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Crock, 11/9/25

Now, obviously part of the whole deal of Crock is that it takes what’s objectively a pretty grim situation — a remote outpost of an army engaged in a grinding colonial war that we know with the hindsight of history that they’re going to lose — and uses it as a setting for a mostly light-hearted and zany series of comical vignettes. Still, sometimes the grim seeps through more than others, and you gotta admit that “angry troops attempt to lynch their commanding officer, only for him to trick them into falling to their deaths in turn, leaving him alone to wander the desert” is one of those times.

Hagar the Horrible, 11/9/25

Now, you may wonder why Hagar, who seems well aware that his years as a notorious pillager have created a very lucrative brand, doesn’t simply cut out the middleman: instead of letting the Duke of York profit by association and then stealing said profits, why doesn’t Hagar simply charge visitors to his own village, go on a highly paid speaking tour, and publish Horrible, and Profitable: What Today’s Leaders Can Learn From My Years Of Terror Around The North Sea Littoral, which will be bought by CEOs at airport bookstores everywhere and handed over to their assistants to summarize? But Hagar is savvy enough to understand that his brand wouldn’t survive any such attempt to “go legit,” so any profit he’d gain from such a move would be fleeting. Plus he can’t read, so the book thing probably hasn’t even occurred to him.

Mary Worth, 11/9/25

No offense to David Attenborough, but I’ve never really cared for birds. Like, I guess I don’t dislike them, and of course they’re beautiful to look at, but I’ve always found them off-putting up close — they just seem clearly further away from us, evolution-wise, than cats and dogs, and looking into their eyes they always feel kind of alien to me. The fact that they’re actually quite intelligent just adds to my unease. So, no shade on the many fine people who are bird lovers out there, but I’m just saying that for me personally, if a parrot I had encountered outside had figured out where I lived and begun rapping on the windows demanding to be let in, I would not be quite as enthusiastic about it as Toby is here.

Hi and Lois, 11/9/25

I really love Hi’s quick three-panel transition from triumph to anxiety to crushing depression. Honestly, the final panel with the “punchline” is completely unnecessary and even detracts from things a little bit.

Crankshaft, 11/9/25

The name of this painting is of course a Crankshaft-level bit of awful wordplay, which is why it’s great that he looks so horrified. “Oh god, I talk like this, don’t I? Why haven’t they murdered me in my sleep?”

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Herb and Jamaal, 10/29/25

One of my personal crosses to bear is that I cannot just go along with it when comics deliberately, and for “humorous” effect, conflate fire hydrants with toilets in ways that imply that they don’t actually understand why and how dogs pee on fire hydrants. But at least the strips I’ve complained about to this point involve whimsically anthropomorphized animals. Herb and Jamaal, by contrast, is about humans, who should know better, which is why I find this strip particularly puzzling. Is this supposed to be some kind of dog pee joke? Does Herb not realize that the water that comes out of a fire hose is the exact same water that comes out of a fire hydrant — that indeed fire hydrants exist entirely to supply water to hoses? Does Herb think that the water coming out of a hydrant is infected with dog pee, somehow? Is he visualizing someone putting their mouths right on a fire hydrant, the way you’re not supposed to put your mouth on a drinking fountain, but a lot of people do anyway? There’s a lot to think about here, and none of it pleasant.

Crock, 10/29/25

Oh, does the syndicated newspaper comic strip Crock want us to think it’s silly that this Legionnaire has some jokes about buzzards to tell? Well, if that’s so, why does the syndicated newspaper comic strip Crock tell jokes about buzzards all the time? Heh heh, I’ve now caught this strip in an act of hypocrisy from which there is surely no coming back.

Dustin, 10/29/25

Ha ha, fellas! You know how sometimes you can’t tell whether or not you can get horny anymore, because you hate your wife so much? This sure is relatable content, for guys!

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Crock, 9/29/25

The point of this joke is of course that it’s annoying when a telemarketer (perhaps one offering you a “banking credit card”) interrupts you while you eat dinner, and what if someone a little less bound by social convention than you were to say something that might truly shock and discomfit said telemarketer? Wouldn’t that give you a delightful little thrill? Unfortunately, I feel the whole scenario is undermined by the fact that Crock is in fact depicted as a cruel tyrant who does deserve to face justice for his many crimes. Sadly, that day has never come, for every wrong he commits he commits in the name of the French imperial project, and even when the Fourth Republic collapses in the wake of that project’s failure, no French prosecutor will ever bring charges against him.

Hi and Lois, 9/29/25

I love how stricken everyone’s facial expressions are here! Oh no Dot has somehow learned about feminism somebody call the fuckin police