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Family Circus, 5/2/26
A thing about one-panel comic strips is that it can be hard to tell what order things are happening in, and a thing about the Family Circus is that I actually don’t have a strong sense of how Big Daddy Keane feels about basic gender stuff. What I’m saying is that I don’t know if his little smile is a reaction to what Dolly is saying, and he’s thinking “Heh, it’s true, we both love our pretty little baubles, I hadn’t thought of that,” or if it’s a glimpse of the last moment of his good mood right before his daughter’s observation ruins the whole rest of his day.
Dennis the Menace, 5/2/26
Most of the time you can pretend that Dennis the Menace more or less takes place in the 1950s, but I do kind of enjoy the dissonance this causes when they jam some reference to modernity in there. Yes, Henry Mitchell lives in a world where making electronic payments via smartphone apps is an everyday occurrence that a child would be well aware of, and yet he’s still wearing a tuxedo to church.
Herb and Jamaal, 5/2/26
Hey, Jamaal, fun fact: if you’re not going to send it, you don’t even have to be online! You could just purge all your negative energy into a Word doc or something. Just saying it would be an extra layer of security, I know from experience that “send” button can be tempting!
53 replies to “Mostly dads”
FC-“Daddy, tell me again the story about the time you and Mr. Fredo went fishing.”
MW-Once again let’s go over the signs of being scammed that this story brought up.
Luann-Oh yes. Being a graduate of one of Mrs. Foghat’s classes will open all kinds of doors for Luann.
We just don’t want to admit that Jamaal is showing a far healthier attitude to social media than we have.
H&J: (Click!) Makes sense that Jamal’s off-brand laptop uses a toggle switch for a delete key.
DtM:
Wow. Roger C. Carmel and Eva Marie Saint are sitting behind the Mitchells at the service. I didn’t know they were an item.
Family Circus:
“Coming up with a hook to describe your box was a hard thing to tackle, Dad! Now, I’m trying to draw you into this atrocious word play hook, line and sinker, but apparently, you won’t take the bait!”
DtM:
“Do people still dress up for church services, Dad, or are we kind of in a ’50s time machine here?”
Jamaal’s index finger seems to be a foot-and-a-half long in the last panel. He’s popular with the ladies is what I’m trying to say.
DtM: The real question is whether Henry donates in 1950s dollars or today’s money.
Family Circus:
“Dad, I see that you have something in that box that no member of the Mets’ pitching staff has this year: a sinker that actually works!”
Snuffy Smith vs Crankshaft : Today is Free Comic Book Day. Guess which of these strips celebrates it, and which seemingly could not care less and just does a “Look at these idiot bumpkins!” joke.
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Dennis the Menace : Yeah, that LOOKS like a tuxedo, but it’s actually one of those prop outfits they use for graduation photos… or at the funeral home…. or by strippers.
…Hey, are we SURE Hank works a boring, square job at an office, and not somewhere else?…
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Family Circus vs Herb and Jamaal : Big Daddy Keane is actually thinking “and mine is actually a box for that kind of stuff, instead of a recycled box for butter cookies you idiots are always opening and spilling all over.”, but chooses to hit ‘delete’ instead of ‘send’ on that comment, even though it wasn’t that provocative.
…And neither was Jamaal, knowing him. It was probably something like “Your opinion on this event is bad, and your having that opinion makes you a bad person!”, or something even vaguer.
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Hagar the Horrible : Yeah, this is what it looks like when you go through your inheritance from a relative that was a hoarder. I see Hagar is the “WE CAN’T THROW ANY OF *THIS* AWAY, IF MY DAD KEPT THIS IT MUST BE PRECIOUS SOMEHOW” type.
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Luann : …this stupid storyline was all just a set-up to come up with a pretext to reuse last year’s cancelled “Luann goes to camp” storyline? REALLY!?
…the positive, at least we might finally get confirmation that storyline was pulled because it involved Luann’s bunkhouse getting flooded by heavy rain.
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Moose & Molly : Aw, Chester is a grandpa
*now! And the Vlasic Stork is his new son-in-law!*I’m not stopping with the “those ‘moles’ are actually Chester’s mutated children” jokes.“Language that I would not say in public” holy crap, Jamaal’s going to type out the name of a specific brand or event.
DtM:
What is the lady over Henry’s left shoulder laughing about, anyway? — the cleric’s vivid description of the apocalyptic eschatological end times that await us all?
Wary Morth:
Remove the dialogue, and anyone would think Toby and Mary have shuffled off the mortal coil. If only!
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Extreme Six Figure
Whole Lot
Well-Resourced
Overtakes
Learned –
To know who on earth talks like this
Is something I’ve always yearned.
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You know, for a strip that purports to be against scammers, scammers on this strip don’t seem to ever suffer much or at all as a consequence of their actions. I don’t recall at this distance in time what happened to Entertainer Esme, but as for the rest:
1. Trashlee: no consequences at all, left town.
2. Fabiana: scored a nice diamond ring from Wilbur, apart from who knows what else.
3. Arther Zerro: squeezed as much as he could from what’s her name, suffered nothing at all, not even unmasking as Danny de Vito.
