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Dennis the Menace, 2/22/10

You know, for a long time I’ve wondered why exactly Mrs. Wilson constantly encourages Dennis to come over and raise extremely mild hell at her house, when her husband obviously loathes him. I’d always just chalked it up to a difference in opinion combined with an absence of solicitousness one might expect from a longstanding and not particularly passionate marriage; if there were any grimmer undertones, they might involve the children that the maternal Mrs. Wilson seems to have always wanted but that Mr. Wilson was unwilling (or unable?) to have with her.

But today’s strip casts an even darker pall over the marital dynamic. Mrs. Wilson fills Dennis with trash talk about Mr. Wilson’s mental state; far from worrying that the filterless little moron will run off and repeat it at the first opportunity, she actually waits just around the corner to make sure that he does, tittering to herself at her husband’s discomfiture. Mr. Wilson’s trademark creepy single bead of sweat is the payoff; she knows that one of these days, Dennis will push him over the edge and he’ll die of a massive rage stroke, and then it’s off to Boca with his Post Office pension.

Mark Trail, 2/22/10

Mark Trail is an action-based continuity strip, but the sad fact is that some kinds of action translate better to comic strip form than others. Punching, for instance, seems to work out pretty well! But a thrilling canoe ride through rushing rapids: not so much, apparently. “To get their friend to a hospital as quickly as possible, Mark and Ben Harris run the dangerous rapids at Devil’s Pass. Aaaaannnnd … they’ve successfully gotten through the rough spots, after just a panel! Boy, that was a close one. Uh, here, enjoy this close-up on a magnificent raptor, won’t you?”

Spider-Man, 2/22/10

Sometimes he forgets that it’s on, sometimes he forgets that it’s off. Is Peter Parker just physically incapable of telling whether or not he has on his costume under his clothes unless he actually unbuttons his shirt and looks at his torso? Perhaps this is a result of the spider-bite-induced changes that caused his sensitive nipples to wither and fall off.

Mary Worth, 2/22/10

“Now that cold, heartless medical science has proven that the son I loved so much is a fraud, I’m going to end it all by downing a big glass of cleaning solvent! Care to join me in the sweet release of death?”

Marmaduke, 2/22/10

“You don’t understand! He … he hungers! Please, your Dark Majesty, I’m digging as quickly as I can! No … nooooooo….“

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Dick Tracy, 2/8/10

Dick Tracy has been even more incomprehensible than usual lately, and what I have been able to understand has just irritated me, but I do read it diligently, in case any gems pop up that ought to be shared with my readership! And lo and behold, panel two is just such a gem. “…Not everyone loves you, and you must die.” Couldn’t this sinister, gnomic pronouncement be uttered about each and every one of us? None of us is so lovable as to earn the affections of all, and each of us is mortal! Of course, most of us won’t be terribly maimed by an exploding Stradivarius, with a square-jawed fascist saying something pithy over us as we die in agony, for which we can be thankful.

Luann, 2/8/10

Speaking of people nobody likes, it’s Luann! It actually took me a minute to get my head around the punchline here (i.e., everyone will finally know Luann DeGroot, who will be in disguise, as a Puerto Rican); I at first assumed that we were meant to laugh at Luann’s cheerfully proposed brownfacing. Still, I rather think that her classmates will remember her for her performance, if only as “that girl who got the school picketed by the National Council of La Raza.”

Popeye, 2/8/10

Speaking of incomprehensible and irritating, Popeye just ended one of its stories that I half paid attention to and is about to start another one in which I’ll probably be equally uninterested. Still, you have to admire this strip for showing that even a plot that is extremely grim and all too real for too many people today — a desperate attempt to hide the extent of your financial ruin from your family, who depends on you economically — can be made hilarious through ersatz dialect. “I yam out of monies!'” Ho ho ho!

Marmaduke, 2/8/10

Look, lady, if you keep marrying them, he’s going to keep killing and eating them. I’m not sure why this is such a hard concept for you to grasp.

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Mark Trail, 2/6/10

I may have missed this earlier, but it appears that the hilariously surnamed Parker brothers are hilariously named Moe and Joe. What whimsical parents they must have had, to give them rhyming names! Clearly the only way they had to rebel against their twee upbringing was to grow facial hair and generally dick it up out on the lake, with their big motors. Still, we can see a bit of their wacky heritage out on display in the rapid-fire shirt exchange they made between panels one and two, just for absurdist fun. Mark and Senator Hatcher just stand there with their hands manfully on their hips, their low-key masculinity offering a counterpoint to their desperate antics

In panel three, Joe, or possibly Moe, shows that he’s well acquainted with the most up-to-date way to effect political change, which is to buttonhole one of your elected officials and scream at him.

For Better For Worse, 2/6/10

FBOFW reruns are like comics methadone: not as good as the real thing, and yet I still can’t seem to taper off. I do enjoy them for their sociological insight into late ’70s/early ’80s Canada, anyway. Today we learn what the main characteristic of a dark, seedy Montreal jazz club of the era was: omnipresent menacing mustaches.

Marmaduke, 2/6/10

Come now, Marmaduke’s lovingly curated collection of human femurs is a work of art, not a mere job. I mean, I at least hope that nobody’s paying him for it.