Hell is for (and created by) children
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Dennis the Menace, 8/29/25
We take the eternal struggle between Dennis and Mr. Wilson so much for granted that it rarely occurs to us to ask what Dennis gets out of their interactions. But clearly he must enjoy it at some level; perhaps he even likes and respects Mr. Wilson, and views his neighbor as a role model. In fact, today’s strip reveals that Dennis gets one of his worst traits, his tendency to shit-talk the cooking skills of the person who does all the cooking for him, from the cantankerous old man. Who’s the real menace here, hmm?
Marvin, 8/29/25
The most obvious and tragic feature of the Miller household is, of course, the complete lack of affection among the family members. That’s why it’s so surprising to discover that Marvin and Jeff have actually been bonding. Jeff is happy about it, but check out Marvin’s face: he doesn’t like his father at all, it’s just a plot to annoy his mother, and he’ll be happy to switch his feigned affection from one parent to the other if it will keep the family misery simmering.
B.C., 8/29/25
Since I’m apparently talking about character names in B.C. this week, I will report for those unaware that the three main male characters in the strip are named “B.C.,” “Peter,” and “Thor,” and they are utterly indistinguishable from one another other than via their hair color (red, blond, and brown, respectively). I can never remember which is which, so I always have to consult the character list in the Wikipedia B.C. article when I need to distinguish among them; said list includes some other information about their personality traits (B.C. is a “naïve slob and eternal patsy,” Peter a “self-styled genius and the world’s first philosophical failure,” etc.) that, if they were ever apparent in the strip, have not been for decades, in my opinion. Anyway, I had to go consult the list again this week in order to bring you the news that Thor died. He fucking died. He fell in a water hazard while playing golf and he drowned, and now he’s dead.
74 replies to “Hell is for (and created by) children”
“And they say nothing fun happens around here! And they are right, because ‘around here’ is the nationally syndicated legacy comic strip ‘B.C.'”
That’s stubble on Marvin’s face, isn’t it? He’s a fully-grown little person who decided to pretend to be a baby so he cold shit himself with impunity, isn’t he? I now see this strip from a whole new perspective, which is frankly horrifying.
MW: Come to my parlor said the spider to the fly.
Marvin: Sure, Dad, go ahead and serve extra-crunchy kettle chips to a toddler who barely has teeth. We all know that a torn-up mouth (and type 2 diabetes) will be the least of his health problems.
MW-“Away from home and away from your parents? Spending time with me among people who know how to keep their mouths shut,” Mary says.
RMMD-“I’m going to bond with my rude half-brother over a heart attack!”
BC-This is why you should always pay your bookie.
@Pozzo: It’s not stubble, though I had the same initial thought; it’s food debris.
DtM I like how Mr Wilson seems to be genuinely reflecting on thst question. “Yeah, fall of 1987 there was a batch that you really overcooked, and let’s not forgot the salt spill incident in ’92. Still this is a top ten hash. Of badness, I mean.”
Marvin Is that supposed to be a finance joke? Maybe this is Jeff’s way of subtly bring up the fact that he lost their savings olin the market…
BC Who is ‘they’ here? We, the readers? Because this is not the strip to dissuade me
Rex Morgan Mashup: I went a different way with added missing panels.
DtM: Unlike Alice, Mrs Wilson is the type to respond with a sharp kick to her shit-talking husband’s shin. Seeing him hopping around in pain has gotta be the reason Dennis forces his way through a plate of Martha’s corned beef hash.
Mr. Wilson’s retort to his wife is a cranky, mean-spirited remark so devoid of any wordplay or even the barest attempt at humor that it actually receives a rare negative score on what comic scientists refer to as the Crankshaft Quotient.
LUANN: Hey, whatever your name is, she’s enjoying it the same way you enjoyed the pedi; in a totally egocentric way.
RMMD: Jonah: Go away and don’t come to my @#!* funeral!”
Cody: “Are. You. An. Organ. Donor?”
