Yes, Crock’s middle initial is “P”, I don’t care for it but there it is
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Pluggers, 11/14/25
I have to admit that I’m intrigued by the “come out here” formulation. This isn’t a plugger who has walked into the living room and forgotten what task he was pursuing; this is a dog-man who has gone somewhere, for some purpose now mysterious to him. “Let’s see … was I supposed to sell my soul to the devil? No, it’s sunset, and that’s more of a ‘midnight at the crossroads’ thing. Maybe I challenged someone to a gunfight as the sun went down? But wouldn’t I have brought my gun? I’m pretty sure I would’ve brought my gun.”
Crock, 11/14/25
Man, you read Crock every day for 20 years and you assume you know all the stupid lore but then you read a strip and learn that the shirtless guy in the fez is named “Pretty Boy”. This is pretty dumb, but in a strip where the cowardly guy is named “Captain Poulet” and the woman who’s supposed to be ugly is named “Grossie” and the evil commandant is named “Vermin P. Crock,” having a character with a sarcastic name represents a quantum leap in semantic complexity. Unless this guy is actually meant to be read as attractive? Possible, I guess. Anyway, one of his soldiers has to pee, which has foiled his attempt to capture the Legion’s fort and kill everyone inside.
Herb and Jamaal, 11/14/25
Hey now, the whole point of Herb and Jamaal is to be non-specific and, occasionally, quite confusing. I don’t need Herb smiling wryly while he contemplates his mortality! I have the entire archives of Funky Winkerbean for that!
84 replies to “Yes, Crock’s middle initial is “P”, I don’t care for it but there it is”
Pluggers – Get it together – that hydrant isn’t gonna piss on itself….
(Appropriately named) Crock – Ya scared the shit out of ‘em….
H&J – The good news is, I’m working – the bad news is im working, at this….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
FC: There’s so much jelly on those cards, Jeffy literally “serves” them up as snacks.
MW-“You shall be my new lover.”
Pluggers: I’m pretty sure he’s looking for the outhouse.
Plugger Dogman has been outside all day because he can’t remember to eat more fiber.
Crock: Hey, man, you’re in the dessert! Just pee already!
A plugger’s senior moment can last his whole life.
Beetle Bailey : …these visuals are to set up that Beetle Bailey is some kind of weird parasite that is slowly taking over Sarge’s body, or that he and Beetle have gotten Freaky Friday’d, so it’s a shame the strip is doing neither of those.
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Crock : It’s the ultimate act of dishonorable weakness and cowardice to have to call off an attack because you need to go to the bathroom. It’s true, it’s in the Hagakure!
don’t check me on thatSo it’s must me doubly the dishonor if you’re calling off the attack because of a random soldier in your army, rather than yourself.
…..UNLEEEESSSSS “Pretty Boy” is actually the completely generic looking “Nomad” enemy, while the shirtless guy in a fez is just his aide-de-camp, which would be a degree of incompetence I would expect out of Crock.
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Family Circus : Jeffy doesn’t “get” 52 Pickup.
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Pluggers : are sundowning.
S4th: Hil, when this little development happened you would not shut up about this man. You have no leg to stand on here and it serves you right.
Luann: Next week, new adventure!*
MW: Is it me, or is that bird getting bigger with each passing strip?
JP: Normally I’d suspect Seasonal Affective Disorder, but since Sophie’s always sullen and unhappy, how could she tell the difference? Indeed, yesterday I thought back to the Judge Danger Doofus storyline and how she really should be in protective custody** for her little tantrum and criminal assault of a person of interest in an ongoing police investigation.
*We go back to Luann and Bernice sitting in Luann’s room staring off into space.
**A rubber room at Happy Valley Institute for the Emotionally Interesting.
Pluggers, if your ‘senior moments’ last more than a couple hours, please consult your doctor. Actually, find a loved one who can consult a doctor for you, you’ll probably forget.
H&J You know those kinda sound like vague threats. Is the restaurant getting robbed? I’m pretty sure it’s getting robbed.
H&J: The guy totally in shadow with the mysterious, ominous axiom—he’s death, right? The only reason Herb is smiling is that he’s come for Jamaal.
