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Dick Tracy, 10/17/24

One of the subtler conundrums created by the “comic-book time” phenomenon is the question of how the characters themselves experience it. Like, is Dick Tracy a guy in his late 40s or early 50s who’s been battling weird deformed gangsters for a couple decades? Or did he, like the comic that bears his name, come into existence in 1938, meaning that he’s been at this longer than most of us have been alive, and he’s tired, so tired, of these weirdos’ whole deal? His attitude in today’s strip really suggests the latter. “Oh, what’s that, is there a new hitman in town? A real freak with a mirror for a face who calls himself Mr. Mirror? Should I get excited? Scared? Should I even bother pulling my gun out of my pocket? No, go ahead and answer that call, I can wait.”

Dennis the Menace, 10/17/24

There’s a lot that bugs me about the characterization of Margaret in Dennis the Menace, but a big one is that they need to decide which misogynist stereotype she is exactly. Is she a prissy, humorless, controlling know-it-all and shrew? Or is she empty-headed, vapid, and vain? I feel she veers wildly from lane to lane and they need to pick one.

Hi and Lois, 10/17/24

Ha ha, yes, the teens! The teens are the ones with the phone problem! Definitely not me, a 50-year-old man, or adults younger than me, or adults older than me! None of us have unhealthy relationships with our devices, and definitely social gatherings of mature adults feature exactly as much staring at small screens with varying degrees of surreptitiousness as they did 15 years ago! It’s the teens, I tell ya, the teens!

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Mary Worth, 10/12/24

God, I hope Jimmy is with Estelle in spirit. I hope he’s been following her around for her whole dating journey, and I hope that when she got to Wilbur he recoiled in disgust. He died while on the job so I assume he still has all his cop stuff with him as a ghost, and I hope that every time Estelle and Wilbur began to have sex he reached his ghost hand for his ghost baton, only to realize that as a mere shade he could never break open the man’s bald head with it, so what’s the point. Instead he just has to sit (float?) there and watch. His spectral but furious presence would explain a lot of the bad vibes around that relationship.

Hi and Lois, 10/12/24

I love that the first panel is a bedtime story and the second is happening at least a day later, which meant that the twins have had to time to discuss this. “He’s talking about Mr. Thurston, right?” they presumably asked each other after Hi shut the door. “He’s the tortoise in this situation?” I also like the fact that leaves are beginning to pile up on Thirsty’s inert form. He’s dead, kids! He’s been dead for hours!

Hagar the Horrible, 10/12/24

Hey, guys, want to read a Hagar the Horrible where some people walk into Hagar and Helga’s house and just start fucking? Well, uh, here you go. Happy weekend, everybody!

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Dennis the Menace, 9/24/24

Despite being a resident of California for more than a decade, I’m not a woo-woo person who talks about a situation’s “energy” much, but the closest I get is when I talk about doing standup comedy. The great and terrible thing about performing comedy live is that you can absolutely tell, in an immediate and visceral way, whether people are having a good time: a polite laugh is immediately obvious in a way that polite applause is not. And when you bomb on stage, it is a terrible and physical sensation: the term “flop sweat” is, for me at least, not a metaphor. Anyway, this is all to say that Dennis is very much bombing here; the guys down at the hardware store have zero patience for his bullshit little jokes, but it’s also clear that he’s blissfully unaware of this. Having no radar for how your performance is landing with an audience is almost certainly a type of sociopathy, and demonstrates what a true menace this young man is.

Hi and Lois, 9/24/24

Really love Lois’s gobsmacked expression in panel one here. “Holy SHIT! You bought bungee cords? You exchanged money for bungee cords? You got cords that consist of an elastic strand core covered by woven polypropylene? And you’re going to use it to secure the garbage can lids? Our garbage can lids? The lids to the cans where we put all our garbage? With fucking bungee cords? I never thought I’d live to see the day. May such wonders never cease.”