Archive: Dennis the Menace

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Dennis the Menace, 2/21/16

I can imagine nothing more menacing than this cartoon. Children cynically acting out the most shopworn tropes of gender dynamics for our amusement? Dennis hoping against hope to spend his middle age in sloth and lethargy? This ought to chill the very souls of all right-thinking people.

Spider-Man, 2/21/16

Dr. Strange is the one they’re making into a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie with Benedict Cumberbatch, right? I love that they haven’t bothered to make him look even slightly Cumberbatchish in the last panel here. I also am going to spend the rest of the day imagining Benedict Cumberbatch intoning “the wand of watoomb!” in grandiloquent Cumberbatchian style. This is code for, like, tickets to Hamilton or something, right? Those are about as magical an item as MJ could lay her hands on.

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Spider-Man, 2/18/16

I’m trying to figure out if Peter is being sarcastically self-loathing in panel two or if he’s genuinely perking up. “Oh, that’s right! I was present when this storyline’s villain was defeated! I was wearing my superhero outfit, too! Thanks, TV!”

Dennis the Menace, 2/18/16

I was going to make some joke about a menacing pride in illiteracy, but honestly, is there anything less menacing than a child gathering his friends to watch the news together, with no adults present?

Family Circus, 2/18/16

NOOO DOLLY NATIONALISM IS IDOLATRY, you’re gonna have to do a lot of Hail Marys to walk this one back

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Beetle Bailey, 2/5/16

I haven’t really tried, but I imagine that it’s nearly impossible to make a pancake that actually looks like anything other than a collection of circles, so I guess if we’re being realistic it’s impressive that Cookie has managed to create pancakes that look even vaguely like Sarge. However, considering that this is the fantasy world of the comics, where imagination and tiny printing sizes in newspapers are the only constraints, for this strip to work I think they should’ve looked … more obviously like Sarge? I think a lot of people are just going to read this as Cookie offering the soldiers slightly malformed pancakes, grinning broadly, and saying “Chew them good!”, which they might find off-putting. I find it off-putting and I know what the joke is supposed to be.

B.C., 2/5/16

Right, right, so, Thor is the brown-haired one! Pretty bittersweet that I’m finally learning to tell these characters apart as they’re killed off one by one.

Dennis the Menace, 2/5/16

“I don’t know if I want to engage in constant low-level violence on a lawless frontier that encroaches on the land of indigenous peoples, or serve as the right-hand man to a genocidal dictator!”

Gasoline Alley, 2/5/16

“My God, not the scrapbook! Pilot, shake loose the ranger and the boy, fly directly down into the inferno, and kill that bear as hard as you need to — the scrapbook must be rescued unharmed!”

Spider-Man, 2/5/16

ANOTHER VICTORY WON BY THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN