The Comics Curmudgeon

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Comment of the Week

At least the panel reveals enough so that we can be reassured that at least Thirsty is wearing pants.

—Pozzo
120

Thursday one-panels

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Wizard of Id, 1/8/26

The syndicated newspaper comics are, among other things, your #1 source for gender stereotypes so out of date that everyone has pretty much forgotten them, like “women love to drag their husbands to the opera even though men find opera boring.” Usually your source for these gags is The Lockhorns, where it’s at least vaguely realistic because they live a mere hour from Lincoln Center via the Long Island Railroad; I suppose you might think the Wizard of Id’s pseudo-medieval setting also makes it a good candidate for opera gags, if you were a philistine who didn’t know that opera originated in the 1600s and didn’t truly flower into the oft-parodied art form we see here until the baroque era. Anyway, this lady has a rare talent that she’s chosen to share with the world, and maybe it makes me a gender traitor, but I feel that she does not deserve to experience the painful and horrifying ideal of transformation into a bird, right here and now, at the height of her career.

Gearhead Gertie, 1/8/26

There was in fact a big NASCAR lawsuit settlement recently, and I’m gonna be real with you, I read some of that article I just linked to but couldn’t really follow what it was about and tapped out around halfway through. I don’t feel too bad about that, though, because I read enough to know that the dispute in hand was between the league and team owners and had nothing to do with anything that might get free tickets to fans, so apparently I understood it better than NASCAR superfan Gearhead Gertie.

Dennis the Menace, 1/8/26

I guess Mr. Wilson is supposed to be hinting darkly that Dennis may someday move on from childish menacing and become some sort of evil dictator or criminal mastermind and menace the whole world, but I think he’s letting his endless antagonism with the boy cloud his judgement. Dennis is actually pretty dumb, and I’ve seen no indication that he has the intention or the ability to better himself. It might still be annoying living next door to him when he’s an adult, but I think most of us will be safe.

186

HOT TIP: You don’t have to sign a prenup if the guy you ask to conduct your wedding isn’t a real minister

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Pluggers, 1/7/26

Pluggers has been doing a string of “Classic Pluggers winter fun!” panels this week, and while most of them have in fact been mildly fun, at least for the characters involved (what if we fired up the barbecue grill … when there was still snow on the ground?) I have some questions about this one. When you stare at the TV, expressionless, thinking “Hmm, things today sure are different than they were in the past, and I’m not sure how I feel about it,” is that fun? Do pluggers enjoy doing that? The fact that this is a submission from a Florida-based plugger adds an extra layer of ennui here. “Well, I guess that’s how they do things up north now. Not the choices I would make, but it’s none of my business, I suppose.”

Gil Thorp, 1/7/26

If you had asked me, I would’ve pegged Gil as the kind of guy who has a church he belongs to and occasionally attends, but he doesn’t really spend a lot of time dwelling on religious matters. But we live in a post-sectarian age, so it makes sense that when it comes to finding someone to preside over his nuptials, he turns to his most spiritual friend (“spiritual” here means “has attempted to contact the spirit of Gil’s dead mentor in a supply closet with a Ouija board“).

Mother Goose and Grimm, 1/7/26

Not to sound sadistic or anything, but shouldn’t all these people be dead? Shouldn’t they have suffered horribly as their living flesh was transformed to stone? Because of Medusa? And her powers?

178

A little Rex goes a long way, that’s all I’m saying

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Mary Worth, 1/6/26

OK, sorry, I do not buy that dour Scot Ian Cameron is someone whose heart is cheered by the presence of Christmas decorations, and anyway look at that deranged expression in the second panel: he’s doing more evil anti-Sunny plotting! The cat thing didn’t work but he’s got more up his sleeve. Is tinsel poisonous to parrots? Only one way to find out! Meanwhile, Toby continues to read BLAM! (?) Magazine, oblivious.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/6/26

If you’ve been given the awesome responsibility of stewarding one of America’s beloved soap opera comic strip, you could do worse things with it than reassure your rapidly aging audience that cataract surgery is immensely beneficial and really not a big deal. This series of strips is probably going to reduce highway deaths by a small but measurable amount! Still, in-universe, I’m reading the subtext here as “So I’m just letting you know that you’re not actually going to be spending that much more time with us at the clinic, which is good, because most of the staff here does not like you very much.”

Garfield, 1/6/26

Now, normally, I would say that Paws, Inc., is such a massive corporate juggernaut in the comics world that it can do what it wants — appropriate Hi and Lois’s “Sunbeam” intellectual property, whatever. But the company was bought by Viacom in 2019, and, thanks to a series of other corporate acquisitions and maneuverings over the past few years, is today part of Paramount Skydance, which is in the midst of a complex and politically contentious attempt to acquire Warner Bros., so their legal department is probably pretty busy right now. This could be the ideal time for Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC to strike back!