Milford helmets!
MW: Hey, everybody, do you know Mary’s hosting Thanksgiving dinner as usual this year?
Mary’s able to get away with the “home cooking” ruse because everyone always assumes the Door Dash car parked outside the building is for Wilbur.
CS: “I don’t get it, Mr. Rawlings. If everyone already knows what everyone else is doing, what is there to get caught at?”
“Ah, er, um, don’t be impertinent, young lady. I’m trying to share my hard-earned wisdom with you.”
“But that doesn’t sound like wisdom, Mr. Rawlings, it sounds like bullshit.”
“Hmm, you catch on quick.”
Marvin So Marvin is young enough to be drawing with crayons and pooping himself, but still gets an allowance? Gotta wonder if Mom and Dad and trying to quietly support his ‘running away from home’ efforts.
BB Jesus, does that even qualify as a punchline? It feels like an off-brand simulation, like mock humor, or joke loaf.
DtM Love the smile that Dennis’ dad is giving. “I dunno, I have a pretty clear vision of what’s going to happen on your eighteenth birthday, bucko…”
Luann: ‘My, but you’re an idiot’ There, fixed it for you.
JP: Yeah, screw my nimrod of a brother and any psychological trauma he might have from experiencing extreme family trauma AND having his friend who happens to be a girl stolen out from under him. I’m getting LAID tonight!
Phantom: [facepalm] Oh good grief…
@Joe Momma: Dennis the Menace is an Omen prequel.
DtM: We’ve all predicted your future, Dennis. Don’t bend over in the shower.
BB: Sarge’s psychosexual development froze in the oral stage. Everything goes into his mouth and girls have cooties.
MW: Considering that all the Thanksgiving strip will be is a single panel shot of a loaded table surrounded by people with no place else to go, and a sappy quote about thankfulness, this is QUITE the build-up.
DtM: Dennis, you only do four things: go to Mr. Wilson’s house to annoy him, whine about your mother’s meals, mildly berate Margaret, and sabotage your parents’ friendships by repeating their nasty gossip. It doesn’t exactly take Nostradamus and a time machine to figure out what you’re going to be doing for the next week.
DT: What kind of truck? Was the truck the target or the means to the target? Which extremist group? Did the attack go through successfully? Has the attack even happened yet? Is Sweden okay? Why is Sprengstoff suspected? How is any of this known or assumed? Why does every single goddamned thing have to be so needlessly and counter-productively vague? Christ, and we’re still waiting to hear the explanation for the fiasco at the Transit Authority, if that’s even coming.
CS: When did this turn into a puff piece interview? Does Batiuk not know what “shadowing” means?
JP: Summer may be over, but Judge Parker characters tell-don’t-showing us about how much Lucas sucks is a four-season activity. At least Glenmom is grieving Harold’s death, because apparently both of their sons are too busy squabbling over Sophie’s fickle affections to care about their father’s murder. Anyway, this has taken a turn from Luann to Mary Worth and I am not into any of it one bit. Bring on the next globetrotting crime boss already.
RMMD: Kill me.
Dennis the Menace: Yessir, Dennis, nothing says “unpredictable” like two-dimensional clipart cut and pasted into another drawing! Might want to check your nose, Son, it looks like the glue is coming up.
DtM: With that slight smile, Henry has introduced Dennis to the realm of unexplained phenomena and the supernatural. Soon, Dennis will be fully versed in the world of the occult. The boy has nothing to lose. As the comic has shown fairly well over the decades, Dennis has no soul. Dennis the Menace, indeed.
I noticed that Marvin is left-handed, so I considered researching previous strips to see if that is canon. Then I had a good laugh and continued reading Josh’s post.
Beetle Bailey: Better questions for Sarge to ask: How will I protect my eyes from the wind and flying particles? Is that even a windshield, or just a metal bar over the hood? Where exactly is the engine in this Jeep? Where are the seatbelts? Am I going to die alone and friendless except for my disturbingly human-like dog on this trip to town? I’m going to die, aren’t I?
