Metapost: Your comments are here. Are you ready for them?
Post Content
Many comments were posted on joshreads dot com, the Comics Curmudgeon, this week. Of the ones I saw, this was my favorite:
“These are hate handles, so I’d better draw them in a way I’m sure the audience will hate.” –pachoo
A number of others also merited recognition, in my opinion, due to their humorousness.
“You’re a remarkable girl, Olive. Unlike all the dullards I’m surrounded by here. Hey, you! [in the third panel] Go stand in the corner.” –Hibbleton
“Oh, Mary, you’ve really outdone yourself here — lecturing at someone with your thoughts, when you know she’s the only person who can hear them! Olive, meanwhile, is turning up her noise-canceling headphones on the plane, but nothing can cancel the cacophony of a long-winded lady’s psychic signals. If nothing else helps, she’ll have to try to drown them out with some of that Zeppelin and Creedence and Stones music, which all the Boomers at Charterstone kept trying to convince her is better than Taylor.” –BigTed
“Yes, you CAN buy a shepherd’s crook online. These are wonderful times we live in.” –MKay
“As someone who has skydived (for realsies, twice, and I appreciate the opportunity to bring this up) the utter lack of concern Sarge has for Beetle’s safety was shocking to the core until I remembered that he has broken every bone and damaged every organ in the private’s body on multiple occasions and the dude keeps bouncing back, more or less, so Snorkle has no reason to believe that the main parachute failing in any way would be a death sentence for the private. The years of concussions would also help explain how Bailey is able to sleep standing up.” –Tabby Lavalamp
“In panel one, Thel suddenly notices that her son has no forehead. In panel two, she massages one into existence. Ain’t claymation wonderful?” –Peanut Gallery
“Mother Goose and Grimm is totally fine today. Everyone knows that gravity pulls stuff towards the ground and Hell, being below the ground, has opposite gravity.” –Earl
“I respect the use of an ancient trope, and I feel that I am somehow deprived in that I have never actually been told to ‘Shhhh’ by a librarian. That tears it! To the library! The liquor store is on the way!” –A Grave Mind
“Chip is not in the library, since he’s busy sniffing glue or smoking pot. Your parents can’t see your eyes are red if they cannot see your eyes!” –Ettorre
“If the nerds can handle Eric, a presumably drunken man wearing a purple pinstripe suit and a gravity-defying hat, I’m sure they can handle a little window-tapping.” –Guts Dozier
“The worst thing is, I’m pretty sure this counts as foreplay for the Kudlicks.” –Schroduck
“Mary thumbs through the Guinness Book to see if there’s a record for slowest speedboat Jeff can break.” –Hex Killhouse, on BlueSky
“You know, like calling on animals to rescue her and her friends from a hot air ballooning accident. Just normal, everyday stuff!” –pugfuggly
“Sounds like someone we can all learn from. [steers boat directly into supertanker, resulting in a fiery explosion]” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV
“I would like Mother Goose and Grimm to consider trying out a facial expression that says ‘I am delivering a wacky zinger’ instead of ‘I am experiencing existential dread.’ Just once. See how it feels.” –Dan
“I love how the two of them just stare straight ahead during this scintillating conversation. Jeff must be thinking ‘If I look at her, I’m going to start laughing, and no accidental boob graze tonight.’ Mary is thinking ‘Yes Olive, I will tell him how special you are.’” –Maltmash3r
“A few days ago, I said that there might be a strip that could realistically portray alcoholism, but Judge Parker was not that strip. I now confidently predict that JP will also prove unable to depict the problems with trying to make a wild animal into a pet.” –Ken
“I love how quickly Dr. Jeff 180s on the whole psychic powers thing. His initial skepticism was merely a test to see if Mary was serious. Now that she’s reaffirmed her belief, he is eager to share his medical perspective on the strange human abilities he has witnessed and the copious notes he has collected but dares not publish for fear of his reputation.” –BananaSam
“I imagine that Mother Goose and Grimm’s first panel went through multiple iterations of specificity, each time getting sent back to the author by the lawyers because they didn’t have permission to use ‘Sears’, ‘K Mart’, ‘Walmart’, or, somehow, the words ‘department store’ in the strip.” –RoofPig, on Patreon
“Mother Goose looks so affronted when asked what credit card she would like to use. ‘As a mythical creature of nursery rhymedom I should not be forced to participate in the modern economy! Isn’t it enough that I consented to contact you through this 1970s landline?’” –matt w
“Plugger chairs don’t need doilies, they need Febreeze.” –nescio
“‘Shopping’ isn’t saying what Ma Goose is doing; she’s talking to Bradley Shopping, her regular high-class male escort.” –TheDiva
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19 replies to “Metapost: Your comments are here. Are you ready for them?”
