Archive: Dennis the Menace

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Hagar the Horrible, 3/16/24

That’s Hagar’s mother-in-law as the presiding judge up there, by the way, and really the only way this strip would make sense or be funny to you at all is if you knew that, and also knew that she hated him, and that represents … well, I guess I don’t know how many “casual” comics readers are left, but I’m going to go ahead and say it represents a relatively small portion of potential readers. But whatever! I got the reference! I am for better or worse the intended audience of this strip and I have to make peace with that. Anyway, look how happy Hagar’s wife and children are about his impending legal dilemma? He must have done something truly monstrous, this time.

Dennis the Menace, 3/16/24

What makes this one actually, genuinely creepy is that Dennis is not just using a hammer to blindly smash; no, he recognizes that a tool can be used in many ways, to probe for weakness, to find the seams, to wreak destruction in a dozen ways, both subtle and blatant. Seems menacing! Seems real menacing if you ask me!

The Phantom, 3/16/24

The Death Of The Phantom lasted seven years, and the Phantom Had A Weird Dream Last Night lasted about a month; I can’t imagine we’re going to be able to get more than week out of This Guy Just Wants Dick Around On His Phone And Drink A Little, Why Won’t The Phantom Just Leave Him Alone.

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Beetle Bailey, 3/5/23

“Oh, posh,” you’re probably thinking, “Surely a tech whiz like Spc. Chip Gizmo would simply use a password manager to keep track of all his login information.” Sorry, wrong, this fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the Beetle Bailey universe. Chip Gizmo arrived in the strip in 2002 in response to the increasing popularity of these newfangled “computers” and, like all the other characters, has not evolved or changed or learned anything new since the day of his creation, so he’s never heard of a password manager. (Beetle was created in 1950, which is why he naively assumes that any complex piece of machinery must surely come with an instruction manual explaining how to operate it.)

Dennis the Menace, 3/5/23

“Older than I was when we got here. The linear flow of time and the operational state of our bodies only move in one direction, and that direction points us straight towards death. Feeling menaced yet, doc?”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/5/23

SPOILER ALERT: It’s piss, everybody! He’s an old man who’s been stuck in that chair all night, and the thing he needs to do is piss.

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Mary Worth, 2/29/24

Yes, blah blah blah, Toby and Mary are still going on and on about Keith’s virtues (as a singer and a [squints] farrier?) and unorthodox but still Mary Worth Approved™ family situations, but what I really needed to let you know about is that Mary is dishing up her latest and greatest disgusting slop recipe to Toby, her least discriminating neighbor. Mmm mmm, it’s brownish-grey, it’s viscous, it’s steaming hot, and it’s full of … pebbles? peanut M&Ms? Whatever, Toby’s had so many nose jobs her senses of smell and taste are pretty much kaput, and Mary doesn’t want to just throw this concoction out, because it might get loose and start crawling around and smothering people.

Dennis the Menace, 2/29/24

I’ve given it some thought, and I’ve decided that “No punishment can hurt me, no prison can truly cage me … as long as I can construct my mind palace with the power of pure memory and imagination” isn’t so much “menacing” as “kind of ominous.” I think that’s an important distinction!