I declare victory in my long war against Crock
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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!
84 replies to “I declare victory in my long war against Crock”
Look at Kudlick’s dead stare. Wait a minute! This abyss! IT GAZES ALSO!
I read the hydrant joke as referring simply to the volume of bad news. Maybe I should read more Mother Goose and Grimm.
Crock, meta: Years ago, you did declare victory, which caused the artist to die. Fear the Fruhlinger!
S4th: “What are those guys from the ‘Bill & Ted’ movies doing up there?
“Oh, geez, we’re in the wrong play! But how did you score Broadway tickets for Waiting for Godot in the first place?”
yS4th: That’s a pretty good comeback, I’ll admit.
JP: It’s the “Frankenstein Name” conundrum all over again. “Dude” is the name of the squirrel. “Dud” is the name of the nanny.
I note Crock does not actually TELL the great buzzard joke, as that would require Crock to tell a great joke. Or any decent ranking of joke, really. Keep it to yourself, Legionnaire. Maybe you can crawl into, like, Sherman’s Lagoon.
DT: His Majesty? Well, we now know this takes place in the Edwardian Era and not the Victorian as we assumed.
Crock:
“Question?”
“If we march until we’re exhausted, will we get ‘Legionnaire’s‘ Disease?”
Herb takes a moment: “Why IS this mug so huge? No wonder our profits on coffee suck! It’s just like drinking from a water tower!” Because Herb’s on a roll, and his water containment vehicle metaphors will not be denied.
I owe my Mom 80 dollars, but neither me nor my Mom can remember what it was for.
I think that we may be pluggers.
@Tonio: But the volume, it should be the same, right? Because the fire hose is attached to the fire hydrant. Eliminating the hose shouldn’t, at the level of volume at play here, significantly increase the volume.
Dustin: “Saw a lot of guys online and can’t get horny with my wife”.
“You may be right, Ed. Homoerotic fantasies shouldn’t prevent heteronormative sex. I’ll get you that prescription right away.”
Crock:
“Okay, so here’s the joke. A buzzard goes to the ticket counter at an airport, clutching a satchel containing something in its beak. ‘Are you going to check that bag?’ asks the agent. ‘No,’ replies the buzzard. ‘It’s my carrion!’ ”
Wary Morth:
Watch out Dr Jeff THE MIND CONTROL ALIEN’S MARY WORTH FLESH MASK IS SHIFTING AND ITS REAL FIRM IS ABOUT TO BE REVEALED RUN Dr Jeff RUN.
H&J: ACTUALLY Herb, water flows FASTER out of the fire hose than the hydrant, because the nozzle is designed to narrow and pressurise the flow. It’s like you don’t even understand Bernoulli’s principle, Herb, you MORON.
Dustin: Look, we all knew the first comic character to fall into the Andrew Tate manosphere would be Dustin’s dad. All that’s surprising is that it took this long.
I hate to have to hand it to Dustin’s dad, but at least when falling victim to testosterone and supplements scam, he first checked with a medical professional! Many other comics characters would already be injecting steroids!
I can say Dustin and his son or Dustin and his dad, I don’t know and don’t want to know, both those losers, would benefit enormously from some testosterone.
Does the doctor with a magnificent chin holds in contempt a chinless freak like Dustin’s dad and consider him less of a man? Yes, but not for the chin
@Schroduck: There is actually a recognised phenomenon where spending a lot of time with children who you love and care for causes fathers’ testosterone levels to temporarily fall, but we all know THAT’S not Dustin’s dad’s problem.
Crock:
“Okay, here’s another one for you. A prodigal commander observes a grunt buzzard stepping off in the direction of one of the Great Plains States. ‘Why are you marching off to Kansas?’ the commander inquires. ‘ “Carrion,” my wayward son!’ replies the buzzard.”
H&J I guess the real difference between drinking from the fire hose and the hydrant is that for one you have to bend over, which actually works for the metaphor, I guess…
Crock It’s a shame they didn’t have an extra panel in which to tell that joke, instead of… /motions with hand/ all of this.
Dustin You know, for all those ads ending in ‘ask your doctor about…’ I’ve never actually seen it in action. Seems…awkward.
I used to be irritated by “Herb and Jamaal” non-specific vagueness, but now that joking about America’s dear leaders can get you fired or visited by federal agencies, I have to concede that it is the only possible way to do political satire
@Ettorre: I believe that comic strips are one of the few mediums that get past that radar. Because really no-one (besides us) cares about comic strips.
That’s why Mother Goose and Grimm can draw Snow White and Grumpy a few weeks back and have literally no lawsuits from Disney.
