A spooktacular comics roundup, part 2

Enjoy never sleeping again.

Before you go out trick-or-treating, I invite you to cleanse your palette with some seasonally appropriate comic strip parodies.

It's an old-fashioned summertime comics roundup! (Part 1)

Sadly Priscilla's Pop is not one of the strips covered in the following article.

Hey, y'all! How's your summer going? That's nice.

I don't know about you, but I'm in the mood to throw some more newspaper comics onto the rusted-out Weber barbecue grill in the backyard and char them to cinders. Does that sound like fun? Okay, then. Let's get to it.

Oh dear. It's time for another comics roundup.

"Take that, you judgmental old biddy!"

The comics, like the waterfalls, never stop. That's a big part of their charm, the constancy. Sure, the newspaper industry died at least ten years ago, and the last non-ironic reader of Judge Parker died twenty years ago. But does that mean King Features Syndicate should just stop paying people to write and draw Judge Parker? I hope not.

Anyway, I haven't done one of these comics roundups since February, and they've been building up on my computer, so I figured it was time. Past time, really.

Is it already time for another comics roundup? Apparently.

Yep. In colors. Plural. We're going all out here.

Look. If you read this blog, you already know the deal. Occasionally, I like to clear off the images I have saved to my computer and start fresh. Specifically, these are various parodies of newspaper comics that I've done over the last couple of months. That's what this is. Not into that? Then this isn't the article for you. Move on to something else.

Fun in the sun with Mark Trail! (and a veritable panoply of high-larious comix!)

So I guess Mark is just nude to the waist.

How's the week been treating you? Good? Bad? Indifferent? Well, however it's been going, prepare for it to get just a little better. I have a whole new selection of fractured funnies to share with you. If you'll direct your eyes slightly upward, for instance, you'll see my latest Mark Trail adventure.

And here's one featuring that little dickhole dickens, Dennis the Menace:

Fundamentalists say the darnedest things.

Speaking of Dennis the Menace, here are a couple of parodies of a recent panel. I decided to remove Dennis and replace him with another, more appropriate character.

Corporate synergy FTW!

Another variation, one that possibly goes too far:

So Dennis is probably dead in this scenario.

For a change of pace, here's another edition of Family Circus Minus The Family. Isn't this peaceful and serene? I know the kitchen has two doors that hinge in incompatible directions, but try to look past that.

No malapropisms have ever been uttered here.

And finally, just for giggles, here's my attempt at constructing a typical newspaper comics page.

And no ink stains on your fingers either!

More fun with 'Dennis The Menace'

When wry observations backfire.

Dennis The Menace was one of my favorite comics when I was a kid. I was even sort of excited about Dennis' status as a mascot for Dairy Queen. Only when I grew up did I realize that the Mitchell family depicted in the comic was a cesspool of mutual resentment and acrimony. And it wasn't just my imagination either. The comic strip is based on a real family, and it presents a considerably sanitized, brightened-up version of their lives. The real Alice died of a drug overdose in 1959, and the real Dennis became estranged from his father and had a troubled adulthood. The real Henry, aka cartoonist Hank Ketcham, continued to exploit their misadventures for fun and profit for decades, putting a happy face on their domestic strife. But the truth oozes up through the drains sometimes. Here's the real comic for comparison. It's debatable whether my version is nastier or less nasty.

George Wilson cannot enjoy even the smallest of victories

An expanded Dennis The Menace cartoon.

In his landmark 1993 book Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud stated that single-panel newspaper features like Bil Keane's The Family Circus do not qualify as comics because they lack sequential juxtaposition, i.e. the very feature that defines comics as a unique medium. I wonder what Mr. McCloud might make of Hank Ketcham's Dennis The Menace. From Monday to Saturday, Dennis is (usually) a single-panel feature with a very limited cast in a very defined setting. On Sundays, it expands to a multi-panel layout. And, every once in a while, the thankless artists who do the strip today (Ketcham died in 2001) will divide one of the daily panels into halves. So Dennis The Menace is occasionally a comic and occasionally not a comic. It is the Schrodinger's cat of the cartoon world. I think it should be a multi-panel feature every day. Sometimes, when there's just one panel to work with, the joke is not really complete. Today's Dennis is a perfect example. You see it up there at the top left. It needed a couple more panels to be whole. So I added them.

