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Dennis the Menace, 3/30/21

This is one of those comics where I feel like the joke is convoluted enough that I have to reason it out from first principles. Like, we know Mr. Wilson doesn’t have any friends — we know this with absolute certainty — so I guess the book he’s going through is supposed to be the White Pages, rather than a particularly thick personal address book, even though I’m pretty sure they stopped publishing the White Pages years ago and also the DIRECTORY heading never appeared at the top of the page in the middle of the book for whatever reason. Anyway, who do you think he’s calling? Given that Dennis has upgraded his menacing from “dropping by to annoy Mr. Wilson” to “dropping by with a friend to gawk at Mr. Wilson like he’s an animal at the zoo,” I certainly hope that it’s finally Child Protective Services.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/30/21

I guess the new hilarious “Harry Dinkle has blood running down his face” running gag comes from him biting his tongue when his god-like talent as a band director isn’t recognized by the ladies of this church, who live in a different town from where he taught high school and have literally no reason to know anything about him. That said, the funnier explanation would be that his face is starting to crack due to the pressure put on it by wild swings in expressions like the one we see between panels two and three, and pretty soon it’s going to just slide off the front of his head altogether.

Family Circus, 3/30/21

You may think Big Daddy Keane’s little smile here is cruel, but you have to understand that the minute Billy is large and/or skilled enough to defeat him in single combat, his reign as head of the household — and his life — are over. That day is coming, but it hasn’t come yet, Billy. Not quite yet.

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Gil Thorp, 3/29/21

The Gil Thorp winter basketball storyline is over! Donezo! It was boring and I’m not even going to bother recapping it! We’re cruising right ahead into spring, the new season that smells like freshly mowed baseball diamonds and [sniffs air] [record scratch] musty old books????

Yes, it appears our baseball/softball season is starting in the library — and the boringest part of the library, where they don’t even have any books or anything. Not sure what prospect would be funnier: if Debbie’s trailing spouse here got replaced on the library board by Gil or Coach Kaz or some other Milford-adjacent jock who really shakes things up in the stacks in a way that at first ruffles some feathers but ultimately everyone agrees it’s for the best, or if market research has shown that sports fans stopped reading newspaper comic strips years ago and so Gil Thorp is about to take a hard pivot into the thrilling library governance drama the last few remaining newspaper readers crave.

Hi and Lois, 3/29/21

I love how genuinely shocked Lois looks overhearing Hi’s tale. “Oh, no, he’s telling them about … golf? But we agreed! Not until they’re older!”

Family Circus, 3/29/21

Speaking of ruined innocence, I am very much enjoying Mommy’s expression. “Oh, no, am I going to have to deal with this moron’s thoughts about … his own mortality? At this hour? Absolutely not.”

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Dustin, 3/28/21

I was going to start this post with “Did … did the manufacturer of warfarin write this comic” and then do a whole riff about how this seven year old kid may not need a blood thinner but the geriatrics who represent the biggest cohort among newspaper comics reader just might, but then I checked out warfarin’s Wikipedia article and found out it’s a generic drug, so that doesn’t really work. It’s just funnier if you get to use the actual name of a pharmaceutical conglomerate, you know? Anyway, I also learned that the warfarin was originally developed as a rat poison, its most common side effect is “bleeding,” and it can also cause something called “purple toes syndrome,” so, honestly, it really does need some good press.

Blondie, 3/28/21

The premise of the main gag of this comic is pointless — why would Mr. Dithers need a drone to keep tabs on Dagwood when there’s literally an entire sector of the software industry dedicated to producing spyware that bosses can use to keep tabs on their workers? — but I have to admit I found the throwaway panels, in which Dagwood reacts to a video poker website with more excitement and engagement than he’s ever demonstrated towards his career or his family, haunting enough that today’s strip will stick with me for weeks.