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Gil Thorp, 8/31/23

So before we get football season underway, Milford’s students are doing some kind of Night At The Museum sleepover thing, only without the part where the exhibits come to life, probably. Anyway, I’m not sure what possibility is funnier: if Luke Hernandez’s pay at his new Milford coaching job is so low that he has to moonlight as a museum security guard, or if he’s just doing this as part of his job as a Milford faculty member and went out and bought a vaguely law-enforcement-y uniform to help him establish his authority as a chaperone. (The other possibility — that, as this summer’s Prison Bowl demonstrated, Milford-area athletics is becoming full integrated into the carceral state — isn’t really funny at all.)

The Lockhorns, 8/31/23

I really like the expression this bait shop guy is giving Leroy here. “Hey man, that’s … that’s not really how you’re supposed to think about it. I mean, yeah, sometimes the fish die at the end of the process, but not always, and the point is to relax in the boat and have a beer or three, not to come up with a vivid scenario where you’re some kind of fish executioner. Is everything OK at home?”

Dennis the Menace, 8/31/23

Oh, so you don’t like it when tells your guests the mean things you say about them behind their backs, but you also don’t like it when he just quietly goes up to his room and lets the adults socialize? I’m beginning to think that Dennis isn’t the only one engaging in some menacing here.

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Hi and Lois, 8/29/23

Look, I’m just a simple city boy who’s always had his trash collected by a municipal service department, and I don’t understand the wily ways of suburbia with its advanced public-private partnerships and such. That’s why the relationship between Hi and his garbagemen has always puzzled me, as it’s often implied that he’s paying them directly in some way? I always assumed they were contracted by his HOA or something, but now that I find out that it’s actually some kind of anarcho-capitalist situation where different suppliers compete for dominance both by offering superior service for better prices and by using violence to intimidate or eliminate their competitors, I have to admit that I’m a lot more interested.

Blondie, 8/29/23

If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know that inside me are two wolves: one that gripes “Ugh, this long-running legacy comic has been beating the same joke into the ground for decades” and the other that gripes “Wait, this is out of character! Why isn’t this long-running legacy comic strip character using one of the beloved jokes he’s been doing for decades?” Anyway, today the second wolf has triumphed, and I have to say I’m disappointed that the punchline here is “Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if men liked reality TV?” rather than the reveal being that Dagwood was watching America’s Next Top Sandwich or The Real Sandwiches Of Beverly Hills or Love Is Blind And Also They Eat Sandwiches or something.

Dennis the Menace, 8/29/23

Alice shaming her son for not having any friends to play with? A rare menace reversal here.

Dick Tracy, 8/29/23

“A real piece of shit. We all wanted him dead and whoever did this to him should get a medal. Frankly I’m pretty furious the coroner called you down here. Nobody in this locker room is going to testify at trial.”

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Gasoline Alley, 8/26/23

Hey, remember the bear in Gasoline Alley who can talk? Well, he found a human baby abandoned in the woods and brought him to the ranger station for safekeeping. Today we learn that he’s “heard” of angels but doesn’t know much about them, which implies to me that while bears in the GasAlliverse are sapient and can talk, they don’t have eternal souls that live on after death. Some real unsettling implications there if you think about it!

Dennis the Menace, 8/26/23

Margaret is showing Dennis was a true menace is: she’s not only irritating Mr. Wilson, but breaking the fourth wall and confronting the comics’ aging readership with the fact that the late 1990s were 25 years ago.

Marvin, 8/26/23

Imagine if your house was burning down, everything you own going up in flames, but one of the firefighters who’ve come to help has to sheepishly tell you that they can’t hook their hoses up until a bunch of dogs finish pissing. That’s life in the Marvinverse, Where Piss Comes First™.