The Comics Curmudgeon

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118

Who needs the TV show to experience a dark, gritty Riverdale

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Hi and Lois, 3/9/26

Happy Monday, everyone! It’s another week and another entry in what’s quickly becoming my favorite genre in the comics: Hi and Lois muses melancholy on a single, ephemeral moment and forgets to deliver a punchline. “Isn’t this what the groundhog predicted?” Hi says, barely audible — but that’s fine, as he isn’t really talking to Lois anyway. “Isn’t it true that none of us can bend Fate to our liking?”

Archie, 3/9/26

Archie is traditionally a happy-go-lucky guy who rarely experiences distress deeper than some minor romantic slight at the hands of one of his two beautiful girlfriends. I’m not saying I like the fact that he’s experiencing some sort of profound mental disturbance right now, but at least it adds a little depth to his character.

Mary Worth, 3/9/26

Oh wow. Oh wow. Exactly the wrong thing to say, Harvey. Mary was going to try to gently guide you away from your current troubles by means of her judicious advice. But now? Now she’ll simply watch impassively as you let your sexual urges and romantic vanity override your good sense and lose everything, until you’ve sent your last bitcoin and abruptly stop receiving blatantly AI-generated photos of a twentysomething gal with a huge rack, until you need to take the bus down to the pawn shop to hock your only remaining cravat. You’ll look up and shout “Save me!” and she’ll look down and whisper “No.”

171

Animals strike curious poses

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Mary Worth, 3/8/26

Five years ago, Mary tried to broach the question of whether Estelle was being grifted rather gingerly. With Harvey, she’s being somewhat more direct, and it immediately blew up in her face, though maybe that’s just his masculine pride kicking in and driving him to comically storm out of the room. It’s just like beloved [note to self: look up what kind of job “B.C. Forbes” has held or what sort of person they are before publishing this post and insert description here] “B.C. Forbes” says: if you don’t have your life savings drained every few years or so by a Cambodian-based criminal syndicate, you were leaving legitimate opportunities to have sex with hot babes much younger than you on the table!

Shoe, 3/8/26

I know, I know this is a perennial gripe of mine, but: You absolutely cannot do whimsical jokes about birds in a comic strip where everyone is a bird. This is a joke about a number of these characters’ peers committing violent, awful suicide! It’s pretty believable that they’d do it, since all the bird-people in this strip are very depressed, and with good reason, since they live in a world dominated by sapient birds where nevertheless KFC is a viable business.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 3/8/26

Now, this strip? Where Slylock Fox, a sapient animal cop in a world dominated by sapient animals, is providing enhanced security to a wealthy and influential sapient animal who is fairly obviously wearing a fur coat? That doesn’t make me mad at all. That’s just how the world works. That’s a mystery that kids need to learn how to solve a lot more than anything about gloves and how people won’t pick up just one lying there by itself no matter how lovely it is.

132

A “mud mountain” is a classic OSHA safety violation

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/7/26

Look, normally when an employer is reluctant to tell you his last name, that’s a red flag. But in this case, it’s just because he’s desperate to get someone working as a waitress because the notoriously sketchy Mud Mountain Murphy demands human companionship along with his food, which is honestly a much, much bigger red flag.

Blondie, 3/7/26

I continue to believe that Blondie is America’s most important window into the Boomer mindset, and what it reveals is that the Boomers love setting their phones on speaker and yelling into them more than anything. For once, Blondie’s weird rictus facial expression is actually kind of appropriate here. “Are you talking on speaker to a wrong number while I’m reading? Do I have that right? Is that happening right now?”

Gil Thorp, 3/7/26

Big news, everyone! Mimi has decided to not marry her girlfriend. Instead, she’s just going to get all her romantic and sexual satisfaction out of watching her ex-husband screw up. Oh, is Gil’s mother being a pain? Not Mimi’s problem anymore, and she’s loving it.