Post Content

Hi and Lois, 3/8/09

My goodness, today’s Hi and Lois presents one of the most searing indictments of standard-issue suburban heteronormality that I’ve ever seen — it certainly strikes me as more compelling than Revolutionary Road, which, I should confess, I didn’t see, because it looked pretty snoresville. Side note: I think Revolutionary Road should have been marketed as a Titanic sequel, and framed as a dream sequence going through Leo DiCaprio’s character’s mind as he froze to death in the North Atlantic, imagining what his life would be like if he survived and married Kate Winslet’s character. The numb, soul-crushing lifestyle he envisions for their future would really just reflect the fact that his body and mind are shutting down in the icy waters.

Wait, where was I? Oh, right, Hi and Lois. Lois, driven completely bonkers by her unruly brood, contemplates just leaving, just walking out, getting some “fresh air” and not coming back. Her wide-eyed look in the next-to-last panel is particularly harrowing: she’s just staring off to space, thinking, “What if I just keep standing here? They say that freezing to death is just like falling asleep. You don’t even feel anything. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice to fall asleep in the nice white fluffy snow, forever?” Eventually, she decides that venturing into her hell-house is marginally better than dying of frostbite, so she turns around and returns, a wan little smile on her face.

The first two throwaway panels add an extra little bit of awful to the whole affair. “Woah,” Hi says, “Your mother sure looks like she’s about at her breaking point! I’m just going to take this newspaper with me to the bathroom and not come out again for the rest of the night.” At least Chip doesn’t actively flee when asked to help, though I note that he “took over” without once getting off the couch or even looking up from the tiny little screen on his cell phone.

Mary Worth, 3/8/09

On that note, I should mention that Mary Worth appears to be setting itself up to compete with the recently completed “sometimes we slap and terrify our partners because we love them too much” Mark Trail storyline in the repressive patriarchy department. Adrian may be a full-grown adult and a doctor to boot, but we’ll soon learn what happens when a fragile, vulnerable, young little girl attempts to choose her own husband: betrayal and grifting and heartbreak and despair. Once Ted has left town with her life savings, Adrian will finally agree to the plan her father has been pushing all along: an arranged marriage with the son of Dr. Jeff’s neighbors, so that their children will eventually inherit both estates and achieve a higher status in the ranks of the local landed gentry.

Family Circus, 3/8/09

Ah, NyQuil — is there any problem you can’t solve?

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 3/8/09

There’s nothing Mr. Wilson longs for more than to pound back a few bourbons, get in his car, and slam himself into a tree.

Crankshaft, 3/8/09

Ha ha! It’s funny because Crankshaft is old, and all his friends are dying!

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 3/5/09

Our soldiers are refusing to take performance-enhancing drugs, like steroids, because they prefer non-performance-enhancing drugs, like heroin.

Blondie, 3/5/09

Dagwood’s transformation into a Howard Hughes-style, urine-jar-storing shut-in begins today.

Dennis the Menace, 3/5/09

“Plus you keep downloading viruses from all those porn sites.”

(Possibly more menacing alternative: “Plus I keep downloading viruses from all those porn sites.”)

Family Circus, 3/5/09

Jeffy finds himself encrusted with filth with such depressing regularity that he has established some sort of rating system for it.

Hi and Lois, 3/5/09

Hi and Lois is attempting to match Ziggy’s patented brand of second-rate empty-background existentialist absurdism — and, sadly, coming up fairly short.

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 2/1/09

“OH NO,” I thought as I read today’s Dennis the Menace, “THIS IS AS NON-MENACING AS IT GETS!” Dennis having sleepy-time fun, engaging in ludicrously wholesome pursuits with Mr. Wilson? “MAN, I LOVE PISTACHIO!” “I LIKE STRAWBERRY!” Gah! SO NOT MENACING AT ALL.

But really, give this strip a moment’s thought (which, for the record, is about three-quarters of a moment more than it deserves). Look at the fixed, deranged grin on Mr. Wilson’s face, particularly in the first panel of the second row. The poor man is obviously not enjoying himself; he’s a mere puppet in Dennis’s dreamworld, where the towheaded monster is all-powerful and is forcing the put-upon retiree to leave his comfortable home and consort with his greatest nemesis. Dennis’s plea in the final panel isn’t some cutesy, childish inability to understand the difference between dreams and reality; in fact, he has created some kind of Nightmare On Elm Street shared universe with the fitfully sleeping Mr. Wilson up the street, who is being compelled by forces he doesn’t understand to frolic for another’s amusement. Dennis thinks he’s getting Mr. Wilson to “have fun,” but like most children, he doesn’t understand that his likes and dislikes aren’t shared by everybody. George Wilson will run and fish and hike and eat ice cream, a rictus smile on his face, until he drops dead of a heart attack.

And even if this really is just an ordinary dream, one has to wonder about Dennis’s unhealthy fixation on his elderly neighbor, to the exclusion of others who might actually want to go fishing and hiking with him. One imagines him breathlessly recounting this wonderful dream over the breakfast table, while he father silently dies inside.

Mark Trail, 2/1/09

OH MY GOD ADORABLE TINY LITTLE MOUSE DANGLING OFF OF DISCARDED DEER ANTLER = CUTEST MARK TRAIL IMAGE EVER!!!!!!

I’m increasingly concerned about Mark Trail’s mixed messages; first he’s all “Wild animals are not pets” but now he’s like “Sure, go right up to that deer and look in its mouth to figure out how old it is, can’t see anything going wrong with that.” At least he didn’t give the answer I expected, which was to cut the deer in half and count the rings.