I was kind of busy so it was a short balls week. Sorry to those I missed:
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Maltmash3r
October 18th, 2025 at 5:00 am Reply
MW– That last line ” you know I will” is a veiled threat by Moy that if we don’t stop harping on Wilbur, she’ll bring Olive back.
BigTed
October 18th, 2025 at 5:14 am Reply
Mary Worth: You know, a “mishap,” like the Titanic or the Hindenburg. (You can’t call it a “disaster” unless your balloon literally exploded when it fell from the sky.)
ectojazzmage
October 18th, 2025 at 7:25 am Reply
Blondie: Has Dagwood been corrupted to the lifestyle of having sex with sandwiches by that one lady from Six Chix?
Mary Worth: Unbeknownst to Olive, she’s already been implanted with hypnotic commands as Mary’s manchurian candidate. As soon as she gets home, its only a matter of time before her parents say “endearing quirk” and are promptly killed by their own daughter.
ValdVin
October 18th, 2025 at 5:38 am Reply
MW: The “Leave Room for Jesus” people are not going to bother Mary and Olive. Have Augie and Summer from RMMD been giving those two hugging lessons?
RMMD: Summer’s polish-needing is getting a bit obvious.
CanuckDownSouth
October 18th, 2025 at 5:51 am Reply
RMMD The poor nurse tries to help Summer out of the conversational hole she’s digging herself into, but it’s not working: how’s your guy with a perfectly fine job? – you mean the soon-to-be-published author? – so he has a book deal! – noooo – well, you’ve read the draft, right? – ummm….
GT So this is what our so-brilliant-he’s-in-demand-by-the-pros coach comes up with, some kind of fakeout where’s-the-ball trick play. Funny, I didn’t think that was something you’d find at an NFL game, it feels one step removed from finding a loophole in the rulebook and bringing out a punt-kicker mule. Maybe pro football is more interesting than I thought!
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Tabby Lavalamp
October 18th, 2025 at 6:34 am Reply
Don’t worry, plugger, I guarantee it’s a robocall. Anyone you know who will be the ones sharing the bad news is right now furiously trying to text “Grandma’s in the hospital” to your rotary phone.
Voskhod
October 18th, 2025 at 12:37 pm Reply
When the phone rings between 9 AM and 5 PM, Pluggers know it’s a collection agency. If it rings after 9 PM, someone is dead. Between 5 and 9 PM though it might be that nice young man from Microsoft who just needs a bit more money to fix the computer.
Ukulele Ike
October 19th, 2025 at 6:00 am Reply
SFx: I, for one, am extremely disappointed in Casandra Cat’s choices in nightwear.
Liam
October 19th, 2025 at 4:36 am Reply
Slylock Fox-Cassandra Cat is innocent. She’s been doing a livestream of her OnlyFans. Max has proof.
MW-Olive’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors.
matt w
October 19th, 2025 at 5:02 am Reply
This week’s Mary Worth quote is very busted. This doesn’t even land on Ralph Abernathy’s wikiquote as a disputed attribution, it was already kicking around in various churchy sources in the 1950s as a chestnut, it was in Stuart Hamblen’s 1952 gospel hymn “Known Only To Him,” and the earliest source I can find is Cyrus the Persian (1941 or 1944) by Sherman A. Nagel: “Faith says, I may not know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future” (p. 93). Abernathy was 15 or 18 at the time, depending on the date.
Also though the quote seems like it’s supposed to be about The Children, it’s really about Jesus, in case anyone was still wondering about whether Mary and Olive are going to start a messianic quote. At least it’s not attributed to John C. Calhoun.
nescio
October 19th, 2025 at 5:25 am Reply
Mary takes someone to the airport and then stays so she can watch the plane take off, that checks. We know she doesn’t have anything better to do, for sure.
Charterstoned
October 19th, 2025 at 5:38 am Reply
MW: Ah, THERE she goes…and she’s OFF! She’s at the back of the field…but now she’s gaining…she’s coming around the clubhouse turn…!
Weaselboy
October 19th, 2025 at 5:41 am Reply
MW – Talk her up all you want, Mary. We all know that once Olive gets to high school, she’s going to go all Carrie on her classmates.
