Crying and pouting are fine! Go crazy, everybody!

Dennis the Menace and Gasoline Alley, 12/18/23

Christmas is just a week away, and that means our beloved (?) legacy comic strip characters are starting to interact with, or perhaps perform as, mall Santas. How's that going? Well, Dennis is showing that the real menace is the slow process by which enchantment seeps out of the world; he sits a good distance away from Santa, presumably for liability reasons, and instead of opening up about what he most wants as a gift, he's interrogating him about how his mythical powers fit into the regulatory framework of the modern state. But Gasoline Alley for all its faults still understands the chaos that's necessary to make magic seem real. Rufus will say "Ho ho ho" if he wants to! No rules constrain these elves, and that's why small children believe they can deliver livestock to neighborhoods that are very much not zoned for it.