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Hi and Lois, 12/11/24

Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold the damn phone, six months ago Hi seemed genuinely depressed to not receive golf gifts for Father’s Day, back when the kids unilaterally cancelled Father’s Day. Anyway, if Ditto is going to try to do some “turnabout is fair play” on gifts, Hi’s move should be to say “Hey, remember when you cancelled Father’s Day?”

Dennis the Menace, 12/11/24

OK, I’m just genuinely flummoxed by this one. Only thing I’ve got is that Dennis has the Benjamin Button disease and he used to be much taller, and his shrunken, aging brain is vaguely remembering this? I feel menaced in my confusion, but not in a fun way.

Mary Worth, 12/11/24

Mary has had a lot of experience interacting with Dawn, so she knows she has to remind Dawn that she recently became vegan to set the stage for the meal. That girl has a lot of fine qualities, but object permanence simply isn’t one of them.

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Mary Worth, 12/10/24

I guess (for once) Wilbur leaving town is providing us with an opportunity not to see what Wilbur gets up to outside of town but rather to see what happens in the Wilbur-shaped hole left behind. What happens is that Mary is going to make dinner for Dawn literally on her first night alone, which seems a little overprotective, but she might as well learn now that Dawn is now … [extremely dramatic music sting] … VEGAN???? Or, at least she “started a vegan diet,” which implies that she’s doing this as a weight loss thing or a “cleanse” or whatever rather than out of ethical concerns over animal welfare. I know, Dawn doing something wacky for self-interested reasons would be a real shocker. Anyway, Mary was last seen eating a nice salad herself, but presumably it was well-dusted by bacon bits and drenched in a creamy dressing. Could she create an even vaguely edible meal without such crutches? This will be her greatest challenge yet!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/10/24

Speaking of vaguely edible meals, I do “Ha ha, it’s funny because the residents of Hootin’ Holler are crushingly poor!” riffs on this blog not because I think it’s actually funny, but because I find it fascinating that there’s a longstanding syndicated newspaper comic where that’s the background radiation of the worldbuilding (see for instance: patched curtains forming the “walls” within the Smifs’ one-room shack) but it isn’t usually directly addressed, because that would be depressing. But today’s strip, where Loweezy attempts to extend her family’s meager food supply for another day to stave off both boredom and starvation, is a little too on the nose.

Marvin, 12/10/24

“Wait a minute,” I said to myself as I said this. “Why would Jeff have a bunch of pictures of Marvin on his phone? He hates Marvin!” Based on his facial expression in panel three, he’s coming to the exact same realization.

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Mary Worth, 12/8/24

Hello, fellow young people! Like me (a young person), you have no doubt been using the word “cringe” in its relatively new slang sense, as either an adjective meaning something embarrassing or awkward, or as a noun to denote something that inspires the feeling described by the adjective. This is a use of the word that we young people like to deploy on social media sites such as TikTok and [what are the other ones? Is TikTok still what young people like? double-check this].

Sadly, however, we’re all going to have to stop using the word that way, because Wilbur Weston just did, in the comic strip Mary Worth! Ironically, this act itself is incredibly cringe. That’s the last time I’ll use that word in that way; now, as a young person, I will be moving on to new forms of slang that are inscrutable to the many, many people who are older than me.

Pardon My Planet, 12/8/24

Hello, fellow young people! Are you familiar with the hot new musical film Wicked? Fun fact: it’s actually a prequel to another film, The Wizard of Oz, and this syndicated newspaper cartoon is a joke about the characters from that older movie! You’d think it’d be more direct to just do a joke about Wicked, the movie that’s currently popular, but that would require some research to determine what exactly its characters look like, and that sort of effort simply isn’t part of the Pardon My Planet game plan.

Daddy Daze, 12/8/24

Good news, everyone! The Daddy Daze daddy is dead. The Daddy Daze baby captured and killed him. Now, does this mean the Daddy Daze baby will soon himself die, from neglect? Unclear. He’s a baby, so normally I’d say yes, but he managed to capture and kill his father, so he has powers and capabilities beyond those of ordinary babies.

Hagar the Horrible, 12/8/24

Hey guys, if you’re so scared, why don’t you attack the castle during the day? Idiots.