BB: Why is Sarge squatting with his knees up to his chest? Is that a back seat or a cargo area?
Nancy: Someone please count her hair spikes to verify.
CS: In reality, small-town newspapers run a lot of stuff like “Sidewalk Repair Underway.”
Sarge, I understand that you’re going to pout about this like a normal human adult who is a Sergeant in the United States Armed Forces, but consider: You could drive. You could tell your subordinate to cram himself into the apparently footwell-less back seat with his knees at the approximate level of his shoulders. It didn’t have to be this way, Sarge. I’m disappointed in you.
MW – Stupid Mary. Thanksgiving is BEFORE Christmas!
Marvin – I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you…with crap….
BB – At Camp Swampy, rank only defines body odor….
DtM – So…the Mitchells are into Thelema and the Order of the Golden Dawn! This strip would have made a lot more sense if they’d have explained this Rosemary’s Baby connection right from the beginning. Yes…he’s got his father’s eyes….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Dennis uses his elementary school understanding of occult to challenge core concepts of free will. While his son’s questioning of Henry’s deeply held Lutheran faith may be menacing to him, it doesn’t seem to be something the neighbors should worry about.
MW: In a good strip, weeks of buildup of the Most Delicious Wonderful Thanksgiving Gathering would have a payoff – one of the regulars brings a guest with either a side dish that upstages Mary or a normal set of taste buds leading to a full-blown Emperor’s New Clothes moment with the feast of glop, or Mary comes down with influenza/ RSV/ covid at the last second and cannot host. But then I remember that this is Mary Worth, after all.
Is Dennis going to argue that even in a materialist and godless world, there is room for free will? Or is Dennis going to reject the false beliefs of his father such as astrology and embrace his mother’s religion? Both atheism and Augustianism are very menacing!
Called it yesterday: we’re really going to get a week and a half of nothing but various people praising Mary Worth’s cooking. Today, it’s Mary’s turn to praise her own cooking. The only excitement left in this turgid tome of tautology is guessing who’s up next to praise Mary’s cooking. I bet it’s Wilbur. Be still, my beating heart. I can hadly contain my excitement.
MW: Just look at Jeff, all adorable there angling for an invite to next Thursday’s glop-fest.
Sarge complains about being denied riding shotgun, probably because he actually saw war and has some experience shooting shotguns at people
Have you ever considered that Sarge really does own the Jeep, which he brought to the organization as a condition of signing up? Camp Swampy is probably home to a private military company that purchases its ordnance on the black market and various Army-Navy surplus stores. It’s been tough to purchase new equipment since Silk Road shut down, though.
I know we stopped making jokes about Sarge’s forbidden love for Beetle, but when he’s stewing about how Beetle has to give public pride of place to the beard Miss Buxley instead of him…
Dennis has to defend the concept of free will. If his future can be predicted, he has no free will and he is just a puppet of an Almighty God — or Almighty Author —, just a cog in a bigger machinery. Only if he has free will, morality can exist and terms like “evil”, “sinful” or “menace” have any weight
Marvin has no idea about sex because his parents have never had sex or even spoken or thought about it since the day he was born. Better not to risk Marvin 2
I’m sorry Dennis, who actually calls you “unpredictable”? Your strip has basically followed such a strict formula for the last seventy years that you would not need a complex LLM to generate new strips, an analog computer would suffice
Marvin – Marvin doesn’t understand where babies come from, but ironically doesn’t know he’s used as an example in sex ed classes to scare at-risk teenagers into not bringing more babies into the world.
Beetle Bailey – Sarge is currently on probation due to a drunk driving incident, hence why Beetle is serving as his chauffeur. While Sarge hasn’t been demoted in rank officially, he is de facto bottom rung in any transportation related situation.
Dennis the Menace – In many Greek tragedies the Gods and Fates come down heavy on protagonists for their hubris. The difference is Dennis has already accounted for this in his plan. The heavenly attempts to humble Dennis will merely give him the chaos in which for him to seize power and rise, and eventually march on Mt. Olympus itself!