Horace Broon
October 19th, 2025 at 9:05 am Reply
MW: “And she’s off.” Yes, Mary, I’ve been saying there’s something “off” about that girl for this entire story. Glad you’ve finally noticed.
Bob Tice
October 19th, 2025 at 9:27 am Reply
MW:
In tomorrow’s new installment, Max and Greta are nabbed for using a hoist to pilfer paintings of dogs playing poker on display at the Louvre.
Professor Well Actually
October 19th, 2025 at 8:30 am Reply
MW: I suppose I’m the only one who would take pleasure in someone telling Mary to fuck off.
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Hibbleton
October 19th, 2025 at 4:44 am Reply
FC: Sure, Jesus healed the blind but I’d still take Jeffy to a hospital.
JP:
You can’t even unlock your own door?
This place is a pigsty.
Charlotte shit-talking Neddy everyday is a comic I can really enjoy.
ValdVin
October 19th, 2025 at 7:35 am Reply
RMMD:
“And who should I make the signed copy of my first edition best seller out to?”
“Umm…eBay.”
TheDiva
October 19th, 2025 at 8:30 am Reply
RMMD: Two weeks later, Augie admits the publishing deal fell through, but he has a real good feeling about the seventh novel!
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
pugfuggly
October 20th, 2025 at 4:43 am Reply
FC: Is it weird that I thought that Ma Keane was just sticking that sucker on Jeffy’s forehead, just in case he wants it later?
Victor Von
October 20th, 2025 at 5:49 am Reply
Family Circus: What are the flavors in that weird lollipop? Blood and licorice?
MKay
October 20th, 2025 at 5:02 am Reply
MW: “Snooze” mode for the next five days, while Mary eats salmon, Jeff eats steak, Mary exalts Olive and Jeff exalts Mary.
Anonymous
October 21st, 2025 at 4:38 am Reply
Hi & Lois : …that’s supposed to be a library? It looks more like they’re in a random old couple’s house! (Who are sitting apart, in different rooms, with looks of profound anger on their faces for obvious reasons).
A Grave Mind
October 21st, 2025 at 4:37 am Reply
I respect the use of an ancient trope, and I feel that I am somehow deprived in that I have never actually been told to “Shhhh” by a librarian. That tears it! To the library! The liquor store is on the way!
MKay
October 21st, 2025 at 4:44 am Reply
H&L: Can’t believe Thirsty isn’t in the book club.
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Professor Well Actually
October 21st, 2025 at 4:37 am Reply
MW: Jeff you idiot. Why in the world would you want to start Mary droning on about dear Olive? How do you plan to stop her? Do you expect to stick your tongue down her throat?
Vice President John Adams
October 22nd, 2025 at 4:50 am Reply
Dustin is an old-school nerd, back before the term was embraced as a badge of honor. We know this because of the way his eyes turn solid black as soon as the clerk utters the word.
Maude R. Fawker
October 22nd, 2025 at 9:59 am Reply
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Pickles – Next Opal will confess that she has never LMAO.
“So does that mean…?”
“Yes. On our wedding night when I said you made me CUM, I didn’t, and never have since then either. Sorry about that as well.”
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Hibbleton
October 22nd, 2025 at 4:37 am Reply
MW: Maybe Olive’s just channeling all the sexual energy produced by her parents constant boinking? Jeff asks covetingly.
A Grave Mind
October 23rd, 2025 at 4:41 am Reply
This needs to kick off two weeks of Judge Parker where Neddy attempts to catch a squirrel, only for said squirrel to repeatedly foil her, forcing her into pratfalls, wisecracking all the while, in true Friz Freleng fashion. Stupid? Sure! But no worse than neither of these dumbshits noting you can’t just buy a goddamn squirrel.
…and 250 bucks for a squirrel??? That kid is getting a stuffed toy, and a crappy sandwich.
MKay
October 23rd, 2025 at 5:08 am Reply
JP: It’s not the enthusiasm for a pet that I find alarming, it’s the plan to turn the pet into some sort of spy/weapon.
pugfuggly
October 23rd, 2025 at 4:49 am Reply
JP I love how the kids in this strip find starting a surveillance regime just as exciting as a new pet.
MW You know, I had never considered Mary being an unreliable narrator in this strip, but it would explain so. much.
Liam
October 23rd, 2025 at 4:35 am Reply
MW-Like how Wilbur could fall off a moving cruise ship and still live. Like how Jeff continues to go out with Mary.
