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Dennis the Menace, 1/14/25

Now, look, today I’m not really interested in litigating whether this is wildly non-menacing (“Aww, I need to show all the parts of my body that they’re loved, just like my parents show me they love me”) or quite menacing, actually (“If I train my body to accept arbitrary stimulus as the equivalent to human affection, eventually I will have no need for emotional contact with others”). No, I want to focus on Joey’s jaunty body language as he slurps refreshing water through his straw and watches Dennis put on socks. “Wow, so they go between your skin and your shoes, huh? I could see that having a number of positive impacts on the overall foot experience.” I’ve had my issues in the past with strip colorists so I gotta give props to whoever correctly figured out what was going on here and made sure Joey’s ankles were flesh-colored, as this is clearly the first he’s hearing about socks.

Mary Worth, 1/14/25

Mary Worth has delivered any number of outrageous and delightful word-sequences over the years, and though it’s not as flashy as some, I immediately believe that “My parents were successful pharmacists” is up there on this list. Who could’ve imagined that this town’s two top pharmacists, respected by their peers and earning a fine salary, possibly working as a team or maybe each with their own pharmacy to better provide prescription drugs and related goods and services across the region, would get divorced? And why would they do it? Probably because their son’s a huge asshole, is my guess.

Zits, 1/14/25

I haven’t always been on board with the realism of the depiction of teen behavior in this strip, but teens are fairly notoriously terrible kissers, so I’m going to have to hand it Zits for this one.

Six Chix, 1/14/25

What better way to establish how chaotic 2025 will be than choosing to “start the year” a full two weeks into January? Six Chix is doing it exactly right, something I don’t say lightly.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/10/25

Ha ha, can you imagine? The Smif and Barlow families would be lined up opposite each other, and Steve Harvey would shout out, “Things you carry home in a burlap sack!” And Barlow would buzz in first and smugly shout “Chickens!” but while he’s distracted, Snuffy jumps over the podium and charges at him with a rusty blade he had hidden in his overalls, eager to slit Barlow’s throat and finally declare victory in their long-running clan war, right there on national television. The little bastard doesn’t understand that TV shows aren’t broadcast live, but the footage will leak out anyway. It’s too sensational not to.

Bizarro, 1/10/25

Hey, did you know that the millions of toner cartridges and batteries we’ve produced over the past few decades all have souls? Or maybe they are the souls of the electronic equipment we stick them inside, I’m not 100% that I follow the cosmology here, but the point is we’re going to be encountering this stuff when we die and move on to the next world, and I think it’s going to have some questions for us that I for one am not sure I’ll be able to answer.

Dennis the Menace, 1/10/25

You know what’s real menacing behavior, Gina? Carrying around a 5 x 7 wedding picture of your parents outside in the middle of winter while you tell people about this. What if you drop it in the snow?

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Dennis the Menace and Curtis, 12/19/24

Well, I guess yesterday’s Curtis is the start of an arc about how the kids today celebrate holidays differently, using technology, and I like that Greg’s exhausted facial expression tells us what he thinks about this but he still will only say philosophically that the only constant is change, all is vanity, etc., etc. Dennis the Menace put cyber-Christmas advocacy in the mouth of its most annoying character as well, but otherwise doesn’t outwardly condemn it. And if they won’t, I will. This is tacky and it sucks! Curtis, that app was a trick to get you to download cryptomining malware onto your phone, and Margaret, you are texting with a scammer in Southeast Asia who will convince you to send him your parents’ credit card and Social Security numbers by the end of the year.

Gearhead Gertie, 12/19/24

Speaking of celebrating Christmas differently, I’m not actually that interested in the fact that instead of enjoying classic modern-day Christmas tales Gertie would rather — surprise! — consume NASCAR-related content. I’m more curious about who the other two people on this couch are. Do Gertie and her increasingly alienated husband have [squints] a daughter and a grandson, or perhaps two grandchildren, and they’re staying together for their benefit? Or are these just two people they recruited off the street because they needed a “rule of three” setup for Gertie’s punchline? (Fun fact: Gertie thinks the “rule of three” is when Dale Earnhardt descends from heaven and implements his thousand-year kingdom on Earth).

Hi and Lois, 12/19/24

Remember: due to the oddnesses of comic-book time, we’ve been enjoying Trixie’s antics since the Eisenhower Administration, but she’s been alive for less than a year. This is the first time she’s ever experienced winter. She thinks Sunbeam, her only friend, is old and dying. Pretty bleak!