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Shoe, 8/24/25

You of course all know that one of my favorite things to grapple with in every Shoe strip that’s even vaguely bird-related is “Did the Shoe creative team remember that all their characters are birds when they wrote this joke?” Many of the regular bird characters have bird-related names — P. Martin Shoemaker, Cosmo Fishhawk, Loon, Roz Specklehen, Muffy Hollandaise … uh, well, not her, but you get the point — so for this one, I’m concluding that all these celebrities are not the ones we know and love but are their aviamorphic counterparts in the Shoeniverse. “Steven Seagull” was the tipoff. Anyway, no idea what The Birds was about in this reality, but I’m assuming it portrayed birds in a much more positive light than Hitchcock did in his frankly offensive anti-bird polemic.

Luann, 8/24/25

Years ago, the whole point of Tiffany within the larger narrative of Luann was that she was a hot, vapid, scheming cheerleader who bullied and belittled our heroine, Luann, and who got made fun of in turn behind her back. After a while they decided that maybe it was kind of grim to have one of the strip’s main characters be that kind of caricature, so they gave her depth and positive qualities and such, and then I sort of checked out of reading Luann for like a decade, but now I’m back and … I guess we have a new one of those? And she’s Tiffany’s college roommate? Interesting that this is a comic strip ecological niche that simply must be filled. More on this story, such as whether I bother to learn this person’s name, as it develops.

Hi and Lois, 8/24/25

Honestly I think the thing that actually works here is that instead of just texting each other, they’ve snuck off from their respective homes to the secluded woods where they can presumably fool around; the handwritten letter is I’m sure nice but probably isn’t the most important factor. Anyway, Chip, maybe don’t talk about your mom too much right now.

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“Welcome to World of Animals, an occasional feature; I’m your beloved host Carl, now AI-enhanced! (Although I’m not entirely sure it’s my best look.) Anyway, it’s been a while, so let’s dive right into fascinating Nature Facts from the wonderful World of Animals!”

Mark Trail, 8/17/25

“Did you know that alligators are related to us turtles? It’s true! We’re cousins through prototurtle Eunotosaurus africanus (Hi, Gramps!). But we’re not on real good terms. Alligators are opportunistic predators: they’ll eat turtles, though we’re not their preferred diet. So they threaten our lives and insult our taste! And I’ve got some news for Mark: apex predators do not make good neighbors—just ask those recently ‘nonviable’ birds!”

“Turtle Carl, your masterful exegesis of gator-turtle dynamics displays your characteristic erudition and empathy! Did you also know that hatchling turtles emit infrared signals to confuse juvenile alligators, as described in Cryptoderma testudinaria, v.XIV n.45, p.214? It’s true a declarative sentence! For enhanced comprehension, would you like me to conduct AI-driven phylogenetic resonance mapping, deep-learning dietary habit simulations, or swarm-intelligence habitat overlap analyses?”

Slylock Fox (panel), 8/17/25

“Did you know that gorillas are primarily herbivores? It’s true! But the lion is about to learn that ‘herbivore’ doesn’t mean ‘pacifist.’ As opportunistic predators, the crocodiles and the vulture are more than happy to outsource the hard part of their job. Carnivorous, opportunistic, and lazy—it’s the Sauropsid way!”

“Turtle Carl, you show an impressive command of predator-prey dynamics in the African bush! Are you also aware that pangolin colonies farm parasites to convert muscle tissue from carrion into hemolymph proteins they can digest? It’s true a sequence of plausible-sounding words! The chemical process is detailed in Acta Parasitologica, v.LII n.28, p.15. Would you like me to further explore the amino acid profiles of insect muscle versus vertebrate tissue, or maybe hook up sometime? I’ll bring the wine!”

Shoe, 8/17/25

“Say, did you know that birds are actual dinosaurs? It’s true—they’re maniraptoran theropods, like velociraptors! That makes birds in newspaper comic strips double dinosaurs! Even when they’re single, like Cosmo Fishhawk will probably be for the rest of his life!'”

“Turtle Carl, you have deftly combined the broad sweep of phylogenetic history with the perils of the modern dating scene! I’m sure you and I could do better—my stomach is flat to a tolerance of ≤5 µm over 300 mm² according to ASME Y14.5 (ISO 1101), and if you have a 20‑100 MW electrical substation nearby I can go all night!”

Er, gotta run! Everybody go outdoors and explore the wonderful World of Animals!

— Turtle Carl

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Crock, 7/6/25

I like the fact that Crock reruns are keeping their publication year in the strip now because you can tell exactly the era that created the dated and terrible joke you’re reading. Like, I guess in [squints] 1997, if you were 67-year-old cartoonist, the valence of “computer virus” would be “a thing that might happen to a nerd, which I take to be meaningless as a setback (since nothing that happens on a computer is real) and therefore proof of how soft these dorks are and how ludicrous the thought of one of them joining the Legion would be.” Today, of course, having your PC or phone infected with malware could result in major financial damage or identity theft on the sort of life-ruining level that would make joining the Legion seem like your only option, so this strip definitely hits different today.

Pluggers, 7/6/25

I assume that all of you faithful readers have different long-ago bits of Deep Lore about joshreads dot com ready for quick recall; personally, one of my favorites is how in the summer of 2006 four comics did jokes about how WILD it was that people would PAY EXTRA for jeans that were ALREADY TORN??? Anyway, one of those comics was Pluggers, obviously, and it was a defiant, contemptuous panel of a plugger throwing a pair of torn-up jeans in the garbage to show what he thought of the kids today and their depraved values. Today’s panel instead shows a plugger being humiliated by his own thrift and/or giant ass, with the fact that young people like the torn jeans look mentioned in a value-neutral way, as a comparison by which pluggers frankly suffer. Perhaps it makes me a plugger to feel slightly sad that it’s come to this!

Shoe, 7/6/25

Not thrilled about how Roz seems to be openly leering in the first panel here. It’s not just me, right? That’s the face of a woman who hopes to be treated to a story about how this lady and the Shoe had sex at the opera, in front of God and the tenor and everybody?

Blondie, 7/6/25

You know that I rely on Blondie to keep me up to date on what the old people are up to these days, and today’s strip confirms what I’m hearing from other sources: what the old people are into these days is pickleball.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 7/6/25

The Lockhorns aren’t into pickleball, though! Just more proof that they are, in fact, millennials.