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Dennis the Menace, 4/17/07

It’s easy to feel like you don’t make a difference in this cruel world, but every once in a while you realize that concentrated effort can effect change. For instance, lately I think I’ve detected a modest but measurable uptick in menacing on the part of Dennis Mitchell, and I’m more than willing to credit that to the hectoring from this site. Today’s installment is particularly delicious, as Dennis manages to emasculate his father on two levels: by revealing to a third party that his wife openly flirts with other men, and by suggesting that he make a pass at this strappling officer of the law. The look of barely internalized rage on Henry’s face might suggest savage beatings down the road, but the Mitchells are a civilized clan: presumably some act of psychological warfare will be perpetrated against his son instead.

Mark Trail, 4/17/07

Speaking of savage beatings, I can’t wait to see the epic fisticuffs that will soon break out in this dingy hotel room, reducing the cheap furniture to so much kindling. In the second panel, the reason for Mark’s tie becomes obvious: for a brief moment, Dan has mistaken Mark for a Mormon missionary, and that instant of confusion gives our hero the opening he needs to force his way in and get all shouty shouty.

Apartment 3-G, 4/17/07

I have a great memory for useless trivia, and it’s both a blessing and a curse. For instance, most of you have probably long forgotten that more than six months ago Margo casually mentioned that she had an assistant, but I’ve been on tenterhooks to find out who this person was, or if the very existence of such an individual was just a figment of Margo’s bravado and need to look important and/or imagination. Today, we learn that she’s hired an attractive, younger fellow, naturally, though his unnaturally wide hair part and taste in powder blue polo shirts are unfortunate. While it’s impossible to say for sure, we can reasonably assume that he harbors lustful feelings in his heart for his boss, which her frequent outbursts of unreasonable rage only intensify.

By the way, Margo, I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but you were, strictly speaking, hired to, um, help. Don’t be mad at me.

Gil Thorp, 4/17/07

Oh, so he’s a preternaturally helpful old black man with a colorful nickname! Nice. I bet he has some real life lessons to impart to these young white people. Yup.

To be fair, if my name were “Otha,” I’d go by a nickname too. The fact that he likes to be called “Clambake” may indicate that his real agenda is to protect the Milford baseball team from Scientology.

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Mary Worth, 4/9/07

Grandstanding oddballs? Grandstanding oddballs? OK, this … this … the people behind Mary Worth have to be in on the joke. They have to be. This is the grand calling the kettle stand. The odd calling the kettle ball. Professor Ian Cameron is without a doubt the grandstandingest oddball who ever grandstanded. I mean, come on.

Also, check out that faraway look in his eyes as he waves his hand around at nobody in particular in panel two. I know we think of him as being uptight, but he is a liberal arts professor at a groovy California state university who wears “nonconformist” facial hair and likes to bust out the burnt sienna leisure suit and get down on occasion. He’s almost certainly chemically altered right now. They can’t show it in the comics, but I’m pretty sure that throughout this whole pool party sequence, the Charterstone communal bong has been just off-camera as it gets passed around. Maybe that’s why Vera took off so quickly: over in Pacific Cliffs, that millionaire’s stomping ground where she grew up, the mind-altering substances came in little bottles and were prescribed by your private physician, and she looks down on this bourgeois tokery.

Slylock Fox, 4/9/07

I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am that Cassandra Cat seems to now be a recurring character in Slylock Fox’s rogue gallery. You’ll note that she’s dyed her hair blonde since her last appearance in the strip, all the better to use her feminine wiles to slink out of a shoplifting conviction. Max Mouse is clearly besotted with a representative of the species that should by Cartoon Law be his greatest nemesis, which confirms once and for all that he’s an S&M submissive.

By the way, we also would have accepted “Because polygraphy is pseudoscience perpetrated by quacks, and Slylock’s half-assed guesses, based on equal parts induction and species prejudice, are just as likely to be accurate” as a correct solution to the puzzle.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 4/9/07

Careful TDIET readers (which category I trust includes ALL OF YOU) know that each daily panel, while a unique and brilliant masterpiece in and of itself, is often built out of a number of recurring elements and formulae, just like the epithets and set phrases that the ancient bards used to create the Homeric poems. I first encountered “the urge” in one of the very first TDIETs I commented on. Generally, the urge impels the urged to visit some horrible act of violence — usually something along the lines of skinning alive or burning to death — upon the perpetrator of whatever minor transgression is the subject of that day’s installment. Today, the urge is left unspecified: Alf is merely subject to it, and we are left to wonder just what variation upon it is rolling around his be-Kangoled head. It’s all no doubt baffling to the casual reader, but a nice treat for the true TDIET fan.