CROCK: If the guy in black didn’t have a nom de guerre before, he’s got one now: Bitty Bladder.
PLUGGERS: He came out to tear off his clothes and howl at the moon, of course.
RMMD: Augie’s best option here is gaslighting. “WHAA? Of COURSE it’s not about you! Summer/Autumn? A coincidence!”
MW: Sunny grows with every meal. Ian will come home to a humongous parrot bulging out of the apartment, with Toby squashed somewhere beneath him
As the Pogo characters used to say, “Don’t take life so serious, son–it ain’t nohow permanent.”
Herb and Jamaal:
“Of course, there’s an undistributed middle here: no news. But no news is also only temporary. So, since every conceivable state of being associated with news is only temporary, there’s no point in my making a comment about any of it at all!”
There’s at least three different ways that a black catsuit is a bad outfit for desert warfare.
Pluggers:
Why do Pluggers’ limbs and fingers always look like oversize Milk-Bones?
@Lord Flatulence: I might expect someone with your username to proudly admit he pees in the dessert.
Crock:
“Urine a lot of trouble for not going before we started the battle!”
MW:
“My goodness, you’re such a wonderful bird! You know, the odds must be, therefore, that you escaped by accident from the dwelling of some caring homeowner — perhaps even a vulnerable child who is fretting incessantly about what might have happened to you and whether and when you’re ever coming back. But I’m not going to bother asking around to see if that might be so, because I’m utterly solipsistic and self-absorbed, and the only interaction of yours that matters as far as I’m concerned is your interaction with me, me, me!”
Now that raking season is over and no additional hands are required to work the estate, Lois prevents the dynastic marriage from being consummated.
H&J: When one middle-aged man speaks to another middle-aged man, there’s no need to get specific:
“Feels good to empty my bladder but the feeling is only temporary.”
FC: Something about the overflowing cards stuffed all around and under his arm, the missing left arm creating the impression it’s twisted around his back and he writhes and wriggles to keep them from falling. It’s got a real single-panel slapstick vibe to it that I’m unironically enjoying.
Phantom: Something I enjoy, ironically, is the Phantom’s nesting doll of secret identities: Kit Walker —> Phantom —> Unknown Commander —> John X. The icing on the cake is that none of these are in any way necessary because literally nobody knows who Kit Walker even is, especially Kit Walker.
Pluggers: It’s a good thing that our dog-man can use his powerful nose to prevent himself from becoming totally lost in the field he’s apparently in the middle of. Of course, that’s assuming that Plugger noses haven’t evolved to become vestigial organs of their former selves after years of suburban living…
Pluggers: I’m relatively confident that this is the exact scenario that Silver Alerts were created for, by which I mean “dementia-related wandering onto compounds filled with sovereign citizens seeking to establish a dog-supremacist ethnostate.” It is Idaho, after all.
How to stretch “This too shall pass” into three panels.
Also Pluggers: Idadog? No, you da dog! (Workshop this.)
The face of this sage is left deliberately dark, to make his truth more universal. But from his words, you get that he is King Solomon
MW: The attendant looked through the grate in the heavy, locked door and observed the blond woman sitting in the cell beyond. She was smiling as she stroked her pillow, cooing gently and promising a welcoming home and a space in her spare room. The attendant shook his head and slid the cover over the grate.
“I don’t think her husband is going to want to spend more money to get ANOTHER cell,” he remarked to the nurse who stood nearby. “He was practically apoplectic when he realized what this place was going to cost him just for his wife to stay. He’ll go nuts if we tell him he has to spring for an extra cell, just for his wife’s pillow!”
@The Quiet Man:
Luann: Next week, new adventure!*
[…]
*We go back to Luann and Bernice sitting in Luann’s room staring off into space.
The sad part is that THAT might be one of the preferable scenarios. It could be one more week (or worse, several) of this. It could be Les and Gunther instead of Luann and Bernice.
Worse, it could Bwad & Toni… and SHANNON.