MW: First, Olive’s going to go all Final Destination and save them from a plane crash. Once in California, she takes one look at Wilbur’s aura and runs screaming, all the way back to NYC.
DtM: It’s a sure bet that as a lad, Wilson was a menace himself. People conveniently forget that, even when they still have all their marbles.
BC: He’s not dead — he’s just sleeping with the fishes.
Marvin: Indeterminate brown blobs in a bin bag? When Jeff says “junk food”, he means it literally
MW: Enough with the small talk, Mary. What’s up with the Himbo in the bathrobe in the painting you’re walking by?
@Schroduck:
Marvin: Indeterminate brown blobs in a bin bag? When Jeff says “junk food”, he means it literally
Thanks for making my mind go “they are eating Marvin’s turds”, great mental image!
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Crankshaft : you know, it just hit me : maybe this storyline is a reaction to the criticism that Crankshaft is hardly featured in his own strip anymore. Well, now you have a full week of Crankshaft, except you can’t see him because he’s hidden behind furniture the entire time!
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Luann : I bet “SheratonStLouis” or any such variation is NOT taken, she could have used that!
My theory? The Wilsons are merely aged versions of Dennis and Margaret. When the two kids grew up, she agreed to marry him only to launch her decades-long plan of revenge. Reaching their retirement years, she brainwashed him and took him back into time to be tormented by his younger self. How else to explain her unearthly calm in the face of the young Dennis’s menacing and “George’s” grumpiness? Unfortunately, the mind wipe didn’t quite take and Margaret didn’t grasp the paradoxes of time travel. Not only is Dennis the same menace at any age, he’s only that way because of the influence of his older self.
Tired: Marvin is happy because he’s bonding with his father over a shared bowl of junk food.
Wired: Marvin is drunk.
MW: Taking a minor across state lines! Time for the Feds to get involved.
Pardon My Planet, one of my least-favorite comics, appears to show a cop holding a gun on his partner as she frisks a suspect; so, whose underwear is the female cop talking about? And why? What does all this mean, where is life taking me…
@lynn: Ah. Now, looking at it online instead of in postage-stamp size in my local paper, I see she has the cop equivalent of ‘plumber’s crack’ going on.
MW: In what world is it OK for an adult to invite a child to whom they are not related to fly across the country and stay in their condo with them WITHOUT ASKING THE CHILD’S PARENTS?
Of course, in this case, Ed-n-Evy will welcome the chance to have more private sexy time, but still.
Dennis the Menace: Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning? And they are, silently learning, menacingly learning, carefully observing the adult interactions around them and filing them away to keep themselves on top for 74 glorious years and counting…
DtM: Considering that the “corned beef hash” looks more like “railroad track pennies,” George kind of has a point.
As a hash connoisseur, I am offended.
What the fuck is Jeff eating? Are those leaves? It would explain why Marvin and the cushion appear to be covered in flies, but that’s pretty much as expected.
MW: Setting aside the fact that Mary is inviting Olive to fly back to Santa Royale without first asking her parents if it’s okay; and setting aside the fact that Olive goes to school, so a mini-vacation would make her miss a shitload of classes; and setting aside the fact that Charterstone is populated with older, creepy, dysfunctional misfits who wouldn’t know what to do with a 14-year-old girl that wasn’t illegal in every state but Florida: Mary’s plan for Olive sounds AWESOME!
Marvin: Anyone who’s ever been a parent knows exactly what the drill is here: Dad’s giving the little shit treats to keep him happy and quiet while the television is on. Sure, the kid will be sugared to high heaven and possibly have a radioactive diaper a couple of hours from now, but hopefully that will turn out to be Mom’s problem. A+ contempt and disregard, but not peculiar to Marvin’s family!
At least Thor died doing what he loved, golfing. Or what his creator loved. Next time try doing what we love, making a joke?