Maltmash3r
October 23rd, 2025 at 4:56 am Reply
MW- I love how the two of them just stare straight ahead during this scintillating conversation. Jeff must be thinking “If I look at her, I’m going to start laughing, and no accidental boob graze tonight”.
Mary is thinking “Yes Olive, I will tell him how special you are”
Ken
October 23rd, 2025 at 4:37 am Reply
MW: Jeff knows which side he wants to get his bread buttered on, and will say whatever it takes.
Of course we all know he’s only going to pay the bill at the Bum Boat, and get some hand-holding on the moonlit pier, which makes it even more pathetic.
Stop Motion Cyclops
October 23rd, 2025 at 4:41 am Reply
I want to see a gender swapped version of The X-Files with Jeff and Mary.
“You really think aliens are real?”
“Yes, I have seen them.”
“I believe you.”
Kirk Out
October 23rd, 2025 at 5:03 am Reply
MW: “Yes, each of us have more individual abilities than we even realize or use.”
-Thought bubble-
“Like sex, Mary? Like actual effin’ sex! Oh my God. Why do I stay with this platitude spouting ice queen? Kill me now.”
Professor Well Actually
October 23rd, 2025 at 5:08 am Reply
MW: what in the name of all that is true and lovely does Jeff see in that creepy woman?
matt w
October 23rd, 2025 at 5:22 am Reply
I underestimated Mary’s ability to talk about Olive for a solid week after she left. Praying for the sweet release of a Wilbur story.
But What Do I Know?
October 23rd, 2025 at 5:08 am Reply
JP — Hoping for a spin-off strip, Charlotte the Menace! Panel two alone shows more of the eponymous adjective that that fraud Dennis has displayed this century.
MW — “I’m a medical doctor, trained in the scientific method, who comes up against all manner of quack theories. Are you sure that really happened?”
“Yes, each of us have more individual abilities than we even realize, or use.”
“OK, I’m convinced!”
Professor Well Actually
October 23rd, 2025 at 8:13 am Reply
MW: is Jeff a gym fanatic or does he get those impressive, buff arms by pleasuring himself after another frustrating date with Mary?
Tripod
October 23rd, 2025 at 8:44 am Reply
Why in the world would anyone want to fuck Mary? She’s a two-bagger all the way.
Charterstoned
October 23rd, 2025 at 5:18 am Reply
MW:
“YES. Each of us have more individual abilities than we even realize…or USE!”
“I AGREE with you! However, since the subject of your sentence, ‘Each’, is singular, you should have said, “Each of us HAS….” I mean, if you want to be grammatically correct….”
An uncomfortable silence followed, then a splash off the port side.
Mary steered the Compensation toward the dock by the Bum Boat.
“Table for one,” she said to the host as she entered.
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
ValdVin
October 23rd, 2025 at 6:38 am Reply
Leave it to Crankshaft to remember that the only “lawsuit abuse” is by tort lawyers. Corporate lawyers at GE, GM, General Dynamics, and General Mills thank you for the blameshifting.
TheDiva
October 23rd, 2025 at 6:41 am Reply
C’shaft: Huh, I would think with Crankshaft on the road personal injury lawyers wouldn’t need to go so niche.
RMMD: Oooooh, I think he’s going to ask The Question! “Summer, darling, would you do me the honor of being my beta reader?”
Luann: The Wizard of Oz playbook says the first encounter with the title character should be with their false public persona, so who’s the proverbial man behind Delta’s curtain? (Minds out of the gutter, please.) I’m guessing Gunther.
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Charterstoned
October 24th, 2025 at 4:35 am Reply
MW: Today’s stilted conversation make way more sense once you realize that Mary and Jeff are talking about the challenges of his having a small penis, ED, and Peyronies.
Weaselboy
October 24th, 2025 at 5:27 am Reply
MW – Mary and Jeff have a side hustle writing fortune cookies and have found that they do their best work when they’re out at sea.
CanuckDownSouth
October 24th, 2025 at 5:54 am Reply
MW I am actually kind of impressed by how they keep slightly varying the platitudes, never quite repeating, never increasing the information content of the conversation. It’s so deliberately bland you’d think they were a pair of spies having an extremely coded conversation, where each pause and slight change in the platutide-o-rama indicates something else about the nuclear future of the Middle East
Professor Well Actually
October 24th, 2025 at 4:37 am Reply
MW: oh no…they’ve started a trite, stupid cliche off.
RMMD: Augie is looking decidedly creepy. He’s going to tell Summer the book will be published but it will need an investment for printing costs. Could she help?
