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Dennis the Menace, 9/24/19

Dennis not understanding common English turns of phrase is a key part of the Dennis the Menace mythos, but it seems the current strip creators have forgotten why that is. The point is that Dennis is supposed to use his (feigned?) ignorance as an excuse to reveal that something shitty his parents have said about one of their acquaintances in private, e.g., “You said there’d be an old battle axe coming over but all I see is this late-middle-aged woman with a bad personality.” All today’s garbage joke does is make it clear that Dennis is stupid, and somebody needs to take it over to the Family Circus where it belongs.

Family Circus, 9/24/19

The Family Circus really needs that joke, to be honest, because I have no idea what’s going on here. Who is this random teen, and why is Billy hanging around with him talking about math? And why are he and Ma Keane giving each other a knowing glance? “It’s algebra,” they’re saying to one another, wordlessly. “He doesn’t know the word for it, but we both know he’s talking about algebra.”

Zits, 9/24/19

So it turns out the terrible thing Jeremy learned yesterday was that he has to repeat freshman P.E., and I know I almost never talk about Zits here so it’s weird that I’m talking about it two days in a row, but I think it’s kind of interesting that a strip that used to get in trouble with the syndicate for using the word “sucks” can now do jokes where the punchline is that Jeremy is mad because his dick isn’t getting any bigger as his adolescence progresses.

Hagar the Horrible, 9/24/19

Hagar and Lucky Eddie can’t bear to look at themselves in the mirror, probably because of guilt from all the horrible murders they’ve done.

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Family Circus, 9/22/19

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think the joke in today’s Family Circus is too subtle for me. Is it that they both look smug in the final panel because they each think they’ve pulled one over on the other — Ma Keane because she’s talked Jeffy down to a goldfish, Jeffy because the goldfish is what he wanted all along, but he “went big” with his requests so that she’d be more willing to get him a goldfish? I don’t think Jeffy’s actually smart enough to pull that off. I think Ma Keane is looking smug because she talked Jeffy down to getting a goldfish, and Jeffy looks smug because he realized he can eat the goldfish.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/22/19

Oh hey, in case you forgot, Buck, who’s having a new baby with Mindy, already has an old baby — what scientist call a “teen” — from his previous marriage (not to the lady who shot him in the head, the one before that). Anyway, here Buck is having a man-to-man talk with his teen son about how great it is that his teen son knows how to poop in a toilet. They seem like they have fun!

Shoe, 9/22/19

I really love how completely depressed this lady looks here, just utterly wrecked by how poorly the evening has gone up till this point. Clearly the date is unsalvageable, so why not open the dinner conversation with “Hey, you ever eat anything that just gave you the shits real bad?”

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Mary Worth, 9/21/19

Longtime friend of the blog and Heathcliff obsessive Brandi Brown has a theory that 9/11 never happened in the Mary Worth universe, and after this strip, I’m finally convinced. In a world where commercial airlines were never weaponized, lax airport security allows even gross foreigners like Hugo to just pop off for an hour or two for a quick makeout session while storms over the midwest delay the daily Santa Royale International-Charles de Gaulle nonstop flight. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But Josh, what about the special Mary Worth strip commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks?” Well, while the Apartment 3-G that ran that day makes a fairly explicit reference to the attacks and the Twin Towers, the Mary Worth strip just features Mary leaving a message for some lady about her son who died ten years before, which, he could’ve died in any number of ways! Didn’t have to be in a terrorist attack. The fact that this lady saw that Mary was calling and let it go straight to voicemail makes sense in any version of the timestream, of course.

Family Circus, 9/21/19

Ha ha, kids sure do say the darnedest things, especially after you’ve sought shelter from a natural disaster but just left them upstairs to stare out of a completely unshuttered and unprotected window!