Archive: Curtis

Post Content

Curtis, 3/1/24

The weird thing about arrested-in-time strips like Curtis is that we, who have been reading this strip for decades, have internalized the rhythms of the family dynamics and recognize today’s episode as one of an infinite number of subtle variations of the “Curtis asks his dad for money” gag. But Curtis, in theory, is only 11 for a year or so, and in a strange way he’s experienced much less of his own life than we have, and so can’t predict what’ll happen next. Look at his smile in panel two! “Throw his money out a window?” he’s thinking. “What a charmingly odd idea! Not sure where he’s going with this but I’m sure I’ll have some cash in my pocket by the end of it.” Anyway, Curtis, have you considered getting a Spotify subscription? They have Six-ribs’ whole catalog, along with a huge number of other hip-hop artists, and 60 bucks could get you six months!

Marvin, 3/1/24

It took me a minute to figure out, but I think the joke here is supposed to be “The dog, who should not be eating people food, will end up eating the meatloaf, because someone will be surreptitiously feeding it to him, ha ha!” But this is a strip where dogs and babies have adult human-level cognition, so don’t they shouldn’t act like we’re supposed to be surprised or amused that they might eat adult human food. Anyway, my initial read on this was that the joke was about the dog not wanting to fill the house with horrible odors vented from his bowels, which would at least be kind of a twist for this strip.

Mary Worth, 3/1/24

Toby is truly one of my favorite ancillary Mary Worth character. Unlike Wilbur, she’s used sparingly enough so that it’s a true delight when she occasionally shows up and says things like “I want to take up cooking, which my husband would love, but my neighbor up the hall, who rarely cooks for us, is so much better than me at it, so why bother?” This would be hilarious even if the thing the lady up the hall had just dished out wasn’t the most disgusting brown glop you could possibly imagine. Anyway, Mary is being either incredibly kind or incredibly sarcastic when she calls Toby “a talented artist and a great friend,” because she definitely isn’t the former and I’d be willing to bet quite a bit that she’s isn’t the latter either.

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/7/24

Oh my goodness, Rene’s reign of grifting terror is finally at an end, stopped once and for all by the deliberate and heroic efforts of our protagonists some random guy hitting him with a car. Remember, in the Morganverse, a pedestrian getting run over results not in death but in selective amnesia, so I look forward to seeing how his personality gets rebuilt better than before, possibly with the help of the Lyle Ollman’s patented Mirakle Method™.

Curtis, 1/7/24

A longtime and beloved Curtis bit is that Curtis enjoys cracking wise about the elaborate hats worn by the ladies in his congregation. Part of the bit is that Barry, despite enjoying the quips, always begs him to stop, and today we finally learn why: having angered the Church leadership with their antics, the brothers have now been excommunicated, expelled from the community and forever cut off from God’s grace. Look for a future strip where Derek and “Onion” ask Curtis “Hey, ‘Wimp-kins,’ why the long face?” and he replies “Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God and tasted the eternal joys of heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss?”

Daddy Daze, 1/7/24

We’re all on the same page about the Daddy Daze baby’s “ba”s actually just being nonsense babble and the Daddy Daze daddy is working out his own interior emotional turmoil when he projects meaning on to them, right? I think today’s strip neatly illustrates the process: something deep the Daddy Daze daddy’s half-awake mind has conjured up a truly nightmarish body horror scenario, which he puts into the mouth of his son, and then his higher consciousness works to transmute this grotesque image into something much more pedestrian: an anxious metaphor about the imposter syndrome that he assumes all adults share. The way he has to speak all this aloud really drives home the fact that he’s got the worst recorded case of bicameral mind since the Bronze Age.

Dick Tracy, 1/7/24

Look, I get that Dick Tracy is at least 15 to 20 percent old timey pop culture references by volume, but I feel like naming two characters after the actors who played the Second and Third Doctors on Doctor Who but you add a letter to one of the names and also don’t make the characters look anything like them is less of an “old timey pop culture reference” and more “ah shit ah shit I need to come up with a couple names for people for this storyline, uh uh uh uh uh”.

Dennis the Menace, 1/7/24

Pretty sure that “a little dehydrated” is the euphemism publicists use describe their celebrity clients who are obviously drunk or high in public, so Dennis’s little game here is the least of the menace on display.

Family Circus, 1/7/24

Don’t be sad, Mr. Snowman! That hot chocolate would hollow you out from the inside within seconds, leaving you to die screaming on the kitchen floor! You’re better off alone outside!

Post Content

Happy 2024, everybody! How did you celebrate the recent holiday season?

