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Dennis the Menace, 2/9/19

Not sure which is more menacing: that Dennis is trying to pull his mother into a pact of omertà, in which mutual silence encourages a downward spiral of crime; or that this alliance implicitly places Henry, who should be Alice’s equal and partner, in the role of enforcer of the morality that both she and Dennis will attempt to evade and undermine.

Hagar the Horrible, 2/9/19

The little detail that really makes this cartoon work for me is the circles under Helga’s eyes that you can see in the final panel. Ha ha, it’s funny because her husband forgot her birthday, and she’s been crying!

Gil Thorp, 2/9/19

And just like that, Marty Moon came up with the idea that would let him leave behind the small-town high school sports radio career he had come to loathe and skyrocket to fortune and fame: college-age Abraham Lincoln erotica.

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Mary Worth, 1/28/19

Monday is starting with BIG MARY WORTH NEWS, everybody: it turns out that Professor Ian Cameron will not just give you a good grade even if you don’t do your assignments, no matter how vigorously you wink at him. With that out of the way, we can now begin to explore the fact that he’s been ignoring his wife for entirely non-affair-related reasons, probably because he just doesn’t like her very much.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/28/19

Hmm, now I’m beginning to lean away from my longstanding “Hootin’ Holler is an extremely impoverished community that’s geographically, economically, and culturally isolated from mainstream American life” theory and pivoting to “Hootin’ Holler is a deliberately anachronistic intentional community/compound, much like the titular setting of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.’

Dennis the Menace, 1/28/19

Dennis Mitchell only received the nickname “the Menace” during his trial for crimes against humanity, when the results of his awful genetic experiments came to light, but there were signs of what was to come from a very early stage in his life.

Family Circus, 1/28/19

Ha ha, kids sure say the darndest things in Munchausen syndrome by proxy situations!

Sam and Silo, 1/28/19

I admit that I’m still having a hard time trying to figure out what Sam and Silo’s deal is, even in terms of its cultural situation, by which I mean: what are the things outside of itself, in the larger cultural universe, that it references? Today we have name-checked the most famous political crisis in American history and … a 2006 cheating scandal in international test cricket? Never change, Sam and Silo, you delightfully unplaceably weird strip!

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Pardon My Planet, 1/19/19

Pardon My Planet is a strip (panel?) I’ve added to my rotation in the new year, and honestly I can’t really tell if it’s supposed to be a Far Side-esque series of out-of-context gags that happens to only have three or four character models, or if I’m supposed to be recognizing these people as distinct characters with persistent personalities and such. Either way, though, today’s panel, which implies a rapid descent into body horror as this haunted-eyes dude tries escalating techniques for transforming his anatomy in impossible ways, represents a sharp turn that I am very much here for.

Dennis the Menace, 1/19/19

God damn it, is it possible to be less menacing than adorably comforting your dad with a lovable teddy bear??? The only way I can accept this is if I imagine Dennis as being extremely sarcastic. “Here, dad … mom says you’re havin’ a rough day and whining like a little baby, so here’s a stuffed animal, like a baby would want. Fuckin’ baby.”