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Archive: Dennis the Menace

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Plague of skeeters

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Beetle Bailey, 6/10/11

You might have doubts that Plato, Camp Swampy’s resident braniac, would pass his time reading the bluntly named Weird Stuff. But at least he’s leagues ahead of Beetle, who apparently isn’t intellectually equipped to deal with words or even pictures and is instead just perusing some publication that consists entirely of colored squares arranged in simple patterns. “Ooh, it’s the red-yellow issue!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/10/11

What are we to make of the fact that a host of mosquitos buzz into this strip only after we learn that Eliviney has doused herself with some dubious home-made insect repellent? It could be that we’re supposed to believe that this homemade Off knockoff is of such low quality that it actually attracts bugs; however, I prefer to think that Hootin’ Holler, among all of its other well-known negative qualities, is permanently afflicted by thousands of mosquitos, whose presence we normally aren’t privy to because they’d be tedious to draw. Panel two shows us the hellish bug-world in which the characters live at all times, just to emphasize why extreme measures of homemade chemistry are necessary in this case.

Dennis the Menace, 6/10/11

Dennis and Joey are already gravitating towards activities that compensate for their lack of skills. I guess having low expectations for yourself is kind of menacing?

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Possibly the geekiest post ever on this blog

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Mark Trail, 6/5/11

It’s not often that Mark Trail sends me on an etymological adventure, but now the hunt is on! I was very suspicious that the loon was the ultimate origin of the word “loony,” and sure enough, a quick trip to the dictionary shows that it’s actually a 19th century slang abbreviation for “lunatic,” which, as the spelling implies, is derived from the Latin luna, or moon, since it was once believed that the phases of the moon affected mental states. I had assumed that “loon” as a synonym for crazy person shared the same derivation, but that seems murkier; the dictionary says it is in fact derived from the name of the bird (though “perhaps influenced by loony”), but has the bird’s name’s etymology somewhat different from the one Mark offers, deriving it from an Old Norse word for diver. Anyway, you might not enjoy sleuthing after word origins as much as I do, but surely this trip through the English language’s past has distracted you from that white-headed loon’s terrifying searing red eye blazing out at you soullessly from the final panel of this strip.

Crock, 6/5/11

Oh, look, Crock is celebrating the anniversary of D-Day! Isn’t that nice! Apparently the French Legionnaires of Crock are actually Vichy collaborators fighting for the Nazis? And they’re stationed in some desert section of Northern France? Eh, sure, why not, makes as much sense as anything else.

Dennis the Menace, 6/5/11

If Dennis is trying to up his menacing quotient, I’d say that staring at the Wilsons’ house through a fence for hours in eerie silence is doing a pretty good job of it!

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Saturday quickies

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Dick Tracy, 6/4/11

Dick Tracy is about to face his most sinister villain yet: Dagwood Bumstead. Will his inevitable ironic death involve a huge sandwich?

Gil Thorp, 6/4/11

“Plus, everyone knows they don’t cut boys’ sports! Ha ha! Hey, let’s go back in and read the paper in the coach’s office for another two or three hours!”

Dennis the Menace, 6/4/11

Oh, man, look how darn happy Dennis’s mom looks! She ain’t coming back.