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Archive: Crock

198

Mostly military Thursday

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Mary Worth, 7/25/24

Hey, remember when Mary threw a surprise funeral for Wilbur’s fish? And lots of people Wilbur knew were there, and they all paid attention to Wilbur, and felt sorry for Wilbur? Wilbur sure remembers it! But now the era of paying attention to Wilbur is over, and all he has left to console himself with are his sad thoughts and his one alive fish. But what if … there were a way … with the resources he has at hand … to reproduce those heady, bygone days when all eyes and sympathy were on Wilbur? Wilbur is 100% going to Munchausen syndrome by proxy that fish, is what I’m saying.

Beetle Bailey, 7/25/24

I actually really enjoy the contrast between Sarge and Lt. Fuzz in the second panel here. Fuzz, an effete military bureaucrat, is pecking away at his laptop, indistinguishable from a middle manager at any civilian white-collar business. Meanwhile, Sarge, the masculine shaper of warriors, has only a single piece of paper on his desk, presumably containing a list of soldiers ranked by how thoroughly he has broken their spirits in preparation for the task of rebuilding them as dedicated killing machines.

Crock, 7/25/24

Algeria has huge oil and gas reserves; but the grinding colonial war there has disrupted production, and the people back home are now suffering through a fuel crisis while these two, who are supposed to be crushing the rebels and restoring the spoils of empire to the metropole, crack wise about farts from the safety of their fortified compound. Sad!

197

So it goes

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Crock, 7/15/24

Ah, just another day in the French Maghreb, with a difficult march ahead for our Legionnaires, though at least they have a promise from their commanders that they’ll be cared for this time … but wait, what’s this? A white flag of surrender flying above the fort? Ominous! Presumably the stragglers will not be left by the wayside because there simply will be no stragglers: most of the men will summarily executed en masse by the insurgents of the liberation army, while Crock and the other the officers, having made a deal to save their own skin, slip through enemy lines back to heavily fortified Oran or Algiers. Don’t worry, my vulture friends, your cravings will be satisfied indeed!

Hi and Lois, 7/15/24

Ha ha, that was kind of a downer, sorry! Anyway, chores, amiright? You gotta do ’em? I do like that Lois is holding a laundry basket here; she’s not a nag, she’s just someone willing to shoulder her share of domestic labor, and she wants to make sure everybody else does, too.

Alice, 7/15/24

Look, I’m a big fan of 20th century novelist Kurt Vonnegut, but he was not a doctor and also he’s dead, so I would simply not seek medical advice from him. Of course, I also wouldn’t trust him to prescribe medication to my parrot, so I supposed it’s been well established that Alice and I are on different wavelengths in this regard.

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Itchy/gross/spinning

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Gearhead Gertie, 6/27/24

I find Gertie’s husband extremely relatable here. Sometimes, when your loved one just shouts jargon from their special interest that just sounds like gibberish to you, you’ve got to use a very basic, widely understood term from the same topic area to simultaneously hook them in but tether them to the wider world. We’ve all been there! Also, I love to relax on the couch after a long day at work and read from a giant scroll.

Crock, 6/27/24

Despite my many jokes about the historical strips, I don’t actually expect Hagar the Horrible to be an accurate depiction of life in Viking-era Scandinavia, nor do I think Crock should adhere to the historical realities of French colonial North Africa; indeed, I recognize that the anachronisms are in fact the intended fun of the strip. That said, I would hope that the strips’ creators would give a little thought to world-building that goes beyond “these guys live in the desert so they have … sand in their underwear? probably?”

Beetle Bailey, 6/27/24

Man, I assumed those particles coming out of Beetle’s mouth in panel one indicated that he had eaten a bit of Cookie’s cooking and was immediately spitting the half-masticated food back into the buffet. But then I learned in panel two that he hasn’t eaten any of the food yet! Which is somehow much worse! Because what is that then