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Dennis the Menace, 11/11/12

“Not right now, Dennis. You see, I’ve been very, very naughty and now I have to sit here in this corner until your Mom comes back with the carpet beater for my spanking. Say, why don’t you walk down to the candy store and buy yourself a treat? Here’s a twenty — take the long way back.”

The Better Half, 11/11/12

OK, this is some kind of Six Differences thing, right? Dress, earring, meal, hair, chair, … dammit! One thing that never changes is Harriet’s stunned reaction to her friends’ romantic complications: I betcha boring old Stanley is looking pret-ty good to her right about now.

I’m also a little intrigued about the redhead’s idea of catch-and-release sport-dating. It sounds like something Henry and Alice Mitchell might want to check out.

Curtis, 11/11/12

The most expressive characters in Curtis are the animals. From faithful basset-hound Trinklet to the Evil Dr. Horsehead, the animals are invariably more sincere and deeply engaged than all the heavy-lidded humans sleepwalking around them. I mean just look at Unnamed Sheepdog racing from despair through alarm to ecstacy in about three seconds there — who wouldn’t want to come home to that?

Still, I don’t think boyfriend is playing this at all well. Maybe the passion of the lovers’ reunion was judged too intense for a family strip? Maybe boyfriend is just putting off introducing Naomi to his new wife Kashmala, waiting in the car? Or maybe he caught a glimpse of Curtis and Barry and decided on the spot that wife and family was not the life for him?

— Uncle Lumpy

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Phantom, 11/10/12

OK, stay with me here. The “panic to keep the modern world at bay” is a bunch of pissy Llongo elders’ plan to undercut their hot queen’s rare-earth mining deal with a story about a vengeful immortal lioness who protects the tribe’s sacred land. The plan requires hardworking Llongo warriors to secretly release a captured lioness near the village, publicly kill her, privately dispose of the carcass, and then go find a matching replacement lioness — repeating the cycle to keep the “immortality” myth going until either they run out of lionesses or the queen relents and shuts down the mine.

The miners’ ace counterplan is to lock the corpse of the next-to-die lioness in a cage, confronting the tricksy elders with steamy, maggot-infested proof of their bad faith, and breaking the cycle. Despite the toll on the poor decomposing lioness, the Phantom is apparently cool with this, since he doesn’t want anybody horning in on his family’s own long-running “mammal-who-can-never-die” scam.

PS. To Wambesi terrorist and Phantom arch-nemesis Chatu “The Python”: before your next attempt on the Phantom’s life, buy a nice strong cage, and maybe some air freshener.

PPS. Have I mentioned how much I like saying “lioness”? No? Lioness, lioness, lioness …

Gasoline Alley, 11/10/12

Despite appearances, this isn’t yet another tiresome “bullying is bad” lesson-comic. Boog’s helicopter mom Clovia smothers him in glurgy mash-notes and three-cupcake lunches to stupefy and fatten him into the image of his father, idiot-whale Slim Skinner. But these three young heroes will have none of it, bravely staging an intervention to keep their pal tough and slender.

Hey, grotesquely-drawn moppets gotta stick together, am I right?

Update — Boog’s mom is Hoogie, not Clovia, and Slim is his grandfather. Other than that, the story was accurate!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/10/12

Did you know that tomorrow is Veterans Day in the U.S.? Snuffy Smith does! And he has every right to join that parade, since he not only shares the nickname of a genuine WWII Army hero, but served in the Army his ownself:

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/24/1941 (panel, courtesy of The Comics Journal)

So what explains Snuffy’s descent from stalwart Defender of Democracy in the 1940’s to the shif’less no-‘count skonk we know and love today? The world’s longest-running case of PTSD? Bone laziness? My money, as always, is on the likker.

Hi there, I’m sitting in for Josh until Sunday, November 18th. You can contact me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net to report any site or comment issues. You can still reach Josh at bio@jfruh.com, but expect sloth-related delays.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Hello, all! Your COTW in a moment, but I just wanted to note that your favorite Uncle Lumpy is taking the reigns of the site starting tomorrow and running through Sunday the 18th. He’ll be nice to you, so be nice to him! I’ll be back with a delayed COTW on Sunday. Till then, here’s the top comment that’ll get you through:

“The knife, placed prominently at the groom’s waist, shrinks in the second vignette. On his wedding day he has been dominated in front of his new bride, and Six Differences has entered strange Freudian territory.” –Dan

And your runners up! Very funny!

“If Heathcliff and Marmaduke fought to the death, who would win? Besides us, I mean.” –[Old Man] Muffaroo

“And what about Batman? He’s, like, a bat? Right? Why can’t he fly? And why does Spider-Man wear his webspinners — which oughta be called spinnerets, by the way — on his wrists? Real spiders have ’em at the back of their abdomens, so Spider-Man’s oughta be on his butt, right? And why don’t you carry more Little Lulu comics?” –erdmann

“That Heathcliff cartoon is especially cruel, with the way that woman mentions kissing to the mouthless entity at her side.” –Droopy Says

“You’re a plugger if you have the side effects even though you aren’t taking the drug.” –Matthew

“CPR? Wha? We were told that you transplanted the brain of a woman into the body of a kangaroo. CPR? No one sends two television news crews to do a story on goddamn CPR.” –hogenmogen

“No, no, no, Archie is not a rerun; it is just set in 1991. Next Jughead discovers grunge. It’s nostalgia!” –Marco Polo Shirt

“I like the look of admiration the little girl is giving the the cake-taker. ‘My hero!’ she seems to be thinking. ‘Someday, when I’m big and strong, I’ll take the cake! All of it!'” –Nehemiah Scudder

“‘You can never have too many friends,’ said the man with none.” –Johnny Knuckles

“Ah-ha, so Evan is a double-crosser! And whatshisface the actor is a smug self-promoting jerk! I’m starting to think the only way you can tell the men in Apartment 3-G apart is by whatever glaring flaw they have that will eventually force the ladies to dump them.” –TheDiva

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