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Six Chix, 9/30/17

I find crows a little uncanny, what with their keen intelligence and ability to recognize and remember human faces. So I’ve always been a little averse to learning too much about their ways, lest I freak myself out even more about them, but today’s Six Chix finally led me to fatefully Google “what do crows eat?” Because … what is that the crow is scarfing/ripping/tearing/shredding/mutilating in panel two there? Remember, the coloring is done by the syndicate — it doesn’t necessarily represent the artist’s intent. It sort of looks like a pile of leaves but then it also kind of looks like the gutted body of another bird, right? Those are little bird feed sticking up from the end of it on our right? As the nice bird-feeding lady looks on in horror? Anyway, turns out “crows eat frogs, lizards, insects and anything else they can catch and swallow. They’re also known to eat carrion.” After that, I decided I was ready to give in to full-on bird horror, so I Googled “will crows eat other crows,” but I only got as far as “Crows occasionally murder each other for reasons that mystify scientists” before I decided, you know what, I’m not actually emotionally prepared for this.

Dennis the Menace, 9/30/17

We joke a lot on this blog about the true meaning of menace when it comes to this strip, but really: is there anything creepier than someone — especially a child — doing something destructive and manifestly not in his own best interest, for impenetrable reasons of his own, with a smile on his face? At this point I’m just hoping that bucket is full of water that came out of the faucet, if you catch my drift.

Pluggers, 9/30/17

I feel like this panel is cheating by giving us a plugger definition not just in the caption but also in a word balloon? Anyway, you have to respect the fact that, no matter how many folksy aphorisms you jam into the text here, this panel still looks like a couple guys cruising for erotic e-stim play partners in the parking lot of the Dillard’s out on Route 78 that closed down in 2011.

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Arlo and Janis, 4/10/08
Dennis the Menace, 9/17/17

Margaret puts her own dark spin on the Arlo and Janis classic: It was her idea, Dennis, all hers. And she has so very many ideas for you.

Menace level: Grandmistress.

Spider-Man, 9/17/17

Hoo boy, is this strip ripping off Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or what: underground standoff, chalice of immortality, unstable geology, icy-hot villainess — the works.

Now Tyrannus here is an evil guy, no doubt: he usurped a kingdom from good ol’ Melvin the Mole Man, busted up his wedding, put him in chains, talked endlessly about killing him, yada yada. But Spider-Man’s plan is to deprive a desperate old man of the cheap, plentiful resource he needs to postpone his degeneration and death? Brr. Dude, you’re a super-hero, remember?

“Next: Hiding Aunt May’s digitalis!”

Phantom, 9/17/17

Speaking of stretching the limits of heroism, seriously Phantom, I know Prince Valiant set a precedent, but you gotta crucify these guys? (OK those aren’t technically crosses, but what else: “isocelate”?)

And isn’t Guran reaching for the blackout powder just a little too often? Last time I looked, that was for enemies, or at least mildly inconvenient nosy reporters. But he may need a lot more of it once it dawns on these cops that the sketchy rando who shows up out of nowhere and starts explaining the crime to them is pretty obviously the perp. Has nobody in this godforsaken backwater seen a single episode of Law and Order?

— Uncle Lumpy

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Dennis the Menace, 9/6/17

Over the years, the overarching ’50s aesthetic and cultural milieu in Dennis the Menace has gone from “it was actually created in the ’50s so it was contemporary at the time” to “creative staff is aging out of awareness of contemporary culture, or maybe is trying to maintain a consistent tone” to “active indulgence of nostalgia, Mad Men style.” Even so, I find today’s panel particularly baffling. If this were actually published in, say, 1967, I’d describe it as “someone trying to draw a hippie who’s heard of them but never actually seen one and who is physically incapable of visualizing a man leaving the house without wearing a suit jacket,” but since this was in fact produced in the year 2017, I have to imagine that it’s … trying get inside the head of such a person from 50 years ago, who’s heard of hippies but etc.? Anyway, assuming we are in the early-to-late-mid ’60s window, the extremely mildly shaggy grooming plus earth-tone suit over sweater and dress shirt says “junior faculty at local liberal arts college” but the sandals say “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, returned to judge the living and the dead from His position as a junior faculty member at the local liberal arts college.” “My Father taught me many things, but the need to conform to the transitory grooming codes of this world was not among them,” the Son of Man thinks to Himself.

Mark Trail, 9/6/17

Speaking of Jesus, Mark seems to think that he’ll be safer from the coming twister underneath a house of worship, while our nefarious criminals have only one thing on their mind: getting as drunk as possible on whatever leftover booze has been aging deliciously over at the saloon in the decades since this entire town was abandoned. Mark’s going to feel pretty pious down there in the church basement, right until he realizes it’s part of the underground tunnel system where the Samson the biblically named but still bloodthirsty bear lives.

Beetle Bailey, 9/6/17

This strip has done plenty of strips about General Halftrack’s incipient dementia, but I think this is the first time we’ve actually seen one of the other characters cruelly laughing at his doddering panic.

Mary Worth, 9/6/17

It has come to my attention that some of you think that maybe this whole “Dr. Ned is still married” thing is a big comical sitcom-style misunderstanding, and that Jared overheard him talking to his daughter or something. It’s possible, I guess, but as contrary evidence let me point out that for their big dates Dr. Ned has taken Dawn to French restaurants called “The Love Dog” and “The Dishonest Snail.” This strip generally isn’t subtle, guys.