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Dennis the Menace, 12/15/06

I’m not sure why Dennis’ persistent and willfully non-menacing behavior makes me so mad, but it does, it does. Dennis, you had damn well be heading right for the aforementioned closet with the intention of sorting through all the presents, determining that most of them are “lame,” taking them back to the store where Mom bought them and exchanging them for cash, using that cash to buy the most powerful BB gun they’ll sell to a child, and then heading down to the overpass to shoot out the windshields of innocent motorists. That’s being a menace, by God.

By the way, if it’s December, any child with even the most basic concept of how numbers work knows exactly how many days there are left until Christmas. In America, that’s how most of us learn to subtract.

Mark Trail, 12/15/06

So is this it? Is Mark Trail just going to be all lonely, confused animals in the woods all the time now? Is it going to turn into Mutts? Is that it? No punching, just Mutts with a slightly broader species range of adorable creatures?

Rusty is looking more and more hideously deformed every day, and his front teeth are looking buckier and buckier. I’m beginning to think he’s caught beaver.

The Phantom, 12/15/06

Right, so, um, yesterday? When I said it would be awesome to see the president personally beat somebody up? Well, I was pretty much just joking. Turns out it actually makes me kind of uncomfortable. In President Luaga’s defense, though, Denton did take his glasses off in panel two, which totally means that he’s asking for it.

Family Circus, 12/15/06

“And Easter came before Halloween so that Zombie Jesus had a chance to get good and hungry for brains by October 31.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/29/06

You know, suddenly this is the first Funky Winkerbean sequence I’ve unironically enjoyed since I rejoined the new gloomed up version of the strip. I love the musical notes floating in the air — is it stripper music? Is it Christmas music? Is it somehow, wonderfully, both? I love the way that Santa’s thick black belt, such an iconic part of his thoroughly asexual garb, has suddenly been transformed with a vague aura of S&M. But mostly, I love the way that everyone is leering at sexy Santa with naked lust — except for the mother-to-be, who looks on in unalloyed horror, as if only she can see how very, very wrong this is, and she’s thinking, “My God, has everyone else gone insane?”

Apartment 3-G, 11/29/06

Wow, so yesterday when I guessed that this was Alan’s beatnik buddy I was pretty much kidding, but it looks like it actually is … I think. Just like I think that’s Alan in panel three in the cowboy hat. Or maybe it’s Lu Ann’s cousin Blaze, who’s partial to cowboy wear. Or even Eric Mills, whose Hat Man tendencies might go both ways, if you catch my drift. God damn, this feature would be easier to follow if the men didn’t all look a alike.

Dennis the Menace, 11/29/06

Dennis further erodes his Menace status by getting a co-ed group together and then playing the least threatening game of doctor in the history of prepubescence. Joey, meanwhile, is looking more like a child prostitute with every appearance in this strip.

Judge Parker, 11/29/06

You know, I remember the good old days, when the press would focus on the issues, like the fact that Randy Parker is unmarried and therefore almost certainly a homosexual and thus totally unfit for the bench, instead of feeding the politics of personal destruction and mentioning the fact that the totally heterosexual and not at all gay Reggie Black’s wife’s breath stinks of liquor. Jackals!

Luann, 11/29/06

Wait, Brad was planning on painting his living room black? Did he buy a blacklight and some Cypress Hill posters too? Did he think he was going to star in a spinoff strip called Brad and TJ Are Really, Really High All The Time?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/29/06

When did June become the villain in a Dickens novel? And when did Rex Morgan start shilling for McDonald’s?

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They’ll Do It Every Time, 11/22/06

“Douglas Iannuci” is a distinctive name; having seen it fairly often in the comments section of this blog, it immediately caught my eye at the bottom of the TDIET. So take a bow, Douglas, from down there in the balmy Virgin Islands! I hope for your sake that the Pestina in your life doesn’t actually fly into these sorts of Scadutized rages over old flames.

For me, the best part of this cartoon is that Pestina is giving Fignewt the third degree about his prom, which, from all appearances, must have happened about thirty years before.

The Phantom, 11/22/06

The Ghost-Who-Walks has a whole bevy of tricks that work on two-year-olds. “See, he’s right there … GASP! OH MY GOSH, THE ONLY THING I CAN SEE THERE NOW IS AN OBJECT THAT IS LARGER THAN HE IS! WHERE COULD HE POSSIBLY BE???”

Gil Thorp, 11/22/06

You know, if I were Liz Ritter’s mom, I’d care less about some imagined defects in Stormy Hicks’ character and more about the fact that he’s a whiny little brat. “Waaah, everybody is paying attention to me and judging me all the time, waah waah waah.” If you haven’t been following Gil Thorp, words cannot even describe how uninterested I am in telling you how we got to this point. I mostly wanted to point out the dude half-heartedly doing the robot in the first panel, and say that “Liz Ritter all but forces Stormy Hicks to go to The Bucket” may be the greatest sentence every constructed in the English language.

Hi and Lois, 11/22/06

Since Lois is a classic cartoon stick figure, I’m not even going to get into the horrifying body issues going on here. I’m more intrigued by the fact that Hi is sitting unshaven, unkept, and decidedly unattractive on the bed in his old man pajamas, while Lois is parading around in what appears to be a football jersey over a slip. Presumably it’s the uniform of the local high school quarterback, who she’s banging on the side because her schlub of a husband can’t satisfy her.

Mark Trail, 11/22/06

Oh, man, say what you will about the interminable buildups in Mark Trail, but once the action starts, it does not disappoint. Check out the flying strands of mullet in panel two. It almost makes up for the semantic nightmare of a sentence coming out Mark’s mouth in panel three.

Mary Worth, 11/22/06

Ye cats, Mary has expressed a genuine human emotion! It’s only in thought balloon form, of course, and it’s evil, but it’s a start. Still, it’s kind of condescending of her to offer to run errands for Ella right after Ella makes a point of saying that she’s not an invalid. Maybe Mary will grab “Citizen Cane” (so awful, yet so awesome) as she heads out the door to make sure the new biddy knows who’s boss.

Yeah, that’s real funny, smart guy. I can’t wait to come back hours from now, when you’re still holding that balloon up in the air like a jackass.