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Panel from The Lockhorns, 7/3/22

This one gets even better when you think about the backstory. Presumably the lifeguard jumped down out of his chair and dashed off into the surf to save someone struggling out in the water. The rest of the beachgoers watch the drama, praying for a safe ending and admiring the lifeguard’s prowess. Leroy, meanwhile, sees an opportunity to do a bit. “She’s gonna hate this,” he thinks, chuckling to himself.

Dennis the Menace, 7/3/22

Alice’s look of genuine surprise in the next to last panel really makes this one for me. “Wait a minute … the stringbean arms … the scrawny legs … did I marry a nerd? Oh, no, I married a real dweebus! I can’t believe it!”

Dustin, 7/3/22

I can’t believe I’m about to type the following phrase, but I really respect today’s Dustin. A lesser strip would’ve made the kid character the butt of the joke and had him dumbfounded by metaphors, whereas instead we have him slowly realizing that everyone in this family is a jackass, not just Dustin.

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Dennis the menace, 6/29/22

There are so many questions this panel raises — like where are any of these people and why is Henry wearing a suit jacket in the same … room? area? zone? … where a guy is lifting weights and is Dennis talking about his dad’s heart or his esophageal sphincter or what — but the one that truly pushes me over the edge is that Dennis is standing on what appears to be an ottoman. And why? The answer appears to be “so the various bits of clip art can all be in the frame together” but there’s already no real sense of where any of these people are in physical space so that seems wildly unnecessary. Just move Henry up a few inches. Or down! It doesn’t matter! Nothing matters!

Pluggers, 6/29/22

You know what does matter, though? Working so that America’s infrastructure becomes ADA compliant as our population ages unstoppably into pluggerdom. It’s good for pluggers and frankly good for all of us if physical mobility becomes easier. No notes on this one!

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Dick Tracy, 6/16/22

Oh, right, I guess I never mentioned that the owl guy had, pre-owl-stuff, been seen using hypnosis (?) to convince people to hand over money they were taking out of ATMs, and is also a classic member of Dick’s rogues gallery named “Mr. Memory.” ATM-hypnosis is in the same bank-robbing ballpark as the stuff our heroes are investigating, but I appreciate Sam pointing out that it’s not the same thing as draining bank accounts via computer hacking, at all. I suppose he could’ve just used his hypnosis powers to convince a bank employee to do the bank account draining for him. Dick, however, is very set on this computer business being at the center of things, to the extent that he’s defensively claiming that Mr. Memory needs computers to “plan” his crimes, but while the flashback scene in panel two today is completely wild on a number of levels, at its heart it’s fairly standard tying-people-up-and-holding-cops at gunpoint stuff that doesn’t need, like, an advanced AI to pull off. Maybe Mr. Memory and his gang had a shared Google Doc that they used for brainstorming ambassador-kidnapping ideas, I dunno.

Dennis the Menace, 6/16/22

The thing about this panel is that what Dennis is saying is nonsense. What’s menacing is his attitude. Just standing six inches behind his dad while his father tries to do a little fixy stuff for once, casually sipping his soda from a straw, letting loose with some pointless advice. “You’re a dipshit, dad” is just kind of his whole vibe, you know?