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Momma, 6/13/06

I think if Samuel Beckett were to write a comic about the meaningless empty void at the heart of a lonely, embittered old woman, it would look something like this. He’d leave out the reaction shot in the third panel, though; Momma’s depressing hobbies speak for themselves.

Dennis the Menace, 6/13/06

While appreciate the fact that Dennis is annoying Mr. Wilson with some 50 Cent or Korn or whatever the hell it is kids listen to today to annoy old people, and the fact that Joey is continuing to wear that incomprehensible pink belly shirt, I have to say that after some exhaustive research I’ve come to the conclusion that this panel contains no jokes of any kind. Ignoring for the moment the fact that nobody actually calls it “kids’ music”, the sentence is set up so that it seems like “drives grownups crazy” is supposed to be some play on words, despite the fact that it so clearly is not. Instead, Dennis is just saying “We like music that they don’t!” Mr. Wilson should punch him.

Mary Worth, 6/13/06

“I have to hand it to you Kelly! Living with a knife-wielding stab-frenzied maniac like me! I know it isn’t easy!”

Seriously, I hate to call for a savage knife attack, but it’s the only thing that would liven this up. She’s got one too — maybe they can manage to kill each other off, Hamlet-style.

Hi and Lois, 6/13/06

Note to Hi and Lois: if you draw your punchline and then have to have a character explain it, it’s probably time for a rethink.

In Finger Quotin’ Margo news, it looks like even Hollywood superstars are trying to get in on the action. Check out the video below; around the thirty second mark, you’ll see Britney Spears perpetrate the most misguided finger quotes in the history of television journalism.

(This is the first time I’ve tried to put one of these YouTube thingies on my site, so let me know if it causes something to go horribly wrong.)

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Dennis the Menace, 6/7/06

Yeah, your grandpa pretty much sounds like a loser, kid. I’m all for good sportsmanship and everything, but if you go around telling your friends stuff like this, I think you are pretty much permanently banned from referring to yourself as a “menace”.

9 Chickweed Lane and Pluggers, 6/7/06

If you had asked me this morning which two features would be using the same joke today, this is not a pairing I would have come up with.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/7/06

Rex looks increasingly agitated as this strip progresses. “God damn them and their medical mumbo-jumbo! Impersonating a doctor is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought. OK, what am I going to do if one of them asks me a question? There’s got to be a way to change the subject of this conversation to ice cream.”

Gil Thorp, 6/7/06

What’s wrong with him? How much time do you have, exactly, Coach?

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Dennis the Menace, 5/2/06

Hello and welcome to our latest quasi-recurring Comics Curmudgeon feature, from the geniuses who brought you What They Say And What They Mean — it’s What’s The Deal? Basically, this feature happens when nothing really excites me in the comics and so I just pick out one little detail and nitpick about it. (“Which is different from usual how?” you say. Ha ha ha!) Our first installment concerns Dennis the Menace’s little friend Joey. Joey appears to have exactly zero hair on his head, except for a longish lock right between his eyebrows. This is pretty punk rock, except that, while we don’t really know that much about Joey, we know that he is very, very much not punk rock.

So, in short: Joey’s hair — what’s the deal?

(Other What’s The deal? candidates in this panel: the hyphen in “veg-tables,” and Joey’s brown yet still translucent drink, which looks a little too much like this. But I’ve always wondered about his hair.)

Tune in for future installments of What’s The Deal, where we ask tough questions like, “Is ‘coffee cake’ supposed to sound slutty? Because it doesn’t!” and “Mallard Fillmore exists? What the hell?”