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Dennis the Menace, 9/24/24

Despite being a resident of California for more than a decade, I’m not a woo-woo person who talks about a situation’s “energy” much, but the closest I get is when I talk about doing standup comedy. The great and terrible thing about performing comedy live is that you can absolutely tell, in an immediate and visceral way, whether people are having a good time: a polite laugh is immediately obvious in a way that polite applause is not. And when you bomb on stage, it is a terrible and physical sensation: the term “flop sweat” is, for me at least, not a metaphor. Anyway, this is all to say that Dennis is very much bombing here; the guys down at the hardware store have zero patience for his bullshit little jokes, but it’s also clear that he’s blissfully unaware of this. Having no radar for how your performance is landing with an audience is almost certainly a type of sociopathy, and demonstrates what a true menace this young man is.

Hi and Lois, 9/24/24

Really love Lois’s gobsmacked expression in panel one here. “Holy SHIT! You bought bungee cords? You exchanged money for bungee cords? You got cords that consist of an elastic strand core covered by woven polypropylene? And you’re going to use it to secure the garbage can lids? Our garbage can lids? The lids to the cans where we put all our garbage? With fucking bungee cords? I never thought I’d live to see the day. May such wonders never cease.”

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Pluggers, 9/23/24

An oft-noted source of malaise in American life is a rise of loneliness, as “third spaces” — places where people socialize that aren’t home or work — decline, and more and more people spend all their time with immediate family, coworkers — or, as they age, themselves. My new crackpot theory is that this explains why individual Plugger entries have gotten increasingly weird and idiosyncratic over the years that I’ve read the strip. They used to be the sort of corny and relatable content that emerged from consensus as you and your buddies griped or joked about life’s little foibles at the bar or on the job site. But now? Now that you took your pension and your wife has died and the VFW hall has closed, now that mostly you just sit on the couch with the TV turned on way too loud, so you can hear it and also can’t really think, which is maybe the whole point? Well, now who knows what your old pals who you exchange occasional texts with do. Do they mute the TV before they reply to your text? Probably, right? You do it, so it stands to reason that they do too. Maybe that’s why they haven’t replied to your text yet. Maybe they’re just waiting for their show to end so they can focus some attention on it. That’s probably it.

Gasoline Alley, 9/23/24

In addition to being obviously annoying, Rufus and Joel are also uncanny, in the sense that they alone among the cast stay the same age even as everyone ages around them. Are they truly human at all, or are they strange visitors from the fae realms? Well, today’s strip at least establishes that Rufus was in fact pushed down a human birth canal, which may be more information than any of us ever wanted, but now we have it.

Shoe, 9/23/24

I love the fact that the Perfesser’s eyes are closed here. He’s not just daydreaming about these culinary delights: he appears to be deep in the act of prayer, as if he’s trying to manifest them. This probably hurts Roz’s feelings, as she runs the restaurant where he’s currently sitting and from which he could presumably simply order them.

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Hello everyone! I am back from my vacation! Did you miss me? Did you realize you liked Uncle Lumpy better? Did you not even notice any changes? Feel free to only answer those questions in ways that won’t hurt my feelings. Anyway, I do want to thank Uncle Lumpy for his fabulous fill-in duties, and thank everyone who donated to the annual fundraiser (said donors will be getting individual thanks from me, this week!).

Mary Worth, 9/22/24

I also want to give thanks to the usually cold and unfeeling universe and/or the vagaries of the King Features editorial calendar. It seems strangely common that truly wild Mary Worth action, like the legendary Operation H-Town warehouse shootout, happens when I’m on vacation. But this year, I’ve gotten home just in time for the truly incredible panel in which Estelle decides to murder her fiance, and probably a bunch of sick animals too. Can’t wait!!!!

The Phantom, 9/22/24

An extremely long-simmering plot in The Phantom is that at one point the Phantom had amnesia, and ended up enlisting under the name “John X” as a patrolman in the Jungle Patrol, the paramilitary unit he ordinarily leads from the shadows as the perpetually unseen “Unknown Commander”. Before too long he regained his memory and had to juggle both roles, which was increasingly more trouble than it was worth, as fun as it was to intermittently show up as John X and make all the patrolwomen extremely horny. So our hero has finally decided to wrap up his double life by having the Unknown Commander order John X off on what’s widely understood as a suicide mission. This has the added benefit of modeling for the patrolpersons he commands the idea that they’re expected to nobly sacrifice themselves for unclear ends at any time, which could make his life a lot more convenient even ignoring the whole thing where he has one less identity to juggle now.

Beetle Bailey, 9/22/24

The throwaway panels assure us that Beetle is aware that he is a member of the U.S. Armed Forces, but it’s fascinating that in subsequent panels he contemplates various increasingly fantastical transportation modes only in terms of the convenience they would offer him, and not the incredible tactical advantage they would grant his platoon in combat. I guess there’s a reason he’s never been promoted: he simply doesn’t have the mind for military leadership.

Mark Trail, 9/22/24

WOW, Mark Trail, you had an opportunity to depict a GRAPHIC vulture vomit scene in the Sunday full-color comics and you chickened out? For shame, for shame!