One could be forgiven for thinking today’s “Dennis the Menace” is a misnomer. There’s seemingly no menace coming from the titular character, no darndest things – heck, he’s dutifully eating his elderly neighbor’s corned beef hash with nary a complaint. (Is his elbow on the table? It’s hard to tell.) But make no mistake, there is menace here. He’s bearing witness to decades of marital strife, and he’s taking notes. Invisible menace may be the most menacing of all.
@Tonio: I love this.
B.C.: This joke is much funnier when you realize it’s actually about the author’s frustration with the back nine at his local country club and/or public course. Which of course doesn’t mean it’s funny, but it’s closer. (It is not closer.)
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Apologies for the oversnark. We were on the same wavelength, it looks like.
MW: Honestly, it’s really my fault for thinking this stupid storyline was wrapping up soon. OF COURSE she’s coming back to Charterstone in the middle of the school year. Why wouldn’t she be???
Maybe she’ll go all Carrie on Wilbur…
@Austria: No worries. You will still be allowed to go insane before you are consumed.
Olive don’t need no stinkin’ school. Olive has her tummy-brain, stuffed with pimentos of perception. Dear Olive is far too gifted and amazing and special for mere mortal’s schools. Just ask her and she’ll tell you. And tell you, and tell you, and…
CS: That face in the last panel says she’s *this* close to pulling a ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?’ finale.
JP: ‘If you’d just shut up for two seconds and stop interrupting me, I could explain.’ ‘But then we couldn’t drag this confrontation out ’til the Sunday spread! WAAAAAHHHHH!!!’
MW: ‘Wait til you meet my friend, the wonderfully wacky Wilbur Weston! He’s so endearingly quirky!’
Dennis the Menace: So, that’s what happened to George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. They even made up a new imaginary boy, to add more bathos to their frustrated anger.
Dennis the Menace – The difference between a menace or a merely bad kid is that a menace reveals something about the menaced. Dennis parrots his parents honest opinions in front of company, and he in turn gives his honest assessments (usually of his parents food). Dennis cuts through facades and niceties, tapping the wells of anxieties and resentments to generate a form of chaos that could be either destructive, or creative.
In a way, this is just a less mature, 1950s Gentile suburban version of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Marvin – In contrast, Marvin is simply a bad kid. He only consumes, demands to be waited on, and refuses any attempt to mature or be considerate of other people. If he somehow manages to bully a nerd with a good business idea, he could become the next Silicon Valley billionaire.
B.C. – Thor may have died young, but he left a beautiful corpse (archaeologically speaking).
MW: So, Mary was video-chatting with a teen girl; flew across the country to see the girl; took the girl out on the town, telling her repeatedly that she’s special, the two of them are kindred spirits, but other people don’t understand her; and now she’s inviting the girl back to her home, thousands of miles away.
Can we bring this strip back to a more wholesome plotline, like Belle Batsfrey bonking her surrogate brother?
I just need someone to confirm that in Gil Thorp, is Marty interviewing Mickey Rourke or Mickey Rourke’s character from The Wrestler?
Mary Worth: Ruffled Shirt Giant: “Can I come too?”
Mary Worth II: I can’t decide who’s more likely to make some suggestive comment about seeing Olive’s tan lines or rubbing lotion on her or whether she’s ever seen a man’s penis: Wilbur is usually drunk and he’s mostly the star of the show, but that’s why my money’s on Ian Cameron: give him his moment, lock him in prison, and Mary can console Ian’s wife Toby forever.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: The other day, I was thinking, I wonder what Cthulhu tastes like.
Probably very chewy because squid.
Never ask “How’s my corned beef hash?” Corned beef hash isn’t something you serve to people because you want them to have a wonderful dining experience. It’s something you make because you forgot to get groceries and it’s either this or it’s a bowl of that cereal you thought you’d give a try but didn’t care for.
***
Golf is awash with Thor losers.
MW: I read this strip to see how much of a train wreck it can become, so this is a promising development. Please bring underage Olive to Charterstone where she can be friend-stalked by Dawn, predated by Wilbur, and murdered by Belle Batsfrey. In that order.
