Post Content

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!

Post Content

Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/10/21

I’m old enough to get the why of it, but it’s genuinely funny to me that “flatscreen” is used as a shorthand for a certain kind of luxury electronics, often with the connotation that it’s an indulgence you shouldn’t be spending money on. It’s literally not possible to buy a new non-flatscreen anymore (I’m sure there people who prefer such vintage TVs for their “warmer analog picture” or whatever), and you can now get flatscreens for cheaper, indexed for inflation, than CRTs ever were! Anyway, there’s a lot going on here, including (a) a therapist who looks like a 1970s (?) stereotype of a Freudian analyst, (b) Grimm is stealing things from Mother Goose, who he lives with?, (c) someone (Mother Goose?) is paying to send Grimm to therapy, and (d) they have pills for kleptomania now????, but for whatever reason it’s the flatscreen thing that jumps out at me.

Dustin, 4/10/21

Sorry, as an [extremely heavy sigh] daily Dustin reader, I reject the central premise of today’s strip. Dustin’s mom absolutely does not care if Dustin’s dad lives or dies. Nobody does!

Post Content

Dustin, 3/28/21

I was going to start this post with “Did … did the manufacturer of warfarin write this comic” and then do a whole riff about how this seven year old kid may not need a blood thinner but the geriatrics who represent the biggest cohort among newspaper comics reader just might, but then I checked out warfarin’s Wikipedia article and found out it’s a generic drug, so that doesn’t really work. It’s just funnier if you get to use the actual name of a pharmaceutical conglomerate, you know? Anyway, I also learned that the warfarin was originally developed as a rat poison, its most common side effect is “bleeding,” and it can also cause something called “purple toes syndrome,” so, honestly, it really does need some good press.

Blondie, 3/28/21

The premise of the main gag of this comic is pointless — why would Mr. Dithers need a drone to keep tabs on Dagwood when there’s literally an entire sector of the software industry dedicated to producing spyware that bosses can use to keep tabs on their workers? — but I have to admit I found the throwaway panels, in which Dagwood reacts to a video poker website with more excitement and engagement than he’s ever demonstrated towards his career or his family, haunting enough that today’s strip will stick with me for weeks.