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Archive: Dennis the Menace

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Mostly suburban trauma

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/15/24

Today’s Barney Google and Snuffy Smith punchline isn’t bad exactly. It’s a perfectly serviceable newspaper comic strip gag. There’s no shame in writing it, or in publishing it. But it’s not good, either, and it definitely doesn’t merit the insanely smug expression Jughaid is aiming at us through the fourth wall in the final panel. Settle down kid, it’s just a grape joke. Nobody’s gonna remember it tomorrow, but they are going to remember how off-putting you’re being.

Dennis the Menace, 6/15/24

Honestly, a little kid not just agreeing to look at old pictures with an old person but actually asking to do it seems like it would be an absolute dream scenario for said old person. The fact that Mr. Wilson is so firmly rejecting this offer really tells you a lot about the hell on Earth that is his Dennis-adjacent lifestyle.

Hi and Lois, 6/15/24

The project of reclaiming Thirsty’s original characterization as the neighborhood drunk has been getting grimmer for some time, and has entered a truly dark phase now, as his wife begs him to seek counseling, for her sake if not for his own, and he refuses in an incredibly dickish bait-and-switch designed to briefly give her hope that her awful home life might someday improve. What really makes this strip to me is the first panel, where you can see that Thirsty initially planned to just do a shot, but then changed his mind and decided to fill up a tumbler instead, so that he could really linger over that XXX-brand brown liquor flavor.

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Crankiness … intensifying

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Dennis the Menace, 6/8/24

“Dennis shit-talks his mother’s cooking” isn’t my favorite trope in this strip, but I feel you at least have to respect the form: he should either be poking sullenly at his food, glowering at everyone, absolutely ruining the energy of the family meal, or he should be making some witty quip that emotionally devastates Alice while Henry barely conceals a smirk. But while the dialogue here works, the art is all off: Dennis looks extremely pleased by the high-nutrition meal that’s been prepared for him, and his parents are all smiles. This frankly is so un-menacing that it loops all the way around to menacing again because it’s so deeply uncanny.

Judge Parker, 6/8/24

OK, since I’m embracing being a cranky old man who hates change, I’m just going to say it: “eloping” is supposed to mean that you sneak off and get married without telling any of your friends and family, often without even being formally engaged first. But more and more people are just using it to mean “We’re going have a small wedding, actually, even though we told some people we were planning to have a big one at some point in the future,” and I hate it! The secrecy is the point! You don’t just wander in and announce it while your fiancee is in the middle of a Zoom call with her mother!

Blondie, 6/8/24

YES IT CERTAINLY IS ANNOYING WHEN A CHILD SHOWS UP AT YOUR HOUSE AND EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE DOING OTHER STUFF YOU’RE EXPECTED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THEM

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Saturday fast takes

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Gasoline Alley, 6/1/24

Uh oh, looks like the electricity is out all over Gasoline Alley! I guess electricity has decided, in the wake of the rejection of the proposed “Electric Acres” renaming, that it isn’t wanted there any more. And who can blame it? Tough luck, Walt! Enjoy drinking your precious gasoline, in the dark!

Blondie, 6/1/24

I’ve always found the ways shoes are drawn in Blondie weird and off-putting, but I don’t think I ever actually tried to imagine the way the feet underneath them look. Well, thanks to today’s strip, now I have, and I wish I hadn’t. I don’t care for it.

Dennis the Menace, 6/1/24

Hey, Dennis, buddy, if you don’t have a good bit of menace in the chamber, you shouldn’t force it. You don’t have to be “always on”! You could just get the garbage bags and bide your time till the next opportunity arises.