Grim and grim(m)er
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Crock, 8/12/26
I’ll admit it: I am, in fact, a gentleman of a certain age, which means I must begin working out how I’m going to start facing mortality. Turning, as one does, to the comics for masculine role models, I learn that, if I feel my heart starting to give out on me, I should simply glare out over the parapet in manly silence waiting for it to pass (“it” here being either this cardiac event or my fleeting life on earth). And if anyone tries to engage me in conversation in my final moments? Well, that’s when I make it their problem that I’m dying, and make them feel bad about it.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/12/26
Pinocchio has what looks to me to be a big frown on his face, but maybe that’s just supposed to be what his face as a puppet looks like? Unclear. If it’s the latter, it’s depressing that he looks like that all the time, but if it’s the former it’s because he’s learning that the autonomy he long yearned for carries with it the terrible burdens of responsibility for one’s own personhood, which is frankly even more depressing.
37 replies to “Grim and grim(m)er”
Mother Goose and Grimm : PINOCCHIO VERY FAMOUSLY HAS NO STRINGS FOR ANYONE TO CONTROL HIM WITH! HE HAS AN ENTIRE SONG NUMBER ABOUT IT!
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“But don’t take any wooden nickels!”
Mother Goose and Grimm:
Thesis: all comic strip psychiatrists resemble Sigmund Freud. Discuss.
Well, Crock gives all appearances of French North Africa, 1920s, probably latest. So really, what treatment for chest pains was one receiving? Like, buckwheat cakes? It was always buckwheat cakes.
MG&G: I can’t help feeling that this is the puppet equivalent of masturbation, which makes it rather disturbing that this is all happening on the psychiatrist’s couch as he watches approvingly.
Wasn’t this guy in Team America: World Police?
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“Now that you’re exercising that control, have you, perhaps, decided on a course of study to pursue?”
“String theory!”
Mary Worth Mashups: Does it work when Mary’s involved in this little scene?
MW: Dawn runs home, sobbing. When Wilbur asks what’s wrong, all she manages to gasp out, winded, is “Tommy…Brandy…” Wilbur takes this to me than Tommy has traded drugs for liquor, and storms out to kick his ass with his Matrix moves.
The psychiatrist looks through his papers, retrieves a photo of a maple log.
“Now, tell me about your mother…”
RMMD Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, folks! At this point, Rene could call over the guard and rat them out and they would *still* be bewildered by how they got arrested
Mother Goose and Grimm:
Arms too long to hold
Strings too long to stretch taut.
That’s one tangled mess.
@Lauralot:
…or possibly to demand half of the brandy? There’s some quality cliff-sittin’ to do, here.
Crock: Yes, we should worry about his chest pain — but only if we can figure out which one of the parts jutting out of his upper body at weird angles is supposed to represent his chest.
Mother Goose and Grimm: I get that a) that’s supposed to be some generically classic psychoanalyst, and b) a lot of the “human” characters in this strip are given big noses, but c’mon — Pinocchio would have to tell a bunch of whoppers in a row just to have a schnoz anywhere near that size.
Flash Gordon : must be nice to have a veritable army of guys willing to die so that the pile of their corpses cushions your fall.
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Pluggers : It’s Lexicon. Wordgirl’s home planet.
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Wizard of Id : people don’t always do sales because they have a large stock of inventory they can’t sell and desperately need to get rid of! Sometimes they just need to get better numbers for the end of the month! And sometimes, they do a sale in advance of demand significantly increasing!
Crock:
“Perhaps it’s that triglyceride-laden sandwich you just conumed — made of Gruyere cheese, ham, bechamel sauce and white bread — that’s causing you such discomfort, sir. Why, you might croque, Monsieur!”
JP: Well, no one knows how to pad a story like Ces. I still have until the end of the week for the dramatic reveal before taking those two spoonfuls, Baja!
MW: So…. that whole business with ‘the pan’ was literally pointless. You could have run today’s strip yesterday and not missed a beat.
MG&G:
I have got strings I pull myself
They tangle up and life is hell
Just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
MW: If Dawn’s exclamation point could talk, it would say, “Whaaaaa?”
RMMD: It dawns on Rene that he’s dealing with the human version of The Goofy Gophers.
The fort’s roof is plummeting so fast that everyone in it will be dead before Poulet can deliver the good news.
@MKay:
On MW: Tommy’s girlfriend who he was devastated when she left town is now back and he’s happy to see her??? Whaaaa?
On RMMD: Hey now, the Goofy Gophers have outsmarted dogs, Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck. These two nitwits have nothing on them. They don’t even have proper manners!