@Epistemology Unbound: Mary is grooming her, but not in the sexual assault sense. She recognizes in Olive the soul of a true Charterstone tyrant. Long after Mary and the other characters we know have dissipated into scattered bits of newspaper ink, a middle-aged Olive will rule the condo complex, outdoing her mentor in playing sadistic manipulative games with her advice.
FC: The “fog” is hiding Daddy and “Uncle Roy” while they’re making love in the Castro district. By the way, why is Mommy holding a newspaper? Didn’t she bring along a tablet for her news?
DtM: Dennis and Mrs Wilson are of the same mind as they simultaneously say “Fuck you, George!”
Menace factor: To be determined.
@Baja Gaijin: Much more realistic.
DtM:
“Your telangiectasis is especially prominent today, Mr. Wilson! — you must’ve been hittin’ the sauce particularly hard last night!”
DtM: I am fairly certain this is a re-run of a very recent panel. In fact, as an aficonado of corned beef hash myself (the old school salty kind, not the hipster “artisanal” kind), I saved a very special quote from the comments under that panel:
—
Look, I love corned beef hash. Love. But the spectrum between the best corned beef hash and the worst corned beef hash is tiny. It all has that Alpo-esque quality to it that makes you question your sanity.
— Old School Allie Cat on “Comics Curmudgeon” blog
—
I find Old School’s observation to ring true, personally.
I just went back over a year of DtM archives on this blog and I cannot find that previous appearance. Am I the Plugger here?
RMMD:
Broke sappy ending: Cody saves Jonah’s life and they become fast friends. Fast-forward to them taking a family vacation together along with the half-sister’s crew.
Woke sappy ending: After receiving mouth-to-mouth from Cody, Jonah is finally able to express his latent homosexuality and release his anger. Fast-forward to Cody serving as the best man at Jonah’s gay wedding.
Marvin: “By the way, Marvin’s diaper needs changing.”
DtM: Dennis adds this bon mot to “the list.”
BC: It’s weird to look at a legacy comic strip and realize the creators have no idea how golf works.
Arlo & Janis: Hey, there’s no need to treat Mary Lou like a satin pillow princess!
Lockhorns: This gag doesn’t go with a two-person household which owns two fishing poles. It should have been sold to Hi & Lois or such.
Gasoline Alley: Actor Lenny Henry worked at a restaurant for half a year to background his comedy “Chef!”. Tailsteak’s “Leftover Soup” smacks of someone who knows about food service and pro cooking. Does anyone here in the biz get the same vibe from Gasoline Alley?
Pluggers most enjoy reading the 48-point praise from other famous people on the cover of novels. After that, it’s all downhill.
Blondie and Zits: Does anyone else have a strata of comics teenage garage bands? Mine goes 1) Jeremy, 2) Alexander, 3) (unknown teen), 4) Chip.
Beetle Bailey: I don’t get this gag, simply because General Halftrack wears clothing barely less retina-searing for golfing all the time.
B.C. I think that’s B.C. drowning there, based on his head shape and hair. Thor has longer, straighter hair and his head is taller (he’s also noticeably taller than B.C. and Peter). Peter has a forelock that sticks up. All of this comes from my having read a lot of the strip in the mass-market paperbacks that were out in the ’70s. Thor’s shtick used to be that he invented things (like the wheel and the telephone), but I don’t think he does that anymore.
Alley Oop: Millennia later, archaeologists would be baffled by their discovery of what appeared to be a fossilized slanket.
FC: Thel, girl! You need to e-nun-ci-ate. Jeffy still has a death grip on that pennant, I see.
MW: “Oh, boy! I wanted to see the world, and I have the opportunity to visit Santa Royale?!? Those loser bullies will be soooo jealous of me!”
Dustin: “I’m right here! Can’t you wait until I’ve gone across the room before trash-talking me?”
