Post Content

Blondie and Dennis the Menace, 2/5/15

Characters in long-running comic strips exist in comic-book time, a fact that I’ve had fun with as recently as yesterday, so I certainly can’t fault the actual comics artists for playing around with it. I particularly enjoy the panels here that do purport to show earth-shaking changes — look, Blondie’s employed! Dagwood used to ride the bus, like a poor person! The Facebook logo in the first panel is rendered so lovingly that I suspect this is some of kind of cross-platform promotional deal going on.

At first I assumed that Dennis the Menace was playing the same sort of game here — look, Mr. Wilson is old in that picture, becuase he’s always been old! — but the line about “before you met me” really thew me. Dennis is young, guys. Like, he’s supposed to be seven, maybe eight, tops? Mr. Wilson is an old enough old man that he’d have been an old man seven years ago. Seven years is not very long. Dennis is younger than this blog. I’m old. I’m Mr. Wilson. Oh god, I’m so very, very old

Mark Trail, 2/5/15

Man, look how sad Mitchum and Justin look! They really weren’t prepared for the emotional journey they’re on right now. You know what they say: never go into business with anyone if you’d be real broken up when you eventually have to murder each other.

Post Content

Blondie, 12/14/14

Dagwood and Herb live next door to each other and make up half their carpool, and yet the driver still doesn’t deign to drop them off in front of their own houses. Though perhaps that’s by request: today we see they like to spend time walking down the dark and eerily quiet streets of their suburban subdivision, negotiating the terms of their friendship.

Dennis the Menace, 12/14/14

There are two potential interpretations of this strip: that Dennis fabricated an highlight-filled weekend in anticipation of needing to top his friend, then fessed up to the truth when he found out it was unnecessary, or that he switched his story to something worse than the truth in order to make his friend not feel bad. Since the first one is more menacing, it’s obviously what’s going on here. Double points if it gets back to his dad and makes him feel bad too.

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 12/13/14

One of the Peanuts plots burned most intensely into my memory involves Charlie Brown’s baseball team advancing to the league championship through a series of odd circumstances that cause opposing teams to forfeit. The team wins the championship game outright — except that later they have to forfeit due to a gambling scandal: Linus and Lucy’s little brother Rerun bet Snoopy a nickel that the team would win. Anyway, this is just my way of saying that one of the Mudlark teams has actually won a championship for the first time in the decade I’ve been reading this strip, but panel two might cause everyone’s joy to unravel.

Blondie, 12/13/14

“These movies all depict the warm family togetherness that is the true meaning of Christmas. If anyone wants me, I’ll be sitting here by myself in the living room, staring at the TV and not talking to anybody.”

Funky Winkerbean, 12/13/14

Just in case you had forgotten, Funky Winkerbean has a character with PTSD that it occasionally does Very Serious Stories about!