Maybe I’m too harsh, she’s browsing r/SoapOperas
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Dennis the Menace, 6/30/26
I’m pretty sure Dennis is the one being menaced here, as he stares dumbly at Mrs. Wilson, who is half-watching what used to be her favorite show while simultaneously scrolling through a Facebook feed on her phone that’s increasingly dominated by bottom-tier brand posts and AI slop. Is it really true that “her stories” have degraded in quality? Or is it just that age, and the transformation of the media landscape, have rendered her less capable of enjoying the genre’s ludicrous twists and emotional highs and lows? Overall a real grim lesson for Dennis to take away from this visit, honestly. Still, I suppose he might be adding this pun to his own arsenal to unleash in a semi-menacing fashion on someone else. And let’s not neglect the fact that he’s drooling on himself. Engendering disgust in other people is a kind of menacing, I guess.
Dick Tracy, 6/30/26
The latest Dick Tracy storyline involves FBI Agent Fritz Ann Dietrich, who I guess I haven’t mentioned before but she’s a very occasional character whose main thing is that she’s always openly hitting on Sam Catchem (DIVERSITY WIN: this sex pest cop is also a lady!). Anyway, you might think that this box of “gaming machines” will be something interesting, but given that this is new-look nostalgia-obsessed Dick Tracy, it’s probably full of mechanical accessories for classic board games or something.
66 replies to “Maybe I’m too harsh, she’s browsing r/SoapOperas”
Mary Worth Mashup: Let’s add a panel for Dawn’s reaction, shall we?
Wrecks Moregone:
“Just like dad does when he pretends to be treating people?”
“That’s different. Your dad has a medical degree. It’s a mail order medical degree from Cambodia, but it’s a degree all the same.”
________________________________
Wary Morth:
Dusk: “Its not as though he’s a crazed murderous psycho. Once a crazed murderous psycho, always a crazed murderous psycho!”
Wilbur: “That reminds me, I invited Belle Batsfrey to come for another visit today.”
@Baja Gaijin: Dusk grew a spine?!????!?
DtM:
“Our readership and I must be slipping into senescence, Dennis — it appears that we can all see your eyebrows even though your hair is covering them!”
Questioned Malcontent:
Good heavens, Zlata has been in her new chassis for just 8 panels and her nose has already doubled in size and her eyes are sliding down her face.
DT:
“I can’t concentrate, Fritz Anne — my face looks particularly like a paralellogram today!”
DtM- I guess they’re just admitting this is the only age group still reading this slop.
DtM:
“My favorite was the military daytime drama about the trials and tribulations of a high-ranking officer — General Hospital!”
Yikes, Comics Kingdom’s vintage Apartment 3-G strip just jumped from Alex Kotzky’s gorgeous 1972 strips to Frank Bolle’s 2011s, and I am not loving it.
MW: Based on human psychology (and tropes!), I’d normally expect Wilbur’s speech to drive Dawn closer to Tommy. But this is Mary Worth so normal human psychology may not apply. Really we can’t even rely on the tropes.
Crankshaft : …Larry Dinkle’s band disappeared without explanation during intermission because they got back early, and thought the hall being empty meant the audience was gone, so they stormed off angrily, even though if they had simply waited for the end of intermission the audience would have come back.
************
Dennis the Menace : I wondered if what was really happening was that Martha Wilson was trying to tell Dennis that all her favorite soap operas got cancelled, but knew that means something different then how she means it (“got forcibly ended due to not being renewed”), so she phrased it weird… but quick Google tells me a surprising quantity of soap operas are still running despite being older than Martha Wilson herself is meant to be?
************
Dick Tracy : No, Josh, those really are X-Boxes (pardon me, “OX-Boxes”). In this storyline, Dick Tracy is fighting hackers who are being celebrated by the gaming community for hacking an unpopular/derided video game company.
Yes, Dick Tracy is REALLY going to fight gaming podcasters/streamers, because he’s still sore he didn’t get to kill everyone involved in that mass drone attack/robbery scheme.
************
Luann : Man, remember how Bets had been made to give up on all her cosplay/social media stuff to exclusively be Gunther’s girlfriend, and Gunther’s girlfriend only?
Yeah, that was a dark turn for the character, I’m glad the strip dropped that angle, and Bets got back to doing the things she clearly very much enjoys doing.