MW: So Mary wants to take her “kindred spirit” to the mental asylum she refers to as Charterstone. Oh, goody. The closest Olive can have to a peer is a perpetual college student with daddy issues who has a body count that’s looking like a war memorial. Or maybe she can play with Toby’s horsies while Toby gives her the Helen Sharp treatment while sipping wine and popping pills angrily. Not like her parents are going to care if Ian and Wilbur are creepily leering at her because they’ll be reassured that a former cop will be there…ignoring that he’s incredibly crooked and will probably test Olive’s DNA without her consent.
Maybe she can pretend she’s in a fairy tale with Saul the Dog Obsessed Gnome.
DtM: Apparently years of The Lockhorns have spoiled me, because this is the shittiest “marital bickering” non-punchline I’ve ever seen. And honestly, for breakfast I LIKE corned beef hash, with eggs and maybe a shot of Sriracha sauce. By itself, for dinner? Meh.
Luann: I bet Tiffart hasn’t been taken.
CS: I’m waiting for the thrilling sequel to this story where Jeff and Pam wonder how they got the bedbug infestation.
Back when Johnny Hart was writing this strip, the male characters all had actual characterization — Curls (the guy with extremely short hair and a huge jawline, was the “master of sarcastic wit”, Thor was the inventor. particularly of the wheel, Clumsy Carp wore glasses and was a guy who stuck in head underwater to study fish and also, well, clumsy. Peter was the conniving jerk overimpressed with his own “intellect”, and BC was the dummy. Now all their personalities have been dumped in a small bag and shaken vigorously, and they just play out whatever role the daily gag calls for.
BC: Just remember that BC is a schlemiel, Peter is a putz and Thor is a schlimazel. Easy as!
@Deacon Blues:
But which character is a Hasenpfeffer Incorporated?
Give us any chance we’ll take it…9CL: I did not go to Catholic school but I am pretty sure a boy would not go to a nun for the solution to his horniness. He might imagine a scenario with a nun or two, but not actually talk with one…
HotC – It’s pretty clear that Steenz sat down with some stills from the Zeffirelli film, because Heart is in the costume that Olivia Hussey wore there. Best be careful, Steenz! That film ended up having some bad outcomes for its director.
@Philip: #36
“B.C. – Thor may have died young, but he left a beautiful corpse (archaeologically speaking).”
Archeologically speaking, finding the remains of a prehistoric hominin clutching a modern-day titanium golf club would be startling, and only explainable by invoking the “ancient aliens” hypothesis.
BC: I seem to recall there was a theory that B.C. took place not in prehistory, but in some post-apocalyptic vestige of modern civilization. This would, among other things, explain the character’s names, which seem to be drawn from whatever fragments of the old world that could be scrounged up: Peter discovered an old Bible and took both the name and manner of its most prominent evangelist, Thor found inspiration in the remnants of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and B.C. named himself after a comic strip that, cockroach-like, had continued to persist long after the society that spawned it.
@astroboy: 33- They’ll be out there a havin’ fun in the hot California sun.
B.C.: This feels like its supposed to be a sequel to the Wednesday comic Josh linked to, but was censored into a separate one to avoid sending the implication that Thor here was shoved into the water to drown and die by his own girlfriend.
MW: Proof that Karen Moy does follow this site. For weeks Mudges have been saying in jest that Mary was going to whisk Olive back to Santa Royale with her because the idea would be laughably preposterous. But here we are, feeding Karen Moy the clickbait that she thrives, and probably keeps her strip from cancellation.
@Midtown: #18: Is the Mann Act still in force to involve the Feds?
BCN: That’s either one shoddy floor or one industrial strength wet food can.
C’shaft: Man, how bad have things gotten if Crankshaft is hiding in despair?
DT: So, wait. You’re looking for someone attacking people with some kind of unknown electric shock gun, right? You have a list of people and organizations indebted to the victim and therefore have motive. Instead of going down the list one by one wouldn’t you, say, eliminate the restaurants and chronic gamblers and focus on the people who might have access to the peculiar weapon, particularly science labs that are unusually closed-mouthed on the science they’re doing? I mean, I’m not telling you how to do your job, Dick, but if you spend a little time on the boring detective stuf you’d get to the shooty-shooty part that you like so much.