BB: A ride to pound town…amirite?
I started typing out my prediction of Dennis’s future but it’s too damn sad. These are actually the best days of your life, kid, live it up!
Beatoff Bailey – Sarge’s smile in the first panel is because he thought Miss Buxley would have to sit on his lap – the male equivalent of Ben Wa balls.
Dennis is correct that no fortune teller could predict his future, but he is lying to himself about the reason why. He came into this world 5-years-old and he has been 5-years-old for decades. He has no future and no past, he just is and always will be. Things may look a little different for some reason, but nothing will truly every change for him or anyone he is trapped with. Are any of them aware of their torment, or do they live in this hell in blissful ignorance?
***
If there’s one thing everyone I know does, it’s give money on a weekly basis to infants. Make that bank, Marvin.
***
“No fortune teller can guess my future…” Look at Dennis the Skeptic here.
@pugfuggly: re Marvin: The fact that Marvin gets an allowance is what stood out to me, too. Is it in cash that he spends at the candy store on his way home from whatever school he goes to unaccompanied? Or is it put on a credit card that he can use online to buy crayons and toys? I hope he’s saving some of it so he can buy a bidet one day.
Marvin: Words I never expected to see in a comic strip, or anywhere else:
“That information is above my allowance pay grade.”
So, Marvin already knows he’ll be stuck as a drone in a dead-end job in a strict hierarchy if he ever grows up.
No wonder he is fixated on remaining a toddler forever, never mastering potty-training in order to avoid kindergarten and its dreaded pathway to elementary school and eventually high school.
RMMD-“Well this dialog for one thing is painful.”
MW-Will all this praising of Mary carry over for another week?
@MKay: It could become a situation wherein Mary drives herself to the hospital!
Crankshaft-“In Centerville we report on each other.”
Dennis The Menace: Imagining a psychic tries to do a reading on Dennis and their head immediately explodes Scanners-style.
MW: I would say that this week of everyone praising Mary’s cooking would be blatant foreshadowing for some upcoming disaster, but given how slowly this strip moves, if they wanted a Thanksgiving disaster plot, they’d have needed to start back in September.
Everyone place your bets where this is headed:
a) Absolutely nowhere, Mary makes Thanksgiving dinner and it’s wonderful as always.
b) Some upstart brings a side or dessert that everyone loves even more than Mary’s cooking, and this sends Mary into a downward spiral, deciding she has to outdo this person at Christmas dinner
c) Some other stupid non-issue, probably involving Wilbur
Luann – So this week is a gender switched version of “Tuesdays with Morrie”?
BB- I’ve been getting 1960s-era Beetle Bailey strips randomly popping up in my FB feed, and it turns out Beetle had a steady girlfriend named Bunny, whose father was forever trying to keep his daughter from dating Beetle. Wonder whatever happened to ol’ Bunny? I’m waiting for the strip where Beetle catches Bunny in bed with Killer and turns to Buxley for solace.
Why is Sarge’s stomach upset that Buxley is riding shotgun?
Crankshaft Mashup: What Skip’s silhouette reminds me of.
You see, if you really are psychic, you don’t need a title on the front of the book, because you already know what’s in it. Having the title on the back just reaffirms your powers.
DtM: Dennis learning how to do cold readings and grift grieving widows out of their life savings: pretty darn menacing.
DtM: So Henry is a student of Higher Magick and the mystic arts. And he’s already created his own Homunculus!
Dustin: I don’t think he’d look so good in the outfit. Fishnets aren’t his style.
MW: Mary’s a good cook? When did that happen?
MW- Mary, Mary, Mary, you take a victory lap AFTER the race not before! She’s been spinning doughnuts all week wearing out her “tires” and her audience.
@43 Lord Flatulence: I don’t understand.
RMMD: Okay, I’m willing to wait and see where this reboot of D.O.A. is going. Although casting Danny DeVito in the old Edmund O’Brien role is a bit of a stretch.
C’shaft: Skip misses the good old days of the HUAC.
