Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for September 21, 2022

how does “the new kid” know Alice’s name?

Poor kid, he’s in danger.

Maybe mom exaggerated when she said, “full of new things,” okay Alice!

Does Alice have Alice-heimer’s disease already?

Poor Dill, about to be ground down…..

As Jerry Seinfeld once said, “New Man!”

When you wake up with the grumps, it takes something special to get you out of them. Sometimes I find they can last til bedtime!

Batten. Down. The. Hatches!

Such a cute little volcano, just puffing smoke now, but the locals know better and are already planning their escape and have made Dill the sacrifice.

They’ve been going to school with Alice. Alice!

Alas, Alice undergoes a relapse into grumpiness! The insightful warnings in panel 4 could be from more than one Blisshaven preschooler, but I think that the appearance as if of three stacked speech balloons simply indicates three successive utterances from one source (there’s only one arrow from the balloon stack), who is almost certainly Beni: it has his tone….

What a winning face on dear Dill! But Alice is under a cloud, like in the antidepressant commercials. I imagine she feels inexplicably closed in and sat on. That oppressive mood can dissipate eventually. Just lie low and ride it out.