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Family Circus and Dennis the Menace, 9/3/12

Happy Labor Day, everybody! Let’s all celebrate the prosperity of the American worker, which has allowed the children of the American worker to become whiny, entitled brats who can only say “gimmie gimmie gimmie.” Looks like a century of child labor laws have had negative social consequences after all! Let’s get Dennis and Billy to work in a glove factory stat and shut their greed-holes with good, honest manual labor at 50 cents an hour.

Gasoline Alley, 9/3/12

Gasoline Alley traditionally celebrates Labor Day by eschewing its usual inane plots for elaborate drawings of chain-link fences. Today’s strip contains a shocking innovation, however: acknowledgement that a so-called “Internet” exists, and that Gasoline Alley strips can be found there. Given the no-doubt extensive overlap between people who still pay for print newspaper subscriptions and people who faithfully read Gasoline Alley in the newspaper because they are unaware of other alternatives, this seems like a poor business decision.

Archie, 9/3/12

Today’s Archie may be telling us that in times of idleness we desire business and vice-versa, so that we are never truly at ease; it may be making a larger point that the things we desire will never be as sweet as we imagine; or it may be more specific, showing us that Archie himself cannot stand to spend quiet time with himself without confronting his own essential emptiness. This is pretty heavy stuff, particularly for Reggie, whose own obnoxious egotism has largely shielded him from any kind of depressing introspection.

Marmaduke, 9/3/12

Don’t be alarmed, Dottie! Like you, Marmaduke is “watching his weight.” Specifically, he needs to regulate the amount of human flesh-meat he consumes in order to be as svelte a hell-demon as he can be. So even if that number is a little higher than you’d like, be glad, because your extra pounds are all that stand between you and gory annihilation.

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The Lockhorns, 8/14/12

One of the twisted, dysfunctional “games” played by George and Martha, the main characters in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is talking about their non-existent son. They each tell stories about him, making things up as they go along to create a fuller picture of him; but, as in all improv, the rule is that each has to take the other’s story as canonical. This is a private game, though, and when Martha starts playing it in front of another couple specifically to annoy George, George retaliates by telling her their fake son died in a car crash.

This is a long way to point out that, like George and Martha, Leroy and Loretta don’t have any children either. So I suppose that whatever just happened in that big box store was some variation on George and Martha’s game — a little less creepy, perhaps, but a lot more expensive.

Curtis, 8/14/12

I’m actually really enjoying this “Curtis and Barry are trapped in an apartment with a dead lady and a bunch of cats” storyline, as it’s the strangest and more interesting thing to happen in the strip since Kwanzaa. Still, I question whether old people actually have more lightbulbs on hand than younger folks, and I also would have enjoyed seeing the Wilkins boys come up with an adult diaper-based escape plan.

Archie, 8/14/12

I’m really looking forward to violent class war breaking out in Riverdale! Which of the town’s proletarians will abandon class consciousness and side with their capitalist oppressors? Reggie? It’ll be Reggie, right?

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/28/12

I’m not sure what’s more off-putting: that li’l preverbal Tater is fully aware of and completely committed to his tuber-derived name, or that he’s capable of drawing a startlingly realistic potato in chalk on a moment’s notice. But most disturbing of all is Loweezy’s sinister sidelong grin in the second panel, hinting at the dark purpose behind her son’s strange name. The Potato Revolution is coming, ladies, as soon as the Chosen One is old enough to rule. Be ready for it.

Archie, 7/28/12

So based on the clothing and the in-strip technology and something someone said to me off-hand in an email once, I’ve always assumed that the current batch of Archie newspaper strips are from the mid-90s, an assumption upended by today’s references to online dating and Linux. Yes, Linux dates from 1991 and Match.com launched in 1995, but I refuse to believe that Archie comics would ever be so up on any technological trends (or indeed any trends of any sort) as to namecheck them before they could be sure that most of their audience would get the reference, which means I can’t imagine this strip running before, say, 2002.

On the other hand, the startling words are in italics, and we’ve seen the reruns updated before, so who knows what the original text was. “I spend most of my time working on my book learning.” “You give new meaning to the concept of reading things instead of interacting with girls,” says the guy who responds to all romantic advances from ladies with abject terror.

Apartment 3-G, 7/28/12

Oh, don’t worry, everyone, we’re not just going to skip over Lu Ann’s story without acknowledging it! We’re going to acknowledge that we’re skipping over it, then skip over it. Look at how excited Tommie is! “I’m too scared to go first, but it’s amazing that Margo gave me the option!”

Ziggy, 7/28/12

Ziggy can’t remember what company insures his car, probably because he just suffered a traumatic brain injury.