(Edit: I get Mike Smith confused with the other cartoonist Mike Peters, I can’t remember which did MG&G and which did Gearhead Gertie and I don’t care enough to check)
@Tonio: ‘ I read the hydrant joke as referring simply to the volume of bad news..“
You read it correctly. The water from the hydrant would be an unfocused torrent. The hose (and the pumper truck) focus the stream and mitigate pressure.
@Chance: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dangers-connecting-directly-hydrant-firefightingwhy-vrmje?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via
MW: An oceanside stroll after dinner at the Bum Boat?? Will the edgy, innovative ideas never stop?
DtM: In this round of, “Martha: Malicious or Oblivious,” I’m on the fence. If she’s THAT out of it, she shouldn’t be allowed near a hot stove.
9CL: It’s disturbing but utterly unsurprising that Edda’s literary upbringing involved more Penthouse Forum than Dr Seuss.
@Jerp+jump: Exactly! How can they replace something they never had?
Mary Worth:
“Let’s ramp up the aerobic benefits by doing my favorite jaunty little Texas Two-Step together as we traipse down the pier, Mary!”
“No. Don’t say it, Jeff.”
“Yep. Cory-ography!”
H&J: I think the sentiment is same shit different day or 6 and 1/2 dozen of the other.
Josh, you already won the war against Crock.
All these years, you were actually funny.
@The Rambling Otter: Image: mom-plugger and adult child-Plugger glaring at each other. Caption: “Pluggers would rather save $80 than end a disagreement with a close family member.”
MW: Mary and Jeff continue to practice their A-LM Human basic dialogs over dinner. At first confident of their successful assimilation as Earthlings, Mary suddenly faces a setback when she realizes that Jeff has come out wearing only three fingers and a thumb.
So I realize I say this whenever I read Crock, today’s nothing special, silly to get my hopes up, really, but here we are: What’s the joke?
Dustin: The only way he’d get testosterone replacement would be if it came in the form of donuts, preferably by the dozen so he could shove them all in his mouth at once, a la Homer Simpson.
JP: Well, Neddy will be seeing that mask again tonight in her nightmares, and then in waking life when CIApril dons it as she ‘ties up loose ends’ before whisking the raspberry-haired brat off to the safehouse.
The Herb and Jamaal idea is that it’s the same even if it superficially looks different.
It has nothing to do with dogs pissing on hydrants.
@MKay: I keep wondering if the”Bum Boat” name has any meaning. If I heard the name without seeing the images, I would guess it was a place like Hooters, except where the focus is on bottoms.
Crock — Something, something, something. . . the Aristocrats!
Dustin — When I’m confronted with a medical question, I always ask myself–What Would Rex Morgan Do?
I’m guessing it’s not hormone replacement. . .
Herb and Jamaal is very funny and right on target with the description of the news these days. Josh is trying hard to be cynical and it’s not working.
Not to be too morbid, but I can see Josh’s obituary now: “Lost his battle against Crock and cancer too, I guess.”
@Schroduck: Yes, but if you’re talking about drinking, what matters should be the volume you have to swallow at a time, and the volume flow rate is exactly the same because the whole point of Bernouilli’s equation is to deal with ideal incompressible flow. He fails to understand it, but in a different way!
Herb and Jamaal: Does Herb not understand that if you drink from a fire hose and/or hydrant, you have to do something with all that water? Herb’s got a lot of opinions to share on his Facebook, is what I’m saying, urine is the least of our problems, and may God have mercy on our souls.
@The Rambling Otter:
I WAS thinking that Josh v. Crock was kinda on the level of B–man v. The Guy Who Brought Joker A Pizza.
FG Speaking of words only having the power they give them, why *is* everyone on Mongo taking the projected speech at face value, definitely from a live, returning Ming? I’d bet on the witch-queen laughing her shapely butt off at the rubes who’ve never heard of recordings, let alone deepfake illusions.
Dustin: “I’ll write you an order for a Multiple Whore Imaging test. Our office is out by the truck stop, bring your health insurance, Social Security and bank account information, they should be able to get you right in.”
@Rocco:
Indeed. Did you hear about those clowns in Congress? What a bunch of clowns!
DT: The h pawn is missing (aka king rook’s pawn), but to the credit of the artist, the board is set up correctly. Queens on their colors! The misplaced pieces is by far the most common error committed when depicting chess in TV and movies.
JP: That is a lot of beautiful camel hair brushes in that fake tail.
MW: So this will drag on into a recap on Sunday – will we see any of the boardwalk, beach or just the same old backgrounds?
You can tell the level of intellectual engagement in Crock is not high. If this were any kind of conference, the Legionnaire would open with “This is less of a question and more of a comment…”
@The Rambling Otter: Or why Hi and Lois was able to call for the violent overthrow of the government. You could look it up!
Crock: Somebody just failed the Voight-Kampff test.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
!!! Does Josh actually have that? Would I have to write “Josh’s Story”?
