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Gil Thorp, 1/23/20

Man, I know it’s early, but this Gil Thorp spring storyline has been extremely snoresville so far, involving competition between two student-athletes for valedictorian, plus some actual basketball stuff that I can’t really follow and resent as a result. But I am mesmerized by today’s panel two, in which Marcell Irby controls the glass (I assume “Marcell Irby Controls The Glass” is the name of his avant-garde dance piece where he spins a basketball around on his head in front of a complex, abstract geometric background that he personally designed).

Dennis the Menace, 1/23/20

Pretty sure the real menace here is Alice, who apparently forced her son to sit in his punishment corner for so long that he was in danger of soiling himself? Or maybe it’s the whole Mitchell clan, for constantly getting Joey involved in their internal psychodrama. Look at him! He’s very, very nervous! He just wants everyone to be happy!

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Dennis the Menace, 1/11/20

“Admittedly, it’s kind of weird bringing this up while we’re looking at a shelf that doesn’t include any nerf guns — that indeed doesn’t seem to include any toys manufactured in the last forty years at all. Just a bunch of old-timey toys not even in packaging! Almost like this art was drawn at some earlier date and then the caption was grafted onto it. Anyway, it’s a relief that we’re finally admitting that we don’t like spending time with our son and hope he spends as much time at our grumpy old neighbor’s as possible. Like, each of us knew the other one felt that way, but it feels good to say it out loud, you know?”

Judge Parker, 1/11/20

Hey, remember when Judge Parker Emeritus admitted to doing crimes on TV and then went to jail, but then just a few months later he got out, and I can’t even remember if it was because of more illegal skullduggery or just some dumb technicality, but anyway, now that everyone’s forgotten that unpleasantness, it looks like it’s time for Alan to take his place amongst the town’s rightful leaders again! I certainly hope he calls upon Horace, an old Parker family retainer who you may or may not remember (and really, why would you, why do I remember him, why is so much of my precious, limited brain space taken up by plot points from soap opera comic strips from the mid-’00s) as the guy who ran Randy Parker’s campaign for judge way back when. He was really hot on Randy marrying his fiance, who was the leader of a cult of some sort, which he failed to do, thus giving his opponent the opportunity to start a homophobic whisper campaign against him. Fortunately Horace was there to remind the Parker camp that their opponent’s wife was a drunk, and so Sam and Randy smugly watched her melt down at a press conference and then quietly seized the judgeship that Randy felt was rightly his. Anyway, I feel like Alan’s very public crime-doing will require a lot more dirty-election-tricks help than Randy’s possible homosexuality did, so I can’t wait to see the scorched-earth campaign that’s about to be unleashed.

Mark Trail, 1/11/20

God bless Mark Trail for being so pure of heart that even though he can’t stand Harvey Camel, he instinctively believes him to the point of having his mind utterly blown when Harvey says “oh, yeah, I definitely saw a yeti, by the way.” I certainly hope the next three weeks are taken up by Harvey telling a long, rambling story, along the lines of “one time a train full of drunken clowns derailed in the forest” and “one time a walrus wrecked a rental SUV by violently giving birth in it“, about that one time he just glimpsed a hairy bipedal cryptid loping through the Himalayan dusk.

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Mary Worth, 1/7/2020

Ah, I think we’re about to learn this storyline’s valuable lesson: it’s very important that you not go to some doctor for normals and poors who accepts your cut-rate health insurance, because he’s just going to diagnose you with old. No, you need to go to Dr. Howard, whose fees only dot-com millionaires can afford, and who can pump you full of teenager blood to reverse the aging process, or at least offer you the array of modern cosmetic enhancement procedures that allow, say, Tom Cruise and Paul Rudd to be believable leading men despite being older than Wilford Brimley was when he starred in Cocoon.

Dennis the Menace, 1/7/2020

Dennis is breaking the fourth wall in a quite menacing fashion here. What is he going to do with Margaret that he doesn’t want us to see? I mean, probably just being a sullen dick to her while she attempts to have a civilized friendship with him, I guess, which quite frankly we’ve seen enough of.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/7/2020

PANEL ONE: Aunt Hildy oversteps her bounds, in a friendly but potentially irritating way!

PANEL TWO: June sets a firm boundary, while taking care to acknowledge the good intentions behind Aunt Hildy’s offer!

PANEL THREE: Aunt Hildy acknowledges and accepts the boundary June sets, as the reasons given for it make good sense! This is the sort of roller coaster of drama that we’ve come to expect from this strip, and I for one am exhausted.