@Charterstone: Dune:
On the Phantom, and Kit Walker : as far as I can tell, the Phantom maintains a “secret identity” ENTIRELY for the mystique
*. Like, one of his bits is supposed to be “No one has ever seen the Ghost Who Walks unmasked and lived”, so that’s why he wears a mask.…One of the themes you run into when you riff on the Phantom is “Traditions are WEIRD; some of them are being scrupulously maintained despite their meaning not having that much relevancy anymore”, huh?
* and possibly because he likes trolling and gaslighting Colonel Worubu and the Jungle Patrol“Senior moments that can last all day” is the euphemism the children of Pluggers prefer, because if they used the word “dementia” they would have to pay for elderly care
Pluggers: It’s kind of sad to see the last of the Van Helsing line reduced to this.
Crock: PSHAW! If he were any kind of real invader, he’d just pee on the corpses.
H&J: Just turn it into the Facts of Life theme song, and you’ll be good.
Hi and Lois-
“Huh. You know, Mom, I was pretty sure you’d prefer we didnt do it in the den, but I guess it’s your house.”
Herb & Jamaal: You know what they say, only three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and vague conversations in Herb & Jamaal.
Also Herb & Jamaal! Appointment in Harlem, the long-awaited sequel to John O’Hara’s classic novel, gets off to a vague start, but it [checks Condensed Notes on Literature] stays that way throughout.
Luann: It’s so delightful to see caricatures acting like caricatures.
CS: Yeah, Crankshaft! You don’t see Dinkle carrying all his trophies to choir practice!
9CL: This is definitely how healthy relationships work. Get help, Brooke.
GT It’s retcons all the way down as the “Emily/Mimi was an unjustly-suppressed football player” retcon is revealed as the setup to get the “Mimi always was same-sex attracted” retcon – well, I guess it’s better than the writer’s bad sports action?
Pluggers: The leading cause of death among Pluggers is exposure.
Crock: I know this is just the classic Crock art style (i.e. deranged scribbling) but have the soldier’s testicles swollen up? Does he need the toilet that badly??
Zits today could have been a Dustin, and I do not care for it. No sir, I do not.
FC: It’s the prequel everyone is talking about: Now You See Me, Now You See All of Me.
MW: Sunny is like the child Toby will never have with Ian.
Dustin: Technically, Fitch, you were wrong first. Now, I would have been tempted to reply to her inquiry with, “Wow, my name rhymes with yours.”
Herb & Jamal – Like most of you, I just came here to find out whether that’s a comically large spatula or a fly swatter. The good news is that neither option is better than the other. The bad news is, they’re both terrible.
Herb & Jamal is pivoting to a new era. Gone are the days when the punchlines are so vague they’re impenetrable. Now we can’t even see half the characters’ faces. Not a step forward but certainly a step.
H&J: If you keep making that face, someday it’ll get stuck…whoops, too late!
Phantom: “In my office, commander. Standing by, like a dork, with my pith helmut on, waiting for further insructions.”
“Pluggers be sundowning,” may not be a positive message, but it’s certainly a message!
Dustin: Wow, is the name of this place “The Mean Girl Bar?” I mean, not a nice one in the bunch.
@Chance: With pride!
Don’t worry, plugger. You’ll remember when the smell of rotting meat comes wafting from the trunk of your car. And you’re a dog, so you’ll notice is a lot sooner than a human would!
***
I’d like to leave a sincere note of appreciation for Herb and Jamaal for not having some intern colour it in each day and keeping the stark black and white of a classic daily newspaper comic strip. I’d appreciate it even more if it was funny, but I’ll take what I can get.
Pluggers – Sundown, you better take care / If I find you been teasin’ a confused bear.
“Oh, right, my bucket list included seeing a sunset. Welp, there it is. Time to die.”
Herb and Jamaal: I assumed he meant that the good news is that the bad news is temporary and the bad news is that the good news is temporary.
Also, why is faceless guy saying this and not Herb who tends to wax philosophy regardless?
Why is Herb looking at me like that while they discuss mortality?
Wait, I’m a fly aren’t I? Herb is going to swat me with that spatula isn’t he?
MW – “And I will hug you and squeeze you and call you George.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Baby, please let me sit on your lap!”
“Oh, then you’d be just like a funny ventriloquist dummy”
“NO”
“A cursed ventriloquist dummy with an evil mind of its own!”
