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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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The Lockhorns, 10/24/25

Loretta has, presumably, been jogging for some time with her friend acquaintance who we are definitely never going to see again, and is only now passing by her husband, who has been sitting on that bench staring contemplatively into space for who knows how long. Because absolutely nothing the Lockhorns do is left to chance, especially when it comes to attempting to passive-aggressively destroy one another emotionally, we must assume that she carefully planned both her route and her conversational cadence so that this little bon mot would drop just as she was getting close enough for Leroy to hear it.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/24/25

I’m a normal person, so I do almost all my shopping either online or in a store, but some people do it over the phone, I guess? Maybe they’re all old and increasingly senile and the person on the other end has to say “Shopping…” every once in a while, just to remind them what they’re doing.

Pluggers, 10/24/25

Gah, pathetic, there’s no joke or wordplay or anything here, it’s literally just “Pluggers continue to engage in a traditional cultural/aesthetic practice, unlike most people, who have abandoned it or never knew about it in the first place.” They didn’t even put a plugger in the cartoon! I’d like to think they all refused to participate in such a half-assed non-gag.

Crankshaft, 10/24/25

I love how depressed this guy looks in the final panel. He doesn’t want to say this shit any more than you want to listen to it!

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Judge Parker, 10/23/25

I don’t know if I’ve actually spelled out the current Judge Parker situation, but it goes like this: April vanished after her Norwegian spy encounter and Randy vanished after going off in search of her, leaving their daughter Charlotte in the care of her increasingly drunk and depressed grandparents and, once they got too drunk and depressed, Neddy. Charlotte has been rather shy and withdrawn under her semi-competent care, until she got wind that Neddy and Sophie had a pet squirrel at one point in their youth (possibly in their foundling days before Sam and Abbey took them in, this is deep lore from before my time) and went absolutely berserk. You never know what’s going to trigger a child who’s experienced significant emotional trauma, but that face in panel two is one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen in the comics. I assume that Neddy is holding onto her temple because Charlotte’s shrieks are growing so intense that she’s afraid her skull is going to shatter like an eggshell.

Mary Worth, 10/23/25

Speaking of terrifying children and their mental powers, I am dying at Jeff’s dialogue here. You have to imagine that “Did that really happen, Mary?” was put in a painfully neutral tone, and then, when he had to come back with “I agree with you. I’ve been around enough to have seen things in life that cannot easily be explained!” he took it to the next level of neutrality, because he knows he needs to be very careful if he wants to get back to shore alive.

Dick Tracy, 10/23/25

Hey, remember Silver Nitrate, who last we saw a year and change ago was having a hard time in prison? Well, he’s still having a hard time, and now he’s got to decide if he trusts the prison infirmary to dispense psychopharmaceuticals that will actually soothe his mind instead of potentially making things worse. It’s a real downer! I think this strip should go back to violent gangsters with weird shaped heads shooting tommy guns at people, personally!