Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 9/26/24

Here, in no particular order, is a list of possible menacing reasons why Dennis is wearing street clothes in this exchange when you’d expect him to be in a baseball uniform, some mutually exclusive and some not:

• Dennis has a general policy of refusing to wear a uniform while playing baseball due to the oppositional defiance disorder that his parents and coaches have never been able to overcome.
• Dennis has a general policy of refusing to wear a uniform while playing baseball because he understands that red overalls over a striped shirt are his #brand, which he is very keen to maintain and promote.
• Dennis isn’t even playing baseball today; he’s just wandered onto the field to harass the umpire.
• The creators of Dennis the Menace are not confident in their ability to draw the title character of their comic strip in a way that would be recognizable to the readers if he weren’t wearing his trademark red overalls over a striped shirt.
• The creators of Dennis the Menace do not have access to clip art of the title character of their comic strip in which he is not wearing his trademark red overalls over a striped shirt.

The Phantom, 9/26/24

A fun thing about the Phantom is that he dates from the very earliest days of superhero comics, so his outfit is your basic weird skintight body suit and cowl but, when it comes to a fight, his main “power” is the pair of pistols he keeps handy most of the time. Anyway, today the big purple guy has caught up with one of the out-of-control robots unleashed by fake Elon Musk’s crashed rocket, and he’s just going to straight-up shoot it to death, with bullets. Probably it’s not going to work and he’ll need to do something more clever, but it would be pretty funny if it did, right? “Well, Hero, Devil,” he’ll say to his faithful animal companions, “that problem is solved. Thank God for guns, the best friend a superhero can have!”

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 9/25/24

Once upon a time, your average newspaper reader looked forward to the middle of the week with eager anticipation. That’s because they knew that Wednesday was “Miss Buxley Wednesday,” an opportunity to turn to the comics page and briefly become horny from looking at a crude drawing of an attractive blonde woman in a skimpy black dress. But then we all got older, especially the old man who was the blonde woman’s boss, and while we’re still going through the Wednesday motions, nobody’s getting horny anymore, not really. Instead, the old man is getting exasperated by his subordinate, and the blonde woman, even more crudely drawn than before, is quietly typing away in the background, presumably grateful that nobody is getting horny at her.

Dick Tracy, 9/25/24

Speaking of letdowns, if you were a mysterious alien being with innate biological powers, a command of advanced technologies, and a vague plan to conquer humanity, how would you think your Wednesday would go? Probably you wouldn’t guess that you’d be spending it going through some file cabinets, right? But that’s just how it happens sometimes. Into everyone’s life, a little file cabinet searching must fall, even into the lives of aliens from the Moon.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/25/24

Hey guys! Did you know that trigger finger happens with a tendon sheath is inflamed and creates a temporary inability to straighten a finger or thumb? Pretty neat, huh? Not sure exactly what you’re supposed to do about it, but if we’re lucky, we might find out soon!

Shoe, 9/25/24

Oh, the Perfesser’s refill isn’t scheduled for another week but he needs more sleeping pills now? Interesting, interesting. Look, I’m not saying a “the Perfesser gets addicted to downers” would be a great new direction for this strip, but it’d probably be better than [spends 45 seconds trying to come up with a funny and pithy description of what exactly Shoe has been getting at for the past 20 years, then fails and gives up] whatever it’s doing now.

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 9/24/24

Despite being a resident of California for more than a decade, I’m not a woo-woo person who talks about a situation’s “energy” much, but the closest I get is when I talk about doing standup comedy. The great and terrible thing about performing comedy live is that you can absolutely tell, in an immediate and visceral way, whether people are having a good time: a polite laugh is immediately obvious in a way that polite applause is not. And when you bomb on stage, it is a terrible and physical sensation: the term “flop sweat” is, for me at least, not a metaphor. Anyway, this is all to say that Dennis is very much bombing here; the guys down at the hardware store have zero patience for his bullshit little jokes, but it’s also clear that he’s blissfully unaware of this. Having no radar for how your performance is landing with an audience is almost certainly a type of sociopathy, and demonstrates what a true menace this young man is.

Hi and Lois, 9/24/24

Really love Lois’s gobsmacked expression in panel one here. “Holy SHIT! You bought bungee cords? You exchanged money for bungee cords? You got cords that consist of an elastic strand core covered by woven polypropylene? And you’re going to use it to secure the garbage can lids? Our garbage can lids? The lids to the cans where we put all our garbage? With fucking bungee cords? I never thought I’d live to see the day. May such wonders never cease.”