Post Content

Dennis the Menace and Family Circus, 12/7/16

Happy Pearl Harbor Day, everybody, a day that will live in infamy, a day that went mostly ignored in the comics today, even though many of the old-man characters in various strips are anachronistically supposed to be World War II vets, something even Crankshaft is too young for, honestly. Anyway, these two panels taken together pose the question: what’s really menacing in this life? Is it Dennis’s wild and aggressive accusation that Mr. Wilson, a decorated war hero, was secretly in league with Tojo and the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere? Or is something more banal and yet ultimately more terrifying: that even the most dramatic and momentous events in human history can fade, in the course of just a single lifetime, into a misty half-memory that someone like Jeffy will only vaguely have a grasp on?

Dick Tracy, 12/7/16

The fact that the main villain in this Dick Tracy storyline’s name was “Selfy” and that he was obsessed with taking selfies was one of a jumble of ideas that were entertaining even when they didn’t quite gel with each other. It mostly got dropped over time, but it’s fun to bring it back in the end here, as Selfy attempts to take a murder-selfie that turns out to not be quite murder-y enough.

The Phantom, 12/7/16

Fool! The Phantom doesn’t pay high prices for cable or satellite service! He’s already got Internet access in the Skull Cave, and gets his TV via over-the-top streaming services of varying legality! He’s not held down by your rules! He’s … the Ghost-Who-Cuts-The-Cord!

Post Content

Mary Worth, 11/25/16

Wow, too bad Mary Worth chose the Friday after Thanksgiving, traditionally a day of extremely low readership, for this extremely sexy strip where we finally have confirmed that Zak is standard-college-student age and also on the prowl for fortysomething babes. Look at that line he just laid down here! Like, just moments ago he had to have it explained to him what an iris was and already he’s busting out “oh, late blooming flowers are definitely the ones I want to fuck the most.” I’m kidding, of course, what he actually said was “Late blooming flowers are just as beautiful… if not more so!”, which, just as beautiful as what, Zak? You might think your sentence is more “respectful” than mine, but mine at least respects the rules of English syntax.

Six Chix, 11/25/16

Yeah, man, I don’t even know what to say about this one. Like, is this supposed to be the thing from old Warner Brothers cartoons where a very hungry person hallucinates that his friend’s head has become a rotisserie chicken or whatever? So the cow on the left is very hungry? And also a cannibal? I guess?

Dennis the Menace, 11/25/16

By emphasizing his parents’ marital relationship to one another, Dennis is trying to be a menace by derailing the three-way they have planned with this woman. But the joke’s on him! She’s a highly sought after call girl who knows exactly what she’s getting into. The prim-and-proper outfit, along with a certain amount of feigned reluctance, is just part of the specific fantasy scenario the Mitchells submitted via her web site.

Family Circus, 11/25/16

“There’s never any daytime left over after dinner! Instead the flow of time abruptly stops and the universe outside is replaced by an infinite, featureless blackness. It stinks!”

Post Content

Dick Tracy, 11/3/16

For my money, the line “this is no place for you” is the funniest thing in the comics today. At first I thought it meant that Selfy was a big shot who shouldn’t be risking getting monkey poop on his shiny shoes or something. But then I realized that I had it backwards, which was even funnier: the zoo is too good for a scumbag like Selfy! This is a decent place, where we cage wild animals for bored schoolchildren to gawk at! It’s no place for political hacks who wear tuxedos in their daily life and other monsters. Ol’ Vic tried to keep Selfy on the straight and narrow, tried to teach him the way of the feces shovel and the tranq gun, but it was too late: he was well on his way along the all-too-common young-hood-to-congressional-staffer pipeline, and not all monkey chow in the world could save him.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/3/16

Hey, it looks like Chekhov’s packages of frozen cash finally went off, a year after they were placed on the mantlepiece in an extremely non-casual manner! Anyway, my top two choices for what happened to the money are (a) Heather used it to hire a hit man to kill Milton and make it look like Jordan did it, so he has no choice but to obey her whims, sexually, or (b) Milton used it to wire the house with explosives so that he can go out on his terms, which is to say with some of his faculties still intact and taking his wife and household staff with him. Either way, Jordan is right to “oh, boy!” dramatically!

Family Circus, 11/3/16

That’s actually not right either, Dolly. Mommy is letting the breeze ruffle her hair and is imagining what it might be like to be driving a convertible, by herself, in whatever direction she pleases. Mommy stopped looking for Jeffy a solid twenty minutes ago.