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Archive: Crock

167

Some gross stuff today, not gonna lie

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Crock, 2/3/25

Look, man: if you’re going to do a comic about a restaurant where they serve flies instead of fries, I think you can get away with just having the customer indignantly pointing at his plate, which is swarming with flies, and saying “I thought I get fries with this.” That could be it! That could be the whole comic. If you’re still not sure that people are getting it, I guess you could have a waiter saying “Oh, that’s a misprint on the menu.” A little on the nose, but sure. What you don’t need is an entire second panel where you spell out the joke in very literal detail. And look, probably the smart cynics will say, “Oh, you’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of Crock readers,” but as a daily Crock reader myself, I am telling you, we are capable of getting jokes! You don’t need to be so condescending. Reading Crock every day is punishment enough, the least you could do is treat us with common decency.

Blondie, 2/3/25

You know Blondie spent several minutes outside the door, gathering herself and preparing herself emotionally to see Dagwood sitting in a bathtub full of hearty soup, slurping it up with a big ladle or maybe just his hands. Honestly what she’s seeing in panel three is a best-case scenario, Dagwood-wise.

Six Chix, 2/3/25

Here’s some snowpeople engaging in straight-up cannibalism! Pretty messed up, in my opinion.

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Polysemy … Sarge’s greatest weakness

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Beetle Bailey, 1/16/25

I actually am curious about the chain of thought that determined which secondary Beetle Bailey character got the punchline said at him in this strip. Personally, I would’ve gone with Plato — the camp intellectual would’ve been wryly amused at Beetle’s use of linguistic ambiguity to shirk a few hours of duty. But Killer is staring at him blankly and clearly doesn’t get it at all. “How is this going to help get anybody laid?” he thinks. “We’re not keeping our eyes on the prize here.”

The Phantom, 1/16/25

Just think: a mere 17 years ago, the very notion of women joining the Jungle Patrol was a source of near universal derision. But today, the feminine beauty of the Jungle Patrolwomen is legendary, so much so that criminal perverts like this guy arrange to be brutalized by the Phantom just so he can experience a touch of their healing fingertips. This is a triumph of, uh, feminism? Probably?

Crock, 1/16/25

Not sure why this guy is so intimidated by a rifle-toting yahoo back home. My dude, you are in the Foreign Legion and are posted in the colonies! You have definitely done some war crimes, probably today.

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Love a newspaper headline that eschews proper nouns

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Crock, 12/5/24

If these two guys have names, I don’t know what they are — the Wikipedia Crock article just calls them “the men of Outpost 5,” and they don’t merit a mention on the official King Features Crock character list — but their deal basically is that the guy on the right is always reading letters aloud about life in his hillbilly home town back in France (?). Anyway, I find today’s bit actually kind of heartening. The guy on the left generally looks uninterested during these recitations, but it’s clear he’s been paying attention. He knows the lore!

Gil Thorp, 12/5/24

“Coach, let me rephrase that. It’s cool that you decided to come back from your extended sick leave and all, but I get the feeling you’re only doing it to engage in psychological gamesmanship against your hated rival and not because you’re interested in molding a new generation of student-athletes or anything like that. I’m just a teenager who wants to play football! I don’t think I should be going out there! I’m not equipped for the emotional complexity of this whole scene!”

Gearhead Gertie, 12/5/24

Some might say that having two near-identical drawings in this cartoon is “lazy,” but I think it really hammers home Gertie’s emotional state. Her beloved NASCAR is in danger due to internal conflict, and she’s not exactly sure who to blame or how it’s going to end — maybe if she stays very still and just vaguely shit-talks the legal system, everything will work out for the best.