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What could be more obvious, more crank-turningly predictable than pre-Labor Day back-to-school themes? Nothing, that’s what! So let’s get started!

Dennis the Menace, 08/31/07

Here’s an archetypical back-to-school strip: cozy old theme, a little wordplay, easy on the menace, bang, out of the studio and beat the bridge traffic to the shore. Oh, and Alice Mitchell looks hot in that old-school put-together way. Knows it, too. Mmmm. But I digress.

Curtis, 08/31/07

Nobody turns the crank like Ray Billingsley — it’s like he’s the one working a desk at the DMV. Michelle spurned Curtis? Check! Here comes “Mom won’t buy what I want” as night follows day. Cue Magical Gunk! Barry, wet up that bed! On in five, “Onion”! Greg, smoke ’em if you got ’em! How Billingsley must pray for Kwanzaa, when the mushrooms ripen at last and his mind can soar free.

Crankshaft, 08/31/07

Tom Batiuk once had no peer at whimsy — the hall-monitor machine gun, soliloquies atop the gym rope, band gales. All swept from the cancerscape of FW of course, and alive in Crankshaft only as this ham-handed pretext ginned up to showcase Ed’s relentless petty spite.

Sally Forth, 08/31/05 and 08/28/07

Hey, look — Hilary’s going into the sixth grade. Stretchin’ right out, too — King Features might want to rethink that “precocious 10-year-old” business. And I’m pretty sure that’s her Dad’s manic glint in the second strip. Poor Sally.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Dennis the Menace, 8/27/07

It’s not particularly hard to parse the look Alice is giving Dennis in this panel — I’m pretty sure that something along the lines of “Fine, don’t chew, you’ll just be all the more likely to choke to death so we can be free of you” is running through her head. The fact that she’s wearing a black cocktail dress adds to her aura of icy disdain, but it seems kind of out-of-place at a family dinner for just the three of them. Perhaps this is a glimpse into the alternate-reality version of the strip, Dennis, Viscount of Stokington? That would explain the ultra-formal attire: the whole noble family is supping at their seat, Menacing House, with Henry, the 16th Marquess of Forth and Stoke, despairing that his unruly heir will ever be considered cultured enough to follow in his footsteps to Eton and Oxbridge.

Family Circus, 8/27/07

Hooray for the coloring gnomes, who apparently noticed that the caption here makes reference to “leaves … starting to change” and actually colored the leaves in the background accordingly! That doesn’t forgive the obvious and unexplained dollop of red at the end of Billy’s football, however. The ball is too blunt to stab anybody with, so presumably our little towheaded psychopath killed an innocent in some other way, then dipped the football in the spilled blood, hoping to thereby gain totemic power.

Mary Worth, 8/27/07

Great Jesus Christ, do I want to know why Mary was apparently sitting on Dr. Jeff’s lap while he was doing something “tiresome” at the computer? Or why she has that bizarre, fixed smile on her face? Leaving Jeff to go to bed in what appears to be the middle of the afternoon? Please, take us back to Dr. Drew, with his Star Trek-themed three-way fantasies, I’m begging you.

Momma, 8/27/07

I’m assuming that “– you know — life” is code for “the facts of life” which is in turn code for “the basics of human sexuality and reproduction.” Momma’s clearly right to pick her battles, as nobody, least of all us poor readers, would want to see the how her core values on sexuality — that any woman who has sex before marriage, or enjoys it afterwards, is no better than a common harlot — would be received. But maybe a bit of an explanation would have made things better for her son.

Pluggers, 8/27/07

Normally I just snicker immaturely at pluggers from my elevated position as an East Coast cultural elitist, but today’s installment strikes me as quite poignant. As our plugger hero stirs with furrowed brow, he almost seems to be saying a little prayer: Please, Lord, let me poop tonight. Please. I try to be a good person. I think it’s been nearly a week.

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Apartment 3-G, 8/26/07

Oh my God, Tommie is a whore! And I don’t mean this in the usual misogynist sense of the word, implying that women who enjoy sex, perhaps with multiple partners, are to be stigmatized, while men who engage in similar activities are subject to manly approbation. No, I mean this literally, in the sense that her decisions about sexual activity are entirely determined by the possibilities of financial recompensation. Struggling theater dork? No! Moneyed computer dork? Yes! We see how it works, Tommie. All those people who keep sizing her up as she walks around thought-ballooning aren’t looking at her ass or seeing if she has toilet paper on her shoe; they’re thinking, “Can I afford her?”

Mary Worth, 8/26/07

Speaking of thought balloons, panel one of today’s Mary Worth, in which Dr. Drew spends an idle, distracted moment (possibly during surgery) imagining the severed heads of his two girlfriends eyeing each other suspiciously, is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.

I’ve been disappointed before by the soap opera comics (most recent example: the pathetic, deflated end to the initially so, so promising “Coach Kaz, P.I.” storyline in Gil Thorp), but I can’t conceive of circumstances under which the next few weeks of Mary Worth aren’t going to be absolutely hilarious. The Love Doctor uses his patented passive-aggressive-minus-the-aggression heartbreaking technique on Girlfriend #1, while firing on all cylinders to overcome the challenge of getting into the starched panties of Girlfriend #2, and both #1 and #2 live in the same building? Comedy gold, I tells ya. Of course, if any of his past, present, or future conquests find out that he conducts internal monologues about his love life studded with elaborate Star Trek metaphors, he’ll never have sex again.

Panel from Dennis the Menace, 8/26/07

Sunday’s Dennis the Menace is mostly unworthy of mention, except for this horrifying glimpse of a young Mr. Wilson, who resembles nothing so much as a pompadoured gnome.

And hey! A big shout-out to faithful reader Matt, who recognized me tonight when we were both attending and enjoying the latest Charm City Roller Girls bout. I’m pretty sure that this was the first time I’ve been spotted in public someplace where I hadn’t announced in advance that I’d be there (i.e., my weekend in NYC a couple of months ago doesn’t count). My wife actually has been recognized before, but then she leaves the house a lot more often than I do. Matt says he doesn’t post comments, but you may remember him as the recipient of a charming Aldomania-themed birthday greeting.