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Mary Worth, 9/5/18

But if he were Dale Carnegie — if Carnegie faked his 1955 death, if he managed to still walk among us today at the age of 130 thanks to the dark spells written in blood in his forbidden necromantic tome How To Stop Worrying And Start Living Eternally, if he travels the land in disguise as a wounded and angry man to try to discover the chosen one who can win any friend, influence any person, and if that chosen one turned out to be Mary — well, I’m not saying that’s at all likely. But it’d be a pretty cool scenario, you know?

Dennis the Menace, 9/5/18

Ah yes, it appears that Dennis is finally figuring it out: the reason he’s always been allowed to run wild, been indulged as he harasses Mr. Wilson and blurts out rude nonsense in front of other adults and antagonizes his teachers, is because his mother thinks it’s funny. It doesn’t matter how many people he alienates, that he’s sabotaging his education and his future, as long as she gets some droll anecdotes about what a little shit he is that she can share with her similarly jaded friends. The facial expressions here — Dennis’s of mounting, horrified realization, Alice’s of cruel amusement — make it clear that the menacing dynamic has shifted, or perhaps more correctly that we’ve been wrong about their power relations all along.

Gil Thorp, 9/5/18

“Woo-hoo, bro! Total lack of intellectual curiosity fist bump!”

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Dick Tracy, 9/4/18

Dick Tracy’s approach to depicting crime has always been cartoonish, but usually that means “criminals have hideously deformed crania that could only exist in drawings” and not “drug gangs have laughable names and stake out territory by gently shoving rivals across the street.”

Funky Winkerbean, 9/4/18

Seems pretty mean to joke about your brain-injured pal‘s mental deficits, but I guess if you’re recovering from a massive stroke, as this guy clearly is, you’re “allowed” to say it.

Shoe, 9/4/18

I really appreciate that, in today’s installment of “the bird-men of Shoe hate their lives and themselves,” the Perfesser sighs audibly but only thinks about his deep-rooted desire for a total annihilation of self, because if you speak a wish out loud it won’t come true.

Mary Worth, 9/4/18

HELL YES MARY IS GOING TO FIND MEAN OLD MR. WYNTER SOME FRIENDS AND MAYBE A PACK OF FERALS FOR HIS DOG TO JOIN, NOBODY HAS ANY CHOICE IN THE MATTER, MARY HAS SPOKEN

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Hi and Lois, 9/2/18

Can you imagine if your all-powerful creator diety died? Imagine the sense of mourning, of emptiness that would hang over your whole universe in that scenario. And then you’d have to contemplate the possibility that it was only His constant new acts of creation that kept the world running, and that without that impetus maybe the tide would beging to shift the other way. “Old cartoonists never die. They just erase away,” says Lois, worrying that perhaps her own reality will soon begin to erase itself, removing her and everyone she loves from existence.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/2/18

Well, it looks like Millie was just waiting for one last visit from her high school boyfriend so he knew how hot she was before finally dropping dead. At least she died as she lived: slinging cheap food to ungrateful patrons at a mediocre diner, and dreaming of the day, just around the corner but always out of reach, when she’d be able to retire.

Mary Worth, 9/2/18

Oh, man, it’s a mean old man and his angry dog! He actively refuses Mary’s gift of food! This is going to be her greatest challenge yet! Watch out, Mr. Wynter: your life is about to have the the hell meddled out it. Dead wife? Estranged kids? Prickly exterior makes it hard to make friends? Mary will find your trauma and will force you to process it emotionally until you are fixed.