Post Content

Mary Worth, 10/1/23

OK, I had a whole thing ready to go here about how the Sunday strips represent Mary’s self-aggrandizing memories/interpretations of events but the daily strips represent reality, because earlier this week Mary nosily asked Keith whether he had any family, yet in today’s version of the sequence we see him offering that information freely. But those thoughts were immediately blasted from my mind by the revelation that Keith has a SECRET (maybe even secret to him???) CHILD who has managed to track him down after only a few days in his new home. Maybe because Mary was tweeting about him nonstop on the official Charterstone Twitter account that she set up after Wilbur taught her to use social media? Anyway, I hope everyone is going to be curious and not judgmental about Keith’s unorthodox family situation!

Hi and Lois, 10/1/23

In 2011, the Huffington Post published an article entitled “What time does the Superbowl start?” which became legendary among those of us who toil in the mines of internet content for its naked understanding that internet publishing was about finding the answers to things people were looking for in the next ten seconds, not crafting clever headlines or providing in-depth information or whatever. It’s a milestone that probably passed unnoticed to most normies, even though we now live in a world mostly spawned by the same engine, where, for instance, physical restaurants have names like “Thai Food Near Me.” Anyway, more than a decade later, it seems that Hi and Lois is trying to get into the search engine optimization game, sadly unaware that Google does not index text in image files.

Dennis the Menace, 10/1/23

Oh, Henry! It seems that you’ve achieved every good thing in your life only as an act of revenge against those who doubted you

Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/29/23

Believe me, if there’s one bit of empathy doing this blog for multiple decades has granted me, it’s the understanding that it’s actually really a grind to come up with a new joke every day indefinitely, so I don’t blame comics writers for latching onto whatever they can as a a prompt. Blondie in particular loves to use fake holidays made up for marketing purposes to hang their jokes on, and that’s what I assumed was going on here, but a little Googling shows that “Contrarian Day” simply is not a thing — it mostly seems to occur in the phrase “contrarian day trader,” which is a sort of person who, if some very sad Reddit threads are any indication, frequently loses a lot of money. Anyway, you’d think he could’ve just said “Opposite Day?” That isn’t any kind of official holiday either, but at least it’s been sanctified by numerous cruel teens, right after they tell you that your clothes look nice.

Dennis the Menace, 9/29/23

What’s the menace here? That Dennis is revealing to his mother that his father has a comely assistant? That Dennis is accusing his father of being bad at his job and needing help? Neither: it’s that his father has violated their community’s WASP code and hired [shudder] an Italian.

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 9/28/23

Look, Mr. Wilson, I know your irritating neighbor has pushed you to the brink of madness, but when a couple renews their vows, that doesn’t represent a “reset” where they can decide they actually want to be child-free and any progeny they’ve already sired simply wink out of existence. That’s not how vow renewals work, or how children work, or how the progression of linear time works.

Dustin, 9/28/23

This kid voluntarily hangs out with Dustin all the time, which is a big clue the he’s not in a great place, but after today’s strip I really think someone should be looking into his home life, because it seems like it might be pretty grim.

Mary Worth, 9/28/23

“Sometimes,” he continued, “it’s not about what you like, it’s about what you need — what you need in terms of protein to maintain your massive, rippling physique, and how efficiently you can ingest it.” Then, without further ado, he shoved his face into the pan and started slurping.