(“Josh’s Story” would hypothetically be a compilation of the best riffs from this blog, as well as notes and praises from us Mudges, and a forward from a noted “GOOD” cartoonist who supports the site)
H&J: “Okay. I get it. Hydrant is a bad metaphor. I’ll say it’s like ‘drinking from an open weir’, like anyone knows what a ‘weir’ is. Happy now!? Sheesh“
As always, Herb and Jamal‘s intentions are hard to guess because the strip’s vague writing renders everything incomprehensible. It’s kind of amazing that the strip has title characters. Him and the Other One lets you know there are at least two people in the strip, what else do you need?
No, Dustin. You get credit for making it plausible that the balding potato-shaped husband landed an inexplicably hot wife (they are both evil). But having set that up, you don’t get to make “no sex after marriage” jokes.
Phantom: Guest Writer: Bob Weber, Jr. And we’ll find out the General is being funded by Dr. Weirdly.
@The Rambling Otter: Thinking my comment over, I’m not certain if Josh would find my comment morbid, or a touching sentiment.
@matt w: Kudos, that’s savage!
H&J: “And just to dot the i on this joke, we’ll draw a fire hydrant in the first panel….though if it wasn’t for the joke itself, we could forgive you for mistaking it for a garbage can.”
@Allangary: Interesting theory, but have we ever seen any of the staff at the Bum Boat? For that matter, have we ever seen any customers other than Mary and Jeff? This may be another data point for the “Mary is psychotic” theory.
@Little Guy: I couldn’t even imagine anthropomorphic animals being drawn in The Phantom’s realistic style.
But now I kind of want to see such a thing.
H&J-Water? Like out of the toilet?
RMMD-“Then in three years when my bestselling Pulitzer winning book gets optioned for a movie than I’ll quit teaching.”
MW-“Then maybe we can take a ‘walk’ under the boardwalk.”
MW – So they decided to have dessert and then take a stroll. I guess that wraps up the Dinner at the Bumboat storyline. On to the next adventure!
Dustin: I just looked at the Helen KUdlick character, and to be honest I wouldn’t fuck her either. Not even with Ed Kudlick’s dick.
Dustin’s dad, dude, the dream is dead. Maybe you had a sparkling personality in your youth, but nobody who can communicate with you as your are now would dream of having sex with you, not even your wife who, being Dustin’s mom, is no catch herself. I’m pretty sure you getting an AI girlfriend will be what brings about SkyNet trying to end humanity. Keep an eye out for a man named John Connor, he will be there to end you before it happens.
I always thought those letters were fake until this happened to me . . .
RMMD: “Take a year off to write the sequel kind of money. But in the meantime, I’m a little short. Would you mind…?”
MW: At this stage of Mary’s fever dream, her fork with pie turns into a toothbrush with paste in P2.
JP: As much as I like Charlotte, for a five year old to build a mask like that from ordinary household items would take prodigal amounts of skill and intelligence.
No, I don’t think it needs to be taken as a dog-pee joke at all. Rather, the first part is using an illustrative comparison to say “Some days it feels pretty violent or drastic .. “. Then with that set-up, the “On other days …” part seems like it will be a comparison to something milder. But instead of “something milder” the strip wants to surprise us with “something equally violent or drastic” — indeed, almost the very same thing.
“. . . and then the buzzard says ‘well, at least I’m not a vulture!’ Get it? Well, I don’t care if you don’t think it’s funny, but that talking buzzard down the way, you know, the one that hangs out with that kid, it couldn’t stop laughing.”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
Is McEldowney okay? Like, really? I mean, I think we always suspected him of drawing with his left hand, but between this and the Thorax shit, he probably needs safety pencils and circles of paper
@Allangary: @34: The Bum Boat WAS once a posterial version of Hooters, but Mary convinced the young women that self-respect was better than a nightly boatload (buttload?) of tips.
Now that we’ve established Charlotte’s parents sent her the mask, along with instructions for activating the built-in radio and location transponder, what happens next? I’m betting on Halloween all the kids are wearing similar masks, as “Dud the Squirrel” is the new breakaway hit on TikTok or whatever they’re all watching, greatly complicating the CIA’s plans to whisk Charlotte away.
Dustin – Does talking to your doctor about sex count as oral sex? Asking for
Dustin’s fathera friend.In defense of Herb and Jamaal, he’s perhaps saying that while drinking from a fire hose is a lot, at least it’s directed in a way, but water directly coming out of a hydrant just sprays all over the place with no kind of direction.
But maybe I’m giving it too much credit.
Dustin: Yes, Dustdad, the reason you’re not getting any is because you’re married, and as we all know heteronormative marriage means the end of sex and romance forever. It’s certainly not because you’re a bitter, self-absorbed jackass who hasn’t eaten a vegetable since his mother forced him to, thinks walking from the couch to the fridge counts as exercise, never has a kind word for anyone ever and and treats his wife (and indeed, women in general) as some kind of unfathomable alien creature useful only when she is gratifying you personally.
