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Dennis the Menace, 2/25/17

My one and only encounter with childhood religious instruction that I can remember came when I was maybe in the six to eight years old range; we were visiting my mom’s parents in Ohio, and I sat in a Sunday school class at their church. The teacher acted out the story of Jonah and the whale by putting a Playmobil man into a giant plastic toy shark, and as a know-it-all child this bothered me a lot, because I was very smug in the knowledge that sharks were fish and whale were mammals. But I didn’t say anything, which is just as well, since the bible actually uses the word “fish” (and the ancient Hebrews really didn’t make the distinction anyway); and besides, I wasn’t the type of kid to make a fuss in front of strangers, or to challenge authority. I guess you could say I wasn’t … a menace?

Anyway, while I suspect that modern-day Sunday Schools (especially those run by namby-pamby Episcopalians) don’t follow the injunction from Proverbs that “he that spareth his rod hateth his son,” I also have a hard time imagining that they just turn the other cheek when it comes to classroom disruptions that would get you a stern talking-to and note sent home at a Godless public school. Thus, the only way to interpret this panel that makes sense is that, here in Sunday School, Dennis doesn’t want to act out or cause a fuss, which is probably the least menacing attitude he could possibly take.

Mary Worth, 2/25/17

Speaking of Jesus, what’s Tommy been up to while Iris sows her wild oats all over campus? Thinking about big bottles of delicious pills, mostly! I dearly hope that when a tear-soaked Iris returns to her apartment from Mary’s advice session, we see her from Tommy’s perspective, and it’s like when a hungry wolf in an old cartoon sees someone’s head turn into a rotisserie chicken, except Iris’s head looks like a bottle of Vicodin, or maybe just one enormous Vicodin tablet.

Mark Trail, 2/25/17

OH MY GOD

MARK TRAIL IS A VAMPIRE

OR MAYBE DOC OR CHERRY

OR RUSTY

YES, RUSTY IS THE ONE MOST LIKELY TO BE AN UNDEAD BLOOD-SUCKING GHOUL

STILL, EITHER WAY: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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Hello all! Do you enjoy funny comments? Well, enjoy this one, which is your top comment of the week, as selected … by me!

“‘I’ve got a lot of living left to do!’ says Horrible Hank as he steps off the plane, falls from the ramp to the tarmac, and breaks his neck, just the way he wrote it in ‘One-Way Ticket to the Pearly Gates,’ Horrible Hank’s Tales to Depress, issue #38.” –seismic-2

These runners up are also extremely hilarious!

“Dirty’s back! And I love the way he wears his eyepatch strap at a rakish, if logically impossible, angle. Unless he’s holding it on with electrical tape, which is even more stupendous.” –Pat Ferruzza, on Facebook

“It doesn’t really matter what Gen. Halftrack says, since the interviewer isn’t recording their talk and is barely even taking notes. I’m guessing he’s not really a reporter anyway, but a guy from the Army Psychological Division whose only real job is to check a box saying ‘Crazy’ or ‘Not Crazy.’” –BigTed

“Wait ’til your father hears about this! I’m going to talk to him right … OH DEAR CHRIST HIS FACE! WHERE IS HIS FACE?” –Joe Blevins

“Ha ha, who does Alice think she’s kidding with that ‘OMG?’ I mean come on, given Dennis’s age, she’d probably be… [counts mentally] …oh. Mid-thirties. If not younger. [stares out at the horizon] [walks silently into the ocean]” –Dan

“It’s not surprising that events in this strip occur out of time sequence. With the regular trips Alice takes to 1952 to buy Dennis his clothes and to get her hair done, that’s got to put a lot of strain on the space/time continuum. Something’s bound to break sooner or later.” –Larry McAwful

“Leave it to Marvin to envision a future survival scenario where he uses his own urine to rehydrate his freeze dried urine into some kind of Super Urine. Is this strip originally from Germany?” –Mikey

“I’m trying to figure out the original caption by reading the expressions. PJ is almost levitating with excitement, Dolly is smirking like Les Moore, Jeffy is not only smirking but has his arms folded in defiance, as if to say ‘Here’s something we know you’ll hate but you can’t do anything about,’ and Thel’s expression of dismay is weary enough that we know she’s been through this before. I think it’s ‘Daddy’s man-trap caught another heathen! Will you help us bury it when we’re done?’” –matt w

“Yeah, with these new flat screen TVs you can place them at any random angle near your chair. You don’t have to look straight at them to enjoy viewing goodness. I often let CSI: Wherever reruns waft gently over my profile of an evening, and I never have to worry about eye strain or radiation burns.” –made of wince

