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Hi and Lois, 2/9/24

I have not been on the “dating scene” since I met my wife-to-be back in 2002, but I try to keep abreast of the discourse and the lingo and I’m pretty sure that “ghosting” someone means that you simply cut off contact with them without telling them why. You do not need to begin the process by sending ghost emojis. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I’m in a battle of with-it-ness with Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC, well, let’s just say I like my odds.

Blondie, 2/9/24

Hey, fun fact, did you know that Dagwoods reproduce asexually? True story, a Dagwood will bud an identical genetic clone who, upon reaching maturity, will kill and eat his father/original. This is not really relevant to this specific strip, but you can really see here that the younger Dagwood’s growth process is almost complete and that the elder Dagwood’s Time is almost upon him. Kelly is correct to steer clear!

Dennis the Menace, 2/9/24

“Anyway, where do you think our parents are? It’s been weeks!”

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Hi and Lois, 2/6/24

God, this one is super bleak. Lois has convinced herself that, sure, things are tight and they can’t afford to order pizza very often even though the kids are always whining for it, but what if she just learned how to make it herself? And what if the kids learned to love that even more than the crap from Dominio’s? “Mom’s homemade pizza,” they’d call it, and it would be a fond childhood memory they’d carry with them the rest of their lives, something they looked forward to, not a marker of her and Hi’s failure to provide them with what they really wanted. This fantasy lasts mere seconds into the children’s’ actual encounter with her malformed, fucked-up pizza, and look at her face — she is devastated.

Family Circus, 2/6/24

Jeffy, meanwhile, has been abandoned by his parents and is being forced to clean the house himself even though he’s a toddler, and he’s doing fine. “Noooo, Jeffy, you’re screwing this up, do you even know what cleaning is” Dolly whines in the background, but Jeffy doesn’t care. Look at that face. Cool competence and determination. He’s thriving for the first time in his short, dumb life.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/6/24

I often think that contemporary middle- and upper-class Americans create a culture of child safety that’s unprecedented in history, with children monitored at all times well into their teenage years and not given space to explore or gain useful life skills in ways that will be really damaging down the road. But then I see strips like this and think maybe there’s something to it.

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Mary Worth, 2/5/24

Say, remember way back at the beginning of this storyline, when Sonia showed up at Keith’s doorstep insisting that he was her father, and due to their shared hair color and love of root beer he just kind of went along with it, even though many of us were like “Um, Keith? DNA test? Hello??? DNA test????” Well, big news: he’s finally getting around to it, and sure, most of us would want to get confirmation of paternity before we went through the trouble of reconnecting (sexually) with our long-lost ex/supposed baby mama and scaring away the weird fake hippie dude who was always hanging around for reasons that seemed predatory but were never quite clear. But, let’s be clear: most of us are cowards. Anyway, can’t wait for Keith’s ol’ pal Sal to call him from the lab and say “Yeah, your instincts were right on. This was definitely root beer.”

Hi and Lois, 2/5/24

The joke here is obviously that Lois is at the end of her rope and has resorted to the flimsiest of pretenses to force her children to stop talking, but I’d like to believe that it’s Hi she’s addressing in the second panel. It’s his moment of silence because he’s dying, which she hasn’t told him about yet.