Hibbleton
October 24th, 2025 at 4:43 am Reply
Pluggers: John Stettler misspelled antimacassar six times before settling on “doily” for his submission.
MKay
October 24th, 2025 at 4:48 am Reply
PLUGGERS: No way! I’m a Plugger and the last home I saw antimacassars in was MY grandma’s.
ValdVin
October 24th, 2025 at 6:14 am Reply
@MKay:
@Hibbleton:
On this site I expect people to have words like antimacassar holstered up and ready to go with absolutely no forewarning, and you did not disappoint.
nescio
October 24th, 2025 at 5:31 am Reply
Plugger chairs don’t need doilies, they need Febreeze.
Old School Allie Cat
October 24th, 2025 at 5:58 am Reply
Pluggers – I know it’s just “shading”, but that chair looks nasty. You know it’s being held together with pet hair, snack crumbs and decades-old farts.
Tonio
October 24th, 2025 at 6:33 am Reply
Seeing the empty chair, I was expecting the caption to be “you’re a Plugger if you’re dead.”
Dennis Jimenez
October 24th, 2025 at 5:24 am Reply
Pluggers – You’re a plugger if you use doilies to cover grease, piss and shit stains….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Beau Nair
October 24th, 2025 at 4:49 am Reply
FC: Careful, Billy. HTT Grandma is going to pull out some dirty dollar bills from where they were deposited after a night of lap dancing.
Guts Dozier
October 24th, 2025 at 5:13 am Reply
CS: The lawyer has already concluded that Crankshaft can’t afford his $10,000 retainer, and is now just fucking with him.
Pozzo
October 24th, 2025 at 4:55 am Reply
Ed thinks “Ooh, this guy’s good,” while filing that pun away for later use.
Hibbleton
October 24th, 2025 at 6:17 am Reply
Crank: “There already is a school bus ban on Glitter… and within a five hundred foot radius around the school. Oh wait, that’s Gary Glitter. My bad.”
MotorboaterSequiturOctober 24th, 2025 at 6:52 am Reply
Mary Worth Spanish to English.
“Hey, big boy. Whacha doin’ after the rescue.”
“Getting as far away from you as possible.”
“So, were you able to pick him up?”
“Eh, sure. This ol’ gal still has it.”
Special Scrotal Awards to the Best No. 69 and Beyond of the Week
Mischievous 69er
October 18th, 2025 at 12:17 pm Reply
Hah! I’m in 69 and I’m pissing on it. Heh heh.
69. MikeP
October 20th, 2025 at 8:51 am Reply
FC: I honestly thought that she was offering him cough syrup and we were watching the debut of Family Circus: Momento.
Guillermo el Chiclero
October 22nd, 2025 at 7:37 am Reply
Dustin: Reminds me of an article about comic book stores the Houston Chronicle ran over 30 years ago. A female customer said she frequented the store because of the extremely favorable men to women ratio. However, the article noted that despite her going there for years, she had yet to date one of the male customers, let alone get into a relationship.
Eewww! Nerds!
FC: Shouldn’t an average seven year old be tall enough to reach out of that window without the aid of a stool?
Special Scrotal Awards to the Best No. 69 and Beyond of the Week
Ukulele Ike
October 24th, 2025 at 6:48 am Reply
FG: Aura attacked by the mob? According to the Schkrade Playbook, Wolfang should have taken her hostage.
Meanwhile, back up in the Royal Box, Barin has been torn to pieces like Orpheus with the Maenads.
(Ooooooo, post 69? Okay, Adrane rises from her sickbed, flies into the arena, and sexes everybody to death.)
Congrats to pachoo for the COTW!
And thanks to
FunkyPantsScratchy for the mention!Kudos to pachoo (which is fun to say) and the other folks on the float. Also to the scratchies. Tips of the beret to Tabby Lavalamp, RoofPig, and TheDiva.
Congrats to pachoo, everyone on the float and my fellow scratchies! Broon Croons to Tabby Lavalamp, pugfuggly, Maltmash3r, matt w, Charterstoned, weaselboy, Professor Well Actually, Hibbleton, and everyone who used the word “antimacassar”!
Thanks, Scratchy!
Oops, that was for Anonymous. Never mind.
Thanks, Scratchy.
Thanks to Josh and Scratchy! Glory to pachoo, our new heavyweight champ! The Gravemind sees Hibbleton, Guts Dozier, and pugfuggly (super jealous of that one), and all the rest of you kickass, funny bunch.
Fecilitations to the winners, and thank you, Scratchy!
Congrats to everyone! :3