“WAY TO DISTRACT HIM, BUDDY! I’LL SHOOT SOME WEBBING! OH NO, HE DODGED IT! HOW DOES HE ANTICIPATE MY EVERY MOVE?!?!” –pugfuggly

“And if the beholder has hair growing out of his eyeballs, well, God help us all.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Big product placement for TEK™ luggage, the preferred luggage of thieves!” –handsome Harry Backstayge, idol of a million other women

“He died doing something he loved: inconveniencing stewardesses.” –Old School Allie Cat

“Today’s strip is a setup for an exciting new plotline: Junior is disappointed that the old man can’t hold his liquor and passes out after three, maybe four gin and tonics. Wait, did I say ‘exciting’? Sorry, I temporarily forgot what that word meant.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

“OK, so there’s a dog-woman (and I’m being kind here) with cat-eye glasses, rockin’ the Flintstone jewelry, all knockers-up, just waiting for some other abomination of nature to come along and Plugger. Is that it, Amy R. of Dallas, Texas? Is that it?” –Deacon Blues

“That sort of looks like an eagle, or maybe a griffin, on Dirty’s fake passport. Still, there should be no problem since it’s signed by King Leopold himself.” –Downpuppy

“Coach Kaz seems to be stuck in a Benjamin Button kind of situation, aging backwards in fashion sense. A decade ago he wore open-collar polo shirts and gelled his hair up into a terrible spiky Smash Mouth do. Now he’s rocking the Flock of Seagulls look with a sideburns and free-flowing mullet. Looking forward to the Coach rediscovering bell-bottoms soon.” –Schroduck

“‘What is your purpose for traveling to America, Mister … Smith?’ ‘Spores! I’m being driven by a parasitic fungus to climb to the top of the Empire State Building and then my head’s going to explode and I’ll release this cargo of spores across New York City and … Sport. I mean sport.’” –Voshkod

“I think the cruelest interpretation of FW, within reason, would be that the cop is completely genuine about loving the pizza, and is now writing the ticket with sorrow in his heart because he can’t mitigate the ticket even for the owner of the restaurant he enjoys. So, because of what Funky said, EVERYONE in this situation suffers in some way. Pretty much exactly on-brand, then.” –Enlong

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Gil Thorp, 2/24/17

Today’s Gil Thorp doesn’t necessarily offer a thematically unified big laugh, but is full of little hilarious details that come together to show why I love this strip so much:

• The Freezy Bomb Boys couldn’t wait to shower or change after practice before bursting into Coach Thorp’s office with their latest half-baked theory
• Coach Thorp apparently thinks Inspector Gadget is a good go-to insulting reference when it comes to amateur detective work, even when said detectives are not, in the poetic words of the Wikipedia article on the subject, “clumsy, dim-witted cyborgs”
• Coach Thorp has misremembered Inspector Gadget’s name, and thus may have forgotten much else about him, like the fact that he’s a cyborg, and has to be smugly corrected by Coach Kaz
• Coach Kaz is wearing a black shirt and white tie like he’s the keyboardist for a middlingly derivative 80s new wave band
• This whole thing hinges on Aaron’s basketball ability being tied to … his mother’s pay schedule, maybe?
• Final planel: BAM, a classic Gil Thorp smash cut to something semi-comprehensible happening somewhere else, in this case Aaron and Molly nuzzling at a rave, where NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

Anyway! I very much look forward to this all being resolved in a wholly unrealistic fashion soon, and then the Mudlarks subsequently failing to make the playdowns.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/24/17

Do you guys think that the cop in panel two is meant to be expressing genuine love for Montoni’s, or that he’s just being extremely sarcastic as he writes Funky a ticket he definitely deserves? It’s hard to tell with this strip. I mean, either would be good, because both involve Funky being humiliated, but I feel like I want to better understand the texture of the schadenfreude I’m experiencing here.

Judge Parker, 2/24/17

Shoutout to this Judge Parker flashback for doing a pretty good job of depicting Abbey and Neddy in the Harold LeDoux era. I find the third panel pretty puzzling, though. The kids have already been let go! How are the kidnappers going to do anything with them? Unless … I was right, and “Sophie” really is a replicant replacement? As are the other supposedly free children? And this is the first step towards replacing the entire universe of Judge Parker with a better, cleaner race of beings, i.e., cyborgs? That still doesn’t seem like much of a money-making scheme, to be honest.

Mark Trail, 2/24/17

I’m not sure how often customs agents in foreign countries ask Americans travelling to America what their purpose for traveling to America is, but it sure gives Chris “Dirty” “Smith” a chance to answer in a Transparently Evil fashion! It’s not going to be very “sporting” when Mark punches Dirty’s eyepatch right off, but he’s going to have to learn the limits of his hunting abilities himself, I guess.