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Dennis the Menace, 2/15/23

I know the intended reading here is that Dennis is asking Mr. Wilson, who doesn’t like kids now, whether he (Mr. Wilson) liked kids when he was himself a kid. But they bolded one instead of were at the end of the question, which totally changes the meaning! If Dennis actually said this aloud with that emphasis, he’d be asking whether Mr. Wilson liked kids when he was one year old, specifically. And look, I’m no child development expert, but I’m pretty sure most one year olds barely know what other kids are and don’t really have strong opinions on them. Mr. Wilson at age one probably liked having a nipple in his mouth and an absence of sudden loud noises, and that’s a comprehensive list.

The Lockhorns, 2/15/23

I know Loretta being dissatisfied with Leroy’s earning power is one of the core jokes of this strip, but they’ve always been depicted as living in a decently sized suburban home, so I have to assume that Leroy’s decision to do his workout routine immediately behind the living room couch where Loretta is trying to entertain company is a deliberate and aggressive choice. I’m not sure if he’s trying and failing to impress this woman with his physical prowess, or if he’s aiming this behavior and Loretta and it boils down to the buch more basic “God, I hate my wife! Oh, is she not paying attention to me? We’ll fuckin’ see about that.”

Gasoline Alley, 2/15/23

A couple days ago, National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize nominee Joyce Carol Oates tweeted inquisitively about the comic strip Gasoline Alley, becoming the latest in a series of high-profile cultural commentators who are stealing my bit. Anyway, I hope her interest carried through till today, because I think she’d be quite intrigued to learn that the current storyline is about a little boy who’s about to freeze to death in the woods.

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Gil Thorp, 2/8/23

Oh, hey, remember Emmett Tays, the former Milford football player who presented Gil with his major award and told a fun story about how he and Gil bonded over their abusive parents? Well, he’s received his compensation for leading the Gil-adulation, in the form of a assistant coaching job that pays, on the orders of Dr. Pearl, half of what our dearly departed Coach Kaz was getting, which definitely won’t eventually give rise to a discrimination lawsuit of any kind.

Judge Parker, 2/8/23

Look, I don’t participate in the pill-popping lifestyle so I’m unfamiliar with its folkways, but I have to think it doesn’t actually involve just shaking a prescription bottle in the general direction of your mouth and hoping the tiny, delicious pills end up in there, or at least within tongue range. Even Tommy from Mary Worth is smart enough to know that you put the pills in your hand first, and Tommy is not smart at all.

Dennis the Menace, 2/8/23

Dennis, unaware of the many baroque ways in which the human body can beging to malfunction as it ages, is about to learn that there will come a time when he won’t be able to poop, even if he wants to. Truly, the menace has become the menaced today.

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Dennis the Menace, 1/29/23

True story: when I saw today’s Dennis the Menace title panel, my immediate thought was “Ha ha, surely this isn’t lovable scamp Dennis the Menace actually digging a grave, this is just illustrating a play on words like they sometimes do.” But, nope, turns out he is, in fact, digging a grave, and I gotta say, as far as comics about children digging graves go, this one, which is about a kid preparing a decent burial for the littlest member of his household, even when nobody else in his family will, contains as little menace as possible.

Gasoline Alley, 1/29/23

Have you ever wondered where, exactly, the syndicated newspaper comic strip Gasoline Alley takes place? Well, today’s strip doesn’t answer the question, exactly, but it does eliminate a lot of possibilities, mostly the area where people use dialect terms that can be spun into “fun facts.” Also it’s someplace where animals can talk, I guess.