This Seinfeld/Dennis the Menace crossover might be the only important thing I've ever done

A portly, balding man named George who is constantly ranting about everything in his life? A freeloading, wisecracking neighbor who is forever showing up, uninvited, at inconvenient times? A focus on the mundane, minute details of daily life in America? Yes, in all these ways (and probably no others), Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace is a precursor to Seinfeld. Ketcham's creation started as -- and still exists as -- a daily newspaper comic, but from 1959 to 1963, it was also a live-action sitcom, starring Jay North in the title role. The "Kramer is basically a grown-up Dennis" thing was my starting-off point for this crossover parody, which takes its dialogue directly from a real-life Dennis Sunday strip and its visuals directly from a real-life Seinfeld episode. As this mashup shows, Dennis Mitchell was the original "pop-in guy." By the way, when you read this, I'd like you to do so out loud in your best Jason Alexander impression. Really bite down on words like "computers" and "fence."

Another 'Dennis the Menace' was in need of a rewrite

Nothing much to report here, folks. Today's Dennis the Menace panel was especially stupid, even by the generous standards of that long-running feature, so I thought I'd give it a little rewrite. Originally, I thought I might have a hand reaching out from the snow, but then I decided it was funnier if he was just gesturing at nothing. By the way, not to brag overmuch, but I was just awarded with "Comment of the Week" at Josh Fruhlinger's Comics Curmudgeon blog. Good old Mary Worth came through for me again.

And here's a Hagar the Horrible rewrite for good measure:

A phantom menace... named Dennis

It's tricky to put Dennis side-by-side with real people and not have him look freakish.

Today's Dennis the Menace, pictured above left, offers a most intriguing alternate timeline: Dennis Mitchell need never have been born at all. Imagine that world. George Wilson, 30 pounds lighter and sporting a full head of chestnut-colored hair, would be enjoying an active and inventive sex life with his wife, Martha. Their coupling would be so loud, in fact, that it could be easily overheard by their childless neighbors, Henry and Alice Mitchell, whose marriage would still be as cold and loveless as it is now. Oh, yeah. They were always a bad couple. Dennis' birth just exacerbated an already-terrible situation.

A Game of Checkers: An extremely short story by Joe Blevins

The Wilsons' names are George and Martha.

Mrs. Wilson turned her head halfway toward Dennis, paused, then looked back at the wall. The room grew very quiet then for about thirty seconds, at which point Dennis heard a sound he eventually recognized as Mrs. Wilson sobbing softly. Mr. Wilson must have heard it, too, because he said something that sounded like ‘goddammit,’ and he lifted his heavy frame from the chair and walked out of the room. Mrs. Wilson didn’t even watch him go. Dennis, sensing an opportunity, rearranged the pieces on the checkerboard in his own favor.

Yes, another rewritten 'Dennis the Menace' cartoon

(left) Their version: (right) My version.

I'm a great believer in getting right to the point and saying what needs to be said. And I think there's one particular sentiment that has gone unexpressed in the 64-year history of Dennis the Menace. So today, I decided to right that wrong. No applause, please. I'm not a hero, just a citizen doing his job. But isn't it true that Martha Wilson's mollycoddling and endless enabling of Dennis Mitchell has largely been what has allowed this cruel saga to continue for over six decades? I think George Wilson has a perfectly valid point. Maybe he just hasn't been expressing it clearly or directly enough. That's why I decided to help him out.

Birthdays are still a thing, so I guess I'm having one.

This ritual happens each day across America and other countries where Facebook isn't blocked by the government.

This comment is about a creepy Dennis the Menace panel.

