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Crock, 12/19/25

The sentence that most bothers me here is “It’s me again,” implying that we’re seeing another installment in a long-running drama between Crock and the … guy? … who’s calling him on the phone. At first I thought this was the same salesperson who annoyed him at dinner last month by calling during dinner and trying to sell him a banking credit card; but while on the surface the dialogue in panel one seems like it could be from someone hawking storm windows, it’s a wildly unprofessional sales pitch, and frankly sounds more like someone who’s only heard about sex second- or even third-hand initiating an obscene phone call. Anyway, Crock’s comeback is not as withering as he seems to think it is, and certainly doesn’t merit an entire panel dedicated to the triumphant slamming down of the phone in its wake.

Mary Worth, 12/19/25

This is honestly a fascinating exchange: Ian has gone fully mad, convinced that Sunny is no mere mechanical repeater of sounds but rather a fully fluent user of the English language, which makes the question of where he learned specific terms irrelevant, and that’s good for Toby, whose “Uh, maybe he heard it from [tries desperately to think of TV shows that have swear words] PBS” gambit is truly one of the least plausible things I’ve ever seen someone in this strip come up with, which is really saying something.

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Crock, 11/26/25

So, how old were you when you learned that “stuffing” an animal actually meant that you strip its skin off and fit it over an animal-shaped taxidermy form — a mannequin, basically? I was well into adulthood, and it was recent enough that I’m still a little freaked out about it. In this scenario, I guess this means either that Yarnell was for some reason skinned and then mounted on a prone form that fit into a coffin, which seems kind of pointless, or that he was skinned and mounted on a form in some heroic pose which is being displayed elsewhere, and currently his skinless corpse is the main event at an open casket funeral, which is much more horrifying and would explain Captain Poulet’s expression. It’s also possible that I’m misinterpreting the joke and actually Crock is simply going to force his men to eat Yarnell for Thanksgiving, a holiday that the French do not celebrate.

Shoe, 11/26/25

Holy crap! Shoe finally did it! It finally acknowledged that its characters are birds! And it did it with a slam on all us mammals out here reading it. “Can you imagine having hair?” thinks the Perfesser. “Grotesque.”

Dennis the Menace, 11/26/25

Hey, did you know that at any moment Dennis might just show up at your house and passive-aggressively ask to shit in there? That’s … pretty menacing, honestly.

Marvin, 11/26/25

“Oh, so they’re doing bathroom jokes in Dennis the Menace now, huh? Well, I guess it’s time for us to do strips about Marvin puking everywhere. I don’t like it either, but we’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

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Pluggers, 11/14/25

I have to admit that I’m intrigued by the “come out here” formulation. This isn’t a plugger who has walked into the living room and forgotten what task he was pursuing; this is a dog-man who has gone somewhere, for some purpose now mysterious to him. “Let’s see … was I supposed to sell my soul to the devil? No, it’s sunset, and that’s more of a ‘midnight at the crossroads’ thing. Maybe I challenged someone to a gunfight as the sun went down? But wouldn’t I have brought my gun? I’m pretty sure I would’ve brought my gun.”

Crock, 11/14/25

Man, you read Crock every day for 20 years and you assume you know all the stupid lore but then you read a strip and learn that the shirtless guy in the fez is named “Pretty Boy”. This is pretty dumb, but in a strip where the cowardly guy is named “Captain Poulet” and the woman who’s supposed to be ugly is named “Grossie” and the evil commandant is named “Vermin P. Crock,” having a character with a sarcastic name represents a quantum leap in semantic complexity. Unless this guy is actually meant to be read as attractive? Possible, I guess. Anyway, one of his soldiers has to pee, which has foiled his attempt to capture the Legion’s fort and kill everyone inside.

Herb and Jamaal, 11/14/25

Hey now, the whole point of Herb and Jamaal is to be non-specific and, occasionally, quite confusing. I don’t need Herb smiling wryly while he contemplates his mortality! I have the entire archives of Funky Winkerbean for that!