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Dennis the Menace and Gasoline Alley, 12/18/23

Christmas is just a week away, and that means our beloved (?) legacy comic strip characters are starting to interact with, or perhaps perform as, mall Santas. How’s that going? Well, Dennis is showing that the real menace is the slow process by which enchantment seeps out of the world; he sits a good distance away from Santa, presumably for liability reasons, and instead of opening up about what he most wants as a gift, he’s interrogating him about how his mythical powers fit into the regulatory framework of the modern state. But Gasoline Alley for all its faults still understands the chaos that’s necessary to make magic seem real. Rufus will say “Ho ho ho” if he wants to! No rules constrain these elves, and that’s why small children believe they can deliver livestock to neighborhoods that are very much not zoned for it.

Crock, 12/18/23

One of the dilemmas to be contemplated in a world like Crock, where sapient animals coexist with people, is whether we’re dealing with a spectrum of intelligence, and if so how that maps on to the spectrum we already know about for human beings. Is a child human, by virtue of his humanity, smarter than an adult animal? Would a person of any level of intelligence of learning know more about a camel’s biology than a camel himself? These are fun things to think about when you’re trying very hard not to imagine a camel’s hump bursting like a giant pimple, sending a rush of pus and blood flowing over his haunches onto the sand below.

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Dustin, 12/10/23

A problem in comics in which nobody ages is that the viewpoint characters birth year gets later and later, even though their creators get older and older, creating an increasingly dissonant portrayal. This just gets exacerbated in strips like Dustin, which were deliberately created to do Generation Gap commentary, and whose Boomers vs. Millennials origin has now drifted confusingly into Gen X vs. Zoomers without getting any of the signifiers right. Like, Dustin’s parents now are clearly in the early-to-mid 50s, an age range I know [cough] a little bit about, and I’m here to tell you that in 2023 those people are not the ones somehow leaving the house without their wallet but with a checkbook. Anyway, I guess the final panel is supposed to be from the viewpoint of the customer service worker, who’s visualizing Helen as being from a different era, but I’m choosing to believe that Helen is actually so charmed by the fancy, old-fashioned process of writing a check that she feels like a pretty, pretty princess.

Dennis the Menace, 12/10/23

Look, I understand that the daily and Sunday strips for many legacy properties are done by entirely separate creative teams because … well, actually, I don’t understand why that happens, but I do understand that it’s a thing that does happen, and I think that if it does, the daily people and the Sunday people should check in with each other once in a while, you know?

Shoe, 12/10/23

I actually really appreciate the way that Skyler locks heavy-lidded eyes with us in the little mini-panel in the middle of this strip. “Brace yourself for the punchline,” he’s telling us. “It’s gonna suck ass.”

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Pluggers, 12/9/23

Sure, “pluggers lead incredibly boring lives and can’t think of anything even vaguely interesting to put into a letter” is a pretty funny bit. But when you think about the fact that Pluggers is a comic composed entirely of anecdotes derived from letters sent in by pluggers, and what we see are the most interesting out of them — well, let’s just say there are a lot of layers to this one.

Mary Worth, 12/9/23

Oh, ha ha, the ‘roided out ex-cop isn’t even in a relationship yet and he’s already seething with suspicion and jealousy? This can only go good places!

Hi and Lois, 12/9/23

The thing I like most here is the detail that Irma has rented this leaf blower. Like, she could’ve bought one as a permanent addition to the family toolset; maybe its ease of use would get Thirsty to take care of the yard more often! But actually cleaning up the leaves has long taken a back seat to revenge in this particular ongoing marital dispute, and she only needs the leaf blower for an afternoon for that.

Dennis the Menace, 12/9/23

Oh no, Dennis the Menace did a sort of accurate generation gap comic! I take no pleasure in reporting this.