GT: I didn’t think it was possible for the sports scenes in Gil Thorp to get even more vague and incomprehensible, yet here we are. At least the last guy drew backgrounds.
JP: Man, when having Sophie in your life is the good thing about it…
Luann: Mrs. Horner is REALLY struggling to find the good in this situation right now.
MW: Of course Mary loves Thanksgiving. The stress of large gatherings, the simmering family resentments, the explosive dinner-table arguments over politics…it’s meddler’s paradise!
Phantom: Speaking of incessant talking, when was the last time President Luaga got a word in edgewise?
P&HU: A mandolin or a marimba? Must be that new Latin-bluegrass fusion band I’ve been hearing about…
RMMD: I think he’s just got a case of living in the 2020’s.
DtM: Henry smiled. Maybe one day his son could overthrow Leto the Tyrant, but at the very least Henry would never need to buy him a No Ship from Ix.
Baldo: Man, those Lucha Libre masks are only one step down from WWI gas masks on the Freak-Me-Out nightmare scale. I think I’ll be skipping this strip for the rest of the week.
“Dennis the Solipsist”: a philosophical tract in single panels
Baby Blues: I’m not sure what the standards of beauty are for a universe where people have disproportionately giant heads but this woman does not appear to be overweight.
Curtis: How much food do you usually prepare for Spring Break? Isn’t that usually when Easter falls? Do you need twice as much food for Thanksgiving than Easter? I have no idea.
Blondie: Dagwood is too obtuse to realize that Elmo is trying to tell him his wife is having an affair.
Family Circus: I do not believe that these children have their own separate bedrooms.
Hi and Lois: She also should be bringing the baby with her because these children are not old enough to be left alone unsupervised. Also I don’t think elementary schools spontaneously keep kids for after school detention if they even have that at all.
@TheDiva: #50MW
Biddies spendin most their lives
Livin in a meddler’s paradise…
Her handjobs are gentler, Sarge.
@Baja Gaijin: It’s the famous silhouette of Nosferatu, the 1922 silent movie vampire.
Bizarro: This comic makes no sense. Peter Parker was only bitten by a radioactive spider by random chance as a high school student. He didn’t have a weird childhood obsession with spiders. Maybe this is just some random kid whose parents named him Peter Parker after the Marvel Comics character and he gets teased so much about it that he thinks he needs to make spiders part of his identity.
@Baja Gaijin: @Lord Flatulence: F.W. Murnau did great things with shadows in that film.
“Where do babies come from, Marvin?”
“Well, let’s say you want to be a cartoonist, but you lack the talent and insight of someone like Charles Schulz, Al Capp, Garry Trudeau, Gary Larson, Bill Watterson or Richard Thompson. You cannot be funny or profound, so you try to be relatable. What’s the lowest common denominator of relatability? Pets and babies. People with pets and babies will read your strip and nod, that’s so like me. So that’s where babies like “Daddy Daze”, Trixie of “Hi & Lois” and, of course, “Marvin”, come from”
@57 Lord Flatulence: Oh. I wasn’t around then.
Dennis’ dad is reading a right-to-left book written in English, which means he is not reading a book about ESP, but a manga about ESP. No shade, it would probably more interesting and useful than pseudo-scientific crap.
MW: I LOVE to see people enjoy my HOME COOKING! It’s so much more edifying than watching the local raccoons wrest it from the garbage can, after my guests have furtively scraped their plates into the kitchen trash!
“Can you give me a ride into town?”
“Hold on. You’re asking me to misuse government equipment and commit an Article 15 offense in front of an incredibly violent Master Sergeant? Is this a set-up?”
Dustin: I posted this on Monday:
“But this is the Dustinverse, so I expect a return to the status quo by next week.”
A whole two days. This strip’s awfulness continues to amaze me.
Marvin is basically the same situation as the 1980’s sitcom “Small Wonder”. He is a robot made to look and act like a human baby but he doesn’t know he’s a robot. This is all part of a covert experiment by the government to study the limits of what people can tolerate before having a psychotic break.
