Hell is for children
Post Content
Luann, 6/9/25
Back when I was last reading Luann regularly, a decade ago, the whole deal with Toni’s niece Shannon was that she was a hellion but that was mostly because her dad, Toni’s brother, was a flaky, neglectful actor who was always dumping his daughter with his sister with little or no notice so he could do cool actor stuff. Well, Shannon’s still a hellion, but now apparently her dad isn’t neglectful at all, but is rather a dedicated dad who knows his daughter is the most important thing in his life, and also his acting career is going nowhere so honestly why not pay attention to his daughter, I guess. Not sure what Shannon’s excuse is for her irritating behavior anymore!
Crock, 6/9/25
Nobody seems to have ever produced a detailed timeline of Crock’s characters and lore, and I must confess that, despite my authority within the world of newspaper comics, I don’t have all the details either. I’m not sure when Grossie and Maggot’s beloved (?) son Otis made his debut in the strip; was this installment, which apparently ran in 1997 according to the copyright date, the one that heralded his coming, or is this some other kid, who they (as the dialogue heavily implies) ate?
Slylock Fox, 6/9/25
We humans read the hints in Slylock Fox about the great Uprising that heralded the animalpocalypse and shudder at thoughts of the bloodbath, with the suddenly uplifted animals dishing out brutal revenge for a thousand centuries of abuse at the hands of H. sapiens. Less explored, but certainly germane, is the animal-on-animal battle that must’ve ensued in the aftermath as the beasts fought with one another for access to the humans’ stuff. Perhaps the first rudimentary animal legal codes were developed on the fly to resolve such conflicts peaceably, with Slylock and Max still occasionally tasked with enforcing the Rule of Finders Keepers, the oldest law the animals respect.
