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Six Chix, 10/25/23

After yesterday’s debacle, I’m pleased to see today’s Six Chix, in which a corporate dog discusses his frustrations with measured dignity. There’s a fire hydrant in the foreground, and since this is a comic about dogs, I think we’re supposed to assume one of them will piss on it eventually. But they’re not rubbing our faces in it and I’m sure we can agree that when they do get around to it, they’ll do it in a normal and relatively wholesome fashion.

Dennis the Menace, 10/25/23

Hey, Dennis, since we’re talking body parts, where’s your neck? Pretty sure we should be able to see at least some of it from this angle, but instead it kind of looks like your head’s just floating an inch or so above your shoulders. Just to keep with the counting theme, you have zero necks, which is fewer necks than you should have!

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Dick Tracy, 10/18/23

Oh no! Why would you build a huge wing on the back of your mansion that has an entirely glass ceiling? Why, you’re just asking for someone to break through it and steal all your rare books in a daring heist! I swear, people don’t do any basic defensibility research before engaging in massive building projects anymore.

Beetle Bailey, 10/18/23

What with all the changes in social mores and tolerance over the past 30 to 50 years or so, you, the typical Beetle Bailey reader, are probably concerned: is it possible that Otto, the famous army dog, is a homosexual? Well, worry no more! He’s as straight as they come, and is attracted to human women, which is, uh, fine? We’ll say it’s fine.

Shoe, 10/18/23

The Perfesser is all gakked out on uppers and is now begging his connection for a little something to mellow him out. Seems a little edgy for a talking bird comic but what do I know!

Dennis the Menace, 10/18/23

“But she’s really worked hard to improve for this performance, and you can tell the audience is responding to it! I’m proud of her!”

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Blondie, 10/10/23

I once saw an interview with John Singleton and Stephanie Allain, the producers of the movie Hustle and Flow, about a scene where the characters kick a woman out of the house they’re living in, and how physical to make that confrontation, and they settled on using as a model Fred Flintstone gently yet firmly dropping Dino on the front stoop in the opening credits of The Flintstones. Fred’s act in turn has a context in the time not so long ago when people’s pets freely roamed outside much of the time and in particular were not expected to stay indoors at night, though dogs at least usually got their own little house in the yard for shelter. This was an arrangement that might still hold in rural areas of the U.S. today but has been unheard of in cities and suburbs long enough that I found it puzzling when I watched decades-old Flintstones reruns in the early ’80s; but legacy newspaper comics are the most ossified form of cultural production known to science, and so Blondie was still sticking with it as late as 2007. Today, finally, in the futuristic year 2023, we have confirmation that Daisy lives inside full-time with the Bumsteads (though frankly we knew even back then she slept indoors some nights). Honestly the most unrealistic thing happening here is that Elmo knows what a “doghouse” is.

Gasoline Alley, 10/10/23

I don’t want to sound like a killjoy but, talking bears aside, the moral of this Gasoline Alley plot seems to be “if you find a child and don’t know where their parents are, and the child seems to like you, you can use trickery and force to stop the evil government from attempting to reunite the child with said parents,” which seems, uh, not great? Obviously it would be worse if anyone read Gasoline Alley and it had any chance of influencing any opinions about anything, but still.

Dennis the Menace, 10/10/23

Setting whatever menace Dennis thinks he’s perpetrating here aside, we need to acknowledge his “dentist” is clearly just Mr. Wilson, who has “disguised” himself by shaving his mustache. As a retired postal carrier, Mr. Wilson lacks any of the skills necessary to be a safe dental practitioner, but I fear that’s exactly the point.

Hi and Lois, 10/10/23

Sure, working as cartoonist for a legacy newspaper comic is probably not that creatively fulfilling and doesn’t pay very well either. But when it comes to turning an annoying experience you had into a “joke” that you can be sure literally hundreds of people will read, it simply can’t be beat.