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Archive: Dennis the Menace

135

Speaking affectionately ill of the dead

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Dick Tracy, 5/16/25

The current Dick Tracy story wrapped up with our criminals fleeing from the cops and in the process conveniently getting into a terrible car accident that killed our beloved dipshit nephews and their comically cursing aunt. I guess all’s well that ends well, and by “ends well” we mean “ends with three corpses in the very morgue where, for reasons that have still not been adequately explained, this caper began.” By the way, do the dimensions on those corpses seem off to you? Like they’re unusually tall, right? Not sure I want to know what exactly happened in that car accident.

Dennis the Menace, 5/16/25

Wow, look at how angrily Mr. Wilson is sucking on that spoon in the background there, trying to get every particle and calorie that’s been permitted to him. He’s very hungry! He’s an old man, please just let him eat what he wants!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/16/25

Oh, so you think Rex Morgan, M.D., storylines are “boring” and “pointless” and “nothing ever exciting happens in them, why is this even in the newspaper?” Well, have you considered that if they were exciting, it would be very scary for the characters? Would you want to live in an exciting storyline? I didn’t think so!

125

I guess that’s why they call them the funnies

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Dennis the Menace, 5/4/25

OK, obviously I was going to object that “Sunday school was awesome today!” is possibly the least menacing thing Dennis has ever said, but then I got to the big reveal of what he learned about: the pre-existence of souls, which was very explicitly anathematized by the Second Council of Constantinople in AD 553. Last I dwelled on the question, I had decided that the Mitchells were high church Episcopalians, but apparently they’ve since fallen in with some kind of Origenist cult.

Hi and Lois, 5/4/25

Not sure if some diktat has gone out to the comics to do jokes about how fun it is to read the comics in the newspaper, as God intended, but I feel like today’s entry has been undermined by Chip’s legitimately exasperated attitude. You’re making a disaster of the fridge, Hi! It’s embarrassing when he brings girls over! Why not just add your favorites to your bookmarks on Comics Kingdom dot com, like a reasonable person?

Crankshaft, 5/4/25

Ha ha! Get it? April showers … bring May flowers? Get it???? Anyway, I hope these guys recognize Crankshaft’s many sins and choose to punish him with exile from the colony, or perhaps even hanging.

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How sharper than a serpent’s tooth

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Dennis the Menace, 4/26/25

Obviously my “is this menacing or not” bit is done mostly in jest, but I genuinely think this is menacing behavior. Making unbroken, angry eye contact with his mother as he lets milk overflow the glass all over the table, while nonsensically blaming her and her glass-acquisition choices for the whole situation? Really unsettling stuff, I would be quietly calling a child psychologist in this scenario.

Shoe, 4/26/25

Normally I don’t have a lot of patience for “kids and their damn phones” jokes like these, especially given that the behavior in question is so omnipresent among people of all ages that there’s an industry term for it. But I do have to say that if Skyler isn’t going to be fully engaged during his TV-watching experience, he shouldn’t be making use of the living room’s only chair.

Crankshaft, 4/26/25

You might recall that Funky Winkerbean’s beloved (?) Mopey Pete ended up in a relationship with Crankshaft’s granddaughter, which meant he successfully escaped the collapse of the Funky Winkerbean dimension and has survived in its formerly ancillary Crankshaft zone, which has survived as its own space-time continuum in the aftermath. Anyway, we’ve finally learned what can briefly make him slightly less mopey: the prospect of interrupting his in-laws while they fool around in their car.