11/10 comic quickies

I like comics with morals. Like this one's - don't let old people use the internet.

Soon I'll be treated to a plot that centers around this old lady searching for cans to recycle to pay off her "the Amazon site" debt. And it'll be funny. Oh, it'll be funny.


What's interesting here, besides the sexy, sexy animals all looking right at you (if they weren't sexy, how would you know that they're all female?), is that cat. She's a pussy with one thing on her mind....


So this is what straight sex looks like? Good to know.


Another Sunday, another anti-sodomy sermon.


From the How It Is Dep't: Dr. McRealPerson spends his whole day away from the unwashed masses.... Can't be too clean, I always say...

But sometimes he has to interact with janitors in his building... Oh yeah-h-h-h-h! Hallo, Doc... How you are? Put it dere..

*Urge to repeal the estate tax

Friday's Dennis the Menace

The only one who comes across as menacing here is Alice Mitchell, sending the two boys out in the cold rain with only one umbrella and Joey showing way more skin than is appropriate for someone his age. She always seems to want to get rid of them for some reason....

Dennis the Menace

Fortunately, his parents wear pajamas like giant 8-year-olds. Also, their sexual relationship ensures that Dennis won't walk in on a primal scene.

Dennis the Menace

Margaret: Well, Dennis, I don't know about the tooth part, but the whole neighborhood is on to the fact that your dad's a fairy.

Dennis the Menace

Man, oh, man. This panel just begs the question: What's taking Alice so long in the bath that her son has to go find another one, one that's currently ocupado? Unless Dennis has a 24/7 need to play with his toyboat, which I wouldn't believe since I don't remember seeing him play with it even once before, he could just wait what would be at most half an hour before she got out. Isn't there something good on TV, Dennis?

What's happened here is a larger abdication of parenting responsibilities than Ketcham let's on. I don't know too many kids at age 5 who have free run of the neighborhood without even a parent knowing about it. So something's taking Alice's mind completely off Dennis.

Now while putting throwing in some salts and putting on some Kenny G is pretty relaxing in the bath, we know this isn't the case. The bath-water would get cold before even Dennis's attention span would cause him to flee his house and go off to the old man next door's bath, which for some reason is unlocked. There's really only one thing that can take that long in a bath, especially for a woman.... She has one child, a boring husband, and not much else on her plate. Who can really blame her for escaping a little with some erotic fantasy (let's say, for the purposes of this blog, that it's lesbian erotic fantasy)? With all the images of hot, hot lesbian action floating in her mind, she lost track of the time and gave Dennis a dismissive am-scray. And more power to the stay-at-home mother of a perpetually pre-school-age boy.

And really, I can't see anything else that's gay in this comic.

Qomics for Queers is still holding out hope for Ted Forth

That's going to be how I introduce myself in every room I enter from now on. "NO, I THINK I HAVE THE RIGHT ROOM-HI, MOM... ....PROFESSOR WILKINS!" Or maybe: "NO, I THINK I HAVE THE RIGHT ROOM-HI, TOILET... ... TOILET PAPER ROLL!"

Wednesday's Sally Forth:

Well, it's no secret that I have a little thing for Ted Forth. When it comes to middle-aged men, they don't get much hotter than Ted. He's sensitive to irony yet remains above the fray with his pro-value innocence. And considering how I often feel trapped between market-driven apathy and cynicism parading as reform, value-positivity can look pretty hot. Enter Ted Forth.

Hillary's little comment here provides some hope, even though it's supposed to be a from-the-mouth-of-babes jab at Ted's masculinity, gives me a little hope, hope that we'll see a "Hillary has two daddies" story line a few years from now.


And Tuesday's Dennis the Menace:

I love the expression on Hank's face. It's just saying: "Don't out me in front of the cop, Dennis. Our people don't have a good history with the po-po."

Or maybe that's just my imagination.


Thursday's Mark Trail:

Oh, man, I was right! Not only are they fighting, they're carrying on a conversation while doing so! Not like Dick Tracy, which stops the speech bubbles during a fight scene, Mark Trail doesn't skip a beat.

But Dan raises a good question: HOW did Mark find out so fast? The eyehook under the boat really didn't say much besides, you know, there's an eyehook under a boat, not insurance fraud, although Mark's crazy assumptions turned out to be correct. Yes, a very convenient narrative turn....

Now what sort of "deal" does the EMBARRASSED Dan have in mind? I've read a few Nifty stories that started this way....


And your Family Circus Leslie Feinberg rewrite:

Dennis the Menace

I love the expression on Hank's face. It's just saying: "Don't out me in front of the cop, Dennis. Our people don't have a good history with the police."

Or maybe that's just my imagination.

Qomics for Queers, a product of a liberal arts education

What a week! Tyler confessed to beating himself up in Gil Thorpe, Vera seethes with vague and directionless anger in Mary Worth, and Tommie learns a thing or two about playing the field from Margo in Apartment 3-G. It almost makes you want to take a day off from reading about all this excitement, because it's just too much! But we have a little more here, Queerketeers, because there was a lot of queering it up going on in the funny pages.