A congratulatory message from my insurance agent in my voicemail . An Amazon gift card from my sister in my e-mail inbox. A much-reused banner reading H-A-P-P-Y  B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y stretched across my cubicle at work. The clues are all there. Doesn't take Mycroft Holmes to put 'em together. Another year went by, and I didn't die. And now, as a result, it is my birthday. Personally, the allure of birthdays wore off for me about twenty years ago, around the same time as the allure of Christmas. They were fun once; now they mean virtually nothing. You might think that a birthday is at least a chance to take stock of one's life. Nah. I'm too tired for that shit right now. I had to wake up at 5:30 this morning to get to work on time. I was filling in for my boss today, which meant there was no time for lunch or breaks. Just work, work, work, then leave. It's cold here in the suburbs of Chicago, 48 degrees currently, overcast, and drizzly. Not the kind of day which makes you wanna go out into the world and give life a great big bear hug. I think I'm gonna curl up on the couch and watch some of the shows that have accumulated on my DVR. It's Friday, so there should be new episodes of Married, Garfunkel & Oates, and Black Jesus from last night. Good shows all. By far, the best thing that happened to me today was that I was awarded Comment of the Week on Josh Fruhlinger's Comics Curmudgeon blog for my review of a rather disturbing Dennis the Menace panel. That's always an honor. In other news/life updates, I have booked my flight and my hotel and, barring the direct intervention of God (in whom I do not believe), I am headed to New York City to attend the last two days of the Ed Wood retrospective at the Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan. I'm genuinely excited about that. Or I would be if I weren't so cold and tired. What this situation requires is an episode of Black Jesus, some root beer, and a good night's rest. In the meantime, I'd like to leave you with a song I've been listening to a lot this week for some reason. Maybe it just came up randomly in shuffle mode and I got stuck on it. It's called "Leave My Kitten Alone," and it's a catchy little R&B number from 1959 by the great and tragic Little Willie John, who died in prison in 1968 at the age of 30. As of today, I'm nine years old than he ever got to be. Go figure, huh? "Kitten" has been famously covered by both the Beatles and Elvis Costello, but for my money, there's no beating the original. Give it a whirl, huh? If you promise to listen to this song even once, that's the best birthday present you could give me.

Mill Creek comedy classics #30: "Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus" (1938)

Bad boy, bad boy! What ya gonna do? What ya gonna do when the circus comes through?

The flick: Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus (Sol Lesser Productions, distributed by RKO, 1938) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 5.9

Director: Edward F. Cline (a former Keystone Kop; directed several W.C. Fields films, including The Bank Dick, My Little Chickadee, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break)

Louise Beavers

Actors of note (and there are a bunch): 

• Tommy Kelly (played Tom Sawyer in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; cameos in Gone with the Wind and Battleground)

• Ann Gillis (Becky Thatcher in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; appeared in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and did voice work for Disney's Bambi)

• Edgar Kennedy (a founding Keystone Kop; the angry lemonade vendor from the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup; starred in roughly 200 short subjects)

• Benita Hume (Tarzan Escapes)

• Billy Gilbert (comedian known for his exaggerated sneeze; inspired and voiced Sneezy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; appeared onscreen with Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, and the Marx Brothers)

• Grant Mitchell (Arsenic and Old Lace, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), Nana Bryant (Harvey, The Song of Bernadette)

• George McFarland ("Spanky" from Our Gang/The Little Rascals, appearing in over 100 shorts from 1932-1942)

• Louise Beavers (Imitation of Life, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Jackie Robinson Story; played the title role in TV's Beulah)

• William Demarest (Behave Yourself!; Uncle Charley on TV's My Three Sons)

• Mickey Rentschler (His Private Secretary)

• Fay Helm (The Wolf Man)

The gist of it: Smartaleck Willie Peck (Kelly) pulls a stupid frog-related prank right before he's supposed to leave for summer camp, so his parents (Mitchell & Bryant) punish him by making him stay home with the maid, Cassey (Beavers), while they go on vacation. That means he won't be able to beat his rival, Herman (Rentschler), at the camp's obstacle course and bring home the coveted trophy for a third straight year. But Willie secretly gets each of his parents to relent, and both wind up giving him money for train fare to camp.

