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Hi and Lois, 2/24/23

Welp, I guess we all knew this day — the day when Dot and Ditto from Hi and Lois stand in the middle of the street staring at a relatively realistically drawn mangled squirrel corpse, making terrible puns with vaguely philosophical expressions on their faces — was coming, eventually. We knew we’d be looking at some poor little rodent with cartoonish Xs for eyes and a tire tread across its smashed gut, and wondering how we got here. But I at least thought we had more time to prepare.

Dennis the Menace, 2/24/23

Ha ha, it’s funny because the Wilsons are some of the last bio-humans left alive after some kind of cybernetic uprising! For some reason, these AI intelligences have chosen not to eliminate George and Martha, but instead pester them to death with irritating fees, possibly because Dennis himself designed their algorithms to create Mr. Wilson’s personal living hell, achieving maximum menace even at the expense of his own life.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/24/23

“And you can’t even begin to imagine the depths of her contempt for me!”

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Dustin, 2/18/23

Look, I’m glad that Dustin’s dad being all “the women all use yoga as an excuse to dress like WHORES now and it makes me AROUSED” is the setup to this joke and not the punchline, but … we should see the shoes as part of said punchline, right? Like, we saw a lovingly drawn athleisurèd ass in panel one, so we should see Dustin’s dad’s bright white New Balances in panel two. It almost feels like the artist couldn’t figure out how to frame it properly, then decided, “Enh, whatever, it’s not like this is a visual medium or anything.”

Dennis the Menace, 2/18/23

“Aw, isn’t that sweet,” you’re probably thinking, like a fool. “Dennis cares about the snowman!” Hardly. Dennis created the snowman. He placed every piece of coal on its face, lovingly crafting the grimace it uses to indicate its discomfort. Dennis is the cruel demiurge that summoned the snowman’s soul out of the aether and entrapped it in a physical form that can know only pain.

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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.