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Crock, 12/14/23

Not that I will ever give up on my long-running feud with Crock, but even I have to admit that this is a decent joke. Sure, in order for it to really work for you, you have to know a little about the characters and understand that Captain Preppie’s whole bit is that he’s handsome and egotistical, but for my sins, I am someone who does in fact understand Captain Preppie’s whole bit, so it does, in fact, work for me. Sometimes you just have to give the devil his due (in this analogy, the syndicated newspaper comics strip Crock stands in for the Adversary, the Lord of Lies himself).

Dick Tracy, 12/14/23

I was about to do a riff here about how today’s Dick Tracy is aimed at the fairly narrow audience of people who like to erotically ruminate on the prospect of being bested in combat by Cate Blanchett weilding a rare book case in one hand and an épée in the other, but honestly that doesn’t seem like a particularly narrow audience now that I think about it. It’s probably significantly broader than the audience for the Dick Tracy comic strip, if we’re being honest.

Pluggers, 12/14/23

I’m on the record as being cranky when Pluggers just generalizes the long-contested definition of a plugger into “pluggers are old”, so I appreciate today’s strip, which tells us that pluggers are old and also their refrigerators are more disgusting than you could possibly imagine.

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Crock, 12/2/23

Today’s Crock is just a real rollercoaster and I feel like I have to document my approximate emotional state as it unfolded:

PANEL 1: Wait, a snowflake? In “winter”? In the Saharan Desert? No, absolutely not. And he’s talking about this as if it’s a regular occurence? Insane. Madness.

PANEL 2: Oh ha ha, have you heard that the mysterious nation of “China” has developed a relatively low-cost and acceptable-quality manufacturing sector, upending the traditional nature of global trade? Oh, what’s that, you had heard that? Because it’s not 1997 anymore, so actually you’re pretty well aware of it? Well, OK, I gue–JESUS CHRIST that is enormous, I don’t know WHAT it is but it is NOT a SNOWFLAKE

PANEL 3: Wow, wow, Figowitz is the most put-upon sad sack in the entire canon of Crock, and yet here he is, the first Crock character to receive a message from God Himself. Surely this direct communion with the Divine will change his life and put him on the road to happin–oh, huh, the snowflake melted. Guess it really was a snowflake and they really were in the Sahara after all, whaddya know.

Pluggers, 12/2/23

No rollercoaster here; I don’t care that this panel isn’t a “joke” per se and doesn’t really get us any closer to the answer to the age-old “What is a plugger?” question, I just love it because it’s a bear-man staring in trepidatious disgust at a frankly enormous clod of shit on his shoe. That’s what art is, to me, and I encourage newspapers to keep printing it.

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Crock, 11/3/23

A fun dynamic on this blog is that if I ever post anything to the effect of “Wow, this really makes no sense whatsoever, who on earth would do this/talk like this,” I will inevitably get at least one comment to the effect of, “Huh, Josh, actually if you weren’t a stupid American/coastal elitist/weirdo shut-in/feckless youth/cranky old man you would know that this is in fact very normal behavior, can’t believe you’re publicly embarrassing yourself like this.” But you know what, I don’t care, I don’t believe that anyone has reacted to the information that someone has bought a Harley-Davidson and the first thing they ask is what size Harley was purchased. I don’t believe it! There are many different model families of Harley and, it’s true, they do vary significantly by size, but I still don’t think that’s how you’d approach the question of finding out what kind of Harley your aged mother is has bought with her bingo winnings. Sorry! Roast me for saying this if you will! I gotta speak my truth!

Gil Thorp, 11/3/23

Say what you will about the comics as a medium, but if a TV show wanted to have a couple of of-the-moment superstars as guests, there would be tortuous negotiations and a lot of money changing hands, whereas a comic strip can just draw ’em and have them say whatever crazy shit you want. And since they’re public figures, they can’t even sue! Probably. “Hey, wasn’t this strip about vampires or something just a couple days ago,” you’re no doubt asking, and the answer is: no, wrong, that was a dream sequence, as opposed to today’s strip, where all the football players have hearts floating over their heads, which is definitely happening in real life.