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B.C., 12/3/04

For me, one of the surprises in Jonathan Franzen’s Peanuts essay (yes, I’m plugging it again; you really should read it) was that his favorite comic in the newspaper he read as a kid was B.C. Since I refuse to actually spend good money on a B.C. anthology, or even risk being seen thumbing through one at the bookstore, I must pose this question to you all: was Franzen a little kid with no taste (not a crime; even I, current culture snob that I am, was under the spell of Garfield until I hit puberty), or was B.C. at some point in the distant past actually, you know, funny?

Since all I have to go on is what I read in the funny pages, though, I must humbly assert that B.C. is not, in fact, funny. Do I harp on this point? Well, it’s true. It also has too damn many characters, and it seems to arbitrarily introduce and get rid of them, and maybe if you’re Jonathan Franzen you’re familiar with them all, but I swear I’ve read this strip every day for years and this Queen Ida is new to me. I mean, yeah, ants have queens, and she’s a real queen, with a crown and a, um, robe and everything, but really: What the hell? I ask you.

This strip also offers a good example of a common comics misconception, which is that if you put two half-funny bits in a row in the same strip, you get an actually funny strip. Though “half-funny” might be too kind a description of the “Yankee Stadium” gag, or of the “then dig one” gag, which, I assume, against all logic, is the punchline.

And one last thing before I move on: What’s the deal with the “HBQBJ” thing at the bottom right of the third panel? Is it a secret code? A private joke? A Jesus thing? It’s a Jesus thing, isn’t it?

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Mary Worth, 12/2/04

“Sure, I’ve been married for years, now, but … hey, yoga instructor! Bendy!”

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Dennis the Menace, 12/1/04

You can that tell he wants to, though. Look at the little smile on his face. Heck, what’s the point of being a cop if those P.C. jerks downtown tell you that you can’t haul a broad in just for being mouthy? I tell you, this country’s been heading downhill ever since the Miranda ruling.

However, if we’re going to be arbitrarily arresting children, I think you ought to take a closer look at Dennis, there, officer. Check out those “droopy drawers” on him. That’s so he can hide his “gat” in the back. He’s even wearing a gang color (it’s red, so he’s in the “Bloods”). Better take him downtown and rough him up a little, just to be sure.

Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve done Dennis the Menace in IRTCSYDHT, so it’s my first opportunity to ask: Hank Ketchum’s dead, right? I mean, I remember when he died. I thought to myself, “Ah, soon there will be no more Dennis the Menace in the paper.” But it kept coming, so I thought “Ah, he must have already submitted a bunch of strips to the syndicate.” That was at least five years ago. It’s not even “Classic Dennis the Menace.” So, um, what’s the deal? Every once in a while, I think about it and it creeps me out.