DtM: The Young and the Restless are now The Old and the Sedentary, i. e. Pluggers.
I think that’s a remote that Mrs. Wilson’s holding, as modern as she gets in technology. It does put her one up on her husband, though, who keeps getting up to try and change channels by hand.
DtM — Martha Wilson appears to belong to a cult that demands its acolytes tattoo ovals on their knees and elbows as well as treble clefs on their ankles. Also their children drink milk through a straw from glasses with no lids. Menace level–confusing!
DT: Too late, Fritz Ann. No-one gambles on real gaming machines these days. They’re all addicted to psychologically perfected Skinner-box hyperspeed slot machine apps from online ghost casinos hosted out of Malta and Singapore. What do you think Mrs Wilson is doing with her husband’s social security while she watches her stories?
DtM: Dennis listens to an old woman complain about her shows. Menace level: not even budging the needle.
@Anonymous: On Luann – I’m still thinking these are fancy cell phone filters making it LOOK like Bernice’s “friends” are having the time of their lives while she sits and rots in Luann’s house (shouldn’t she be doing the Kafe Kablooie books to earn her room and board?). The tell? Gunther actually looks halfway *good* in a costume. Any other time he’s joined the cosplay scene, he’s looked ridiculous, if not downright disturbing. I’m guessing he made this post to throw the police off the trail of Bets, which he has chained up in the basement of the garden shack. (Sure, it has a basement, why wouldn’t it?)
MW: I’m getting a bad feeling guys. The Mary-verse’s coddling of Wilbur means he has to be vindicated now in some way. Tommy’s doomed!
JP: Maybe on a subconscious level she knows she ought to be in a jail cell for criminal assault of a suspect in an active police investigation?
S4th: Yup, just as I suspected. Wacky shenanigans separate the parties in the two small vehicles which could easily have been one big vehicle. Lemme guess, the family is going to have a ‘heartwarming’ flashback/forward (AGAIN!!!) and afterward they’re going to go blather about it to Ronan and Mrs. Ted Forth while they are just going to stand there thinking ‘my GOD this was a mistake!”
CS: So was this before or after Dinkle saw Elvis on the TeeVee during that WWII-era dance contest that Eugene took Lillian to before shipping out for the European theater? Had Smellovision replaced it yet?
CS: So, we’re supposed to believe that Daddy Dinkle and the boys were, prior to their break, all set to premiere the new song to an audience of two people, namely Lucy and Eugene? Then, after Larry threw his beloved composition away in a fit of pique, Eugene apparently came back, found it, and kept it for 80-plus years? Sure, that all makes perfect sense (cut to GIF of Rocket Raccoon winking).
DtM: Seeing as there’s only four “daytime dramas” left on the broadcast networks (and one on streaming), that’s hardly surprising, Martha. Meanwhile, Dennis is picturing a fat lady in a horned helmet on stage singing about detergent.
C’shaft: “And all because he hadn’t paid them in two years. Really, some people have no sense of loyalty.”
Dustin: It’s simple, Dustmom. You just have to go back in time, be born a white man, and spend the entirety of your life being told in various implicit and explicit ways that you are the pinnacle of humanity and you deserve nothing other than love and admiration from those around you.
GT: Gil worrying that he won’t always be right and perfect? This must be a dream.
Luann: Everyone around Bernice is living their best live. The sad thing is, so is Bernice.
MW: Wilbur’s not angry, he’s desperate. He needs to believe change and growth are impossible, because otherwise people might expect him to no longer be a pathetic, repulsive lump of a man, and then where will he be?
RMMD: Oh, give it a rest, already! Wasn’t there anyone else at the grocery you can feel superior to for a minute? A person buying soda with food stamps, or maybe a sweet old lady who talked a little too long with the cashier about her grandchildren?
I have to inform you that the joke here is that the soap in soap opera is also the the substance soap going down the drain when you wash something your hand or the dishes. I have also to inform you that you are allowed not to find this funny
DtM: Unless the soaps have REALLY changed, it’s probably not the best idea to expose Dennis to that much iniquity.
MW: Wouldn’t it be delightfully ironic if, after touting The New and Improved Tommy far and wide, Dawn ended up innocently abetting him in a heist?
