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Dennis the Menace, 5/9/08

Dennis, you little devil! See, Dennis gave milk to Hot Dog without asking his parents, and it got splashed all over the carpet, and it’ll be impossible to get it out, and once it spoils, the living room is going to REEK! Ha ha! SO MENACING!

OK, no, there’s no way to get any menace out of this. Seriously, he’s making an adorable statement about a purring kitty-cat. At this point, he’s out-Jeffying Jeffy.

Family Circus, 5/9/08

Case in point. At least this panel has taken the crowd-pleasing step of showing us Jeffy being grievously injured.

Apartment 3-G, 5/9/08

What is Alan smoking? I mean this question quite literally. “Pipe” plus “rock” equals “crack,” obviously, but the lingo has been inconsistent enough that I’m still holding out for heroin, which you can in fact smoke from a pipe if you’re a-scared of needles. I’m not sure why I’m rooting for the horse; maybe it’s an act of local pride (Baltimore being something of a heroin town), or maybe because being a junkie has a bit more old-school charm than being a crackhead. I’m certainly hoping that all this fuss isn’t over marijuana (OH MY GOD AN ARTIST SMOKES POT WHO WOULD HAVE EVER THOUGHT?).

I do like the mournful, baffled way in which Alan is regarding his toothbrush in panel two. “Wait, is this my pipe? Oh, God, I’m so [APPROPRIATE SLANG TERM] on [DRUG]!”

Herb and Jamaal, 5/9/08

Jamaal and Yolanda have carried mutual but unrequited torches for each other for pretty much the whole time I’ve been reading this strip. They’re like the Mulder and Scully of mediocre comic strips that nobody really reads. That’s the context for the first panel, which must surely count as the most awkward attempt to shift gears from friendship to romance in the history of human interaction. Of course, it quickly descends into madness, with Yolanda replying in a manner that no human being would, ever, just to set up a deeply lame joke, but I still can’t get past Jamaal’s super-smooth technique. What if she had taken it more positively? What would his next move had been? “How do you feel about friends kissing with tongues? How do you feel about one friend’s penis kissing another friend’s vagina?”

Dick Tracy, 5/9/08

“Yeah, you know, they do something really mundane, like rescue the police force’s two top officers with a 900-year-old weapon while an entire SWAT team is held at bay, and then stand around all needy, like they want a medal or something. Get a life, loser!”

In other news: Comic Sans has been banished! Huzzah!

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Gil Thorp, 5/5/08

Well well well, look who’s turned out to be the Mudlarks’ chief nativist! It’s Andrew Gregory, who, I feel obliged to point out, wasn’t such a law-and-order type back when he had a half-drunk Marty Moon pretending to be his father for the benefit of a state social worker. Did Marty’s attempt to teach him the importance of sticking it to the man come to naught? I guess in the A-Train’s hierarchy of faceless, dysfunctional government bureaucracies, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement gets an “honor and obey”, while Social Services rates a “go ahead and mess around with.”

I’m hoping that Marty, flush with his victory in the battle to help underaged Andrew half-competently raise his young siblings without interference from the government, decides to take on Homeland Security for Elmer’s sake. I’m imagining him wearing a huge sombrero and a poncho and spouting quasi-Spanish gibberish like “No es bueno!” and “No mas!” and “Hasta la vista, baby!” It won’t help Elmer at all, of course, but it’ll be hilarious.

Family Circus, 5/5/08

Wow, the Keane Kompound has the most boring wall calendar ever. I guess when your strict religious beliefs regard any depiction of humans, animals, or plants as sin against the Creator, all you’ve got do to entertain yourself is make up sad little stories about the names of the months.

I also question the wisdom of giving a long, pointy stick to a six-year-old, or however old Dolly is supposed to be. At least she’ll probably use it against others, not herself; if Jeffy were wielding it, it’d be buried in his eye in no time.

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 5/5/08

For reasons that I can’t quite verbalize, and hopefully don’t have to, Alan’s thought-balloon whinge in today’s Apartment 3-G was hands-down the funniest thing in the comics section today.

Spider-Man, 5/5/08

…although “Crime-fighting and the flu don’t mix” was a close second. In other developments, we learn that, in his BDSM relationship with his wife, Peter is a bottom. Nobody is surprised.

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First, on Friday I got a mysterious box in the mail. What could it be? A bomb? A container of anthrax? None of these, it turned out! Instead, it was fabulous commemorative Family Circus plate from faithful reader Krazy Kat!

The lovable Keane Kids are rolling around in the leftover detritus of an orgy of Christmas consumption, while their parents are passed out exhausted on the couch, hoping that at least one of them will choke to death on a small toy part so that there’ll be less shopping to do next year. Thanks, Krazy Kat!

(By the way, does anyone know if you can actually eat off these commemorative plate dealies? I’ve heard a rumor that the paint on them is often lead or something equally unpleasant.)

Also! Faithful reader Harold, maker of several fonts, has developed one based on the lettering of former Gil Thorp artist Frank McLaughlin! Behold, Ohmigosh! Perhaps the new artist can swap it in for Comic Sans? It can be yours for a mere $30!

Also also! Faithful reader KT has completed his Comics Curmudgeon Get-Together cartoon diary. There are photos too!