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Dennis the Menace and Heathcliff, 6/10/13

Since my main beef with Dennis the Menace is that he long ago ceased to be menacing, I feel obliged to acknowledge the flashes of menace we do see. Just trying to return some ice cream that you’ve already gotten your gross spit all over is less “menacing” than “kind of a dick move,” but I choose to believe that Dennis took the ice cream cone from this guy, gave it several long, languorous licks over a period about 45 seconds, all while maintaining unbroken eye contact, then thrust it back at him, saying “I don’t like this, give me money back.”

Heathcliff, meanwhile, is generally well known for a just-don’t-give-a-shit attitude of the sort that Dennis aspires to. However, here we see that he’s willing to kiss a little ass if that’s what it takes to get what he wants, which frankly saddens me.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/10/13

This strip has spent decades making jokes at the expense of rural Americans, but today’s strip, which implies that country folk are interbreeding with evolutionary throwbacks and other nonhuman hominids, goes too far.

Shoe, 6/10/13

This scene of newspapermen (or newspaperman-birds, I guess) blaming each other for the decline of their industry by spinning a nautical metaphor further and further out of usefulness is, I’m pretty sure, a fairly spot-on depiction of the modern media landscape.

Apartment 3-G, 6/10/13

“You’re kidding, right?! I’m not going to let you wear a white dress in front of a photographers. Lu Ann, you spill things a lot.’

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/31/13

Haw haw, that Snuffy sure is a notorious lazybones and/or narcoleptic! And … there was a TV program, or maybe a local news broadcast, that showed Snuffy asleep? Or perhaps he curled up for a nap atop Hootin’ Holler’s only television set? The second panel would’ve been a good opportunity to cut to a depiction of Snuffy that might clarify the sense of the joke, but sure, just show these two guys laffin’ it up, that’ll work too.

Better Half, 5/31/13

Fellas, I don’t pretend to be a “relationship expert,” but I do know one thing: under no circumstances should you imply that your wife’s face is a putrefying flesh-mask of rotting meat

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Herb and Jamaal, 5/21/13

I don’t expect naturalistic dialogue from Herb and Jamaal, but wow guys this is some badly-translated-from-the-Slovak weirdness right here. Herb’s facial expressions as he stares at the money and then ever so slowly pulls out his wallet and slips the cash inside it are also pretty creepy. Especially his heavy-lidded zonked-out look in the final panel. Pretty sure he plans on “blocking out the memories of the experience” with powerful opiates, which are what he needs the money for.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/21/13

Speaking of unnatural dialogue, “Another anniversary, Elviney?” is certainly a weird way to offer congratulations to your best friend and her husband! “Another anniversary, Elviney? I thought you swore you’d be widowed or divorced by now?” “I married Lukey fer life! An’ I assumed that our community’s poor medical care and unusually short life expectancy would either kill off my husband or leave me in the sweet embrace of death long ago!”

Marvin, 5/21/13

Normally when someone brings a baby to a movie theater — which, let me just mention, is one of the worst things you can do as a movie goer, what the hell could you possibly be thinking — you can’t blame the baby. You should blame the parents, for being thoughtless morons. But … look at Marvin’s face. That evil smile. He’s looking forward to disrupting the cinema experience for everyone involved. The question is, will he start off by crying, thus driving everyone around him into a rage right away? Or will his opening move be a massive diaper dump, filling theater patrons with disgust and nausea?