Post Content

Family Circus, 5/22/22

There’s “I increasingly find Pluggers relatable” old and then there’s “I unironically find the Family Circus funny” old, but I have to say, I unironically find today’s Family Circus funny. The punchline is good, of course, but I also enjoy how sad Billy looks. You’ve ruined his day, Big Daddy Keane! I was going to say that it’s OK for me to enjoy this Family Circus because of how mean it is, but maybe that’s why all the old people have always liked it. All those kindly grandmas cutting out the panels and hanging them on their fridge thinking, “That’s right, Billy, you’re an ignorant little shit, just like my daughter’s eldest.”

The Lockhorns, 5/22/22

I have, of course, been on Team Enjoying The Lockhorns Unironically since my youth, and I deeply respect that rather than phoning in Sundays with a single giant panel the creators instead deliver five separate individual weekday-equivalent panels, each with its own gag. This collection, like most Sunday groups, consists mostly of bangers: top right and lower left are the weakest but even these are passable wordplay; top left shows an actual awareness of how a newfangled social media thing works; middle is a moodily drawn glimpse into a sadly disordered mind; and bottom right is a great visual gag. At least there’s some consistency in this crazy, topsy turvy world, and it’s how much Leroy and Loretta hate each other.

Gasoline Alley, 5/22/22

Oh, has that all been too much sweetness and light for you? Fine: I will never say a kind word about Gasoline Alley. Never, do you hear me? Today’s strip features two senile old men talking nonsense to each other and neither of them can remember whether they’ve said it or heard it before, and is thus a perfect metaphor for the experience of reading the comic strip Gasoline Alley.

Post Content

Family Circus, 5/8/22

Wow, Family Circus did not need to go this hard for Mother’s Day, reminding us that, no matter how much your human litter loves you, you can never make it up to the cat mothers whose babies you cruelly stole away. I’m pretty sure this isn’t actually how it works, though, as cats are generally quite solitary and territorial, and in many cases actually work to drive away kittens soon after they’re weaned. My personal experience in this is that we had a feral cat who brought her already partially weaned kittens in our yard not long after we moved into our current house, and we managed to trap all of them and get the mom fixed and the kittens adopted. The mom we released back into our yard, and while she’ll never be a housecat or even let us pet her, she has stuck around to this day because we feed her daily; after one (1) night of sounding sad about her kittens she apparently forgot all about them, to the extent that, when we were trying to catch another feral cat with a baited trap, she walked right into it and got trapped again, even though that trap was the source of the most traumatic experience in her life to that point. Your cat is fine, is what I’m trying to say, Jeffy, so don’t worry your oversized head about it.

Rex Morgan, 5/8/22

“We’re on the brick shift! Nobody knows why, but every night two doctors at Glenwood Hospital are kept in reserve to exclusively treat any brick-related injuries. I’ve never had to do any work on any of these shifts, and I sure don’t expect tonight to be any different!”

Post Content

Dennis the Menace and The Family Circus, 4/15/22

Oh, man, this is it. This is the nadir. The Keane Kids have ruined their parents’ outing to an art museum, Dolly and Jeffy are consumed with self-loathing, Billy is actively furious at the family’s attempt to to expand their cultural horizons. Meanwhile, what’s going on with Dennis? He’s weeping because he stubbed his toe and now his mom is offering to pray for him? Honestly, what the fuck. That is so much less menacing than the Family Circus that the menace levels could not be detected by the most carefully calibrated instruments menace science has to offer. For shame, for shame!

Mary Worth, 4/15/22

Sadly, this whole week has been taken up not by more hilarious dream sequence action but by Toby telling Mary about her little Cal problem in judiciously elliptical detail, which has been significantly less fun. I do like today’s strip, though, as it implies that Ian cares less about Toby’s romantic fidelity than he does about her ability to “handle” sticky situations, which I assume means that either Helen or Cal — or possibly both — will be dead by the end of the week.