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Dennis the Menace and The Family Circus, 4/15/22

Oh, man, this is it. This is the nadir. The Keane Kids have ruined their parents’ outing to an art museum, Dolly and Jeffy are consumed with self-loathing, Billy is actively furious at the family’s attempt to to expand their cultural horizons. Meanwhile, what’s going on with Dennis? He’s weeping because he stubbed his toe and now his mom is offering to pray for him? Honestly, what the fuck. That is so much less menacing than the Family Circus that the menace levels could not be detected by the most carefully calibrated instruments menace science has to offer. For shame, for shame!

Mary Worth, 4/15/22

Sadly, this whole week has been taken up not by more hilarious dream sequence action but by Toby telling Mary about her little Cal problem in judiciously elliptical detail, which has been significantly less fun. I do like today’s strip, though, as it implies that Ian cares less about Toby’s romantic fidelity than he does about her ability to “handle” sticky situations, which I assume means that either Helen or Cal — or possibly both — will be dead by the end of the week.

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Dennis the Menace, 4/9/22

If, like me, you have persisted in the stubborn belief against all evidence that the point of Dennis the Menace is that Dennis is a little shit who’s either too mean or too dumb to play by society’s rules, then today’s panel is perfection. I genuinely love everyone’s facial expressions here, which are less comical “Ha ha, that’s our Dennis” and more “Oh fuck oh fuck this little kid ruined a wedding, who even invited him?”

Mary Worth, 4/9/22

Ahh, at last, we’re getting to the true heart of Toby’s discomfort. She managed to snag a drunk old husband who can barely tolerate her and certainly wouldn’t want to have to interact with a child in his own home on a regular basis, which means she’s been given permission to opt out of motherhood. But if she gave in to her forbidden desires for young buck Cal, would he someday seek to sire offspring with her? And, more importantly, would he try to do it in a tree, like a common bird?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/9/22

“No one can know the truth about my mission to raise my arm over shoulder height. This goes against everything the good doctor told me to do, but the stakes are just too high!”

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Gil Thorp, 4/8/22

Gil Thorp generally hews pretty closely to the holy trinity of football, basketball, and baseball/softball, but every once in a while it tries another sport out for size and I always appreciate it. Today the Milford baseballers are coming out to support tennis star Charis (?) Tompkins, and going on a journey of learning about when and where it’s appropriate to cheer in different sports. A fun fact is that my niece was a pretty high-level gymnast in high school and I went to one of her meets once and very quickly discovered that you are not supposed to loudly boo your team’s opponents, who knew, ha ha! You can’t blame me, my sole experience with competitive gymnastics at the time was a 2006 Gil Thorp storyline where one little girl just starts punching another little girl in the face in the middle of a meet.

Mary Worth, 4/8/22

Ha ha, yes, this dream sequence is shaping up to be exactly as bananas as I’d hoped! Cal looming erotically/threatening over Toby, staring into nothing with dead heart eyes, while the salmon sky burns behind him? The best part is that it’s Friday and we’re really just getting started, which I hope means we have another solid week of this.

Hi and Lois, 4/8/22

The newspaper comics are essentially an art form created by, and mostly for, those middle aged and older, so a lot of it ends being about how the kids today aren’t as cool as the kids used to be. Normally that’s not my jam, but I gotta admit, when they’re right, they’re right.