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No comment of this truncated week, folks — we’ll let pugfuggly have the place of pride till next Friday!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/3/25

OK, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, you have to decide: is Hootin’ Holler an impoverished and isolated community in one of America’s neglected rural byways, or is it, you know, in the past? “Hillbilly times,” or whatever? You could be forgiven for saying “Josh, it’s obviously in the past, what are you talking about” but if that’s the case, then how come the strip’s hillbillies know about bitcoin and pickleball, huh, smart guy? Anyway, my point is that Jughaid absolutely does not know what a pocket watch is, nor does he understand the modern industrial economy, because if he did he’d know that Santa isn’t about to retool his entire production line just because one kid wants a pocket watch, c’mon.

Tina’s Groove, 1/3/25

“Say,” you’re probably wondering, “does Tina, the title character of Tina’s Groove, a comic strip currently in reruns that Josh talks about extremely intermittently on his blog, have much a love life?” Answer: she does, and it’s just as depressing as everything else she has going on. I do like that this guy has a picture of her on his desk, where to me she looks as shockingly depressed as she always does. It’s like he looked right into her gloomy soul and decided “Sure, whatever,” and I think that’s sweet.

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Pardon My Planet, 12/22/24

One of my least favorite genres of “Images You Can Buy On A Poster Or T-Shirt” is “Two Dead Celebrities Dressed In Vaguely Rockabilly Outfits And One Is Giving The Other One A Tattoo And The Whole Thing Feels Vaguely And Unpleasantly Sexual.” I’ve seen this with Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn (on a giant poster hanging in the men’s room of a restaurant that seemed otherwise respectable) and Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein (on a t-shirt hanging on rack outside a store in Italy). This comic isn’t quite the same thing but I think we can agree it’s in the same general ballpark, and that ballpark is distasteful.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/22/24

No, I don’t buy this at all. A Christmas Carol is famously one of Dickens’s shortest books and Snuffy is a notoriously stunted and gnome-like man and was presumably even smaller as a child. I’m beginning to suspect he can’t tell different books apart, possibly because he’s illiterate.

Marvin, 12/22/24

Can you imagine feeling like you have to continue to live with Marvin, for you own safety and survival, and the thought of being separated from him sends you into a state of panic? Bleak stuff.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/15/24

Geez, man, what kind of weird Slylock Fox-ass riddle-telling meteorologist do these Snuffy and Lukey listen to. “Frozen precipitation,” oh ho ho, you’ve really tricked all your listeners. Jerk. Oh, if King Croesus crosses the Halys River, a great empire will be destroyed, is that it? I guess I forgive these guys for living in a violent culture where civil society and independent information sources are regarded with suspicion and paranoia if this is the kind of shit they have to put up with.

Mark Trail, 12/15/24

Oh, not much to see here, just Mark and Cherry Trail urging you to go out and buy some GROW LIGHTS for your indoor “herb garden.” That’ll spice things up, will it??? This is clearly about DRUGS and you two should be ASHAMED.