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Marvin, 7/16/23

Setting aside for the moment the entire “how old is Marvin” question — he’s preverbal, at least for this strip, and not potty trained? — I’m not sure who we’re supposed to sympathize with here. Personally speaking I would not want to be forced to go out to “play” by myself with no friends or toys in sight. Also, I know we’re in the front yard here, but I assume he’s not supposed to be exploring the neighborhood, seeing as he’s preverbal and not potty trained? I’m all for free range kids but that seems a little young in my opinion.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/16/23

Eye surgery is, like, a thing you specialize in, right? It’s not necessarily something you want your neighbor, who’s a G.P. and never liked you in the first place and is visibly annoyed with you and your whole situation, to do after watching a quick YouTube video?

Dustin, 7/16/23

You know, this isn’t the sort of thing I’d usually recommend, but maybe Dustin’s dad could try drinking a little more. Just to take the edge off. Just as an experiment! It’s not like his personality could get much worse.

Dennis the Menace, 7/16/23

Probably unsurprising that Mrs. Wilson fears the looming spectre of death, while Mr. Wilson frankly welcomes it.

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Judge Parker, 7/11/23

Josh, the world cries out with one voice, how’s Sam and Abbey’s sex vacation going? Well, they just had just gotten out of cell phone coverage range when someone intentionally (?) rammed their car and ran off, leaving an unconscious toddler behind, who Sam and Abbey decided to carry with them on the miles-long walk to their cabin, where a landline awaited them. So, uh, the sex vacation was not going great, in other words! But good news: the little tyke woke up and, understandably, immediately started screaming and fleeing into the woods away from the total strangers who were taking her who knows where. So … sex vacation is back on? More on this story as it develops.

Gil Thorp, 7/11/23

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy (with Gil’s entire family no-shows at his big awards ceremony), the second time as farce (Gil’s kids there to cheer him on but Mimi off somewhere else, presumably banging her golf coach).

Mary Worth, 7/11/23

Now, you might think the implication here is that Mary was only one of many people who reported ambiguous but suspicious dog park adjacent behavior to the police, but let’s look at the facts. Mary is a careful and methodical person and she doesn’t pop a bunch of popcorn in order to gloatingly eat it in front of the 6 o’clock news on the off chance that one phone call did the trick. No, I think that just off panel, there are pile of burner phones and an electronic voice-altering gadget that helped her make sure that justice was done.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/11/23

Sorry to have misspoken last week: Rex and June’s loutish neighbor lost an eye to his post-July 4th fireworks, not a hand, and the whole family was too drunk to drive themselves to the hospital so Rex volunteered to do it. Anyway, Travis is “turning that frown upside down” by thinking about how understaffed emergency rooms are and all the delicious pills they probably just leave out unattended!

Dustin, 7/11/23

Man, this sort of dead-eyed literalism is more menacing than anything Dennis ever came up with. I guess it’s what you’d expect from a child who’s decided to make exactly one friend, and that friend is an adult, and that adult is Dustin.

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Dustin, 6/24/23

Being a diagnosable Twitter addict, like I am, is not particularly rewarding, but it does provide you with a few fairly useless special powers. The ranks of Twitter addicts are fairly small — the number of daily users has never matched networks like Facebook or Instagram or TikTok — but is disproportionally made up of journalists and academics and tech “thought leaders,” so ideas and memes that originate on Twitter often eventually leak out into the real, non-Twitter, world, so one of those aforementioned useless powers is the ability to spot one of the aforementioned ideas/memes and think “Oh, no, this bastard is inflicting a bad Twitter thing on the hapless normies.” For a while, one of the bad Twitter things has been accounts that post pictures of Eastern European models in various contrived everyday situations accompanied with text like “You encounter this beautiful woman in the market. What is your romantic approach?” The goal for these accounts is either to push pickup artist bullshit or just get enough followers so that they can eventually pivot to crypto scam artistry, and I regret to inform you that it appears that at least someone at Dustin HQ has been sucked in.

Dick Tracy, 6/24/23

Dick Tracy hasn’t gone in for nightmarish ultraviolence in years, but current the creative team still likes to unsettle and disturb in their own way, like by offering unpleasant closeups of normal human mouths in action.

Hi and Lois, 6/24/23

This is a good addition to my “Hi and Lois is embracing Thirsty’s characterization as the neighborhood drunk” files. Honestly, the combination of the bright red nose and the fact that he’s clearly passed out in his lawn chair with his mouth hanging open while children gawk at him is a little too much! Getting a little grim! Might want to ratchet it back!

Judge Parker, 6/24/23

Good news, everyone! Sam and Abbey are going off on a trip together to have sex! Sam’s wearing a dumb baseball hat and they almost-matched their ecru shirts because that’s the sort of bland shit that really gets them going, I guess. Hopefully we’ll be treated to the same uncanny flavor of sexuality that marked their last recorded erotic encounter.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/24/23

“Oh, wow, you’ve managed to parry exactly one question with a confident but unquantified assertion. I’m sold!”