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Mary Worth, 9/25/19

“You must feel like you’re on a roller coaster of emotion, dear! Me, I like to keep it on an even keel. If something bad — or good — happens to me, I use the power of my mind to to smooth that memory down until it’s just one more in a series of low-impact incidents in a calm, orderly life. Feelings are for the young and the poor, I always say!”

Dennis the Menace, 9/25/19

I think we need to admit to our selves that Dennis’s menacing, despite being right there in the name of the strip, is really an an informed attribute — something the other characters claim to believe without any evidence within the narrative to back them up. Today’s panel, in which Mr. Wilson declares “That Mitchell kid is more dangerous than the nuclear arsenals that can wipe out the human race with a simple press of the button! He’s an extinction-level event in red overalls, I tell you!” while Dennis flops goofily around on his lawn, is perhaps the clearest evidence of this yet.

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Dennis the Menace, 9/24/19

Dennis not understanding common English turns of phrase is a key part of the Dennis the Menace mythos, but it seems the current strip creators have forgotten why that is. The point is that Dennis is supposed to use his (feigned?) ignorance as an excuse to reveal that something shitty his parents have said about one of their acquaintances in private, e.g., “You said there’d be an old battle axe coming over but all I see is this late-middle-aged woman with a bad personality.” All today’s garbage joke does is make it clear that Dennis is stupid, and somebody needs to take it over to the Family Circus where it belongs.

Family Circus, 9/24/19

The Family Circus really needs that joke, to be honest, because I have no idea what’s going on here. Who is this random teen, and why is Billy hanging around with him talking about math? And why are he and Ma Keane giving each other a knowing glance? “It’s algebra,” they’re saying to one another, wordlessly. “He doesn’t know the word for it, but we both know he’s talking about algebra.”

Zits, 9/24/19

So it turns out the terrible thing Jeremy learned yesterday was that he has to repeat freshman P.E., and I know I almost never talk about Zits here so it’s weird that I’m talking about it two days in a row, but I think it’s kind of interesting that a strip that used to get in trouble with the syndicate for using the word “sucks” can now do jokes where the punchline is that Jeremy is mad because his dick isn’t getting any bigger as his adolescence progresses.

Hagar the Horrible, 9/24/19

Hagar and Lucky Eddie can’t bear to look at themselves in the mirror, probably because of guilt from all the horrible murders they’ve done.

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Dick Tracy, 9/12/19

I’m not going to bother bringing you up to speed on the current Dick Tracy “Minit Mystery” guest-artisted arc, which involves a murder that took place at a modeling agency. The only mystery I actually care about is this: is this storyline just an opportunity for someone to indulge their getting-yelled-at-by-women-in-bathing-suits fetish? All signs point to yes!

Beetle Bailey, 9/12/19

Is Sarge … about to chow down on a half-eaten cookie he fished out of a garbage can? I’m not sure I’d describe that as the behavior of a “big jerk.” It could be indicative of a number of other reasons you wouldn’t want to date him, though!

Dennis the Menace, 9/12/19

“Wow, Henry has a photo album full of muscle guys and he’s lucky that I didn’t fall for any of them? The real menace here is your narrow mind, son.”