Comment of the Week

Maybe it's just that the standards of menace have been so raised by the likes of Calvin and Hobbes or Bart Simpson but I can't remember ever seeing Dennis engage in behavior that would make him a poor children's party guest. He wears a tiny suit to church for goodness sake! He's really just a menace because the strip is called Dennis the Menace but who told the inhabitants of the strip that? Who is going around badmouthing this precocious kid who at worst doesn't always live up to 1950s standards of etiquette? I ask but we all already know it's Mr. Wilson, Mr. Wilson is making the neighbor kid a social pariah out of a sort of misplaced dissatisfaction and inadequacy that his pension wasn't enough to settle him in a gated community with no children.

BananaSam

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Beetle Bailey, 5/3/22

Man, I really respect the second panel here for unleashing the full-throttle refusal to give a shit that makes Beetle Bailey the strip we all know and read every day for some reason. Just a bunch of people, some of whom we know and some we don’t, standing around a … void? with no furniture? because that’s what a “rec room” is, in the army? I guess???? Anyway, the fact that everyone’s facial expressions range from mild excitement to vague annoyance is just icing on the cake. Bravo, it doesn’t get more Beetle Bailey vibes than this.

Curtis, 5/3/22

“Ignorant,” Curtis? Derrick and Onion clearly paid attention in class when you were supposed to be learning about Greek mythology, which is more than you can say.

Dick Tracy, 5/3/22

“Yes, your honor, we have Stuntman Mike’s evidence on this. No, I don’t know his last name. I don’t know if he’s actually a stuntman, either. I only talk to him on the computer and his face is always blurred out. Look, are you going to give me a no-knock warrant to raid this day care center or am I going to have to start leaking to the press that you’re a soft-on-crime lib the next time you’re up for re-election?”

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Marvin, 5/2/22

Ha ha, just look at the dead eyes on Jeff throughout this comic! He has absolutely been anticipating the day his wife is going to leave him for years, and he’s not happy about it but he’s basically numb to the prospect at this point, so might as well get it over with! Anyway, she is going to break some very bad news, Jeff, in the sense that Marvin is staying.

Mary Worth, 5/2/22

“He reconnected with the love of his life, leaving me free to pursue a hot and emotionally meaningless sexual relationship with a college stud. Honestly, he fixed a lot of my problems.”

Crankshaft, 5/2/22

Speaking of fixing problems, it looks like Crankshaft and his entire family are about to be killed when a huge asteroid smashes into the Earth! The rest of the human race will be wiped out as well, of course, but it’s honestly a small price to pay.

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Gasoline Alley, 5/1/22

I gotta say, this Gasoline Alley was a real journey for me, in the sense that the opening title led me to hope that, finally, Rufus and Joel, my least favorite characters out of a cast in which I don’t like anybody, would be horribly murdered by some kind of undead fiend who drained their bodies of blood, but then it turns out to be some kind of weird meta-thing involving people and details I refuse to research further. On the bright side, though, we do get pretty solid confirmation at the end that our rustic duo are thoroughly illiterate.

Blondie, 5/1/22

Look, if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when comics stretch out what could’ve been been a weekday strip to fill the Sunday panels and trash all their world-building and continuity in the process. What I’m saying is that Dagwood has exactly one friend, and it’s Herb, and they don’t even like each other. I have no idea who these other two people are. I assume they’re Dagwood’s neighbors whom he vaguely knows, and they’re being a lot more polite about this than I would be.

Mary Worth, 5/1/22

Mary Worth, on the other hand, often does a pretty good job of doing a Sunday strip that’s mostly a recap of the week’s plot but contains one little detail that rewards you for reading it in addition to the dailies. Today, that detail is Ian’s little note in the fourth panel. Ian is 100% a guy who would have an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student that was destined to leave her emotionally fucked up for decades and then write “with much affection” in her yearbook.

Pluggers, 5/1/22

Hey, look, buddy, the point of Pluggers is to use furries to illustrate down-home real American anecdotes that manage to be self-deprecating and smug at the same time, OK? It is not a venue for working out your extremely petty and very specific marital grievances, do better everybody