@Peanut Gallery: There was a bizarre episode of The Flintstones. Where Fred shrunk down to doll size. He and Barney ended up with a scheme to use Fred as the dummy in a ventriloquist act and make millions.
The shrinking ends up wearing off mid-performance.
And this is before the show jumped the shark with The Great Gazoo. (Although many believe that it already did so back when Pebbles was born)
@Weaselboy: Ohhh, that’s comment of the week right there!
Me, I was just wondering if Sundowning Bear has been standing there literally ALL DAY wondering why. Maybe sunstroke finally got to him, and he’s about to pass out!
Pluggers: Josh, your comment confuses me. Don’t most duels take place at high noon? Was this poor bastard SUPPOSED to fight a dude and just forgot where it was being held, and will now live forever branded a coward?
Ah, the feigned retreat, a classic FLN tactic. Engage the French forces, fall back to an ambush position (where the bulk of your force is already stationed), and wait for the French pursuit. The massacre of Crock and his men will become a centerpiece of Bernard Fall’s Algeria work, but will be ignored as an aberration by État-major de l’Armée de terre, with tragic results along Route One in Indochina. The seeds to today’s defeat are always planted in the past.
Writer of Herb and Jamaal: There we go, another philosophy down, now I’ll think of another one for tomorrow.
(Assistant whispers into his ear)
“What? comic strips aren’t supposed to be about philosophy, but literal humor? What have I been doing for the past 20 years??” -sighs- “back to the fortune cookie factory for me.”
FC: B
Billy comes over and punches Jeffy hard. “What!? He asked me to “deck” him.”
Big Bil points at Jeffy and laughs; “He’s got you there, boy.”
Curtis: It’s been a while since we’ve seen Curtis and his Farting Stars, but this is due to him thrown out of the kitchen rather than a spanking. So…. physically manhandling your child over beatings. Yeah?
I am gradually practicing my drawing skills, so I could maybe someday share my own comic with you guys.
Say, hypothetically an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade parody. Where Indy is a dog, and instead of a room full of Grails it’s dog chews.
Knight Templar Spirit: Chews wisely…
That’s all I have. But at least its an attempt at a joke, which is more effort than Bianca Xunise, Hi and Lois or whoever writes Herb and Jamaal.
Pluggers: “Almost sundown” is what we call an “informed attribute”. Without Earl saying so, I’d think it’s midday.
Can’t believe I’m doing this department: Gil Thorp gives a bit of effort, with the stars, dark sky, and shadows.
FC: Jeffy’s “ace up his sleeve” ploy gets off to a rough start. The playground mafia will discover he’s cheating and break his fingers.
They take Go Fish seriously ’round these parts.
Blondie: Gotta admit Dagwood knowing anything by Todd Rundgren is a surprise.
H&L: Yes, Lois, do that to the couple you were shipping just a week ago. Don’t you want grandkids?
Crock: Could someone enlighten me? What does panel 3 have to do with panels 1 and 2?
@ValdVin: Just looks like autumn leaves rather than a sunset.
Edit: Oh wait, I messed that up. Oh well.
H&J: ” ‘…and the bad news is that it’s only temporary.’ Anyway, they said my updated Magic Eight Ball was too wordy.”
@ValdVin: Then they make him “Go Fish” literally with a pair of cement sneakers.
Pluggers reminds me of an experiment done about ten years ago, that showed that walking through a door does in fact make it more likely you’ll forget what you were doing. It came as such a relief to know that’s normal, and not because I’m going senile. Sadly, today’s plugger is in a door-free environment.
MW panel 4, Sunny’s thought bubble: “Hello from New York. I’m a human empath. It’s a long story. Escape Sunny escape! Two dogs will be waiting at the bottom steps with cab fare. Get away now!”
@Ken: I’ve been battling with amnesiac thresholds since I was in my twenties.
H&J: Up until now, I would have assumed you couldn’t finesse the phrase “this too shall pass” into a comic punchline without descending into Marvin territory. Now I know that you can’t.
Pluggers are the reason Silver Alerts exist.
Wait, senior moments that last all day would be dementia… someone should, uh… should probably check on the artist, editor, and person who submitted this comic to make sure they’re okay.
