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Dennis the Menace and Hi and Lois, 10/29/20

Truly, there’s nothing more menacing than a child who becomes extremely aware of their own ability to perform a sort of exaggerated pantomime of childhood antics. Look at Dennis’s sickeningly smug facial expression in panel two — it’s like he didn’t ruin the wall for the joy of it, but rather just so he could unleash this sub-Family Circusism on his poor mother. Dot, too, is really overdoing it; a child rejoicing in the suffering of a sibling is demonstrating a distasteful but natural human emotion, but she’s making such a big deal of her cruel mirth that it’s clearly meant for an audience, one that for the moment is withholding the attention she so obviously and pathetically craves.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/29/20

Snuffy’s facial expression similarly seems wildly overdone, but I think we’re supposed to read it as genuine. See, he’s really depressed because he’s so poor and so deep in debt that he can’t afford to buy anything to eat, which is … the punchline to this strip, I guess?

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Crankshaft, 10/4/20

Hey, remember the last mayoral election in this town, when Ralph, who’s sitting there claiming he could never do what you need to do to run for mayor, ran for mayor? He lost, because Crankshaft, his campaign manager, forgot to vote for him, and it’s really a good thing, too, because here we are not even at the end of what would’ve been his first term and his brain is so addled he doesn’t even remember he ever ran. Sad!

Gasoline Alley, 10/4/20

I refuse to think about whether the Sunday and weekly Gasoline Alley strips are in the same “continuity” any longer than it will take me to type this sentence, but I will point out that today’s strip that has the vibe of “We’ve been closed for months due to coronavirus but now we’re open!” even though we’ve never seen anyone in the strip acknowledge the coronavirus. Anyway, it seems the pandemic was actually much worse in the Gasoline Alley universe, and the shattered remnants of society have been reduced to eating horsemeat.

Hi and Lois, 10/4/20

Chip’s emotional journey here is interesting but besides the point: these two suburban families have figured out a way to link their landholdings and create a stronger and more easily defensible bloc of territory via strategic matrimony, and so everybody involved just needs to get used to the idea.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 10/4/20

I absolutely love Leroy’s miserable facial expression here. He knows everyone hates him and hates what he’s doing, but he’s found himself committed to this bit against his own best instincts, with no way to back out.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/20/20

Hey, remember Nancy, Kelly’s sneering mean-girl nemesis who tried to key Kelly’s car, back when Kelly was being chauffeured around in a hearse by mobsters because this strip used to be interesting? Well, Nancy briefly tried to do something interesting, but don’t worry: it was prevented from ever happening, off-panel, which is good because otherwise we might have had to watch it happen, instead of getting an entire Sunday strip of virtuous characters talking to each other on the phone.

Hi and Lois, 9/20/20

I genuinely love that (a) techno has been rendered as “boing bop bing” here and (b) that Hi has gone from dubious to extremely over it as Chip works his way through this bit.

Dustin, 9/20/20

You guys, Dustin finally did an actually kind of funny joke! Unfortunately the joke is that Popeye is on TV holding a can labelled “kale.” The punchline to the strip itself is not funny.