The Comics Curmudgeon

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Comment of the Week

First I wondered why the Gearhead Gertie artists felt the need to label the Grand Canyon. Then I wondered why they felt the need to give Gertie a line of dialogue that added nothing to the observers' commentary. Then I wondered why the two observers were saying anything either. Eventually I wondered why I was reading Gearhead Gertie in the first place, and finally why anything happens at all, and here I am, envying Gertie's ability to just live in the moment.

—Kevin Miller
117

MidMarch follies

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Dick Tracy, 3/17/26

Welp, the huge prison riot/jailbreak in Dick Tracy is winding down, with a lot of bad guys on the loose but the authorities regaining control of the facility. Now, there are lots of narrative reasons why we might start with some guards capturing prisoners in an open field, including one guy kneeling with a gun pointed at the back of his head, and then smash cut to a bunch of bodies under sheets in a similar looking field. But as your Comics Curmudgeon who remembers the old days of cartoonish Dick Tracy ultraviolence, I’m kind of required to guess at the grimmest possible narrative reason.

Hi and Lois, 3/17/26

Man, there are a lot of holidays I’m glad we’re not going to see Thirsty celebrating, I’m just gonna leave it at that!

Mary Worth, 3/17/26

“Yes, we certainly do, Toby! Say, how are your parrots doing? You know, the ones that shit everywhere and almost drove you to divorce?”

155

Cyber Monday

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Lockhorns, 3/16/26

Every once in a while the Lockhorns will deviate from their usual laser focus on Leroy and Loretta’s mutual antagonism and just do a “Ha ha, Leroy is a doofus” panel, and honestly I don’t care for it. At least this one includes Loretta looking at her husband with an expression of absolute despair, as she reflects upon exactly what type of man she chose to spend the balance of her adult life with.

Archie, 3/16/26

I was a pretty obsessive Archie Comics reader as a kid, but nevertheless there are bits of Archieverse lore that I’ve learned from the twentysomething-year-old newspaper strips currently in reruns. I don’t think I knew that Reggie was the editor of the student newspaper, for instance, nor that he was that classic type of late ’90s/early ’00s tech guy who had the skills to create an interactive website in the Web 1.0 era but was also obsessive about online privacy.

Crankshaft, 3/16/26

“Anyway, the one week I did it on the computer was last week, and it turns out computers are amazing. I’m definitely selling this drawing board, for a lot of money!”

146

Animals strike curious poses (derogatory)

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/15/26

The characters in newspaper comic strips generally keep their vocabulary squeaky clean, and the Hootin’ Holler crew doesn’t even resort to grawlices as far as I can remember. That’s why I’m pretty horrified to learn today that, while we’re not seeing him in action, Snuffy is just letting loose with a nonstop stream of obscenities, blasphemies, and slurs around the house, presumably where Jughaid and li’l Tater can hear. Grim stuff! (It’s less surprising to learn, as we do in the throwaway panels, that even the Holler’s lone semi-legitimate businessman doesn’t know the difference between deflation and disinflation, as flatlanders generally struggle with that as well.)

Pluggers, 3/15/26

BlueSky, one of several social media sites where I post daily links to my blog, has an auto-moderation feature that deemed yesterday’s Pardon My Planet demonic sideboob “adult content.” Well, sorry, I’m doubling down on the smut. Check out today’s Pluggers! Depraved furry pornography! Unspeakable filth! This is the sort of thing America wants to see in the newspaper now and we all need to come to terms with that fact!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/15/26

Oh, man, were you excited at the prospect of Mud Mountain Murphy and Lorna Starr/Mae Mae Clodfelter getting to know each other over several days of cafe breakfasts, and maybe feeling a spark of attraction that could eventually blossom into romance? Well, too bad. They already knew each other, it turns out. We’re skipping all of that! Better luck next time!