Dustin: “Club Always” sounds like it would be the name of some James Dobson-inspired space for twentysomethings focusing on “traditional courtship.”
GT: “So, um, I guess we should skip these questions on your pre-game beauty routine, then?”
JP: Gee, if only you had an agent literally down the block who was supposed to be keeping tabs not only on April but the people she was meeting with, and might have an idea of their movements. Jesus Christ, do you need one of the characters to get out and push so you can finally get this plot going?
MW: Creepiness aside, I can confirm from experience it Does Not Work This Way. Thanks to concerns about child trafficking and custody battle-fueled abductions, any minor traveling without one or more of their legal guardians needs a signed and notarized form indicating that everyone involved is aware of and consents to the trip. I mean, I have no doubt Ed and Evie would leap at the chance to get Olive out of their hair for a while (because really, who wouldn’t?) but can we at least pretend that they have a say in this?
RMMD: So, um, where is Jonah’s house? Was he just out there running his leaf blower in the green belt for shiggles?
@ValdVin:
Re: Comic Teen Bands
I honestly didn’t know Alex was in a band, and the cartoonist can’t even be bothered to show it. This is an example of “tell, don’t show” laziness.
Meanwhile, Zits actually shows Jeremy’s band all the time, and delivers the jokes without overexplaining it. Pierce’s Cheshire grin and wielding baseball bats at the drum kit are a sign the creative team understands they are a visual medium.
@TheDiva: Legalities are a mere handwave when your priorities are about trying to break records for how many times you can boink before you get evicted from the apartment you can’t afford.
@Philip: If Batiuk wrote Zits, Sara would have asked, “Why does your friend, Pierce, have baseball bats instead of drumsticks?”
Meta-topic: Which comic most often gets mocked in the comments, despite not having been selected by Josh for the post? Mary Worth, Rex Morgan MD, Mark Trail, Crankshaft, Dick Tracy, and 9 Chickweed Lane all seem strong candidates.
B.C. – Thor may have died but that doesn’t mean he’s being written out of the strip. After half a century of Johnny Hart’s evangelical fundamentalism, the strip has gone full-blown Jack Chick and we can look forward to the adventures of Thor in Hell, unbaptized pre-Christian heretic that he is.
BC: Didn’t I tell ya? Bill, our breakout Star from Wednesday, got a call back! Yes, that’s him – they’re tryin’ a slightly different makeup look. He’s doin’ a solo this time – his former co-star Phill was… unavailable. And what a delivery of the punchline! Yeah, I know it’s a weak punchline, but he’s doin’ what he can with the material!
And he’s lucky to even get a gig in this economy. Nobody wants to pay the Big Name Piscean talent any more. Stellan hasn’t had work in months. Of course the fact that he’s been in a mental decline and depression from his breakup with Willa may have been a factor. And Willa -. she’s now a BikBok influencer, doin’ re-enactments of her moment of peril with Belle, this time with other D-list celebs. I don’t know how long she can bring in the dough unless she amps up the “peril” … Folks, this is the bad side of Show Biz… some Stars just can’t handle the fame and fortune. I only hope those two crazy kids will get help and get back together.
DT: why didn’t the major crime unit hit the labs first since there is truly a mad scientist weapon involved.
JP: keep interrupting and start screaming again Randy. That always helps!
MW: Now it is clearer. MW is seeking a new host body. After Olive goes back to NYC, “Mary” will have a break down claiming to be a little gi and is committed to an asylum. “Olive” goes on to terrorize the bully girlsanpd report them to school management.
GT: these are conscious artistic choices. Readers need to remember this at all times.
Phantom: This strip continues to show how powerful good art can be. It makes one forget that the hero is a weirdo dressed in sweaty purple with glow in the dark striped shorts.