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Panel from The Lockhorns, 4/18/21

So … is Loretta over there audibly lying about her age to those women? Or is this just how Leroy strikes up conversations at parties? Honestly this shows an even looser grasp of social norms than all the times he ends up wearing a lampshade on his head and dancing with women three times his height.

Dennis the Menace, 4/18/21

It seems out of character for Dennis to be too scared to jump into the deep end of the pool, and it’s honestly pretty weird for him to climb up on the high board as he explains why he’s not planning on jumping off. There’s only one explanation I can come up with: he’s trying to really sell how scary the whole thing is so that nobody jumps off the diving board. Margaret’s obviously spent weeks getting more and more excited about all the social clout she’ll derive from this shindig, so ruining it even at the expense of his devil-may-care image is a truly menacing act on Dennis’s part. Look, it’s already working on Joey!

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Mark Trail, 4/17/21

You know, one thing I didn’t really like about the first plot of new-look Mark Trail was that it lacked truly cartoonishly hateable villain — yes, confronting the sins of one’s father has a long literary history, but you sort of knew that this was a complex relationship that would eventually, after a fashion, be healed. But a guy who used to go to high school with Mark, who’s real condescending to him and is now some kind of cricket-based protein powder impresario and social medial influencer? That’s a guy who we’re all hoping goes viral on Bikbok when Mark punches him in the face.

Blondie and Dennis the Menace, 4/7/21

I’ve always assumed that Blondie is going for a whole Dennis vs. Mr. Wilson vibe in its Dagwood and Elmo strips, and I have to say that it simply does not come anywhere close to it. There’s a real sense of animus there that Blondie’s anodyne amiability is simply incapable of capturing.

Pluggers, 4/7/21

I don’t usually praise the art in Pluggers, but I genuinely love the expression on kangaroo-lady’s face here. That is 100% the look of a woman who plans to file for divorce two weeks to the day after she gets her second vaccine dose, and has in fact taken any number of concrete steps to make that process go as quickly as possible.

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Dustin, 4/11/21

Not sure what makes me madder here: that Dustin produces this massive hanger-tangle out of nowhere; that this comic’s writer has apparently never heard the words “anger” or “hanger” spoken aloud, and just assumes based on their spelling that they rhyme and can thus be deployed for today’s punchline; or that the strip opens with Dustin’s mom with her back to her interlocutor, a dramatic noir shadow over her angry face, but she just wants to talk to Dustin about clothes organization or whatever and not the murder of their mutual enemy, his hated father.

Blondie, 4/11/21

I kind of enjoy the fact that this strip sets up two delightfully bonkers scenarios — “Dagwood and Mr. Dithers go on a hellish business trip together” and “a big fat raccoon goes absolutely nuts in the Bumstead home” — without actually showing us any of the details of either. It allows our imagination to run wild with both, instead merely showing us the brief calm between these two storms.

Dennis the Menace, 4/11/21

Wait, what if this is true? What if Mr. Wilson really is happy most of the time and only gets grouchy when Dennis shows up, which just happens to be the only time we ever seen him? Guess we’d all owe him a big apology, huh? Ha ha, just kidding, we know Mr. Wilson rages about Dennis even when he’s absent, he’s not a happy man at all. And now that Dennis is just straight-up calling him by his first name, he’s gonna be even less happy! Enjoy suffocating on your own bile, you sour old coot!