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Dennis the Menace, 2/19/14

To the extent that anyone anywhere thinks about third-tier characters in Dennis the Menace, they probably have Gina pegged as “vaguely tomboyish but not gender-binary-threateningly non-feminine girl who Dennis finds to be an acceptable companion and maybe nascent crush object, in contrast with Margaret.” But panels like this give us a glimpse at what one must assume was her other traditional role in the strip: as a symbol of the changing face of middle-class America, a sign of the times circa 1960 when the white people of suburbia found that other, slightly different kinds of white people wanted to be their neighbors. And Dennis is on the forefront of this bold social experiment! Papists are A-OK by him! Don’t worry, Joey, this Italian cheese-butter-noodle glop may have a crazy name that ends in a vowel, but it’s pretty much the same cheese-butter-noodle glop we enjoy right here in the USA.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/19/14

I was going to compliment this Snuffy Smith for really getting at something profound and intriguing about the nature of human memory. When I try to remember what my classmates from elementary school look like, even when I feel like I can visualize them pretty clearly, they don’t look like children in my head, and when I look at old yearbooks I’m shocked by how young everyone is. However, I think that’s probably giving the strip far too much credit, and it’s really more likely this is just an ill-fated attempt to launch a Hootin’ Holler Babies spinoff.

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Dennis the Menace, 2/8/14

Implying that Almighty God might not be all-knowing and all-powerful, that there might be limits to His ability to hear prayers from His mortal creations, that He is somehow constrained by the passage of time as perceived by us puny beings, that He must occasionally rest? Menacingly heretical! It is perhaps ironic that Dennis is courting divine wrath only if he’s wrong.

Pluggers, 2/8/14

This is … a joke about the metric system, I guess? Pluggers are glad that we don’t use metric time? Pluggers are relieved that the most radical phase of the French Revolution burned itself out before the icy tide of Jacobin rationality could wash away all of our long-standing traditional institutions, like the division of time into sixtieths that dates back to ancient Babylon? Sure, why the hell not! Let’s hear it for sexagesimal chronometry!

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Marvin, 1/3/14

So when I returned from my Christmastime Journey and caught up on the comics I hadn’t been reading, I didn’t review all the comics. Marvin, for instance. I didn’t catch up on Marvin. Who cared exactly about which poo-stained antics I had missed? I was thus dropped into this midweek running gag without context, and assumed, since there were no other clues, that “Kiddie Coiffe,” a stand of some sort, was meant to be a Starbucks-style operation, with “coiffe” a whimsical misspelling for coffee. And even if I had known that this was coiffe as in coiffure, I would have supposed it was a li’l play hair salon or barber shop? But nope, they’re selling hair. Human hair, dog hair, you name it. Not enough to make a wig out of, mind you, just weird little patches, if the chunk taken out of Bitsy’s pelt is any indication. Haha, baby hair sales! Ha! So, congrats, Marvin: you’ve brought me to a place of profound discomfort that has me actively wishing for a return to poop jokes.

Dennis the Menace, 1/3/14

“Look dad, I know you don’t love me, and I don’t particularly want you to try, but I am going to make you tacitly admit it so that I can get what I want.” Oh man, Dennis’s menacing game is on point for 2014.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/3/14

“Haw haw, just kiddin’, Mama Smif! When I say ‘risky,’ I meant that givin’ birf in Hootin’ Holler is takin’ yer life in yer own hands, what with our hamlet’s poor sanitation and substandard med’cal care!”