4. Trixie (assuming we aren’t going to see him again): successfully escaped. His captors: are richer by $200000.
In fact scamming seems to be the only crime in Mary Worth that doesn’t get you jailed or suffer in any other way.
Murky Tail:
Sending money to a dogfish is another matter altogether.
Dogs are great!
MW: Good grief, Mary has killed Toby and placed a tape recorder behind her lifeless corpse to play back variations of ‘You’re absolutely right Mary, tell me more, Mary!’ on an endless loop. Seriously, imagine that first panel without the dialogue balloons! Toby’s mouth is hanging open like one of Wilbur’s dead fish!
Phantom: Orders are orders brother, now let’s go check in on that former Senator who was just dumped here by ‘Mr. Freaky’. Our new orders are to ‘THOK!’ him but good!
RMMD: I say again, Lonnie looks remarkably bored for a man who thinks he’s just discovered his own personal goldmine. That mustache and mop of hair must be very heavy.
FC: Jesus, is Big Daddy Kane putting a bobber on a fly rod? I’m guessing he doesn’t fish at all, just collects gear as an excuse to hang out in the garage alone.
H&J: God, I wonder where Jamaal hangs out online? I’m guessing arguing with people on Yelp over poor reviews of his restaurant (“The owner just stared off into the middle distance smiling for like 25 minutes. They never even took my order! 0/5 stars“)
@Anonymous: On ‘Luann’ – and they’re probably going to get pulled again. I saw headlines just yesterday about how a now infamous camp will *NOT* be reopening this summer despite at first planning to do so in response to the discovery of persistent safety lapses and the ongoing lawsuit from grieving parents.
MW: June shuffled into the kitchen and went immediately for a mimosa. Karen looked up from her seat on the sofa, eyeing her partner skeptically. “Don’t you think it’s a little early in the day” Karen inquired. “You still have next week’s panels to draw!”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that!” June replied. “This story is going to be a breeze. As long as Mary and Toby are at the spa, I don’t have to draw eyes! That’s always been the hardest part for me. Well, eyes, and boobs. But now all I have to do is draw circles for cucumber slices! It takes no time at all!”
“Um, you’ve been drawing zucchini, June.”
“Oh. Does it matter?”
“I guess not. Except now, Mary and Toby both look a lot like Little Orphan Annie.” Karen started to giggle. “Should we have them meet a masseur who looks like Daddy Warbucks? Or maybe Punjab?” She walked to the kitchen where June was mixing another mimosa. “It would be kind of fun to have a whimsical story for a change, instead of always being so down-to-earth, rooted in the problems of the real world, dealing with hard facts all the time, and writing interesting and sincere dialogue that reflects the complex emotions of all those characters interacting with each other under trying circumstances. Don’t you agree?”
June handed Karen a mimosa.
“It’s really weird that you’re bringing this up, Karen, because Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars! called just yesterday, wondering if we could use one of his new clients, a scruffy mongrel named Sandy.”
“Arf!”
@Bob Tice: #4: Is Eva Marie one of Mudd’s Women?
@MKay:
Carmel was kind of William Shatner lite — I don’t think he ever had a role that he didn’t over-emote.
H&J: Jamaal gets a wicked thrill from knowing that some richly deserving moron is just one finger slip away from suffering his withering wrath. Saint or sinner? What will it be today?
MW: I love how everyone blithely glosses over the actual crime. Report it to SOMEBODY; the FBI, the bank, Dr Phil, your local library – just REPORT it.
RMMD: Spoken like a man who’s about to mysteriously vanish.
DTM: If you think Henry’s behind the times, just check out the guy behind him. I’m pretty sure that’s a railroad magnate from the 1870s Wild West.
FC: Does Thel’s jewellery really resemble fishing tackle? Does she wear a lot of wire hooks and dead insects? If so, she’s a lot more goth that I gave her credit for. Congrats to Daddy Keane for reeling in a baddie.
Please stop. It’s getting beyond painful You know who you are.
DTM: Fun fact Dennis, you probably can! Many churches have had online offerings since at least the 2020 pandemic!
FC: *gritting teeth* at least it’s not golf.
Like many fathers, Pa Keene hasn’t spent enough time with his daughter and considers his hobbies “male pursuits” so he figured it wasn’t worth talking about fishing with her. This is all on him.
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Don’t churches just set up their parishioners with automated tithe withdrawals now?
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Jamaal has clearly been reading the comments section when The Comics Curmudgeon posts about fucking Herb and Jamaal.
@Schroduck: re: FC – maybe it’s the other way around, and Daddy Keane’s lures are so dominated by flashy mirror bits that he might as well be tying on costume jewelry from the Goodwill random bin?
@Anonymous: re: Luann – yeah, my first reaction was really? all this just for?? you know, she can just reapply – lots of young folks will apply for a summer job, fail, and try for the same one again after another year’s experience, you don’t need some convoluted justification.
@Aaron: Online giving including automatic deductions from bank accounts started *long* before the pandemic. I was interested, though, to see card tap (and maybe it works as phone tap?) points as a little machine in a holder that fits across the collection basket at Notre Dame last year, so they can get on-the-spot donations via cash or credit now.