Crock: If recent events has taught us anything, the possibility–nay, the inevitability–that a despised authority figure will die in the near future is not a sufficient substitute for the event itself.
MG&G: Pinocchio has the panicked look of someone who realizes he will need to hold his arms above his head for the rest of his life.:
@The Quiet Man, JP: “Curtis” has entered the chat.
C’shaft: In other news, congratulations to Myrtle Hill on her 30th successive state fair blue ribbon.
GT: I think they randomly made Coach Ochoa gay to prove that the constant dumping on Emily is not because she’s a lesbian, but because she had the temerity to divorce Gil.
Luann: Ah yes, paid maternity leave, that thing that Americans have so much access to.
MW: So the arc ends by putting a kibosh on the Dawn/Tommy (Dammy? Town?) shippers, if any.
Phantom: Yeah, paralyze him with intense hallucinations, that will make up for lost time.
RMMD: Why should they? Beatty obviously doesn’t.
Oh, come on Freud. You know Pinocchio has mother issues. The closest he has for one is a fairy who flutters in and out of his life with not a care in the world and how she is directly responsible for a certain part of his body growing whenever he lied.
RMMD: This week’s surprising twist: Rene/Jimmy talks them out of kidnapping and sighs with relief. Then as the twins leave, one says to the other “I guess we’ll have to go with our backup con game, murdering all the Morgans.”
FC-Hello, Grandmudda…..
MW-Now comes the overreaction.
Mother Goose and Grimm:
This is actually a pretty decent joke, even if Pinocchio isn’t normally depicted as a marionette. Still, maybe a bit more effort should’ve been put into ensuring the way his right hand is holding the control bar makes sense. As it is, it looks like one of the bars has penetrated his hand, which might explain his expression.
I’d never really thought about it, but Crock is basically The Wizard of Id in a different setting. Crock’s short and unpleasant because King Id is short and unpleasant; Crock’s aide de camp is lanky and cowardly because Sir Rodney is lanky and cowardly, etc.
Wait. [Sounds of googling]
Both strips were co-created by Brant Parker? Did you just get bored, Brant? Is this like when Hanna-Barbara thought they needed two Scooby-Doo franchises, so they created Goober and the Ghost-Chasers? Well, I know who I’m summoning at my next seance!
Deep philosophical questions in today’s Mother Goose and Grimm on the nature of free will and predestination, but honestly they’re also stupid philosophical questions, so let’s move on. Hey! That cat loves lasagna and hates Mondays!
@TheDiva: Gee, do you think Lillian is going to win yet another award? My money’s on that happening Saturday, and then them leaving the fair by saying “fair thee well!”
Crock: Are you all missing the point? This hated ‘leader’ is having chest pains and might soon expire. This news will send morale of the troops just soaring with joy and hope, that this a-hole will soon keel over dead and go directly to the hot place.
Does this sound vaguely like something our beleaguered country today might be going through? Champagne on ice, folks, fingers crossed.
CROCK: “Not now, I got chest pains. I’m in no mood to give the men handjobs today” (Why are you looking at me that way? He’s the one who said his boss needed to “lift their spirits.”)
@Victor Von:
Hanna-Barbera capitalized on the Scooby-Doo formula throughout the 1970s by producing numerous “Scooby clones” that featured teenage sleuths, unique vehicles, and eccentric mascots. This distinct lineup includes Goober and the Ghost Chasers (featuring an invisible dog), Jabberjaw (a rock band with a talking shark), The Funky Phantom (sleuths joined by a Revolutionary War ghost), Speed Buggy (teenagers traveling with a sentient, talking car), Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels (three women solving crimes with a thawed-out caveman), Clue Club (detectives accompanied by two talking bloodhounds), The New Shmoo (comic reporters with a shape-shifting blob creature), Josie and the Pussycats (a touring girl group thwarting mad scientists), and The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (ten siblings solving mysteries alongside their detective father).
@Schroduck:
Anyone familiar with The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio? It is a 1971 softcore sex comedy parody directed by Corey Allen that reimagines the classic fairy tale as a bawdy 1970s exploitation film. In this version, a lonely woman named Geppetta carves a male puppet who is brought to life by a fairy godmother (played by cult icon Dyanne Thorne) as a handsome human man. The story’s famous lie-detecting gimmick is flipped so that it is not Pinocchio’s nose that grows, but his genitalia, which enlarges every time he commits an act of loveless infidelity. He is subsequently exploited by a local brothel.
MW:
“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake — Brandy, plan!
Make me a spliff as fast as you can!”
Mother Goose and Grimm-Sadly though Pinocchio has been unable to tell a lie for years.