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Dennis the Menace, 2/25/17

My one and only encounter with childhood religious instruction that I can remember came when I was maybe in the six to eight years old range; we were visiting my mom’s parents in Ohio, and I sat in a Sunday school class at their church. The teacher acted out the story of Jonah and the whale by putting a Playmobil man into a giant plastic toy shark, and as a know-it-all child this bothered me a lot, because I was very smug in the knowledge that sharks were fish and whale were mammals. But I didn’t say anything, which is just as well, since the bible actually uses the word “fish” (and the ancient Hebrews really didn’t make the distinction anyway); and besides, I wasn’t the type of kid to make a fuss in front of strangers, or to challenge authority. I guess you could say I wasn’t … a menace?

Anyway, while I suspect that modern-day Sunday Schools (especially those run by namby-pamby Episcopalians) don’t follow the injunction from Proverbs that “he that spareth his rod hateth his son,” I also have a hard time imagining that they just turn the other cheek when it comes to classroom disruptions that would get you a stern talking-to and note sent home at a Godless public school. Thus, the only way to interpret this panel that makes sense is that, here in Sunday School, Dennis doesn’t want to act out or cause a fuss, which is probably the least menacing attitude he could possibly take.

Mary Worth, 2/25/17

Speaking of Jesus, what’s Tommy been up to while Iris sows her wild oats all over campus? Thinking about big bottles of delicious pills, mostly! I dearly hope that when a tear-soaked Iris returns to her apartment from Mary’s advice session, we see her from Tommy’s perspective, and it’s like when a hungry wolf in an old cartoon sees someone’s head turn into a rotisserie chicken, except Iris’s head looks like a bottle of Vicodin, or maybe just one enormous Vicodin tablet.

Mark Trail, 2/25/17

OH MY GOD

MARK TRAIL IS A VAMPIRE

OR MAYBE DOC OR CHERRY

OR RUSTY

YES, RUSTY IS THE ONE MOST LIKELY TO BE AN UNDEAD BLOOD-SUCKING GHOUL

STILL, EITHER WAY: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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Dennis the Menace, 2/19/17

OK, so, the logical reading of this strip, up until the punchline, is that Dennis and Alice went to the bookstore, bought a book to correct Ruff’s bad behavior, then returned home to discover evidence of said bad behavior. But in the final panel, we learn that the book was already in the house, which means that between the second and third panels of the middle row, the two of them brought the book home, left it there, then went somewhere else, then came back again. Right? That’s the only way this sequence makes sense? Unless Ruff chewed the book to bits off panel, as Dennis held it in his hand! The dog’s gone mad, I say! Mad with rage! He won’t stop until he destroys everything his family owns!

Beetle Bailey, 2/19/17

Say what you will about General Halftrack’s leadership qualities, but in the last panel in the second row and first in the third row he proves his skill in dealing with the press by cheerfully answering the questions he wants to answer, not the ones actually asked. The punchline leaves him hanging on his greatest challenge yet.

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Slylock Fox, 2/13/17

I can’t remember where I read it now, but there’s a line in a review of Rogue One that I liked, discussing Darth Vader’s appearance. This is the first film where David Prowse didn’t play the body of the character, and the reviewer said that in the new movie Spencer Wilding, the new actor, looked and moved differently, so “he just looked to me like a guy in a Darth Vader costume, which, I suppose, is what he was.” Don’t we all, in essence, play-act the roles in life we aim to inhabit, uncertain of when the moment will come when we finally make them our own? And isn’t this made more difficult when someone else is so strongly associated with the job? It might’ve been the dogs, with nostalgia for their now vanquished nemeses, who explained to the other animals the utility of the postal service after the beasts took over; and, like all the creatures trying to ape the infrastructure of human society, this mailbear is doing the best he can. But it’s his hesitancy, his sense that he’s not really a postal worker, that he’s just a bear wearing an XXL uniform torn off a long-ago-eviscerated H. sapiens letter carrier, that Shady Shrew is exploiting here. Who’s to say that he isn’t in disguise, after all? Who’s to say that they aren’t all going through a vaguely absurd pantomime of their vanquished betters, with their bowler caps and trench coats and magnifying glasses?

Dick Tracy, 2/13/17

Meanwhile, over at Dick Tracy’s heist plot, the Brush, a man with a freakish shock of hair coming down from his forehead and completely covering his face, is about to change out of his landscaper’s uniform and into a security guard’s uniform, two disguises that will definitely let him blend in undetectably and not draw any attention to himself whatsoever.

Dennis the Menace, 2/13/17

I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Mr. Wilson is planning to murder Dennis — he’s old, he’s lived a long life and there isn’t much left to it, prison and the electric chair don’t scare him, etc. — but it’s pretty shocking to see him admit it so openly to his wife.

Marvin, 2/13/17

I spend a lot of time grappling with the horror of Marvin’ endless poop jokes, but it’s only with today’s strip that I feel like I get the rationale behind them: apparently they’re part of some misguided Freudian belief that we’d all be better adjusted if we didn’t have to obey society’s oppressive rules about going to the bathroom in a toilet and just, like, shat whenever, man, you’re not the boss of me and my gastrointestinal tract.

Pluggers, 2/13/17

Pluggers’ dreams of a sex-robot companion became a lot more attainable once they realized that due to their age and general physical decrepitude they had lost interest in sex a long time ago.