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Dennis the Menace, 2/12/20

Just to show you what it’s like to be me, a guy with a head full of random trivia, I read “homeowner’s rates” and thought Alice was using the British term for property taxes, which made me wonder if the Mitchells had relocated to the UK so that Dennis could take on his actually much more menacing rival. But a little Googling shows that sometimes people say “homeowner’s rates” when they mean “what I pay for homeowner’s insurance,” which sounds very strange to my ear but feel free to sound off in the comments if this is part of your everyday speech and you think that I, personally, am an idiot. The important thing here is that Dennis would not have any possible impact on the Mitchells’ property taxes, but could very well be the source of their skyrocketing insurance premiums, because he breaks so much stuff.

Dick Tracy, 2/12/20

Good news, everyone! Mysta escaped from Mr. Robot’s clutches and defeated him using her Lunarian powers, so now we’ve got a new story, about the origins of a bad guy called “Shakey,” because he shakes. Few things in recent comics history have made me laugh more than today’s Dick Tracy, in which the narration box says little Shakey “quickly learned the Golden Rule” and depicts him beating the shit out of other kids and stealing their money. There’s not even an attempt to make some kind of pun or wordplay on “Golden Rule!” “Here’s your Golden Rule, kids: just absolutely terrorizing people with violence is a great way to make a lot of cash.”

Mark Trail, 2/12/20

Ah, yes, it’s an all-too-common story: a sad, isolated person — say, an newly disabled man who isn’t sure who he is anymore — gets big on Twitter and gets a chance to reinvent himself — say, as a guy whose leg was eaten by a yeti. How often do we have to hear this tale before we learn its lessons? Anyway, Minga and Pemba are watching all this from afar, probably wondering if anybody is going to be able to pay them, now that the guy who hired them is dead.

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Arctic Circle, 1/31/20

Another one of the new strips I’m reading, in addition to weird tales of stir-crazy dads, is Arctic Circle, and before you smugly say “Hey, what are these penguins doing in the Arctic,” know that their migration there is part of the bit. Anyway, the strip mostly seems to be the penguins looking on his horror as ecological collapse leads to narwhals savagely impaling each other, so it should be a hoot to follow!

Pros and Cons, 1/31/20

Pros and Cons, meanwhile, promises to extend the Law and Order model by including not just cops and prosecutors but defense attorneys and psychiatrists in its examination of the criminal justice system. Or so the King Features site would have you believe; this week features people who without that intro would read as generic white collar professionals making extremely broad social commentary in various eating and drinking establishments. Still, you can see the strip’s highbrow aspirations here: where else on the comics page will those fat cat modern architects, who greedily demand payment for the professional services they provide, get what’s coming to them? In Blondie? In Hi and Lois? I think not.

Dennis the Menace, 1/31/20

Damn, this strip is having a particularly non-menacing week. “America’s lovable late night clown prince, Jimmy Fallon, is keeping me from getting the rest I need to excel at school” isn’t quite as non-menacing as “These onions are bullying my eyes!”, but it’s pretty close.

Six Chix, 1/31/20

As a certified public transit enthusiast, I’m very glad the influential comic strip industry is weighing on one of my pet peeves. While many people who don’t routinely take transit focus on point-to-point speed, they fail to take waiting time into consideration, and often don’t see the point of funding frequent service. [low muttering] But headways low enough to allow passengers to “show up and and go” at the time of their choice [muttering grows louder, shouts of “get him off” become audible] are often more important [I am physically dragged off stage, but break free] than express service when it comes to [a net falls over me, leaving me unable to flee] the passenger exper[a single tranquilizer dart hits home and I lose consciousness]

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Mary Worth, 1/27/20

Finally, it’s Monday and it’s time for a new Mary Worth plot and … oh, wait, no, we’re still talking thyroid stuff! You’ve probably been wondering how Iris’s thyroid condition would affect her enjoyment of sandwiches, and the answer is: not at all! Gluten free sandwiches are great! Even Zak likes them! And if you’re wondering if Iris enjoys that sandwich lyfe with Zak more than she did with Wilbur, well, never forget that time Wilbur took Iris to his favorite sandwich joint and they sort of rubbed the sandwiches on their lips while staring off into space with dead, joyless eyes. Whereas today Zak and Iris look like they’re high on some wonderful drug while they chow down gluten free sandwiches. It’s no wonder the “you!” is Iris’s word balloon is italicized, as everything is, predictably, better with Zak.

Crock, 1/27/20

Ah ha, women, amiright? They sure love bingo! And colonialist powers, amiright? They sure lose all understanding of ethical behavior and, in a desperate attempt to maintain their control over an unwilling populace, resort to measures like rounding up and interning noncombatants, even attempting to cast such war crimes as “moral victories!” It sure is a crazy world out there!

Dennis the Menace, 1/27/20

This is it. We’ve reached a true nadir of menacing. Dennis is crying involuntarily because his mother is cutting onions, and it makes him think of all the times he cried at school because a mean kid picked on him. This is as non-menacing as it gets, and it makes me sick.