Pluggers: Pluggers are REALLY proud of their early onset dementia for some reason.
Herb And Jamaal: This would probably be less creepy if the guy Herb is listening to wasn’t colored like a pitch black void in every panel, giving the impression he is some inhuman entity from beyond the veil.
@Liam: MW-“You shall be my new lover.”
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Cool Mary Worth/Flash Gordon crossover! Toby and Sunny turn out to be the legendary start of the Parrot men civilization! Wait till Mary the Merciless finds out!
@ectojazzmage: I mean it’s not hard for a seasoned comic artist to draw a generic face. Archie comics does it all the time and prides on it (with all the inexplicitly detailed randoms in the backgrounds and foregrounds)
@Ken: Sometimes my Mom and I forget the same thing at the same time. Like a celebrity’s name. We both know it, but we for whatever reason forget in tandem.
In the old Rupert Bear cartoon, one of surreal fantasy parts of the setting, is that everyone’s memories are sorted in a giant bank-like vault, with memories being literal papers that are sorted in drawers, one drawer for every person in the world.
If you forget something, then that memory had been removed from the drawer, if someone else remembers, then your memory was misplaced in their drawer by mistake.
Sure it was kiddie, but god that show was fun.
@taig: The experiment was elegant. There’s a large open room, with a table at the far end with things. Subjects are told “go get the scissors,” and have a high success rate. Put a wall with a doorway between them and the table, the rate drops considerably.
@matt w: “As the Pogo characters used to say, “Don’t take life so serious, son–it ain’t nohow permanent.”
Thank you. I love this quote and have overused it shamelessly for my whole life.
DT The repeated insistence that Scott Somner was completely virtuous and unerring (and therefore justified in whatever he did) is perhaps closer to the Buford Pusser legend than the writers would like to admit.
Dustin: The headlines of the past week, which have reminded us all that men of wealth and power believe themselves entitled to whatever female company they desire without bothering about little things like consent and legality, makes Parker and Kelly’s usual undercurrent of misogyny even more unpalatable today.
GT: Ah, I see now. This flashback is set in the early 1980s (despite the fact that it puts Emily on the far edge of being capable of having a ten-year-old son in 2025) because they wanted to play up the forbidden lesbian romance thing. If this took place in a more generally permissive era they’d have to retcon Emily’s (late?) mom as homophobic to make it work, which would mean examining their relationship in greater complexity and detail (especially as Emily has been shown caring for Mom during her final illness), which obviously they don’t want to bother with.
JP: Maybe Sophie can hook up with the lighting designer who has provided her with that great follow spot.
MW: “I just assume you turned up in the middle of southern California on your own, and that you’re not an escaped pet or zoo animal that others might be looking for, so there’s no reason for me not to keep you! We’re going to be such great friends!”
RMMD: “Really? Well, let me know when you get to the part where Autumn and her handsome teacher boyfriend…well, you’ll see. I’m, ah, eager to hear what you think of that scene.”
SH: The more this strip plays with the concept of animals capable of communicating with and occasionally becoming humans the more it runs into the fact that, as a matter of course, some of those animals survive by killing and eating the others, and it never handles that as deftly as it thinks it does.
bacön: What hot dogs complain about.
Adam@Home: Adam writes a novel about Wilbur.
@79 Sequitur: I’m sure Wilbur Weston could make the same remark when he’s standing in the condiments aisle at the SantaRoyMark facing the mayo shelves.
9CL: Will all 3 move to Utah and become Mormon just so he can marry both? It might be better for the twins to resolve their daddy issues and find different men (of their own age) to date.
Is the implication here that Plugger Dogman has been standing aimlessly in the desert for the entire day, repeating “why did I come out here, again?” every hour since sunrise?
Is One Big Happy in perpetual reruns? On ArcaMax, it says Copyright 2025, but the little stamp between panels says 2019, which has been the case for months now. Some comics I remember from then, others seem brand new to me…yet they all say 2019. What gives?
JP: Reena is always out with Aksel. Are they still running from sudden melees breaking out in Aksel’s workplace, and then returning later to a miraculously tidy and peaceful setting?