Archive: Crock

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Crock, 11/18/20

The thing about Crock is that it’s years-old reruns of strips whose whole vibe was already years out of date when they were new, which I know doesn’t sound like the description of something that would be interesting to read every day, but it definitely delivers a fascinating, tangled mess of weird cultural attitudes! Like, today’s strip plays on that well-known belief that “librarians don’t have sex.” I mean, how could they have sex? They’re nerds! But the punchline here undermines this widely held stereotype: the bookmobile guy does, in fact, fuck. His paramour is named “Bertha,” though, so we can be reassured in the implication that she’s at least unattractive, and some small part of the world still makes sense.

Mutts, 11/18/20

This strip may not look like much, but it’s actually the end product of a long legal process in which the large and highly skilled team of lawyers on the payroll of Paws, Inc., ensured Garfieldian dominance over feline Monday-disliking for years to come.

Mary Worth, 11/18/20

tiny withered arm not connected to anything tiny withered arm not connected to anything tiny withered arm not connected to anything

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The Phantom, 10/24/20

Next week: NEW ADVENTURE!!!! Hopefully its climax will be as exciting as this one: The Phantom dozing off while his wife natters on about the romantic destiny of her teen son and their daughter’s friend.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/24/20

Good news! Adeela was about to have her life destroyed by a terrible combination of bureaucratic incompetence and institutional cruelty, but then one of the formerly most powerful people in the world was convinced to make a phone call and it solved all her problems! Everyone who’s more than one degree of separation from a current or former political leader can go fuck themselves, though.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/24/20

I am not a parent, but I know enough parents to sometimes get a glimpse of why the Family Circus has historically been beloved among parents, and I truly admire today’s panel, which features Daddy having been pushed to a place in his life where he’s attempting to earnestly reason with a pre-verbal toddler.

Mary Worth, 10/24/20

[cackling evilly] YES … YES! … IT’S A THREE’S COMPANY-STYLE MISUNDERSTANDING … BUT WITH CRACK AND/OR METH!

Mark Trail, 10/24/20

Mark’s new assignment is sending him to Happy Trail Farms, and based on the last two panels here, my guess is that he escaped from there years ago after being grown there in a vat.

Crock, 10/24/20

Like, a significant portion of the time the jokes in Crock are pretty difficult to parse, and normally I’d complain, but today? When the joke is about how beloved character “Maggot” got horny at the movies? I appreciate this protective layer of obfuscation.

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Pluggers, 10/15/20

Pluggers are lonely. So lonely! Who will talk to pluggers? Well, maybe if they just rifle through this seven-year-old phone book — the last one ever delivered to them — and see if any of the names ring a bell, they’ll find someone who will talk to them. They do this every nine months ago when everything just gets to be too much, and every time fewer and fewer people answer.

Crock, 10/15/20

Look, I’m not saying that I want characters in comic strips to be photorealistic humans. Far from it! That would ruin the fun of comics! I’m just saying if your the design of your one of your characters is an undifferentiated dumpling of flesh, whose protruding lower lip sits immediately above his hairy chest with no obvious jaw between thorax and brainpan, maybe it’s best that you don’t ask the reader to contemplate what the phrase “from the neck up” might mean to such a being.