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Dennis the Menace, 5/9/08

Dennis, you little devil! See, Dennis gave milk to Hot Dog without asking his parents, and it got splashed all over the carpet, and it’ll be impossible to get it out, and once it spoils, the living room is going to REEK! Ha ha! SO MENACING!

OK, no, there’s no way to get any menace out of this. Seriously, he’s making an adorable statement about a purring kitty-cat. At this point, he’s out-Jeffying Jeffy.

Family Circus, 5/9/08

Case in point. At least this panel has taken the crowd-pleasing step of showing us Jeffy being grievously injured.

Apartment 3-G, 5/9/08

What is Alan smoking? I mean this question quite literally. “Pipe” plus “rock” equals “crack,” obviously, but the lingo has been inconsistent enough that I’m still holding out for heroin, which you can in fact smoke from a pipe if you’re a-scared of needles. I’m not sure why I’m rooting for the horse; maybe it’s an act of local pride (Baltimore being something of a heroin town), or maybe because being a junkie has a bit more old-school charm than being a crackhead. I’m certainly hoping that all this fuss isn’t over marijuana (OH MY GOD AN ARTIST SMOKES POT WHO WOULD HAVE EVER THOUGHT?).

I do like the mournful, baffled way in which Alan is regarding his toothbrush in panel two. “Wait, is this my pipe? Oh, God, I’m so [APPROPRIATE SLANG TERM] on [DRUG]!”

Herb and Jamaal, 5/9/08

Jamaal and Yolanda have carried mutual but unrequited torches for each other for pretty much the whole time I’ve been reading this strip. They’re like the Mulder and Scully of mediocre comic strips that nobody really reads. That’s the context for the first panel, which must surely count as the most awkward attempt to shift gears from friendship to romance in the history of human interaction. Of course, it quickly descends into madness, with Yolanda replying in a manner that no human being would, ever, just to set up a deeply lame joke, but I still can’t get past Jamaal’s super-smooth technique. What if she had taken it more positively? What would his next move had been? “How do you feel about friends kissing with tongues? How do you feel about one friend’s penis kissing another friend’s vagina?”

Dick Tracy, 5/9/08

“Yeah, you know, they do something really mundane, like rescue the police force’s two top officers with a 900-year-old weapon while an entire SWAT team is held at bay, and then stand around all needy, like they want a medal or something. Get a life, loser!”

In other news: Comic Sans has been banished! Huzzah!

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Herb and Jamaal, 5/8/08

Thank goodness Herb and Jamaal is at last casting its penetrating eye on our political process, using its typical rhetorical strategy of making sure that nobody and nothing is mentioned by name, or with any identifying features of any kind. “CANDIDATES MAKE NEW PROMISES!” Heavens to murgatroid! What won’t these slimy politicians do to achieve elected office of some sort? They probably also “EXPLAIN POLICIES” and “ATTACK OPPONENTS!” They’d better watch out, though, because they might get “EMBROILED IN SCANDAL” or “QUESTIONED ON CONTROVERSY!”

Actually, you know what? That’s pretty much how most of political coverage in the newspaper really goes. Now I’m depressed.

Dennis the Menace, 5/8/08

So, will Dennis “disappear” in the sense of “sold to some shady Albanian businessmen and end up cleaning toilets in a mansion in Dubai?” Or in the sense of “entombed in concrete and dumped into the resevoir?” Alice’s face seems to indicate a certain detached curiosity, but little else.

Momma, 5/8/08

I’m not sure what the little dots in front of Francis’s half-crossed eyes in panel two are supposed to represent, but I think Momma may have just punched him in the face.

Pluggers, 5/8/08

Some kind of meat … little salty … tastes a little like chick–OH MY GOD HAROLD OH MY GOD

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Hey, it seems like a lot of the comics put out by King Features did an Earth Day tribute today! Let’s take a look at three of the strips that took this very nice day when we should be thinking about the environment and made it sick and wrong.

Mary Worth, 4/22/08

Mary Worth may actually be the strip that most successfully incorporated the holiday into its inner milieu, since it provides a perfect platform for Mary’s suffocating sanctimony. “So, what did you do, Toby? Oh, had dinner with some friends? Breathing the precious oxygen that the tree I planted is putting out? Well, that sounds nice, if frivolous.”

Beetle Bailey, 4/22/08

Beetle Bailey willfully and horrifyingly misconstrues the concept of tree-hugging, which is nothing new for this strip. Today we’re forced to contemplate repulsive man-on-tree sex of the sort usually reserved for the most depraved hentai comics.

Dennis the Menace, 4/22/08

Dennis the Menace actually just added a new, Earth Day-friendly caption to a pre-existing comic in which Dennis takes Joey to secluded forest clearing and forces him to dig a shallow grave for himself.