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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Crankshaft, 2/12/16

I know I haven’t been keeping you up to date on the antimatter brownie plot in Crankshaft, but the short version is that Crankshaft convinced Lena to bake her brownie batter into a bowling ball for him, one that, due to its extremely scientifically inaccurate properties, repels pins and scores perfect strikes every time. But the new balls she baked for everyone else for the championship game don’t work. Throw away all the goofy magic bullshit and basically Crankshaft has asked Lena (who, for the record, has never been anything but sweet to all her co-workers, who trash-talk her baking constantly) to help him cheat, and now that that hasn’t worked out, he’s literally descending into a spittle-flying temper tantrum, as she looks like she’s about to burst into tears. Fun times!

Gasoline Alley, 2/12/16

“But anyway, you got your scrapbook back, and that’s the important thing! Sorry it smells like the burned hair and seared flesh of your dead bear friend.”

Mary Worth, 2/12/16

“Hello? Lady? I don’t feel so great. I think I might have a concussion. Can you hear me? Why are you just standing there talking and not helping me?”

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Mary Worth, 2/11/16

Obviously my number one version of this storyline involves Olive watching Mary reject old suitors, but it just keeps going and going and I’m willing to follow it, at this point. So will this turn into some kind of pseudo-Socratic dialogue in which the young and inexperienced Olive advocates for total freedom, while Mary patiently explains that only the strong hand of a Philosopher-Queen can impose the rigid order and structure that our species needs to survive, and that perhaps Olive, with her special tummy-brain powers, can be that queen? If so, I’m here for that!

Spider-Man, 2/11/16

“Haha, look, you’re lucky you’re not all dead, OK? Who could stop Namor? Certainly not me! I’m Spider-Man, and people talk a lot about the proportional strength of a spider, but how strong is that, really? Here’s a hint: not very strong! Have you ever stepped on a spider? Ever noticed that it used its amazing spider-strength to lift up your shoe and save itself? Of course not! Because it can’t! It’s tiny and feeble, just like me! Welp, off to fail at superheroics somewhere else!” [flies skyward crotch-first]

Judge Parker, 2/11/16

“You’ve been in this band for several days now, so why are you not already making all the decisions and reaping all the profits? Do they not know that you’re a Spencer-Driver and never have to prove yourself to anyone at any time? HOW DARE THEY”

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Blondie, 2/10/16

“And just like members of our family, we have exactly one photo of each of them. We englarge our family by placing one, and only one, order with every pizza place in the area. Then we add our new family member to our Collection, in the basement, behind the soundproof walls! Wait, did I say all that out loud? Uh, forget you ever saw these trophy photos, I mean, family photos, that I was looking at on my computer while I should be working, for no reason.”

Momma, 2/10/16

Momma always complains about Francis’s lack of ambition. Here, he desperately attempts to show her the scope of his vision, that laziness itself can be an art form. He will recline, like he does on Momma’s couch, but now he will let our mightiest river move him swiftly, state after state, until he’s finally swept out to sea and can embrace annihilation as he’s never seen again. “Why not just take the bus to the beach?” asks Momma as she takes a single cupcake out of the oven. Her world has always been, in every way, small.