Willie and his eleven pals, including tough little Pee Wee (McFarland), have some time to kill before the train to camp, so they decide to take in the circus visiting their town. After a great deal of haggling and confusion over the entrance fee, Willie ends up spending all his money to cover the cost of admission for himself and his friends. While the other eleven head to camp on the train, Willie stays with the circus and gets involved in territorial war between bareback-riding child sensation Fleurette (Gillis) and scheming, jealous Myrna (Hume), who is the assistant to incompetent lion tamer Arthur Bailey (Kennedy) and also the wife of the circus' manager Mr. Daro (Demarest). When Myrna sabotages Fleurette, sidelining the horse-riding wunderkind before a big show, Willie has to impersonate the girl and perform in her place before making a mad dash via chariot (!) to the camp to compete in the big race.

Bart Simpson lays on the charm. 

My take: Perhaps you've heard of Peck's Bad Boy. Created by the 17th Governor of the Great State of Wisconsin, George Wilbur Peck, the mischievous young lad debuted in a series of humorous newspaper articles in the 1870s. The character caught on, and the enterprising author/politician gave the public more and more (and more!) of him for about three decades. Before, during and after his political career, G.W. Peck churned out one volume after another about his infamous proto-Bart-Simpson, finally conking out with Peck's Bad Boy in an Airship in 1908.

The fictional boy then hopscotched to plays, films, and even a gender-switched TV series, Peck's Bad Girl (1959-1960) starring Patty McCormack, the homicidal demon-child of The Bad Seed. In 1921, five years after Gov. Peck's death, our pal Jackie Coogan starred in a full-length silent film version of Peck's Bad Boy. It was remade as a talkie in 1934 with the very similar-sounding child star Jackie Cooper, a veteran of the Our Gang series. And four years after that came this quasi-sequel, based on a book of the same title that Gov. Peck published in 1905, when he was nearing the end of his Bad Boy cycle. I think you'll agree, that's a whole lotta Peck's Bad Boy.

Was there any juice left in this particular turnip by 1938? Judging by Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus, the surprising answer is yes! I'm not sure how well it works as a comedy, but it's so packed with bizarre incidents, wild characters, and completely insane plot twists that it easily holds the viewer's attention 75 years after its release!

As a diehard fan of The Simpsons, I was fascinated by the plot of this film because it so clearly presaged two of that series' most famous episodes, "Kamp Krusty" and "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie," both from the fabled fourth season. In "Kamp Krusty," Homer threatens to keep Bart from going to Krusty the Clown's summer camp because of a dismal report card, but he then relents and lets Bart go anyway. In "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie," just five episodes later, Homer and Marge agree that they've spoiled Bart by letting him get away with irresponsible behavior and insincere apologies, so Homer vows to truly punish Bart by preventing him from seeing the most popular movie of the year.

The parenting debate Mr. and Mrs. Simpson have in "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie" is very much like the one Mr. and Mrs. Peck have in Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus, except the Pecks simply admit to spoiling their son and laugh it off, while Homer and Marge actually try to deal with the problem. I was further reminded of "teletherapist" Dr. Will Miller's review of the Dennis the Menace TV series (1959-1963) in his book Why We Watch: Killing the Gilligan Within (Fireside, 1996). Please note Miller's use of the term "bad boy."

Jay North as Dennis.

A smokescreen suggesting Dennis was an incorrigible child, this show is, in fact, not about a bad boy. It is, rather, a show about bad parents. The Mitchells are weak, indecisive, and unable to set appropriate boundaries. As in most of these cases, what is not understood by many parents is that permissiveness is not an excess of kindness. It is rather a cruel form of abandonment . . . Of course, parenting is wearisome! Certainly your children's boundless energy and incessant pressing exhaust you. But there is no option, you simply must endure. It is an act of love. Children need you to set the boundaries because they cannot see the fences on their own. Continuing to give in to their immature, developmentally unformed will has dire consequences for you later. You will regret it for the rest of your life! (pp. 126-127)

Even if you don't care about Dennis Mitchell or Bart Simpson, there is still plenty to hold your attention in this utterly berserk film. The modern-day viewer will likely interpret many of the scenes in Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus as examples of child abuse, animal abuse, or both. Did parents supervise their children at all in 1938? Nowadays, a kid can't even ride his bike around the block without first donning full-body armor, but standards were apparently lax during the Roosevelt years, so Willie Peck and his buddies (sort of a junior version of the East Side Kids, minus the "Noo Yawk" street slang) get to do all sorts of risky, borderline-illegal stuff.

