JMcAndrew asks: “Is there any character in comics treated more unfairly than Margaret Wade? She doesn’t do anything to deserve this.” And sends in these exhibits.
JMcAndrew: “This one where he intentionally walks in on her in the shower is all kinds of wrong.”
There is, of course, the running gag in Blondie in which Dagwood is interrupted in the bath. But that was used so often in lost any prurient effect and just the comic effect remained. And Dagwood somehow was always able to get a towel around critical parts.
Comics I Don't Understand 
In the first complete reprint volume, Brian Walker’s intro describes Margaret as an overachiever who is trying to mold Dennis into eventual husband material, while Gina accepts him for what he is. Dennis is supposed to be five and a half years old, and both girls are taller than him, so in my view it’s more older kids lording over a younger one like corporals over a private. Telling off Margaret is akin to mouthing off to a grownup. But yes, in practice it registers more as Al Bundy gratuitously insulting neighbor Marcy.
Recalling one Sunday strip where Margaret expresses revulsion at a frog Dennis shows her. Gina, on the other hand, is impressed. Dennis compliments her for being just like a boy and she slugs him before stalking off, leaving him confused.
The one here about Margaret never being a 10 is a bit out of character. Dennis is often puzzled by his father reacting to pretty women, or men reacting to his mother gardening in little shorts. The one about being kind to her before she loses her figure is just nonsensical.
Gina was often just an excuse for Dennis to make jokes about Italians. Yes he does have a crush on her and she is more of a tomboy so he gets along with her because she knows how to play baseball and fight.
Margaret is book smart and feminine, she plays with baby-dolls and has tea parties which disgusts Dennis. She wants to be his friend but he’s immature and often insults her. She is a bit of a know-it-all but Dennis is so extremely ignorant that most of what she tells him is just common knowledge.
My favorite DtM/MW interaction is one where he hits her with Dorothy Parker’s “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses,” but my gisfu is weak today, so have this one instead.
Max C Webster III used a word I wasn’t familiar with, “gisfu”, so I thought I would look it up. There were several suggested meanings, generally abbreviations or portmanteaux, but not feeling applicable here. “It appears that “GISFU” may refer to the Geographic Information Systems Field Unit of the National Park Service” for instance. ” Capital Global Infrastructure Securities Fund (Unhedged) ” — not even exact. The students’ dictionary of Anglo-Saxon: “-gisfu/! almsgiving. ” Hmmm; no. A Grammar of Ugaritic: GISfu-uq-du-ma [iupdiima] “almonds” ….
Okay, here’s one that’s more plausible: “Combination of GIS (Google Image Search) and Kung-Fu. Gisfu is the ability use a web search to quickly find relevant and usually humorous images to use in on-line forums.” Yes, it looks like a definition because it’s from a dictionary. The Urban Dictionary.
And as always with the Urban Dictionary, one should be a little careful about just accepting somebody’s reading. So let’s check the contributor … It’s a certain “by Max C. Webster, III April 23, 2009” . Oh, a very suspicious character!
Well, there’s Calvin’s classmate Susie Derkins.
I never knew Margaret’s last name.
And I often refer to my search abilities as ‘my googlefu is strong today’.
I don’t know much about the ins and outs of Dennis the Menace, but I took “being kind to her before she loses her figure” as saying she looks pretty normal now but when she grows up she will get “lumpy”, as the caption puts it – ie develop breasts like the grownup woman leaning over her (which is the sort of development adolescents and adults appreciate even if 5-yo kids don’t). Probably a bit of an Arlo reference and risque for the time.
Well, Margaret did say something remarkably strange in the strip a couple of days ago: “Our in-laws are coming over.”
https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/dennisthemenace/s-3727864c
I was unaware that Margaret had a mother-in-law, a father-in-law, or any other kind of in-law.
@Jonesy: While Susie is treated badly by Calvin, I think that Bill Watterson means for the readers to have some degree of sympathy for her. (After all, Hobbes likes Susie.)
However, I don’t think that Hank Ketcham or his successors mean for the readers to sympathize with Margaret. (At least, based on what I have seen of the strip. The strip had been in print long before I was born, and there are many years of it that I’ve never read.)
In C&H, Susie frequently got the better of Calvin. There was also a notable arc where he called her a name and made her cry, then he apologized.
Narmitaj, I share your view of what “loses her figure” and “lumpy” function as in that cartoon.
And Joshua, I also was puzzled by that line. How can they be “our in-laws”? If they’re her mom’s in-laws they’re just her dad’s “relatives” or “family” , and vice versa, so the whole nuclear family can’t have the same in-laws. Or does Margaret live with only one parent? Then this could be made to make sense… The single parent’s EX-in-laws are coming over, and they don’t bother to say EX, and Margaret has absorbed that these are in-laws but not that they might not be her in-laws. Still, whatever the backstory, she would more likely call them her grandparents. Or uncle-aunt-cousins.
BTW, Joshua’s link seems to go to the current panel, here is a correction that should get the one for June 7, with that line. (And the disappointing punch-line about “outlaws”)
https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/dennisthemenace/s-3727864
Benson Donald – You brought back an old memory for me.
When I was a little girl – either 4 or early 5 year old (moved away a few months into 5 years old so had to be before same, but while I was in kindergarten) a boy in my class told me that I looked like Marilyn Monroe. I did have blond hair (in a pony tail), but was a chubby tallish kid.*
I socked him – thought it was an insult!
My parents explained that Marilyn Monroe, who was also blond, was an extremely pretty lady and it was not insult. I don’t think I ever apologized to him for socking him (nor do I remember getting into any trouble with school for same). Whenever I see a movie with her in it, I remember him and the incident.
(*I grew up to be a fat short person – as I grew in height early and then stopped before others did so I was tall then, and short now.)