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Mary Worth, 2/7/22

OK, I’ve been agitating for a while for another Toby and/or Ian storyline, so I’m hoping that today’s strip heralds a transition to a glorious Toby and/or Ian storyline and isn’t just another opportunity for someone else to react to Wilbur by chuckling “Ha ha! That’s our Wilbur!”

Assuming this is, in fact, the end Wilbur Winter and the beginning of a Cameron Springtime, I feel like we’re laying some good groundwork with this sad little birthday party for Toby, which is taking place in the Camerons’ frankly cramped living room, where the spread consists entirely of a bottle of champagne and three muffins, with the only attendees being Mary and Wilbur. I guess Wilbur and Estelle haven’t made up enough for her to be his date to this shindig, eh? Or maybe she just never cared for Toby. Either way would make perfect sense, to be honest. Too bad Toby has literally no other friends to invite! Not even anyone from the downtown art center! Overall the whole party is clearly a disaster, and that’s going to take a lot of emotional unpacking for Toby, which I anticipate that Ian will be unwilling and frankly unable to help with.

Crankshaft, 2/7/22

True old-head Crankshaft readers remember that, years ago, there were a bunch of rowdy kids on Crankshaft’s bus who he called “the rough riders,” and one day he promised to pay for their college education if they would just shut up and leave him in peace, which they did, and which he mostly forgot about until they reminded him right before they graduated, so he cashed in his retirement savings to fulfill his vow, which I guess is why he’s still driving a bus for a living despite being a million years old. Anyway, Ed’s never been what you’d call a pious man, but in light of all that I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising to see him beseeching whatever higher power may be to please let him have some paid time off of work, just for a day or two.

Hagar the Horrible, 2/7/22

I’ve always thought it was kind of odd that there aren’t any strongly defined recurring characters in Hagar’s warband other than Lucky Eddie, but it only occurs to me now that this is maybe because they all get killed on a regular basis and he has to find new people to replace them.

Dennis the Menace, 2/7/21

TIRED: Ha, that Dennis sure is a menace! Why won’t he leave poor Mr. Wilson in peace?
WIRED: DON’T 👏 TALK 👏 TO 👏 CHILDREN 👏 ABOUT 👏 YOUR 👏 BOWEL 👏 MOVEMENTS

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/5/22

Just in case you need more evidence of what the typical newspaper comic-reading demographic is, the joke here is that the elderly gent they’re gossiping about caught mumps from his young bride, which is funny because mumps is a disease associated with children. Or, I guess I would say that it was associated with children until the MMR vaccine became near-universal in the early 1970s, which — and it gives me no pleasure to report this — was fifty years ago. Anyway, a fun fact that you may or may not want to think about in terms of our current epidemiological situation is that mumps traditionally was thought of as an annoying but not particularly worrisome disease that most kids got and got over, but we started developing a vaccine during World War II, when it started spreading on military transport ships and when adults caught it, it made their balls swell up real big.

Dennis the Menace, 2/5/22

Mr. Wilson’s trademarked single bead of sweat has never been so poignant. He wants to say “ass” so badly — so badly he feels like he might explode — yet something beyond his control prevents him! What kind of suffocating universe does he live in, where the release of even the mildest of curse words is forbidden to him?

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Gasoline Alley, 2/1/22

Folks, for a long time I’ve been trying to ignore the fact that there’s a movie coming out called Gasoline Alley. As near as I can tell, it has literally zero connection to the comic strip, as its Wikipedia entry informs me its tagline is “Justice Gets Dirty” and it stars Bruce Willis as “Freeman,” Luke Wilson “Vargas,” and “Devon Sawa” as “Jimmy Jayne,” none of that tracking to our beloved comic strip, which is about [thinks long and hard about what you might describe Gasoline Alley, the comic strip, as being “about”] scrapbooking. Anyhoo, I don’t have the energy to do any research on copyright law, but since Gasoline Alley is 103 years old, I’m going to guess that the title, at least, is now in the public domain, and so all the strip can do in revenge for a movie with the lesser-known Wilson brother and “Devon Sawa” in it stealing its name is put out a long, rambling shaggy dog plot involving these two Hollywood producers that will ultimately go absolutely nowhere.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/1/22

I honestly couldn’t tell you what Mother Goose and Grimm is “about” either, but up until today I would’ve been very sure that what it wasn’t about was the seething, unrequited lust its elderly bird-person characters had for one another. You learn something new every day, in the funny pages!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/1/22

One of the great mysteries of Snuffy Smith: how old is Snuffy Smith, exactly? On the one hand, he and Loweezy are young enough to have an infant son; on the other, as we learned today, Snuffy is entirely toothless. I guess it’s possible that, at some point when Snuffy was in his late 20s or early 30s, Doc Pritchart found a rotten tooth or two and decided just to pull them all to “get ahead of the game.”

Dennis the Menace, 2/1/22

“We live in a degraded, fallen world, Mr. Wilson! Don’t bother getting dressed up for it, they’re just going to put you on TikTok and then do a cancel culture on ya.”