@MKay: Yeah, I’m thinking we’ll never hear of the crime or John “Trixie” Long again, what with Mary in victory lap mode. Odd that they gave John a name, for literally two panels. Unless…
You don’t suppose there was a mixup in production, and we’re missing about four weeks of the story? It would explain everything: Why we never saw John again, why Harv changed his mind so suddenly, why this arc was so blessedly short compared to the last three. This raises the unsettling possibility that someone has noticed the mistake, and Mary’s recap will go into a flashback so they can run the missing strips.
Dennis – “You’d think you could pay with your phone now instead of this nearly-worthless blue scrip issued by the pro tem government. And what are these coins made of, cardboard? I’ll be happy when we win the glorious war against Eastasia and we can go back to using real money.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don Abundio wants a wallpaper that reflects his personality”
“Somewhere between childish naiveté and creepy serial killer”
“How about this, Don Abundio?”
MW: Mary and Toby relish their shared beatific vision while under the influence of hallucinogenic cucumbers.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying our time together, Mary.” Says Toby “But we don’t say ‘far out’ anymore”
The real menace today is Alice. You can tell from her expression that she’s already thinking three steps into a scam. “He’s right you know. Slap a QR code on the collection plate, inflate the suggested giving options, and will anyone really notice a couple extra pennies added to the processing fee?”
DtM: My husband’s church (Presbyterian) has a QR code on the bulletin for donations.
DtM: the mustachioed man behind Henry leads me to believe this panel was recycled from 1898.
FC: Family jewels, mom’s box, there’s a joke in there somewhere.
This must be a very early drawing. Dolly looks like a real human child.
@Pozzo: That’s supposed to be his hand? I thought the computer started melting.
Mother Goose and Grimm: What does Dayton Ohio have anything to do with WW2? Is he senile because he is so old? Why would an old Italian woman hide a goose in her basement? Does this make any sense?
@Tabby Lavalamp: when The Comics Curmudgeon posts about fucking Herb and Jamaal.
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Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
RMMD; the exposure Mud will get from Lonnie will move him from the niche roots country market to the large regular country market and make him millions.
H&J: “Language I would not
sayUSE in public.” I don’t like giving Greg Evans credit for anything, but he hit the nail on the head about comic strip editors. Speaking of the Evans…Luann: this isn’t how college works, even community college. Also, “camp counselor” isn’t a career. It’s a summer job. For high school students. Also too, panel 2 really shoves Luann’s disability in our face, doesn’t it. Ob-la-di, Ob-La-da…
Mother Goose and Grimm: Apparently people hid vulnerable Jews in countries the Nazi invaded during WW2 but this guy’s uncle was hiding from the military draft in Ohio. Not sure why this is being mentioned in a comic about a talking dog that likes to pee on things.
Dirk Twacy Hollistic Defective: Why is that guy aiming a gun at Uncle Duke? You miss one Doonesbury and you’re totally lost plot wise.
MW: No, Toebee, it’s the dick, not the heart, that overtakes everything.
@Ukranazi Stepan: Esme: “Hey, hey, hey! I resent that! I’m a slut, not a scammer! Get it right, ok, buster!”
@Aaron: Can confirm; my church offering has been on monthly autopay for years. There’s even cards where you can write down your e-donation and put it in the offering plate so it can be properly blessed by the rector. But then, a church where you dress your kids up in little suits even though it’s not Easter or Christmas probably doesn’t even have a website, much less digital payment options.
MW- When they’re done with the cucumber treatment, do Mary and Toby move on to the cheddar muffin enema? Salmon squares over the eyes?
DtM: Pointing out that the relentless march of time means your recycled 1960s art is at odds with your modern punchline? Menace level: subtle, but effective.
FC: Later that day, Dolly would try to pierce her own ears with a dry fly.
@The Quiet Man: Re: MW: No see you’re just confused. I can see how puzzling it can be, with dead-eyed, slack-jawed Toby moaning about how she needs “more brains”, but trust me she’s always like that.
Dagwood Bumstead prefers the drive-through option at Clown Church. “Say — Then Pray”!
Blondie: Pithy observation, Dag. Say, if the banks had a Free One Hundred Dollar Bill Day, it’d really be something, too. Wait, what if the ice cream shops had Free Ice Cream Day?
@brendancalling:
Or slasher victims. So here’s hoping! (Fingers crossed.)
Family Circus: I think Big Daddy Keane’s serene smile is actually just because he’s trained himself to tune out anything and everything his children say so that he doesn’t have to listen to their stupid bullshit anymore.
Dennis The Menace: Proving my point, look at this. Henry could be like Daddy Keane, in a state of blissful calm, but instead he has to hear each and every dumbass comment that comes from his shithead son’s mouth.
Herb And Jamaal: I absolutely refuse to believe that Jamaal is a mature enough person to NOT regularly post his deranged rants and extreme opinions online. Jamaal should be on Facebook, posting shit that toes the line between angry politics and hardcore bigotry until trolls annoy him into accidentally saying something embarrassing and he deletes his account in a tantrum.