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Gil Thorp, 12/16/21

Oh, boy, the basketball season storyline of Gil Thorp is already more promising than this fall’s snoozefest because it looks like it’s going to do one of my favorite Gil Thorp things: grapple with a Very Serious Social Issue! Remember back in 2009, when we learned that “‘sexting’ is a serious problem” that’s “been in Time and Newsweek“? Remember how the strip’s version of sexting was “a girl wearing a an extremely non-revealing bikini made out of soda cartons?” Anyway, I’m assuming that sportsduke dot com is the Thorpiverse analog to the sports betting site draftkings dot com, which has gone mainstream now that the Supreme Court said sports betting is A-OK a few years back, and Pranit is about to come down with a Serious Gambling Problem. Or maybe he’s going to make a bunch of money and then start acting as a bookie for his little friends! Maybe Milford athletes are going to bet on games they’re playing in! I demand maximum drama, darn it!!

Dennis the Menace, 12/16/21

I’m going to give Dennis the benefit of the doubt here: the way he’s cupping his hand next to his mouth is a little too theatrical for this to be an entirely sincere expression of anxiety, which is good because it’s frankly the sort of thing we’d expect from Jeffy Keane. No, I’m guessing that Dennis is trying to start some kind of mass panic among the children, either out of a simple desire to stir up shit or because he has devious schemes in play that will be furthered by a scene of screaming chaos. At any rate, I tentatively deem this to be adequately menacing.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/16/21

Wow, look at Tater and Jughaid, eating their cookies off plates like little liberal fancy boys! Snuffy is modeling the only way a real man eats: just letting your jaw hang slack and your tongue loll out grotesquely so you can shove the whole cookie in at once.

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Dick Tracy, 12/15/21

Let’s face it folks: between COVID-19, a general prejudice against nerds, and a widespread unwillingness on the public’s part to engage with anything that isn’t part of a larger, branded “cinematic universe,” museums and libraries and other so-called “brainiac institutions” are in trouble! That’s why we’re trying to “get the word out” in the funny pages about how these places are actually pretty cool, when you think about it. We already had a long story in Rex Morgan about how doing stuff at a museum can lead to you acquiring a mob enforcer as a chauffeur; now we’re learning that if you’ve been paid with murdering a particularly formidable adversary, maybe there’ll be an exhibit about him at your local library that will let you know about all his vulnerabilities and weak spots.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/15/21

Speaking of Sarah’s adventures in unearned and unwanted (?) fame and fortune, let’s not forget that she’s not the only pseudonymous author on the Kitty Cop series: there’s also “Kyle Vidpa,” aka Jake Rowling, whose writers’ block got Sarah involved in all this in the first place, and who is presumably about to blow his own cover to distract from Sarah. Look at his wife in the background of panel two! That is the face of a lady who’s about to go through a lot annoyance for a kid who she quite frankly doesn’t even know, and she’s not thrilled about it!

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Hi and Lois, 12/14/21

This is (and here’s a sentence that I’m reasonably sure has never appeared in the English language to date) the most heartbreaking Hi and Lois yet. Look at Thirsty! He’s doing a half-assed job of tucking his shirt in, he’s writing things down so that when he’s in a meeting he can at least act like he knows what his job is and that he’s doing it. And he looks so happy about it! Maybe putting forth a little effort to meet your responsibilities can make your life better, just like Irma says! Of course, Mr. Foofram is just going to go with whatever suggestion that nerdlinger in the bowtie came up with, which is presumably neatly typed up on that piece of paper that he’s handing over in the background, and this will send Thirsty back into his downward spiral of sloth. But for one brief and all-too-fleeting moment, he’s proud of himself.

Dennis the Menace, 12/14/21

That is, in fact, Dennis the Menace creator Hank Ketcham that Henry is calling his “boss” here, which quite honestly brings up a whole host of existential questions. Is Herny’s generic white-collar “job” actually just to be Dennis’s dad in the strip that bears his name? Does he spend his time in the office being lectured by Ketcham — literally his creator and God — about all the ways he needs to tee up Dennis’s little acts of menace? “Definitely you need to ogle some sexy women in front of the kid this week, Mitchell, and the week after that I’m gonna want you to talk shit about an acquaintance of yours right before they come to visit. You can’t say no to me, I called you forth from the ether with my pen and I can send you back!” The fact that Ketcham has been dead for 20 years just complicates this scene further. It’s almost as if Henry is finally about to explain who’s really calling the shots in this strip, and why despite the best intentions of everyone involved in its creation today, the Mitchells will be trapped in their narrative hell for eternity.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/14/21

Oh my gosh Rex said a swear!!! June is shocked, for obvious reasons: generally people are driven to profanity when they experience an emotion of some kind, something that she knows Rex tries to avoid at all costs.