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Dennis the Menace, 12/11/12

One of Dennis’s core menacing shticks is repeating things he doesn’t fully understand in a way that causes embarrassment to his parents, usually because it’s something insulting they’ve said about someone behind their backs. Unfortunately, Dennis has now become a self-aware menace, and he now knows that he can get a rise out of people this way; but since the whole thing revolves around him not knowing the meaning of the things he’s saying, he’s sort of blundering around in the dark, latching onto phrases he’s not familiar with in the hopes that someone will be humiliated when he spouts them off. “So it’s a doggie bag, but it’s not for the dog, right? Eh? Eh? I’m saying what everyone’s thinking? Is anyone in trouble yet?”

Pluggers, 12/11/12

The games whose outcomes were so important to pluggers in their youth — grown men, scrambling around in the dirt after a ball! — seem meaningless now. Pluggers know that there’s only one game left in town: survival. They don’t care how many pills they have to choke down, how agonizing it is to carry their creaking frame from chair to chair; the biological imperative carries a thrill all its own. Those names and faces in the obits section belong to family and friends, some of them very dearly missed, and yet in a real sense, just being alive to see the pictures and read the pocket biographies is a victory.

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Crock, 12/10/12

As if the poor colonized subjects of French North Africa don’t have enough to worry about, now they have to deal with an outbreak of sexually aggressive camels.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/10/12

Why should the men of Hootin’ Holler bother investing in machinery that will lift them out of a subsistence economy if their wives do all the manual labor?

Apartment 3-G, 12/10/12

Evan and Margo’s sexual banter is pretty much as gross as you’d expect.

Mary Worth, 12/10/12

“We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.” –Albert Camus

Hi and Lois, 12/10/12

THE DOG SYMBOLIZES THE DYING NEWSPAPER COMICS INDUSTRY, EVERYBODY

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Crock, 12/9/12

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Crock is being portrayed as too cartoonishly evil here. I mean, obviously it’s well established that he’s a villainous, petty dictator, but surely he’s enough of a realist to know that the local religious authorities aren’t going to be actively preaching sin and filth like they’re the Church of Satan or something. Shouldn’t he be pleased that the local priest is going old school and promising to use his money to punish and degrade the church’s enemies, instead of going in for some kind of touchy-feely love-thy-neighbor crap like feeding the poor or something?

B.C., 12/9/12

Plans for a lucrative B.C. Babies franchise where abruptly scuttled when the terrifying character designs were revealed. “So, if we make their arms and legs even stubbier, and glom them onto impossibly squat torsos, and remove their necks, that’s cute, right? Kids will want those dolls?”

Garfield, 12/9/12

You know, Garfield gets a bad rap among comics snobs, but anything that teaches kids that Santa is really a terrifying demon-thing waiting to grab you from behind and drag you down into a terrifying hell-dimension is all right in my book.

Luann, 12/9/12

Left to their own devices, Brad and TJ have turned their backs on God and started worshipping Mammon full-time.