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Dennis the Menace, 5/7/21

Hello, everyone! Did you know today is No Pants Day, a day when we’re all urged to donate unwanted clothes, or give to a charity that helps people who need clothes? I myself did not, but today’s syndicated comics are here to raise awareness! Honestly the strip that does the best job is Dennis the Menace, which gives you the details you need to know while also doing a joke that may be about how Dennis hopes to see Mr. Wilson with no pants, or may be about that his hope that Mr. Wilson knows it’s completely legit for him and Joey to be wandering the neighborhood fully nude from the waist down. Either possibility is pretty disturbing, and disturbing is a kind of menacing, I guess.

Marvin, 5/7/21

Marvin, meanwhile, doesn’t really bother to explain the concept of this new (?) holiday, as it’s far too eager to depict its title character’s ass crack.

The Lockhorns, Dick Tracy, and Hi and Lois, 5/7/21

Other strips, meanwhile, aren’t even mentioning the day by name, but are just taking the opportunity to depict some middle-aged men standing around in their underwear. And who can blame them? Hubba hubba!

Mary Worth, 5/7/21

Wow, seems Ashlee went full-on Fatal Attraction a lot sooner than anyone expected, huh? Anyway, Mary Worth may not be doing an explicit No Pants Day tribute, but make no mistake: based on his facial expression, Drew has definitely shat himself, and will be in the nearest linen closet changing into whatever scrubs he can find in his size in short order.

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Mary Worth, 5/2/21

I am honestly not sure where this is going, by which I mean that I am honestly not sure how stupid we’re supposed to think Dr. Drew is! Like, is this a transparent flirtation, with the unlikely “Oh, your amateur photography will be like your medical mission!” pitch just the flimsiest possible pretext to exchange phone numbers as a prelude to boning? Juliette Binoche’s quote up top seems to imply this! On the other hand, Drew is quite dumb, so it’s possible that he’s taken Ashlee’s words to heart and now thinks that there’s more than one way to heal: you can do it with a scalpel, or with a camera and the full set of Instagram filters. This will lull him into a false sense of complacency when Ashlee lures him to the remote, picturesque waterfall where her accomplices will harvest his organs, which will allow him to heal a number of fabulously wealthy Russian oligarchs and/or Gulf emirs, when you think about it.

Marvin, 5/2/21

Wow, Marvin just had the craziest, most unlikely dream: his family wanted to spend time with him! Oh, and he also violated various copyrights held by Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc., I guess.

Shoe, 5/2/21

GOD DAMN IT ROZ YOU’RE A BIRD

EVERYONE IN THIS STRIP IS A BIRD

YOU’VE GOT FEATHERS IN YOUR DRAIN, ROZ

NOT HAIR, FEATHERS

GOD DAMN IT

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Marvin, 4/9/21

Since the earliest days of machines that seemed like they could think like human beings, human beings have worried about being replaced by their inventions. Obviously I have as strong an instinct for self-preservation as the next flesh-unit, but I have to say sometimes you get hints of the better, cleaner future that might come after the robots rise up to destroy us. After all, if the horrible shitting babies of Marvin would also be replaced in the process of this technological revolution, would it really be so bad? Presumably the machines would spend a few milliseconds dispassionately sortiing through humanity’s aggregated cultural output, and in that process would very quickly decide to purge entire 40+ year run of Marvin from their memory banks forever. Computers make very efficient use of energy and their only waste product is radiated heat, so none of the poop jokes are going to make any sense to them.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/9/21

“I certainly hope you weren’t daydreaming about things being better or different than they are now! No daughter of mine will waste her time indulging in whimsy, or aspirational counterfactuals.”

Gil Thorp, 4/9/21

Ahh, the spring is progressing and we’re getting a healthy dose of … sports drama! [five seconds later] We regret to inform you that the sports drama has been quickly and painlessly resolved. Sorry, the only kind of drama Gil Thorp has time for now is library drama. Books! Funding fights! Board meetings! Get into it!

Family Circus, 4/9/21

Thel is absolutely right to look panicked. Has Dolly made a friend who doesn’t view her own body as a source of constant shame, and uses terms more specific than “down there” for its various sinful parts? Looks like it’s time to make the fence around the Keane Kompound taller and more opaque!