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Wizard of Id, 3/9/16

Your occasional reminder that one of the bits of medieval cultural flotsam Wizard of Id makes comedic hay out of is torture! Remember, torture was an omnipresent fact of like in the Middle Ages, and since the Wizard of Id is a 100% accurate depiction of medieval life, it would be narrative malpractice to not have torture jokes. Shoutout to today’s strip for really going all in on the details! The bellows in panel one shows you the technology that was once used by the state to literally inscribe its power onto its subjects. The Spook is usually pretty chill about his eternal imprisonment, but as he dangles from the wall in the background, he looks genuinely terrified about what’s about to happen. And the smoke wafting up from the red-hot iron, demonstrating the world of agony that’s about to be “communicated” to the hapless prisoner — mercy! Wholesome laughs all around!

Family Circus, 3/9/16

Bad news, Jeffy: once you’re done with childhood, intrusive thoughts about your inevitable death start on your birthday, not the next morning.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/5/16

The “uh” in Rex’s word balloon in panel two is an exquisitely placed detail. It’s the moment Rex acknowledges that he’s losing control of this conversation. He’s ostensibly interested in buying this lady’s possible deathtrap of a house, so it makes a certain sense that she’d try to figure out his finances. Asking about his kids, though? This is a personal conversation now, and Rex barely wants to have personal conversations with his wife. “Can I just drop this plate and run?” he thinks. “Just head straight out the door, leaving shattered china and lemon cake strewn everywhere behind me, and never look back?”

Family Circus, 3/5/16

I absolutely love Jeffy’s look of heavy-lidded contempt here. “Girl,” he’s thinking, “you and I both know these are mashed potatoes. Don’t get all up in my face just because I had the idea to malaprop over dinner tonight before you did. I’m the one grandmas across America are going to be hanging on their refrigerators this week, OK? Me.”

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Dennis the Menace, 3/2/16

I dunno, guys, I think we’ve got ask ourselves who the real menace here is? Is it Dennis, who after all is literally a five year old and mostly just repeats what adults say? Or is it Mrs. Wilson, who consistently welcomes a little boy into her home who she know annoys her husband, and then trash-talks her husband in front of him? “Tee hee!” she says, as she hides behind a closet door extremely unconvincingly. “George is fat! This child is saying what we’re all thinking!”

Family Circus, 3/2/16

It took me a minute to figure out that the “joke” here is that Ma Keane is asking her husband to dry the dishes in the most passive-aggressive way possible. Much funnier to me is Big Daddy Keane’s look of pure disgruntlement as Jeffy waves a towel in his face. “What? Participate in the unpaid labor that keeps the household I live in running smoothly? Me? But … but … the patriarchy!”

Pluggers, 3/2/16

You’re a plugger if the struggle between you and your spouse over your possessions ends with your rooting through you neighbor’s garbage.