Mary Worth, 12/25/23

Did you, like Mary Worth, place yourself in the role of the Magi from the Gospel of Matthew? Before you object to this strip as blasphemous, remember that the Magi accidentally and/or passive-aggressively let it slip to Herod that the Messiah had been born, resulting in the Massacre of the Innocents, which you have to admit is a pretty Mary Worth thing to do. “Oh, your majesty, I apologize. I had heard that the new king of the Jews had been born nearby, but it appears that you haven’t added a new member to your dynasty recently. My mistake!

Gil Thorp, 1/1/24

Or did you, like Gil Thorp, place yourself in the position of Jack Nicholson in the iconic final shot of Kubrick’s The Shining? Not gonna lie, this seems pretty dark. The divorce is not going well, I guess?

ANYWAY! It is I, your Comics Curmudgeon, back in the saddle and doing another year of the thing that I do best (making fun of syndicated comic strips for the delight and edification of you, my faithful readers). As is my wont, I took the last week of the year off, but as is also my wont, I cannot resist checking in with my beloved continuity strips, so here’s a quick catchup on what you missed!

Judge Parker, 12/25/23

You remember Declan, Neddy’s beloved (?) boyfriend, who’s visiting the Spencer-Driver compound for Christmas? Well, Abbey’s trying to marry Neddy off to him, and he’s on board! And why shouldn’t he be? His family goes unmentioned, he’s getting to party at the aforementioned rich person compound, and he’s experiencing the first Spencer-Driver holiday in years that isn’t marked by emotional or physical violence!

Mary Worth, 12/27/23

Keith, his attempts to form a family bond having been rebuffed, spent the holidays alone at Santa Royale’s own ALL BEEF, with a plan to push the soy bomb out of his guts and replace it with a massive bolus of healthy, delicious cow flesh.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/27/23

Oh, hey, were you worried that the sudden revelation that the whole Mirakle Method was plagiarized might result in some ongoing conflict of some sort involving our characters? Well, fret not: Old Man Ollman immediately dropped that lawsuit as soon as Buzzy and Mud agreed to simply replace “Rene” with “Ollman” everywhere in their contracts and accounting procedures. Problem solved!!!!

Gil Thorp, 12/28/23

Gil and his coaching staff would like to remind you that, while there is no I in team, some team members are more important than others, and we must do obeisance to them. Shower this young man with praises! All blessings flow from him! Do worship unto him, with the same hand gestures that you would use for our Lord Satan!

Mary Worth, 12/28/23

[record scratch] Brad … is eating … at ALL BEEF? Where they serve meat? What in tarnation???

Mary Worth, 12/29/23

OK, finally, the ongoing question of “Is Brad trying to sleep with Kitty or sleep with Sonia” has been answered (he was trying to sleep with Kitty, and thus was a sexual rather than paternal rival for Keith). Anyway, remember when Keith choked down a vegan hamburger that he hated in order to be polite to Sonia and prove himself as a worthy partner to Kitty? Well, when he did it, it was good. But when Brad did it? It absolutely merited the savage beatdown that’s about to happen.

Dick Tracy, 12/30/23

Remember Rikki Mortis, Dick Tracy’s goth girl villain? Well, she’s back, and she’s here to remind you that even though goths say they’re into creepy horrors beyond the comprehension of normal society, a lot of goth culture is just terrible puns like “fettuccine afraido”.

Mary Worth, 12/31/23

Sunday’s Mary Worth is incredible, not just because it actually advances the storyline for once by establishing that Keith will be using blackmail to secure sexual access to Kitty, but because it also features Wilbur enjoying New Year’s Eve with his dearest friend, a very large hamburger that he’s about to eat.

Judge Parker, 1/2/24

Ha ha, so, fun fact, did you know that as of this July, I will have been doing this blog for [swallows heavily] 20 years? You have to dig pretty far back into the lore of your serial strip to come up with a character I haven’t seen, and apparently Judge Parker has done so, so … congrats?

Mary Worth, 1/2/24

Keith’s evil plan worked! You have to admit that “I’m volunteering with Greenpeace, forever” is a pretty funny way to let someone down easy because a terrifyingly large ex-Marine found out you were lying about being a vegan.

Curtis, 12/26/23 and 12/28/23

Oh, and it wouldn’t be a holiday season with a wild Kwanza fable from Curtis! You know the old saying “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”? Well, this year’s tale puts a spin on that by having a fish perform “magic” by teaching a man about the virtues of self-sufficiency and self-reliance. (I guess the fish is performing magic by talking as well, but never mind that for now.)

Curtis, 1/2/24

Will the fish take his philosophy to its logical conclusion by teaching the man how to build a lover from the discarded corpses in the local cemetery? Stay tuned to The Comics Curmudgeon at Joshreads dot com daily to find out, and to see what’s up in the other strips as well! If you’re really serious about it, you could subscribe to get an ad-free site and/or get the daily post emailed to you as well! Or not, if you’d rather not! I’m gonna keep posting anyway! Happy New Year, and I love you all!