The Comics Curmudgeon

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Anyone here own a top hat? Or seen one? Ever? Yet the Mitchells own one. Look at Henry's pose, right there. THAT, friends, is the asshole who thought it was cool to dress as Mr. Peanut for Halloween, every year, from 1987 to 2002.

—A Grave Mind
91

Monday is for the birds

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Alice, 12/22/25

One of the distinctive features of Alice comics is the little … title? caption? … that goes in the bottom margin. Usually it just sort of adds to the vibe, but sometimes it’s important for the narrative. For instance, real Alice fans (which I assume include all of you) know that just a few weeks ago she was declaring that new cars don’t need “all that stuff,” and it’s making them too expensive. So you’d be tempted to angrily declare “Alice! I can’t believe you’re backsliding on all the features new cars have!” except then you look down at the bottom of the panel and see the word “backsliding,” so you know she’s being self-aware about it.

Shoe, 12/22/25

Speaking of real fans, real Shoe fans instantly recognize “Madame Zoo Doo,” the strip’s resident psychic, just from her character design. I personally don’t think it’s realistic that she’d bring her crystal ball with her to lunch at Roz’s diner. It’s not necessary and frankly a little insulting to think that we wouldn’t recognize her without it. I demand that my relationship with this syndicated newspaper comic about depressed bird-people be grounded in mutual respect!

Mary Worth, 12/22/25

Wait, is Toby changing her plans because she wants to spend more time with Sunny, and she can’t at her friend’s opening? Because “A semi-professional art gallery in a small California college town has a strict no-birds policy” is actually one of the less realistic propositions Mary Worth has ever offered us.

143

The disturbing reason for the season

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Crock, 12/21/25

I kind of like the worldbuilding in today’s Crock, which implies that Magi simply spontaneously generate in desert climes, and can be instinctively attracted to your location by any large star-shaped object. I feel less affection for the final panel, though. Look at those faces: our heroes from the legion are definitely going to kill the Magi, right? Kill them, and possibly eat them?

Dennis the Menace, 12/21/25

This young woman’s “What are you doing here?” is a wholly appropriate expression of surprise. If Dennis’s parents allow him to just roam the neighborhood unsupervised, why do they bother to hire babysitters at all?

Mary Worth, 12/21/25

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And I will definitely set a woman’s parrot against her husband. I cannot emphasize enough that I did not come to bring peace to the households of woman-man-parrot triads. Please do not use the occasion of my birth to give others false hope that parrots and husbands can live in harmony with one another, because they very much cannot.”

120

Baby (Jesus/parrots[metaphorical]/, creation of)

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Hi and Lois, 12/20/25

Now, if you were an ordinary, casual comics enjoyer, you’d read this strip and think “Ha, it’s funny because Hi thinks so little of his children that he’s glad they got parts without dialogue,” or, if you’re more theologically inclined, “Ha, it’s funny because Hi is ignorant of the Bible, in which both the shepherds and the angels very much have lines.” If you’re the Comics Curmudgeon, though, you have access to a deep archive of Hi and Lois content and know that just a year ago Ditto was actively trying to abandon the speaking part he managed to land in the nativity play, so actually Hi is being supportive of his children’s ambitions, or, in this case, their lack thereof.

Mary Worth, 12/20/25

Now, obviously, the main attraction here is Mary’s “Oh dear” thought balloon as her gal pal confesses that she can’t choose between her husband of several decades and a parrot she found in a park less than a month ago, but I’m kind of fixated on the weird brown color of the carrot that Toby is hungrily staring at. Seems like the sort of fading vegetable you’d feed to a bird, honestly. Is Toby having trouble determining where her loyalties lie because she’s slowly being transformed into a parrot herself?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/20/25

Sure, Summer is a receptionist and not medical staff, but it still must be kind of embarrassing to be the only person working at a health clinic who doesn’t know where babies come from.