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Gasoline Alley, 5/17/24

OK, see, I get that Assistant Mayor Elbert Imeswine was the villain of the “Electric Acres” arc, but he doesn’t seem to be based on any particular real-life person and was dispatched without ever having been very threatening. But still, the way he haunts Walt’s dreams as this truly vile vampire pig caricature implies a level of vitriol held by the very artist who created him that I honestly find puzzling. This looks like the way you’d draw a local politician you were in the midst of a decade-long feud with if you were the political cartoonist on the staff of the local paper, or the way you’d draw a representation of some ethnic group that you were extremely racist against.

Dennis the Menace, 5/17/24

Normally, I’m fine with Dennis the Menace’s weird quirk where they think a tuxedo is normal workware at Henry’s engineering (?) job. But today it actively detracts from the joke, which is about how Dennis thinks his spirit will remain free forever despite arbitrary punishments, but eventually he’ll be chained to a eight-hour day and a paycheck, just like his father. This would work better if he were wearing normal business casual or even a suit, but in this getup, he looks like he’s coming home from his job as a butler or as James Bond, either of which would have a different vibe to it in my opinion.

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Gasoline Alley, 5/14/24

Ha ha yes, last week I had some fun imagining Walt encountering some biblically accurate angels, but this week Walt has entered a dreamscape where he’s conflating going to a public meeting and not actually doing anything helpful until the mayor showed up and fixed the actual problem with being an ancient hero, a biblical patriarch and warrior who triumphs over impossible odds. Don’t worry, though: unlike the real bible, this imagined ancient setting will still include the crushingly unfunny wordplay you have come to expect from this strip.

The Phantom, 5/14/24

Oh, OK, so this whole thing has ultimately been about a little light idol theft, and I think it’s funny that this bad guy thinks he can rope our hero in with the promise of ill-gotten idol riches. The Phantom would never do anything so gauche as to launder pilfered cultural heritage through discreet and well-connected European auction houses so they end up at the British Museum next to a small plaque that says “provenance unknown”! Why would he bother, when he could just keep them in a room deep in his jungle lair and go down and look at them every few years?

Gil Thorp, 5/14/24

“Well, here’s your problem: you got one of those cubist buses! Sure, you can perceive it from multiple perspectives at once so you can better understand its context, but that kind of setup is hell on an internal combustion engine.”

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Blondie, 5/11/24

Look, obviously saying anything against mothers and motherhood is a swift ticket to getting abruptly cancelled — and rightfully so! [laughs nervously] — but I refuse to believe “mom’s week” is a thing, even if you use the not-actual-Mothers-Day part of the week to make a nice gesture to the non-relative woman whose house you spend all your time in for ill-defined and probably not great reasons. It’s long been clear that a substantial portion of Blondie gags are generated by a big calendar with all the holidays on it, and today’s strip shows how reliant the writers are on this crutch, with the daily strip crew refusing to cede Mothers Day to the Sunday writers room.

Gasoline Alley, 5/11/24

“I looked, and there were four wheels beside the cherubim, one beside each cherub, and the appearance of the wheels was like gleaming beryl. And as for their appearance, the four looked alike, something like a wheel within a wheel. When they moved, they moved in any of the four directions without veering as they moved, but in whatever direction the front wheel faced, the others followed without veering as they moved. Their entire bodies — backs, hands, and wings — were covered with eyes all around, as were the wheels of the four of them. As for the wheels, they were called in my hearing the wheelwork. Each one had four faces: the first face was that of the cherub, the second face was that of a human, the third that of a lion, and the fourth that of an eagle. The cherubim rose up. These were the living creatures that I saw by the River Chebar.” That’s the testimony of the prophet Ezekiel, and I hope for these things for Walt! I hope he’s borne up to heaven on wings covered by eyeballs by beings who seem like living creatures but are like no living creature you’ve ever seen! If he cannot be blessed by a natural death, after more than a century of toiling in the funny pages for our amusement, let him have this, instead!

Dennis the Menace, 5/11/24

I genuinely find it funny that Alice seems confused by the perpetrator of this prank. “It’s our asshole neighbor, honey. The one who’s done this before, repeatedly? It’s two in the afternoon, are you drunk already?”