RMMD: So, will the plot crisis be that when one of the girls needs medical attention, a triggered June is unable to perform?
“We are distributing Nintendo Switch and Steam machines to young people of Neo Chicago. It will make them anti-social and stuck inside, so they are less likely to join gangs and commit crimes”
@Uncle Lumpy: LAMPY’S BACK
Don Abundio, translated:
“The Admiral says he’s stopped wearing underwear”
“But won’t he be awfully embarrassed if his pants fall down?”
[Sign: TATTOOS]
“Now give me polka-dot boxer shorts”
Dick Tracy: “We’ve uncovered a fiendish plot to introduce these ‘gaming machines’ into every bar, diner and fleabag bodega in the city!” “My God, what’s next, online forums where you can bet on everything from presidential elections to wildfire season in California?” [Beat] “Nah, that would be going too far.”
MW “Well, too bad, young lady! With teen hangout malls back in action, we are slipping back to your adolescent years and I’m in charge – now go to your room and update your MySpace if you want to communicate with friends!”
MT Most of the totally I swear they exist despite the internet’s denial – they’re as common as Humane Society branches! – gorilla sanctuaries have good intentions, housing the many, many gorillas taken in from bad situations because loads of people are secretly keeping them as pets. Why, there’s probably a gorilla in your neighbourhood, folks! Have you looked closely at your neighbour mowing the lawn lately?
Dennis the Menace: Slipping from the kitchen table onto the couch with milk and cookies while your increasingly senile host struggles to understand that she can’t change channels with the phone? Highly menacing, especially if he starts going through her purse next.
DT: “What’s a ‘Pop-o-Matic?’”
Phantom: ”Errrr— looks like the Iberian Penisula. Hold on while I re-boot the system.”
JP: ”Oh, Abbey….everyone is annoyed by you.”
FG: Fria ponders further: “Yet, in a just world, Brussels sprouts would taste like a chocolate malted.”
Also: I can’t figure out what she would look like (maybe dollar-sign sunglasses? Workshop this), but the criminal in this plotline should by all rights be named “Betty,” I consider this a major failure on the part of the Dick Tracy creative team.
MW: Of course Wilbur refuses to believe in self-improvement. This is like the time he saw Zak and Iris working out and had to cope by imagining Zak as an evil Grape Ape. People can’t change! If they could, how would he justify his endearing quirks?!
DtM: They’re sitting far too close to that television. Is Mrs. Wilson secretly scheming to ruin Dennis’s eyesight? Menace Level: Did Not Think This Through. If Dennis navigates with a cane, he’ll break all your stuff with it!
@J.J. O’Malley: re: CS – and also that Daddy wrote this all down in a journal that ended up with his stuff despite never returning home (dying??) after that night…
RMMD: On the one hand, this could be a setup, like mentioned before, that the Overlook Twins are playing with background music, or that the music is from a family member who needs the food and medicine. But since June can never be wrong, I’m going to go with Beatty never getting over wasting money on that Milli Vanilli cassette tape.
DT: So we are going to catch a dangerous internationally connected hacker with a set of X-box knock offs? Not a super high gaming PC tricked out with liquid cooling multiple video cards and a huge monitor? Sure … after all some bad actors have been found by total happenstance … meanwhile Soly Tare is still at large, and did Double Up and Beady Eyes also get away?
JP: We’ll have 2-3 months of ruminations about what is family – is it blood, shared experiences, common goals or simply not having anywhere else to go, then the other writer persona takes over and we’ll be back with a slam bam action strip.
MW: While many may find this hypocritical of Wilbur to be so harsh and unforgiving, it actually all fits into his self-centered point of view. His woes and short comings, his damage to relationship and his hurting of other people’s feelings were all accidental due to the vast trauma he was dealing with and should be forgiven. Other people’s shortcomings, failures and transgressions are clearly due to malice and should be vigorously rooted out! This time Moy got it right! This is truly Wilbur.
RMMD: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE follow classic script writing trope: an overreaction of a character is due to some very personal deep prior experience. June when she was young was made to help a parent do some busking and had to fake playing a violin or flute on the street. She always felt it was wrong, dirty, and that shame has never left her. It ruined her appreciation of her instrument and music. Later then the twins ask Sarah “what’s up with mom, she is mad about something” Sarah will reply that she thinks is related to be an honest artist that is true to the vision and calling of art.
