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Crock, 6/1/25

Imagine if you petitioned Almighty God for a full accounting of all the evil you’ve done in your life. This is information that He, being omniscient, has at His fingertips, and, moreover, because He is omnibenevolent, he reveals your sins to you as a spreadsheet, the most perfect and versatile data presentation and manipulation format ever created. I usually hate on Crock, but I gotta say, as a real Excel head, I’m a fan of this one.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 6/1/25

A very realistic touch here is that in this pose the lithe yoga girlies have their foot fully up on their thighs, demonstrating a level of flexibility that Leroy and Loretta have not yet achieved. It’s not realistic that Loretta appears to just be having a conversation with Leroy at full volume in the middle of a packed yoga class, but I find it very funny nonetheless.

Judge Parker, 6/1/25

Oh, are you tired of Judge Parker strips where the characters just hang out together and whine about their various problems? Well, what if there was a strip where they hung out together and whined about refusing to talk about their various problems, huh? Would it make it any better if pretty horses were involved?

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Crock, 3/18/25

I kind of admire the thought process that went into constructing the current installment of “The Men Of Outpost 5 Read Letters From One Of The Men’s Hillbilly Hometown.” Obviously, you have this great joke about how the one guy is a dumb hillbilly who may have mastered the mechanical art of tying a shoe but doesn’t understand how the process fits into the larger context, where you generally tie both your shoes at once. But what gets me is how they decided to set that punchline up. What if he’s prompted to reminisce on this subject because his beloved friend and mentor died? What if he’s in mourning? That sure adds a fun little twist to the gag!

Marvin, 3/18/25

Marvin, the comic strip, debuted in 1982, so if time flowed normally for its cursèd inhabitants, then Marvin, the character, would be in his early 40s, and his parents would have long ago forgotten his awful infancy, which only lasted a couple of years, after all, or at least they would have sanded down the edges in constant retelling into a “we can laugh about it now” situation. But time doesn’t flow normally, and Marvin will remain a baby forever, and his parents will neither know the escape of him growing up nor ever truly get used to the horror. Thus the exclamation points in the second panel here: while this is the sort of bad behavior we expect from this terrible child, his parents are forever shocked anew, each psychic wound inflicted never healing into protective scar tissue.

Pluggers, 3/18/25

Pluggers long ago lost the ability to feel sexual arousal. But products? Well, pluggers sure do love a good product — looking at them, assessing them, trying to figure out how much they cost, then either nodding their head at a good price or shaking their heads at how expensive things are these days. They still have those pleasures, at least, even though others have long passed them by.

B.C. and Wizard of Id, 3/18/25

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the courting mores of modern times were mapped onto a previous era — the Stone Age, say, or a vaguely medieval period that also had magic in it? Well, today’s B.C. and Wizard of Id have the answers for you, my friends!

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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.