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Dustin, 10/30/19

Say, remember when male Baby Boomers were young and their parents made fun of them for growing their hair long and otherwise not conforming to stifling 1950s codes of what a man should be or look like? Well, those Boomers all lost their hair and now it’s their turn to police everyone else’s masculinity. Whether you’re treating the the availability of a little cinnamon and nutmeg in your coffee like a full grade crisis because girls like it or you think that guy with a small dog up the street ought to be feeling a lot more shame than he apparently does, you’re certainly making your father happy, wherever he is, probably hell.

Dennis the Menace, 10/30/19

Speaking of hell, here’s what all the demons down there will look like. The amount of work Mr. Wilson put into this is absolutely terrifying, and that’s assuming he’s gone to the trouble of creating a perfect Dennis wig and isn’t wearing the poor lad’s scalp as a hat.

Mary Worth, 10/30/19

ME, YESTERDAY: Ha ha, I’m going to make a joke, here on my blog where I make fun of comics, about how Wilbur is going to have an emotional meltdown on this double date with his ex! But probably nothing that interesting will happen.

ME, TODAY: oh my god Wilbur is so worked up he’s going to start guzzling scotch straight from the bottle to prepare himself, this is going to be more amazing than I possibly could’ve imagined

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/21/19

OK, here’s the deal: in general, I like it when the characters in Funky Winkerbean suffer, because I find them all morally and personally repellent. However, I don’t like it when they use their own suffering as proof of their nobility, and I actively despite it when everyone falls all over themselves to praise the sufferers for being amazing. Sure, Mason could play a dumb “action hero,” like Starbuck Jones, a character millions of people love and want to see on screen, or, as panel two shows suggests, like Wally, a guy who fought in a war and was held captive for years and now works at a depressing pizza parlor for a living, but he’d rather be remembered (by Oscar and Golden Globe voters) as a real hero: a guy who stayed married to his wife when she was diagnosed with cancer and was more or less supportive of her until she died, after which point he started cashing in and never stopped. At least when people gave the characters in Woody Wilson-era Judge Parker undeserved praise and cash, it was funny.

Gil Thorp, 10/21/19

Chet, I’m pretty sure that once you’ve achieved the rank of don within the mafia, you pay other people to act out, pull teachers’ hair, and throw scissors at classmates for you. I’m gonna need you to come back with a better metaphor for this one!

Dennis the Menace, 10/21/19

Not sure what I find funnier here: the idea that Dennis has some elaborate curtain/roller-shade window treatment in his room, that he uses his roller-shade for his “bad boy” art (a picture of a child with his tongue stuck out), or that this self-professed “menace” is too cowardly to let his mother know about his vandalism/budding art career.

Mary Worth, 10/21/19

Hot on the heels of discovering that Iris is fucking herself into a state of exhaustion with her new boytoy, we now learn that Wilbur is focusing on just singing with Estelle because he, too, worries about his own sexual stamina, as he idly stares at this bottle of “VIGOR VITAMINS” at the sketchy supplement store at the mall and wonders if they’ll be enough to restore his declining libido. There has been lots of talk in the comments about Iris and Wilbur improbably ending up back together, and finally we have a good reason why they should: they’re both just too tired to do it anymore, and honestly it would be kind of relief to be with someone who doesn’t expect anything from them, sexually.

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Pluggers, 10/18/19

The point of Pluggers, it seems to me, is that it’s meant to draw a distinction between pluggers and … the rest of the world, defined however you want (liberal elitists? big city folk? the young and the hip?). We might disagree on what exactly those distinctions are, on what communities the plugger community defines itself as not being, but I think we can all agree that today’s panel — “A plugger uses an extremely common slang term in an everyday situation” — is terrible, just terrible, carrying almost no semantic content to speak of. The good news: this means we’ve run out of meaningful things to say about pluggers, and can shut down this strip forever.

Dennis the Menace, 10/18/19

Wow, this is the Dennis the Menace that’s going to be haunting my nightmares! “What if he was your son, George?” asks Martha — his wife with whom, of course, he has no children — while George looks down at Dennis with a sort of detached contemplation. I have so many questions about this! Is this some weird little game they’re playing? Is Dennis already a participant in this fantasy, or do they hope he’ll catch on and play along? Why does she say “your” son instead of “our” son??? I guess the “punchline” is supposed to be turning that back on her — he’s not my son, I just married into him when I married you — but it’s such a weird way of doing it! What the hell, man? Seriously, what the hell?

The Lockhorns, 10/18/19

Honest to God, the first time I read this, I thought Leroy was talking to Loretta, and that he really had missed his trial and was going to jail soon. Which would be good, honestly! He should go to jail, for his crimes!