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

Wednesday comics

"The Amazon site"? That's another one of those phrases that no one in real life would ever say and yet somehow made it into the comics. Saying "amazon dot com" is what people actually say, the way the site is advertised, and the way people who use webpages for purchases actually refer to those webpages.

I'm going to venture a guess here and say that Amazon just didn't want any Crankshaft readers on their site. I'd say bad things about those people, but that demographic includes me.


Otherwise, Ruff, I'd have to kill you.


One day you'll learn, Jeffy, that pretty bois don't have to be smart.

Some things stayed the same...

In my two months of absence, I missed a lot of comics, but I just read them and I'm finding that the French expression, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, is actually really, really true.

Check out today's TDIET:

They're still sticking with the "deranged and whiney people complaining about problems that no one really has" take.

Slylock Fox is still digging the you-have-to-stare-at-them- for-half-an-hour-and-have-a-newspaper-with-amazing-resolution- and-color-quality mysteries. (And Farmer Hog even asked Shady Shrew to watch his road-side stand! As if there was nothing to clue him off to the possibility that Shady would steal from him, besides the dude's name. Seriously, if I were the pig, I'd be a whole lot more worried that Shady, y'know, stole the money in the register instead of a few apples.)

Gil Thorp is still a bunch of boxy lookin' kids whose names I'll never remember sitting around gaping abysses getting excited over not really but kinda sports-related themes. (I'm thinking that Cully Vale is new. Am I right? And what happened with all that Gale Martin drama? Was it the bassist?)

Whoever writes DtM still thinks, "Decade-old pop culture reference plus reference to Dennis equals nap time!" (Can't you just unbutton one button, Henry, to show that you're relaxing? I mean, I know that it's supposed to be a Rockwell inspired comic, but I think that late at night, after the kid goes to bed, you're cuddling with your wife on the couch, you'd probably want to unbutton at least one button.)

And Beetle's still stuck in his abusive relationship with Sarge.

Friday's Dennis the Menace

Oh, well now DtM is making fun of everyone who wears glasses. Niiiiiiiice. I suppose this is less "Dennis the Menace" acting out here and more a performance of "Dennis the Schoolyard Bully with Low Self-esteem that Makes Him Insult Others' Appearance". On second thought, DtSBwLStMHIOA would probably be a great comic that could be disrupted periodically with trips to the shrink telling him to get over his parents' loveless marriage.

I'd read that mess.

Thursday's Dennis the Menace

Well, weird.

I was watching television on a Saturday morning recently and I found that Saturday morning cartoons aren't the same as when I grew up. They pretty much don't exist anymore - I saw a lot of other stuff on there, but not many cartoons. So is DtM actually less than two decades behind the times?

That's one level of weirdness.

The other one is the fact that one of those cartoons I grew up watching was "Dennis the Menace" (Dennis, Dennis, Dennis the Menace...). So when Dennis is telling Joey about his dad, who I guess is only a few years older than I, growing up watching Saturday morning cartoons he's actually talking about his dad watching his unborn son on the TV as a child.

Total mind-trip.

Wednesday's Dennis the Menace

All poodles are female, all poodles are female, all poodles are female, all poodles are female!

Monday's Dennis the Menace

Does he mean like this car wash?

But I don't know if I'd want to read that Dennis the Menace.

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....

Saturday's Dennis the Menace

What strikes me about this DtM is that most kids that age don't know anything about low-fat food. In fact, they usually just eat either whatever's in front of them (like I did) or five or six safe foods (like my brother did). With Alice smiling on, though, it seems like she's really sending a message here, and that message is: Yeah that's low-fat food, and I'm glad you noticed, tubby.

Otherwise, I can't see a joke here and I can't visualize this actually being within the realm of possibility. Although Joey's parents could possibly invest in some less-revealing clothing, and maybe the joke is that Dennis wants to see Joey with a little more meat on his bones.

Last Sunday's Dennis the Menace

I think I need to start a "Kids digging through tough sod, which is nearly impossible, and making their parents angry" Watch. Because this gag is really getting old.

Monday's Dennis the Menace

Could we get any more Eve/Mary here? We all know that the subtext of the relationship between Margaret and Dennis is that she's an uppity woman trying to bring down the relaxed, cool, "chill", if you will, white man, and he constantly thwarts her using his privilege-induced nonchalance as his only defense. Like, fine, we'll deal with that. But does Dennis have to bring in another woman, better drawn than any of the other DtM characters, just to be a comparison for Margaret?

I do hope that we see more Sammi - Sammi a la Sam Hill, getting a piloting license, draining swamps, teaching pseudojournalists about birds at airports. A newer, more kick-ass character lifted from the comparatively hip Mark Trail is just what this single panel needs to stay relevent.

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.

Monday's Dennis the Menace

I like the use of class indicators on this guy to show that he's a violent threat to the middle-class Mitchells. He drinks beer! He doesn't shave properly! He wears plaid but without a coat! He wears jeans to the grocery store! Good heavens! How can we let someone like that walk the streets freely! He even enters his car from the right! Oh my!

Sunday's Dennis the Menace

OK, that's gross, whatever you were thinking about me including this one here in QfQ. Seriously, they're father and son! Even that joke would be beneath me.

No, I just wanted to ask who Alice was on the phone with. This person apparently is concerned with how clean the Mitchells' car is. The Clean Car Police, and she's ratting Henry out? Someone looking to buy the car? The Duchess, who was expecting a visit from Alice "as soon as the car is clean"?

But since DtM doesn't maintain a narrative throughout the week, we'll never know.

Dennis the Menace

Have you ever tried to shovel a hole directly into suburban grass? Yeah - it's nearly impossible. The roots overlap to make sod, which is really hard to break through. In fact, it seems that Dennis and Joey here have super strength of some sort to be able to do that.

That's probably why George is just staring and isn't stopping them. He knows not to mess with Dennis and Joey.

Dennis the Menace, throwaway panels

Dennis Mitchell seems to just love that expression. Actually, I think that someone about a month or two ago used it around Hank Ketchum, he thought it was funny, and now we have to read it over and over until he gets it out of his head.

Either way, it's about 75% as gay when said to a girl than when said to a boy. That's still pretty darn gay.

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.