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Gil Thorp, 5/13/21

It’s always fun to learn something new about a medium you’ve written about for years, which is why last weekend I followed with interest this Twitter thread from various comics types about whether a comics character needs to be drawn with their mouth open when speaking. I’ve been checking this out in various strips ever since, and while I generally agree with their consensus that closed-mouth-plus-word-balloon is fine and actually makes faces more expressive in many cases, I cannot recommend a scenario where a character is speaking while their mouth is closed around a slice of pizza and they’re smiling and you can see a couple teeth, somehow. My main point here is that Eating Pizza In A Fucked-Up Way Week is rolling right along here on the funny pages.

Pluggers, 5/13/21

Since this dog-man is the one who’s been made contact with, and since his character design is what we might describe as “pencil-necked,” I think we have to conclude that he himself is not a plugger, or at least not the plugger who’s intended to be the subject of the descriptive caption. Somewhere out there, presumably back at the tee, is the plugger in question, whose thoughtlessness is a menace to us all. A bold assertion from a comic that’s meant to be “celebrating” pluggers, honestly!

Dennis the Menace, 5/13/21

By pointing out his mother’s anachronistic language, Dennis threatens to unravel the entire fabric of his retro reality. He’s so committed to menacing he’s willing to undo his very existence in order to do it properly, and you have to respect it.

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Dennis the Menace, 5/7/21

Hello, everyone! Did you know today is No Pants Day, a day when we’re all urged to donate unwanted clothes, or give to a charity that helps people who need clothes? I myself did not, but today’s syndicated comics are here to raise awareness! Honestly the strip that does the best job is Dennis the Menace, which gives you the details you need to know while also doing a joke that may be about how Dennis hopes to see Mr. Wilson with no pants, or may be about that his hope that Mr. Wilson knows it’s completely legit for him and Joey to be wandering the neighborhood fully nude from the waist down. Either possibility is pretty disturbing, and disturbing is a kind of menacing, I guess.

Marvin, 5/7/21

Marvin, meanwhile, doesn’t really bother to explain the concept of this new (?) holiday, as it’s far too eager to depict its title character’s ass crack.

The Lockhorns, Dick Tracy, and Hi and Lois, 5/7/21

Other strips, meanwhile, aren’t even mentioning the day by name, but are just taking the opportunity to depict some middle-aged men standing around in their underwear. And who can blame them? Hubba hubba!

Mary Worth, 5/7/21

Wow, seems Ashlee went full-on Fatal Attraction a lot sooner than anyone expected, huh? Anyway, Mary Worth may not be doing an explicit No Pants Day tribute, but make no mistake: based on his facial expression, Drew has definitely shat himself, and will be in the nearest linen closet changing into whatever scrubs he can find in his size in short order.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/4/21

A classic Rex Morgan, M.D., trope is when ancillary characters give Rex and his family free stuff for no good reason — clothes, antique furniture, passes to Sea World, what have you. It’s always great fun! But now we’re seeing a new running bit where people effusively thank Buck, a boring drip, for doing extremely boring stuff like recommending comic books to children. No thanks! Somebody give the Morgans an actual human child, we haven’t seen that in years.

Crankshaft, 5/4/21

Normally I’d read today’s strip and think, “Oh, look, it’s yet another Crankshaft where the wordplay that’s the whole central joke of the strip is based on a homonym and so it wouldn’t work at all when spoken aloud, and nobody involved in the production of the strip cared enough to mention it or try to rework it or anything.” But then I saw Crankshaft’s face in the third panel, and I can’t really put my finger on it but he’s giving off very strong, “Listen up, fuckos, a pun is happening” energy, so I guess I’ll allow it.

Dennis the Menace, 5/4/21

OHHHHHH SNAP WHO’S GETTING MENACED NOW