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Family Circus, 10/14/18

Maybe it’s the “vest,” but I’m pretty much imagining all of these being said in a faux Eastern European accent, aka “the Dracula,” and having said that now I’m imagining a version of Dracula where instead of decamping from Transylvania to Victorian London, he heads to the American Old West instead? Excuse me, the “Old Vest.” And then he, like, drinks the blood of a bunch of cowboys and so on. Their exsanguinated corpses end up in the “symmetry,” ah ha ha! (That laughter should be imagined in the voice of Bela Lugosi as Dracula, or, if we’re being real, the Muppets’ Count Von Count.) It’s very sad to me that Billy (age 7) will make millions from this idea and not me, but I’m nothing if not scrupulous about intellectual property laws.

Dennis the Menace, 10/14/18

Henry is just joking wryly in the throwaway panel, but what if he weren’t? What if a whole series of babysitters, despite being paid good money to care for a child, and despite child abandonment being a literal crime, had just left Dennis to his own devices, fleeing into the night, never to be seen again? Just dozens of them being hauled into court on child endangerment charges, shouting “IT WAS WORTH IT, NO JURY WILL CONVICT ME, I HAVE PICTURES.”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/9/18

“Haw, haw! Guess I’m just a simple orphan being raised by my aunt an’ uncle, who resent my presence and are likely to snap into a rage if I intrude into their routine in any way!”

Dennis the Menace, 10/9/18

Dennis is about to explain podcasts to Mr. Wilson, and pretty soon Mr. Wilson is not going to be able to shut up about Serial, much to the annoyance of everyone around him. This is Dennis’s most subtly effective menace yet.

Mary Worth, 10/9/18

“Should I give him a project to distract him by driving my car through the wall of Charterstone and into his living room, destroying the vehicle in the process? No, that would be foolish. I’ll drive Jeff’s car into Mr. Wynter’s living room.”

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Six Chix, 10/7/18

I get what this comic is going for here, I really do, but part of my job (“job”) as the proprietor and namesake of the Comics Curmudgeon is to spend more time than usual thinking about the premises of comic strips, and my friends, when you do that with this one it starts to get dark. Like, sure, it seems that your dog is sitting in your living room, watching squirrels scamper around outside for entertainment, and maybe at some level that’s true. But when you, a human, watch acrobats or lion tamers, you do it out of appreciation of their skills, and maybe get a thrill from imagining yourself in their place. A dog’s emotional arc in that scenario is very different, and when you factor that into the change of setting here — not one dog but a whole uncountable pack, not sitting in some domesticated space with a glass between them and the squirrels but out on the side of a country road in the middle of the night — well, you can’t help but wonder when the moment will come when, by some unspoken agreement, the audience descends on the performers in a howling frenzy and tears them to bits.

Dennis the Menace, 10/07/18

It’s pretty much absolutely necessary for the core Dennis the Menace shtick that he be allowed to wander around through the neighborhood unsupervised, as I’m given to understand that children of earlier generations were, so it can be difficult to remember that he is, canonically, five years old, and so probably in kindergarden. In the bygone days when five-year-olds were allow to roam freely and hassle the neighbors, were they also taught science and history in kindergarden? Anyway, another reason we often forget Dennis’s true age is because he’s so darn precocious, and you have to admit that telling your parents that your failure really represents their own shortcomings is some advanced-level menacing.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 10/07/18

Look at that pelican bait shop attendent, grinning like a big idiot! He doesn’t even realize that the only reason he isn’t being hauled away to an internment camp without trial right now is because Slylock happened to remember some nature facts about tides or whatever.