Phantom: Nomad is no good at the geoquest game!
6Chx: YOU live in Los Angeles, Mediterranean climate winter through summer, not a lick of humidity in your air. If you want to make cartoons bitching about the weather, move to a city with seasons.
Bitch about smoke inhalation, flooding, earthquakes, and wildfires. That’s allowed.
There’s a 100% probability that the Dick Tracy artist has drawn Fritz Ann naked many times.
Dennis the Menace: Mrs. Wilson’s dress is supposed to be covered in violets, but instead it’s a pattern of purple Xs! One-handed tic-tac-toe, the Devil’s game!
Dick Tracy: Fritz Ann’s idea is so powerful, it turned a wall orange! It may not be life-changing, but it’s provably color-changing!
DtM: Martha angrily points at her checkbook while complaining about their latest self-produced YouTube video.
“Not another dime, George!”
“There’s just not enough sex and violence anymore! I guess HBO has ruined the genre for us all.”
Family Circlejerk – “Daddy’s having a wet dream again!”
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – They made June ugly on the outside with that hideous haircut. Now they are working hard to make her even uglier on the inside.
NO! No, Mrs. Wilson, NO! You are NOT trapped in the Funkyverse! You are in a different hell with an eternal 5-year-old where it’s somehow both the 1950s and the 21st century, but you do not have to let yourself be forced to do bad word play! Fight this incursion! FIGHT IT!
***
Fritz Ann saw the new price for the Steam Deck and understands that it’s going to lead to a lot of crime. Well done, proactive cop.
@MKay: DtM: Unless the soaps have REALLY changed,
I recall visiting my parents around 2005 or so. They still took the newspaper, and every Saturday there was a brief summary of all the soaps. I recall one weekend there were plotlines involving UFOs, zombies, and drug terrorists — not, I think, all on the same soap. I can only imagine they’ve gotten worse since then, having to compete for attention with so much other media.
Dennis the Menace-Martha’s soaps used to have so much more sex.
RMMD-“Let’s turn around and run them down.”
MW-Wilbur has a bit of a point. People with addictions have to struggle with that all their lives.
FC-“Daddy’s passed out drunk again.”
On of the top pitchers ever, Steve Carlton, hung around too long in his declining years, ending it in Minnesota with a bunch of bad outings. A local columnist (one who has since gone into sports talk radio, which tells you all you need to know about him) did one of those pretentious “open letter” columns: “Dear Lefty, you were a great pitcher. Now you are ruining your legacy . . . blah, blah.”
I’m fighting the urge to get that pretentious and write an open letter to Batiuk.
I enjoyed Crankshaft in his early years. And the original version of Funky was good. For some reason the Minneapolis dead tree dropped Funky, and I was unaware of the time jump until I came to this community. The grown-up version of Funky was horrible, but at least we all had one another to snark on it. I guess for that we can thank Batty for giving us Dead Lisa.
Although he ended Funky, sort of, Batty continues on with Crankshaft for whatever reason (Pulitzer? FIFA peace prize?)
So bring on the pretentiousness:
Dear Batty,
You were good once. Now your comic sucks. Give it up.
@Ukranazi Stepan: How are you able to get new QC strips? The site I’ve always gone to isn’t showing anything newer than last week!
@Buck Ripsnort: Nevermind, I just checked and it’s back to normal, or at least functional. That strip could never be classified as “Normal.”
From a plot that was introduced referencing genuine furry comics to what might be a nod to how “skill games” were just recently banned as slot machines in part of the US, this might be the most topical DT has been in decades.
Meanwhile I’m pretty sure from the positioning that the flatscreen’s cabinet and the smartphone in Dennis the Menace were originally a CRT and a remote control, respectively, so take from that what you will.
DT: Given that the current world economic mess plus AI shit demanding all the microchips and rare-earth minerals necessary for high-end electronics like generic “Gaming Machines,” these are most likely used SNES models from the 80’s. Some people would enjoy those even more!
@Buck Ripsnort: Sorry for not turning off BOLD as I intended.
FC: Total betrayal of Dolly’s character. Everyone knows she’d be telling her mom that Daddy’s wearing shoes on the couch.
MW: Dawn knows her dad’s anger is only about six on the Wilbur rage scale. He said ‘Tommy’ and not Thomas. It’s only at about level eight that he starts pushing people off of sidewalks into oncoming traffic.
