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Dennis the Menace, 6/5/25

I know that “ha ha, this little boy is repulsed by the idea of heteronormativity” is one of Dennis the Menace’s go-tos, but to do a “Dennis says something inappropriate in front of strangers who have never been in the Mitchell household before and, after this incident, will never be there,” the stakes need to be higher. Like he should be saying this to a woman, or a couple, or should be saying “I’m gonna be a confirmed bachelor — that’s what my dad says you are!” As it is, this is just kind of a non sequitur that this random grown-up can smile and nod at before returning to his normal conversation with Henry. And honestly, this announcement is a little confusing! You’re going to be a bachelor when you grow up? What are you now, married? To whom?

Gil Thorp, 6/5/25

Ha ha, Keri’s just kidding! They’re not getting back together! Unless … why are they touching each other so much. With their hands. Their big giant hands. All the better to touch each other with! You know, sexually.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/5/25

Oh, man, what are the chances, Truck’s bastard kid is also a working-class musician??? In this strip?????? Incredible. What genres do you think he’s into? Roots country? Rockabilly? Surf guitar? Garage rock? It’s one of those, right? Those are the only ones?

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Dennis the Menace, 5/28/25

When you have a long-running strip like Dennis the Menace, where one of the main characters is a child who never grows up and another is an old man who never dies, it does force you to contemplate how comic strip time operates for the two of them. Are we meant to understand that they are locked in an eternal, changeless struggle? Or is Dennis just a kid who’s only started wandering over and annoying his neighbor in the past few months? Mr. Wilson’s reaction today points towards the latter: clearly he’s never even thought about the fact that Dennis will have his days free during the summer, much less experienced it. “Ah shit! Ah fuck!” is his immediate, visceral reaction.

Wizard of Id, 5/28/25

The idea of this joke — “two armies must fill out paperwork with the owner of the battlefield before they hack each other to bits” — is solid enough, but I have a quibble with the execution. Specifically, we’re in a faux medieval setting, so you could just put this guy in vaguely medieval peasant garb or something and people would easily follow everything thanks to the dialogue. Instead, the logic seems to be “we’re saying field so it should be a recognizable farmer, let’s put him in overalls and a hat from the early to mid 20th century,” which doesn’t work at all, in my opinion. The fact that the colorist decided to make said overalls the exact same shade of brown as the ground doesn’t help.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/28/25

TIRED: Herb and Jamaal uses weird circumlocutions to avoid proper nouns so as to make the strips “timeless” and reusable in the future

WIRED: Herb and Jamaal takes place in an extremely specific alt-timeline where Star Wars-style droids are real and the subject of political controversy that elected officials need to field questions about at press conferences

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The Phantom, 5/17/25

One of the key ongoing dramas of The Phantom is the question of what woman will contribute her genetic material to the ongoing Phantom bloodline by allowing Kit to sire the 24th Phantom on her, and so far the main competitors have been Kit’s local sweetheart in Tibet or his mother and sister’s choice, Kadia Sahara, the daughter of former Phantom archnemesis The Nomad. But … is there another? Savarna, of course, has mostly been interested in Kit’s dad, having flirted with him when he thought his wife was dead and proposed a superstar teamup that the Ghost Who Has Morals rejected because she’s violent and kind of insane. As a result, it seems that flirtation has cooled — sure, rescuing her from Gravelines Prison was the inciting incident behind the years-long “Death of the Phantom” arc, but that was a purely platonic jailbreak. Anyway, apparently somewhere along the line that I forgot about she met Kit back at the Skull Cave, and like many a young man, he fell under the spell of a worldly, sophisticated older woman. Like, look at her: she’s using a napkin! Ooh la la, fancy lady!

Gil Thorp, 5/17/15

There’s been some spring sports action in Gil Thorp over the past couple weeks that quite frankly has not risen to a level of “interesting” that would get me to comment on it. But Coach Martinez attempting to summon the ghost of Pop(s) right there in the athletic department storage room specifically to prove a point to Gil, to the obvious amusement of the other assistant coaches? You’d better believe I’m ready for multiple weeks of this.

Dennis the Menace, 5/17/25

Henry, wearing that checkered suit jacket/bow tie combo in public anywhere of course marks you as a true fashion moron. But specifically wearing it to a restaurant’s clearly labelled Western night? You dipshit. You absolute fool.