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Daddy Daze, 2/6/22

It’s important to occasionally reflect on whether your actions are causing harm to others, even if that isn’t your intention or motivation. For instance, today’s Daddy Daze prompted me to consider: does the fact that I always refer to the father character in this strip as “the Daddy Daze daddy” and have never bothered to remember or research whether he has some actual name add to his sense that he’s losing his identity as part of the parenting process? In my defense, the Daddy Daze baby does have a name that is not uncommonly given in the strip, but I refuse to use it and only refer to him as “the Daddy Daze baby,” so I feel like overall I’m just being tough but fair.

Blondie, 2/6/22

“He’s having a real hard time of it, and doesn’t know where he is or where he’s going. Ha ha, he’s passed out face first into the snow! Guess I’m never going to have to return all those tools now!”

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/5/22

Just in case you need more evidence of what the typical newspaper comic-reading demographic is, the joke here is that the elderly gent they’re gossiping about caught mumps from his young bride, which is funny because mumps is a disease associated with children. Or, I guess I would say that it was associated with children until the MMR vaccine became near-universal in the early 1970s, which — and it gives me no pleasure to report this — was fifty years ago. Anyway, a fun fact that you may or may not want to think about in terms of our current epidemiological situation is that mumps traditionally was thought of as an annoying but not particularly worrisome disease that most kids got and got over, but we started developing a vaccine during World War II, when it started spreading on military transport ships and when adults caught it, it made their balls swell up real big.

Dennis the Menace, 2/5/22

Mr. Wilson’s trademarked single bead of sweat has never been so poignant. He wants to say “ass” so badly — so badly he feels like he might explode — yet something beyond his control prevents him! What kind of suffocating universe does he live in, where the release of even the mildest of curse words is forbidden to him?

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Like the sands through the hourglass, so goes the COTW:

“I love how Harry’s expression changes between the first and final panels. ‘Jello shooters? I don’t know if a school organization should be promoting alcohol and — was that a pun? Ha ha, you sons of bitches, I’m in!’” –pugfuggly

Your runners up: also very funny!

“Oh, Wilbur. You’ll never understand people. Or animals. You suck!” –matt w

“Poor Thel! She can dream about a construction worker with a jackhammer and it has nothing to do with sex!” –Joe Blevins

“I hope this leads to a remake of ‘the boy who cried wolf’ where Wilbur actually dies but nobody believes it and they don’t even go to the funeral.” –Ronconi Riccardo, on Twitter

“‘I’m sure glad I’m on your staff!’ won the Least Erotic Dialogue award at the AVNs last year.” –nescio

“Even if Wilbur didn’t call, wouldn’t somebody who worked at the resort call the cruise line? ‘Hey, a disheveled guy in soaked clothes showed up here claiming he fell off one of our ships. Should we straighten out the liability or just quietly shoot him?’” –Alex Parker-Spencer-Driver

“I’ll keep you from driving off a clef! Unlike our mutual friend and colleague Bull Bushka, who very recently drove off a cliff and died! Haha!” –jroggs

“Snuffy and Loweezy evidently haven’t mastered fork protocol past the ‘use as weapon’ stage.” –Pozzo

“Even if Snuffy could afford dental care or had insurance, there’s no way he’s going to let a hoity toity fluoride-touting ‘expert’ stick a drill in his mouth. It’s highly likely he also whittled those dentures himself.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“‘This is a partial prospectus we have prepared for you to peruse!’ is not how Hollywood people talk. Our Mr. Wallet is clearly getting scammed by a couple of Paper Moon-era con artists, who will trick him into thinking a film is being made about his life. A year from now, they’ll get him to pay $60 for tickets, popcorn, and candy to see what will turn out actually to be that disappointing Bruce Willis action movie. (Yes, the effort-versus-payout ratio of the scam is quite low, but no one in this strip is exactly a genius.)” –BigTed

“Mary gaslighting Estelle again and again and again is the most on the nose, yet subtle, Groundhog Day reference on the comics pages today.” –Where’s Rocky?

“A key concept in Nietzsche is the eternal return, the idea that an Übermensch should embrace with joy the fact that life repeats identical to itself forever. This strip shows that if you are still wedded to Platonism and Christianity like Hi, you will never be happy. Embrace nihilism!” –Ettorre

“I’ll just say this, ladies: everybody thinks Wilbur is already dead. Throw him down a well and blame his ghost if anyone thinks they saw him after the cruise liner. It may not work, but at least in jail there won’t be Wilbur.” –jerp+jump

“I was going to crack wise about the unhealthy codependence of keeping awful Wilbur around so they can bond about how awful he is, and then I realized that I read this strip and am now commenting on it with other people. Estelles all, the lot of us.” –matt w

“Dawn Weston: Old enough to carry on affairs with older men to re-enact her deep rooted daddy issues, too young to drink during the day and suppress them.” –Needless_Exposition

“We all know what Rex is thinking: Do I bring a cross claim against Sarah to indemnify us? I mean, it was her fault after all, it’s my money, and she is a pain in the ass.” –Lawyerbob

“DustinDad specifies that he ‘ended up driving‘ to get the food. This gratuitous information for the benefit of the unseen audience tipped her off that she was expected to help him set up a joke. It’s distasteful, but it pays the bills!” –Peanut Gallery

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