MW: Wilbur doesn’t care about Dawn, he just doesn’t want to have to interact with Iris at the preliminary hearings.
@Bob Tice: With its sexual fetish story lines, I thought it was Genital Hospital.
MW- Tommy Beedie? Really? Can he get any blow?
Forget being a plugger. Today, I’m Mrs. Wilson. My favorite soap operas—Another World, Guiding Light, and, above all, Santa Barbara—have gone down the drain by bringing canceled years ago. What’s more menacing than the slow demise of an art form. You know, Dennis, like newspaper comics?
DtM: She’s reading Mary Worth on Comics Curmudgeon “The stories used to be so much better and coherent!”
DENNIS THE MENACE: “THIS ISN’T METACOMMENTARY OR ANYTHING!” The strip proclaims, as it whistles inconspicuously and then walks away….
DT: Dick looks pissed.
Is it because he got reamed by Chief Pat Begorrabegorra for the MCU being MIA during the Great Drone Heist?
Or is it because he has to work with ‘a girl’?
@McCapwell: There was a videogame called “Another World” in the U.K. when it came to North America, due to the soap opera, it was forced to be renamed “Out of this World” which I found a much better title.
Then in recent years, after the soap opera ended, the game was renamed “Another World” in North America, which actually kind of ticked me off.
Also the game itself kind of sucked…? One of the worst endings I have ever seen in a videogame in my life.
@McCapwell: For me, it was “Ryan’s Hope” (“Hopeless” as we called it).
It was always on in the break room when the receptionist took her lunch.
It’s the sadness of time passing from the death of network radio to the daily serials to the fading of other staples of my youth.
MW: it seems Wilbur is unaware of the fact he is an unredeemed piece of shit asshole.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I’ve found a few open letters from fans to Tom Batiuk floating around the internet… but nothing in the last 15-20 years. When Batiuk finally killed off Dead Lisa in 2006, and then immediately did a time skip/snap back that made her death irrelevant, comics fans just gave up on the strip. So fans don’t bother trying to improve the Funkyverse, or care how much it sucks anymore. Unlike, say, For Better Or For Worse.
@The Rambling Otter: I remember that game! I rented it from Blockbuster for my Sega Genesis one time. It was this weird, trippy puzzle platformer. It remember that it had a French language option for all the onscreen dialog, which was unusual at the time. I used it because I was studying French, and it was a good way to practice. I never saw how it ended, but from what you’re saying, I wasn’t missing much.
@Ukranazi Stepan: @Buck Ripsnort: One thing Questionable Content has taught me is that a robot with a substandard body aspires to obtain a humanoid female chassis with eye-poppingly large breasts.
They’ve figured out who’s REALLY in control in the meatsack world.
@Banana Jr. 6000: To be fair, the game did have good atmosphere and the platforming puzzles are cool, but really. I won’t spoil but… I really did hate that ending.
Mary Worth – I hate to say it, but once a self centered, repulsive asshole, always a self centered, repulsive asshole.
Rex Morgan – Oh, for fuck’s sake – get a smidgen of humanity, June. The girls are begging for money for food and MEDICAL EXPENSES, which I think should register in a medical professional’s brain. But no, let’s spend at least a week complaining about their lack of real musicianship. To make it worse, she’s drumming it into her daughter’s head. Instead of “Fake music!”, June could point out, ” Those girls need help. How can we help them?” How hard is that?
This story has just begun, and already it’s infuriating.
9CL – Why does Brooke continue to draw his female characters in profile? They are hideously unattractive from that angle. They’re no longer gorilla faced ballerinas; they’re now gorilla faced musicians.
Seeing these two in wedded bliss reminds me – what happened to the other twin’s husband, Guy? They had a boinkfest, and then he disappeared. By the way, he’s French Canadian, and his name is pronounced Gee, with a hard G. Maybe it wasn’t hard enough.
Crankshaft – Maybe they left because someone told them their names weren’t on the program.
How long is this garbage story going to last?
@Baja Gaijin: Mashup – I’m sure that’s what we’re all thinking.
@Ken: You’re right about the tropes, but keep in mind that the platitudes are forever.
@MKay: Re MW – or she innocently became his drug mule.