Post Content

Mary Worth, 10/2/14

Thank goodness little Gordon’s cognitive functions have been completely captured by horrifying mouse cartoons since Monday, so he doesn’t have to listen to his mother and his grandmother bicker over who gets to spend less time with him! Currently he’s staring at Non-Copyright Infringing Superhero Mouse and playing with his action figure and pretending he’s participating in its uncanny valley adventures, so he doesn’t hear his reluctant caregivers dancing around the issue of s-e-x. How are either of these single ladies going be able to go on dates if they have to supervise this mute little ginger, who needs to have his bugged-out eyeballs moistened every few hours as he watches the Rodent Cartoon Channel?

Those shadows in panel one show just how brave Hanna needs to be to defy her daughter: if Amy were to stand up straight, her knees would clearly be level with Hanna’s waist. It’s not easy to say no to a terrifying giantess!

Dennis the Menace, 10/2/14

Speaking of unsettling size differentials, has Margaret always been so much larger than the boys? Anyway, in today’s panel, Joey, this strip’s holy fool, reveals his complete ignorance of the arbitrary ethnic labels that divide human beings from one another. Dennis and Margaret, already so fully inculcated in the lie of nationalism that it seems a part of nature to them, regard him with pitying stares. It’s a panel that’s truly menacing in its implications.

Post Content

Crock, 9/29/14

Reminder: When you see daily comics in color, those colors haven’t been selected by the artists, who generally submit their strips in black and white; instead, there’s a separate staff of colorists, paid by the syndicates, who add color for those contexts where color versions of the strip appear. I’m never afraid to mock these poor underpaid drones when their work results in weirdness or blatant historical errors, so I’m willing to give them kudos when they do the best they can with what they have to work with! Would a normally green cactus that loses its needles as part of a joke about it being “fall” in the desert turn orange, the way green leaves of deciduous trees turn orange before falling of their branches? Maybe! Does having the cactus be orange in the beginning ruin the joke? Trick question: this is Crock, and Crock jokes cannot be “ruined.”

Mary Worth, 9/29/14

It turns out that the real problem with Hanna Dingdon (side note: HAHAHA “DINGDON”) isn’t that her failing eyesight makes her a dangerous driver, it’s that her daughter just uses her as a personal babysitting services at the last minute, without any advance notice! Hanna has had it up to here with this inconsiderate treatment, and so she’s getting revenge the only way she knows how: by letting her grandson watch the most horrifying children’s programming you can imagine, starring monkey-faced rat-things bearing the logo of a literal broken heart on their chests, so that after every visit he’ll return to his mother a traumatized emotional wreck.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 9/21/14

Welcome to your next Mary Worth plot, everybody: should old people (who aren’t Mary) be permitted to drive? Or, perhaps more specifically: should old people (who aren’t Mary, obviously Mary is fine, everybody, Mary is 100% in control of her faculties and her body is in as good as shape as it’s ever been, beyond some fetching silver in her hair) be forced to move in with their terrible daughter Amy, of whom they are obviously terrified? I’m guessing the answers are “no” and “after a little light meddling/reconciliation, yes” respectively. On the other hand, the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote found on inspirational-quotes.info seems to point in another direction. “We start dying as soon as we start living! You risk life and limb every time you get out of bed! Why not get behind the wheel? Why not experience the thrill of knowing you could plow into a crowd of schoolchildren, or be run down on the sidewalk? THE RISK OF DEATH IS THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW WE’RE ALIVE”

(Also maybe old people should go to the optometrist to see if they need new glasses? Just a thought!)

Blondie, 9/21/14

Legacy strips tend to contain innumerable running gags that have been popping up regularly for decades, and in so doing ossify cultural attitudes that have long ago faded in the real world. Strips like Dennis the Menace have really young kids playing unsupervised around the neighborhood in ways that were commonplace a generation ago but would get many parents in trouble with Child Protective Services today. The tradition of just letting your dog roam freely at night, has, I think, been dead (at least in suburban American neighborhoods like the one where the Bumsteads live) for even longer: I’m pretty sure I first learned that it had ever been common when as a child I asked my mother why Fred Flinstone was dumping Dino out on their doorstep at night, and was horrified at the answer. Yet Daisy being allowed to wander around unleashed in a common theme in Blondie, and I’m genuinely curious as to whether there are places in the United States where it would still be considered unremarkable. That all said, if Dagwood were abruptly devoured by this pack of feral dogs with the same gluttonous ferocity with which he’s crammed innumerable sandwiches down his gullet over the decades, I for one would not object.