Tuesday's Gil Thorpe:

Well, Gil Thorpe's latest story line came to a screeching halt this week. We saw Tyler walk into Paris's party with a bleeding head-wound, then Brynna blamed RJ for it and we all thought she did it to solidify her boyfriend Tyler's position on the basketball team, and then we saw Mr. Lazy Editor and Sleuthy McScoop (seen talking to Tyler's floating head in panel one) investigate, all to have Tyler confess to the whole thing. For no reason.

Even though I don't work within my major, college wasn't a complete waste for me. I wrote a paper on how coming out is a rhetorical act used as a tool to deconstruct the power behind Catholic confession. The long and short of it is that confession is a speech act used to reiterate Catholic teachings and strengthen them through repetition and by reifying the power relationship between confessee and confessor. Coming out is a speech act that builds a personal narrative with details about one's sexuality, but it focuses on empowerment of the confessee by seeking and expecting approval.

Yeah, I know, real original.

But anyway, here we have Tyler confessing really happily to being a big-time masochist. He says in the Wednesday strip that he wanted sympathy but that he had no part in blaming RJ. That makes about as much sense as the motion lines in panel two. No, here he is beating himself up and then proudly telling everyone. In an abstract sense of the term, he's coming out of the closet.

Of course, Coach Thorpe sends him to counseling in Saturday's strip, so I'm sure he'll find out that he's completely non-mascochistic, was just acting out, and is moving to the Midwest to study to be a psychologist.


Thursday's Beetle Bailey:

I don't even need to reiterate how gay Beetle and Sarge are. But now they're bickering like an old married couple. I mean, this is a conversation one would expect to hear from Helga and Hagar or Leroy and Loretta, not a Sergeant First Class and a Private under his command.

It gets even more intense on Friday:

I'm totally like, Oh.My.God. Beetle can't take the closet for another century and he's leaving the military. Because we know what "Maybe the army isn't for everyone" means when they're letting in high school drop-outs and convicted felons and still don't have enough people to fill the ranks. He may or may not have been asked, but I'm sure that if we could look one panel into the past here, he told.

Fortunately for Beetle, this unnamed officer doesn't believe in kicking out a soldier over DADT and is expressing his solidarity with the community in panel two.


And Wednesday's Dennis the Menace:

Haha, Dennis! You sure showed Margaret! Oh wait, no, no you didn't. Calling her ugly would have required a "no" answer. Asking if it's a trick question is just confusing. It presumes that there's no real way to answer the question. Almost as if he feels unable to judge female beauty....

Or maybe the joke has something to do with how Margaret has fused her legs together.


And this morning's Dennis the Menace:

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Well, Dennis, they're getting together to eat something, but it isn't on any Supperware....

See? I was right! I wasn't just making things up!

Qomics for Queers, providing 24-hour coverage of Dennis the Homosexual Menace

OK, folks, sorry about not having a Qomics for Queers last week. I didn't have anything from that week that really jumped out at me, and then I was going to do a few re-writes, and I never got around to it, and it became one of those things, and before I knew it it's today.


First is Monday's Dennis the Menace:

The question on everyone's mind is: Where are Dennis' parents right now? They apparently got him all ready for bed. I don't think that if he asked "Can I go bother our elderly neighbor now that I'm supposed to be asleep and it's all dark?" that they would say yes.

One of them should be supervising him....

One possible explanation is that both Alice and Henry are simultaneously having affairs (I just watched Desperate Housewives). Think about it, neither would leave Dennis at home if they thought the other wasn't, so there would have to be a situation where each of them is away for something secret. Since this is supposed to be outing the comics, let's make them gay affairs. Hot, sexy woman- or man-loving affairs. And neither made an excuse, Alice and Henry each snuck out of the house so well that the other thought that it was safe to sneak out as well. That leaves Dennis, all alone. I suppose he woke up and asked for a glass of water, only to find no one there. Where a normal 5-year-old would start crying, Dennis is a true professional menace, so he takes this opportunity to do his thing.

And really, I can't see anything else that's gay in this comic.


Sunday's Dennis the Menace throwaway panels:

Oh, kindergarten. Where candy is sweeter, life is simpler, and kids sit around talking like the characters in Queer as Folk.


The throwaway panels from last Sunday's Beetle Bailey:

You know, from what I know about the army, it's not really common for a Sergeant 1st Class to be hanging out with a private when they have some time off. But not only is Sarge going out with Beetle here, Otto implies that this happens quite often. Their smiles indicate that they're happy, really happy, going-to-get-some-head level happy.

Now, I may not be the first person to say that Beetle and Sarge are gay, but I am probably the person who says it the most often. I think its particularly apropos right now in light of Pace's comments this week (I know, I know, this one was drawn weeks before his comments, but hear me out). Wouldn't it be great if they're setting Beetle Bailey up for a huge publicity stunt involving Beetle and Sarge coming out to everyone when DADT is repealed? It'd be great, and all the characters could be there in one big coming out party (do people do those ever or was that just Ellen?) that would be one big panel on a color, large-format Sunday feature, with doves holding up pink banner that could say, "We're here, we're queer, and you did get used to it!"

Uhhhhhhhhh..... That revealed a little too much of my personal Beetle Bailey fantasies. Maybe I should stop now.