Fleurette's dangerous horse-riding act seems like a gross misuse of both the child and the animal, dragging them from town to town so they can perform for half-empty audiences under a filthy tent. Yet we are supposed to side with the child's mother (Helm), a former circus star herself now living vicariously through her daughter/meal ticket, in the battle for circus supremacy against Myrna. Why? Watch this movie and tell me what makes Fleurette and her mother any morally superior to Myrna. There's a fine line between this mother-daughter pair and the one in TV's infamous Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

If that's not enough, there is a major subplot in this film revolving around Mrs. Peck's sleeping pills, which (through convoluted circumstances) wind up in her son's possession. Willie feeds some of them to the circus lions, and rest are consumed by Pee Wee after Willie tells him the pills are "candy." Think about that a moment. "Spanky" from The Little Rascals is gobbling down sleeping pills like M&M's. That sounds like the setup for a tasteless cutaway joke on Family Guy, featuring its controversial "Herbert the Pervert" character. Yet, back in 1938, this was no big deal.

Edgar "Slow Burn" Kennedy

Is it funny: Yes, though not always in the manner the film intended. It's the film's audacity and oddness that made me laugh more than its jokes. The film gives plenty of screen time to the acrobatic clowns in the circus, but this only reminded me of Here Comes the Circus, an unsettling short film once featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Tommy Kelly's "wise guy" characterization got on my nerves at first, but I got some laughs out of the genuinely-funny scene in which he dresses in drag as Fleurette and does a hapless, clumsy imitation of her act while dangling from a wire. Kelly spends pretty much the last third of the film in a dress, which was a bold choice for one of pop culture's most celebrated "tough kids."

Fleurette herself, though meant to be a serious and sympathetic character, made me laugh more than Willie Peck because she was such a little drama queen. When her act is given a slightly-less desirable time slot one night, she treats it like a major career setback. And there's one moment in which Willie's shenanigans somehow "cure" Fleurette's injured leg, and she throws her crutches away like she's just been blessed by a faith healer at a revival meeting.

Marx Brothers fans will dig the opportunity to see famed comedic foil Edgar Kennedy do his patented "slow burn" routine a few times, and Kennedy even participates in the ludicrous chariot scene that sets up the almost-as-ludicrous obstacle course finale. Kennedy also gets the movie's best line. When the chariot speeds around a dangerous curve, Kennedy asks Kelly, "You didn't want to live forever, did you?"

My grade: B

P.S. - As for the issue of racial stereotyping in this film, Louise Beavers plays yet another mammy-type domestic character, and the script makes her say things like "Is you is or is you ain't?" She also mispronounces "scram" as "scrum" several times. But Beavers is a very talented and accomplished actress, and her intelligence shines through even as this cliched character. Cassey seems like the most reasonable, levelheaded person in the Peck household and the only one to recognize what a brat the title character truly is.

Oh, Dennis the Menace, you incorrigible scamp!

Here's my rewritten version of today's Dennis the Menace. Enjoy.

The Funday Sunnies! Comics for the terminally depressed!

Celebrating America's richest vein of laughter and despair: Newspaper comics!

Hello, everybody!

My main man, Zomby, has been on a vision quest in Nepal these past few weeks, which explains his near-total absence from the blog. When (or if) he gets back, I'll be happy to bring you his further exploits. In the meantime, I thought I'd bring you a variety of Sunday comics, each one with the subtly dispiriting, downbeat antihumor of Zomby!

Enjoyment is not the proper reaction to these comics, per se. You really should be shaking your head and sighing deeply after each one.

Capitalist Cut-Ups

Ruprecht, The One-Armed Cat

Dennis the Fundamentalist

Only One Punchline!

The Dullards

Suburban Ennui

Creepy Love