GT: Retconning Gil Thorp as an apparent pedophile who preyed on his students and married one of them is an….interesting…choice in 2025.
@Arkholt:
Yes: it is logically impossible to give Herb and Jamaal too little credit. This is axiomatic.
@Ken: There have been customers in the background but that doesn’t mean they were really there. Mary’s newfound interest in people with psychic abilities may have tuned them in from far and wide.
@Hibbleton: MW: At this stage of Mary’s fever dream, her fork with pie turns into a toothbrush with paste in P2.
And, as with other utensils and cell phones in the Worthiverse, the proper way to hold functional objects completely escapes Mary’s comprehension.
9CL: Soooooo…..Two days, ago he finds a “girlie magazine” that’s all wet…and he’s not so sure it’s with water……and he picks it up and proceeds to thumb through it? I don’t know how many STDs you can contract through your hands, but if anyone deserves to…
@The Rambling Otter:
And who would play the role of “Josh”? Damian Lewis? Michael Fassbender? Conan O’Brien?
Emphatically not … [removes sunglasses] … David Caruso.
The Lockhorns might be funny if Leroy was bitching about his wife’s driving to some taller, normalish-looking acquaintance who we don’t recognize and will never see again.
Gasoline Alley: This is a good setup and punchline from a writer whose third language is English.
Wait…
MW:
“Speaking of exercise after a meal, Mary-”
“Don’t push your luck, bud.”
FC: Want to know why this isn’t interesting (besides the normal reasons)? It’s an altered rerun from 1965. Originally Billy was made up as Cesar Chavez.
As the Keanes realized any normies in their suburb would squick out, and ICE would send him to Somalia, certain changes had to be made.
MW: there’s something wrong with Mary’s face. Her eyes are growing apart.
C’shaft: Hey, if you can’t trust an anonymous venture capitalist who disguises himself with pizza boxes, who can you trust?
DT: I’m guessing the one missing pawn is going to be a vital clue to all of this? Not that it matters, as the Minit Mysteries never seem to be solved by evidence presented throughout the story so much as one random fact dropped in the third-to-last panel of the final Sunday strip.
JP: GAAAAAAAAH! Take it away, take it away! She looks like a character rejected from the Five Nights and Freddy’s franchise for being too creepy! If that thing came trick-or-treating at my door I’d freak out and start hitting it over the head with the candy bowl!
Luann: Seems like the secret to having an interesting life is getting as far away from Luann as possible. I’ll bet Knute’s doing great as a top gaming streamer or something like that.
MW: Oh…oh God…is this all part of some elaborate “doctor/patient” role play? Does Jeff get his jollies by offering Mary generic lifestyle advice in public? I’ve just taken a shower but already I need another one.
Pluggers set the bar so low and yet they still can’t clamber over it.
RMMD: The occasional Stephen King or Nora Roberts aside, is anyone a “full-time author” in this economy?
Phantom: Hey, guys. I know one thing we have in common. We all have to take a shit and there’s only one toilet in this cell. How are we gonna figure this out?
@Little Blue Bicycle: I’m not sure, but I think Gil is supposed to be a fellow student who’s volunteered to coach the girl’s football team because nobody else wants to? Because nobody on the faculty supports this endeavor? Or anyone at the district level, since presumably other schools would need to have girl’s teams for this team to play against?
….I’m starting to think this isn’t a very well thought out plot.
@TheDiva:
On Luann : In Luann’s defense, Delta having gotten her degree already and being successful was part of her DREAM. In reality, Luann has not talked to, or heard from, Delta in quite a while (at least two years within the “no one ever
progressesages and time never passes” timeline of the strip, about a decade of real time), and thus had NO IDEA what ever became of her.In Luann’s offense, however, I’ll say that I’m pretty certain she doesn’t even remember WHY she picked italian, of all languages. She’s probably completely forgotten that it was in reaction of Tara suggesting she attend a clown school in Italy, and the main sticking point was “But Tara, I don’t speak italian!”
(Also, WEIRD that she focuses on the more recent “Phil and I were kinda there at the Pet Adoption Awareness Event, I guess (which you already knew because we were there FOR YOU)” instead of, you know, that blood drive she organised at the Fuze).
…this is WAY TOO MUCH over friggin’ LUANN…@TheDiva: DT: Yeah, sounds about right. Cypher expert stabbed and died slowly, able to remove the pawn as a clue to the murderer. My money’s on Count Pawn-iatowski, but this being Dick Tracy, a new character named Robert Kingsrookspawn or Lionel Algebraic-Aitchtwo might show up.