Dennis the Menace, 4/9/07

You know, as a comics reader, you sort of accept that your iconic characters are going to sport the same outfit day after day: Charlie Brown will always wear that yellow t-shirt with the raggedy black stripe, Dagwood Bumstead will always wear a tuxedo with a single dinner-plate-sized button in the middle of his chest, and Donald Duck will always wear the top half of a sailor suit, but, disturbingly, no pants or underwear. But scenes like this — where Dennis is wearing his typical red overalls and blue-and-black-striped shirt, and his mom is putting another instance of the same outfit, neatly folded, into a drawer that’s presumably full of them — make it harder to suspend your disbelief. Either Dennis has a serious undiagnosed case of OCD, or the Mitchells are very, very cheap and managed to get a deal in some kind of bulk sale on factory seconds.

Pluggers, 4/9/07

Once they quit the menial jobs that they hate, pluggers have very little reason to go anywhere or see anyone. Sometimes they just stay in bed for days.

Actually, sleeping in until noon is one of my very favorite things in the world, so, as a non-plugger, it’s disheartening to learn that I’ll be continuing to set an alarm even after I retire. I wonder what it is I’ll be doing so early in the morning? Having brunch with homosexuals where we drink mimosas and plot to undermine our commander-in-chief, no doubt.

By the way, apropos of nothing, I was checking out the Google search terms that brought people to my site today and discovered “make your boyfriend feel better when his dog dies” among them, and it really touched me. Nice lady (or perhaps fellow): just the fact that you’re trying will go a long way, honest.

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Apartment 3-G, 4/2/07

In part one of Soap Opera Strips I Haven’t Been Discussing Because They Have Been Boring To Me, Apartment 3-G’s interminable Lu Ann vs. Ghost Albert Pinkham Ryder storyline has been boring to me. There’s been days and days and days of crap exactly like the above, and yet none of it has advanced the plot a single iota. I have grabbed onto a shred of hope that the final panel here represents the possibility of some kind of resolution, as the dialogue would surely point to a murder-suicide scenario if one of the interlocutors weren’t already dead.

How long in strip time has Lu Ann been holed up in her paint-huffing paradise? It seems like months, which means that Tommie and Margo should jointly win the Worst Roommates In New York, Self-Absorbed Division. Shouldn’t Margo at least be concerned that Lu Ann has secretly accompanied Eric on his business trip for sexin’ purposes or something?

The Phantom, 4/2/07

In part two of Soap Opera Strips I Haven’t Been Discussing Because They Have Been Boring To Me, The Phantom’s interminable Old Man Mozz Is A Hostage To Bank Robbers storyline has been boring to me. There’s been a lot of fleeing bank robber dude, a lot of Phantom mind games, and way, way too much of Mozz’s gnomic, infuriatingly vague pronouncement. It appears that the Ghost Who’s Good With Knots is as bored with the diminutive sage’s blather as we are, but I do think that lynching him is a bit harsh.

Pluggers, 4/2/07

You know, I am in touch with my inner plugger enough to admit that I get some lower back twinges now and again myself, and I will say that, even on my back’s worst days, if I had to choose between bending over, and, say, allowing a heavy can to fall from above my head and bounce off of not one but both of my nipples — well, let’s just say that I’ve become quite adept at bending at the knees when need be. Admittedly, I don’t have the luxuriant man-boobs this plugger is sporting, but that’s gonna bruise.

Dennis the Menace, 4/2/07

Hmm, destroying your parents’ marriage by well-timed and almost imperceptible acts of psychological guerilla warfare? There might be hope for you yet, young menace. Well played.

Mark Trail, 4/2/07

Please be Dan’s corpse. Please be Dan’s corpse. Please be Dan’s corpse.