Dennis the Menace, 10/1/25

I was thinking the other day about how Dagwood Bumstead and Hi Flagston have extremely generic jobs. Technically Dagwood is an "office manager” and Hi is the "head of the eastern sales team,” but we literally never see them doing anything at work that might match up with those descriptions; instead, we just get "office" hijinks that could involve anyone in any white collar professional setting. Lois and Blondie, meanwhile, who got jobs in the '80s and '90s, respectively, got the much more specific (and female-coded) jobs of realtor and caterer, respectively, and while I wouldn't say the strips about them are exactly gold mines of laffs, I do in general think specific settings are funnier than bland and generic ones.

Some comics dads do get pretty specific jobs, mind you: Calvin's dad was, like Bill Watterson's, a patent attorney, Walt in Zits is an orthodontist, and Henry Mitchell, at least in some character iterations, has been an aerospace engineer. I'm not sure if this version of Henry is still in that line of work, but if so he should be absolutely embarrassed about trying to program his smart TV, a task that any idiot could tell you is achieved by use of the remote control and on-screen menus, with a wrench. He should also be embarrassed by even joking about putting Dennis to work on this, as his son is notoriously pretty stupid.