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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.

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Family Circus, 4/5/22

I’ve been doing this blog for many, many years and my attitude about many of the comics has evolved in ways I never expected, and one of the ways I least expected is that I have come to respect some of the subtle dry wit in the Family Circus. In today’s panel, for instance, Mrs. Crisp is giving Billy a semi-defeated “is this little moron shitting me” look, which, once you learn to recognize it, a surprising number adults use when interacting with the Keane Kids, including their parents.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/5/22

Funky Winkerbean has accrued a truly epic amount of lore over its decades of existence, and I was about to apologize to you for not having it all at my fingertips, but you know what? It’s good and normal to not remember Funky Winkerbean plots from decades ago and I’m not apologizing for practicing self-care by refusing to retain information about them! Anyway, the last few weeks of this strip have been about Crazy Harry’s teen days as an arcade-based video gamer, and how his arch-rival was a person who wore a helmet and was known as “The Eliminator,” and that person turned out to be … the woman he would later marry. I have no idea if this was how the storyline actually played out way back in the early run in the strip or if it’s been retconned in a “What if a great video game player … were a girl, really makes you think” way, and I don’t care to do the research to find out. What’s important is that Crazy Harry has put on “The Eliminator”‘s helmet, and it’s apparently now some kind of VR/metaverse thing, only instead of taking you to a fantastic world beyond your imagination, it just plops you down right next to Les and Lisa’s special park bench, where you too can experience your wife dying of cancer in vivid 3-D.

Dick Tracy, 4/5/22

Ah, it appears that “Coffyhead,” using the clever alias “Moka,” is about to tangle with Vitamin Flintheart’s manager “Coffee Grounds.” I usually find “Don’t talk to me till I’ve had my coffee!” jokes pretty dumb, but I’m beginning to think that the Dick Tracy creative team should in fact not talk to anyone or start working on Dick Tracy until they’ve had their coffee.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/5/22

Oh, I’m sorry, are you still griping because the comic strip Rex Morgan, M.D., doesn’t do medical-themed storylines often enough for your taste? Well, they’re just going to spend weeks on the most boring injuries you can imagine until you beg for more stuff about “roots country” or whatever the fuck.

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Family Circus, 3/27/22

I actually think this is a pretty clever strip, though I would argue that, just as the strip sometime updates old art to acknowledge that flatscreen TVs exist, it could’ve improved things by maybe updating some of the fashion choices on these imaginary old people, since those constitute a pretty important aspect of what you think an old person looks like and how others perceive how old they are! But the funniest thing to me is the quip from Big Daddy Keane that sets this off. Can you imagine someone bringing up a mutual acquaintance and your first reaction is “That guy? Oh yeah, he’s old. He’s old as shit. Doddering motherfucker with one foot in the grave. Wears adult diapers, probably.” Anyway, I would type out more terms of abuse here, but then it occurred to me that the typical person whose oldest child is 7 is probably younger than I am by as much as a decade so I’m gonna go have a nice lie down for a few hours.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/27/22

And I’m back! With this one I mainly want to point out the “I still don’t know what this is!” in the right panel in the second row. That’s called an author’s signature, Sarah! It’s how you know who drew this comic! I can’t believe after all you’ve been through you’re still sneering at people’s attempts to establish their ownership of their intellectual property!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/27/22

Kind of surprised it’s taken almost two years for the comics to engage with the “30-50 feral hogs” meme, but the specific strip that was the first to do so is not a surprise at all.