Comment of the Week

Maybe it's just that the standards of menace have been so raised by the likes of Calvin and Hobbes or Bart Simpson but I can't remember ever seeing Dennis engage in behavior that would make him a poor children's party guest. He wears a tiny suit to church for goodness sake! He's really just a menace because the strip is called Dennis the Menace but who told the inhabitants of the strip that? Who is going around badmouthing this precocious kid who at worst doesn't always live up to 1950s standards of etiquette? I ask but we all already know it's Mr. Wilson, Mr. Wilson is making the neighbor kid a social pariah out of a sort of misplaced dissatisfaction and inadequacy that his pension wasn't enough to settle him in a gated community with no children.

BananaSam

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Blondie, 6/19/18

Apparently Blondie HQ finally got wind of the insanely dumb Rick and Morty fan riots at McDonald’s over Szechuan Sauce, and decided to tackle it as only they can, which is to say by taking care not to infringe on anybody else’s intellectual property. Still, I like the idea that in Dagwood’s imagination the dispute stops being about a specific kind of sauce and just becomes about sauce as a general category, and also that it only took nine signs before they got to extremely stilted phrases like “Unfair to sauce cravers” and “Stop the sauce withholding madness!”

Judge Parker, 6/19/18

“I ask that you hold all questions until the very end. Particularly about the spelling of my name, which, as I’ve already established, is M-A-H-L-E-R. Harold is spelled the usual way. I’m not sure how you spell Godiva. Ahem. At approximately 9:30 am, Ms. Danube’s body w–” “Commander Mahler! How do you spell ‘Danube?’” “God damn it, what did I say?”

Mary Worth, 6/19/18

“I’m close to my mom too. She’s still young and hot though, and has an extremely active sex life. [as Brandy’s weeping intensifies] How horny was your mom, Brandy?”

Mark Trail, 6/19/18

“Settle down, Rusty! Rambunctious little boys are the first to be sacrificed.”

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Dick Tracy, 6/18/18

Hey, remember how Sawtooth was on his way to Neo-Chicago, to do crimes? Well, even though he’s a brutal cop-killing thug with teeth made out of real saws, he still has other interests, and one of those interests is taking in live midnight audience-participation showings of the cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show. Too bad Sam Catchem was there too! God, you’d think you could avoid the cops at underground events like Rocky Horror, but I guess this is pretty clear evidence that it is not as alternative and punk rock as it was 30 years ago, right? Anyway, Sawtooth is about to punch a cop in a face, in public, which probably won’t help with the whole “sneaking into town in disguise” part of his plan.

Mary Worth, 6/18/18

Ahh, Tommy and Brandy, just another pair of economically marginal Americans working themselves to death! Maybe soon they’ll fall in love, share expenses on a tiny apartment in a so-so neighborhood, and occasionally get to have sex after work, assuming their shifts can sync up and they aren’t too exhausted.

Beetle Bailey, 6/18/18

Speaking of sex, Killer just did sex and … then came back to the barracks, literally putting off smoke? I don’t know why it bothers me so much that this is smoke and not steam. I know “putting off steam after sex” isn’t how sex works, but putting off smoke after sex is definitely not how sex works.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/17/18

Aww, isn’t that sweet? Jughaid is honoring his Uncle Snuffy on Fathers Day, even grouping him in with the “paws,” and saying nothing of his own biological father. What terrible circumstance has led him to being raised by his second-order kin rather than his parents? Did his father die in an ongoing feud with another clan — perhaps die shamefully, so his name is never spoken? Or was the boy himself captured as an infant in a raid for chickens and other movable goods in a neighboring holler, with “uncle” just a convenient term for non-parent guardian applied to the family that took him in? This is surely one of the more intriguing instances of nephewism in the daily comics.

Marvin, 6/17/18

This right here is probably Marvin: Origins. I’m not talking about the origin of Marvin the character; that happened when Jeff and Jenny managed to briefly overcome their mutual resentment and irritation and have sex with one another. No, I’m talking about the origin of the strip itself, which probably came about when someone was waiting in line for the bathroom and thought “Wouldn’t it be great if I could just shit my pants? And if that was somebody else’s problem? Ugh, God, babies have it so easy!”