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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/27/12

Aww, isn’t that sweet? Hootin’ Holler must be the most loving, romantic community on the entire planet. I say this because Barney Google and Snuffy Smith characters wag their tongues and roll their eyes constantly. Look, they’re wagging their tongues right there in the second panel, as they’re talking about people wagging their tongues! I’m glad to learn that these are symptoms of an overabundance of affection, as I had assumed that residents of Hootin’ Holler were just prone to seizures due to some combination of inbreeding and malnutrition.

Archie, 1/27/12

As noted, the current run of newspaper Archie strips consists of reruns from the ’90s, which is fairly clear when you have it pointed out to you. But never let it be said that Archie Comics is simply digging out strips at random from its no doubt enormous archives (side note: I dearly hope that Archie Comics refers to its archives as “the Archie-ives”) and mails it out to the syndicate. No, first they have some entry-level employee make sure there aren’t any blatant anachronisms in the strip and quickly fix them. Fun game: what non-Glee TV show do you think Mr. Weatherbee was originally referring to in the third panel? I’ll bet its name is significantly longer than four letters!

Dennis the Menace, 1/27/12

Dennis seems to think that his baby sitter will find his mastery of bound morphemes menacing! Sorry, Dennis, but this is not the case.

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Dennis the Menace, 1/11/12

I never thought about itching the same way again after reading about how powerful and little understood a sensation it really is in this New Yorker article, which features, among other anecdotes, a horrifying account of a woman who had an unstoppable itch on her scalp that was so bad that she ended up scratching right through her skull. My point is that cutting your fingernails short enough that you won’t be able to scratch itches in a satisfying fashion is a 100 percent legitimate concern, and there’s nothing either menacing or cute about Dennis’s request, although maybe Alice’s smirk is supposed to indicate that she plans to do exactly this, as a subtle form of revenge for, well, pretty much everything Dennis has done since learning to walk.

Gil Thorp, 1/11/12

Are you tired of me talking about Gil Thorp yet? Well, too bad, because this is the first storyline that I’ve genuinely loved in years, so you’re just going to have to sit there and take it. For today’s strip, I’d like to point out that (a) most teenagers who want the new Twilight movie “for their girlfriend” (who “lives in Canada,” probably) are almost certainly capable of finding bootleg movies on the Internet, obviating the need to go offer some improbable story to a sketchy Kiwi tattoo artist, and (b) a vision of Batman t-shirt teen alternately crying and masturbating to the latest Twilight film jumped into my head unbidden upon reading the final panel.

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Dennis the Menace, 12/6/11

Dennis is bad at eating, inevitably ending up covered with half-masticated food, misaimed condiments, and slobber.

Mary Worth, 12/6/11

Mary has now completely forgotten about the missing Emily Smith, and has ironically become fixated on the idea that she might be losing her memory instead.

Six Chix, 12/6/11

Due to her family’s poverty, this little girl isn’t going to college, and indeed will probably die of malnutrition long before she has a chance to graduate from high school.

Pluggers, 12/6/11

Pluggers like to swing with other couples from their church.