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Dustin, 1/18/24

I think my record on the themes and narrative content of Dustin is pretty clear — I find them extremely objectionable, perhaps more than any other comic in my daily rotation — but I generally don’t say much about the art. It’s — well, “good” might be pushing it, but it’s generally perfectly workmanlike and occasionally shows flashes of charm. The one thing about it I don’t like is the weird way that the character’s eyes switch back and forth between stylized pupils-and-sclerae (as in panel two here) and simple black dots (as in panel three). Maybe this doesn’t jump out at you in black and white (which I still consider the canonical format for a daily strip), but in today’s scenario it honestly feels like we’re going from them talking normally about teenage boy trouble to their eyes suddenly going inky black and their voices shifting to an ominous thrumming as they say in unison “THE HANDSOME LAD, THE PRETTY ONE … HE HAS WRONGED US AND HE MUST BE DESTROYED.”

Gil Thorp, 1/18/24

Keri has been selling the “Pedro ghosted me!” sob story to anyone who’ll listen for a while now, but honestly it feels more like “Pedro is experiencing a major depressive episode that isn’t actually about me”? This is, I imagine, a fairly accurate example of a teenage reaction, though.

Mary Worth, 1/18/24

My immediate reaction to this strip was “Oh my god was this just setting up a MARY WORTH HAS A SECRET DAUGHTER PLOT????” Now, obviously, you’re going to dismiss that as anatomically impossible, but remember that Mary firmly believes that you can overcome past trauma simply by refusing to remember that it ever happened, so it’s more likely than you’d think!

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Mary Worth, 1/15/24

Well, thank God, surely now that this Mary Worth story has wrapped up in the most boring manner possible we can move on to something more interesting, and … wait, what’s this? Keith and Kitty are “giv[ing] in to their growing attraction,” right there in the car, front of God and Mary Worth readers everywhere? I can’t believe we’re about to see something so explicit, so filthy, that … oh, thank goodness, Keith just referred to food you buy at a grocery store as “dinner items,” no libido no matter how powerful can survive the sexlessness of that wording. Things are going to go back to normal (non-horny) soon enough!

Gil Thorp, 1/15/24

Ah, whoops, it looks before he even had a chance to menace Gil and our heroes, Coach Perm was felled by a swift punch to the gut from one of his own players. Welp, problem (?) solved (???), let’s go see what Coach Ochoa and the hockey team is up to for the rest of the week.

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Mary Worth, 1/13/24

There’s been a few complaints from the commentariat that I haven’t been covering the end (?) of the Keith-Kitty-Brad-Sonia saga. The reason I haven’t is because it’s been dumb as hell, but to summarize, Sonia warmed up to Keith even though he’s The Man and not a fake vegan in a dumb hat because he knew how to play at least one Stevie Wonder song on the guitar. Has Kitty also picked up some hidden talents in the last 20 years that Keith is going to learn about? You know, like sex tal–no, you know what, I’m not doing this, this plot is ending so lamely it doesn’t deserve my attempts at ironic ribaldry.

Dennis the Menace, 1/13/24

I know Margaret is cursed to be this strip’s resident scold, but I’d honestly like to know how exactly these two landed on this topic of conversation. I assume that Dennis has just finished an extended riff about how his parents put him in timeout again and it’s not fair, man, which is somewhat menacing, assuming you consider “annoying” to be a kind of menacing.

Gil Thorp, 1/13/24

“Wait, we’re supposed to be playing to win?” thought Rod to himself. “Shit! I haven’t been doing that at all! What sort of leader am I?”