Mary Worth – “I LOVE to see people enjoy my HOME COOKING!” I would expect every other person in the world say something like “I love to cook for other people.”
Mary is already patting herself on the back. Then after Thanksgiving dinner, starting with the person sitting next to Mary, everyone at the table will take turns saying how awesome Mary is, how she is the world’s best cook, how she is the world’s most astute meddler … you get the picture.
Rex Morgan – It sounds like that could be something serious, or at least concerning. In the hands of a competent writer, this could be a compelling story. It’s being presented vaguely by an unpleasant, unappealing character we’ve seen once before, so whatevs.
Frazz – No, your favorite part is being a smug, insufferable know-it-all.
9CL – I’m not sure exactly what Brooke is going for here – I don’t have the interest to think about it more than superficially. Whatever it is, he’s running it into the ground.
@Baja Gaijin: In 1922, I was already getting into the movies at half-price as a senior citizen. That Ben Turpin is the cat’s pyjamas!
@I speak Jive: re: 9CL: If I were marrying a twin, I would certainly expect her sister to prance around in front of me in a skimpy bathing suit. What’s the point of marrying a twin otherwise? “Whoops, fucked the wrong one again!” (It’s okay because sisters are so good-humored about sharing sex partners)
@jroggs: Re Crankshaft – If the question is “Does Batiuk not know what _________ means?”, the answer is always no.
@richardf8: I got that reference!
She can expect a stern lecture from Rex Morgan if she does that.
@Lauralot: I think it will be c).
Marvin: I’m surprised Marvin doesn’t know where babies come from, because he’s very knowledgeable about what comes out of all the other holes.
MW: Everyone is asking Mary if she’s hosting Thanksgiving, but so far she hasn’t actually invited anyone. Next week’s image of Mary sitting alone behind a pile of beige muffins will be bleak.
BB: Miss Buxley gets to sit up front because she’s equipped with air bags. (cue Ed McMahon laughter)
@Ukulele Ike: @Baja Gaijin: I know it’s probably obscene to compare a cinema masterpiece to Crankshaft, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!
LUANN: Mrs Horner: “My, you make life complicated. The trick is to pop opiates like Tic Tacs. And then the world smooths over in a blissful drugged-out haze. Now go away, you’re harassing my buzz!”
LUANN (2): Miss Horner: I’m sorry dearie, that wasn’t very helpful. The actual trick is to be a Manic Pixie Dream Grandma who only exist to give “wise council” to young people (main characters only, please!) and make their naive callow assess feel special, but otherwise have no internal life of their own. More cookies, sweetie?”
Dennis the Menace-Dennis is going to grow up to lead a very boring middle class life.
@Anonymous: A spear version of a “Betsy-wetsy” I imagine….”
@Ukulele Ike: 9cl: I think Alistair’s planning on marrying both of them simultaneously. They must be in Utah.
@Midtown: I’ll bet it goes towards his prune and all-bran budget. He’s got a reputation to maintain after all.
@Lord Flatulence: I appreciated it. Of course Skip Towne has a blob for a nose instead of Count Orlok’s creepy hook, but the hands match!
DtM: When I see “unpredictable”, my mind goes to WWE “enhancement talent” The Unpredictable Johnny Rodz.
When the bell rang, you could easily predict that Johnny was gonna lose.
RMMD: “Well, sir. You’re tired and you ache a lot. My diagnosis is: you are old.”
“Doc. I want a second opinion.”
“OK. You’re also ugly”.
Dennis the Menace: So Henry is training his son in arcane mystical practices, by using a children’s book about unleashing psychic powers featuring illustrations of Curious George? I don’t know what cult they belong to, but I’m pretty sure Dennis will eventually be leading it. (And I guess this finally explains how nerdy Henry and super-hot Alice first got together — she was love-bombing him in order to lure him to the upstate compound.)
@TheDiva: GWIT: The Ghost Who Incessantly Talks.
@TheDiva: Dennis Mitchell will grow up and become Rene Belluso.