Archive: Crock

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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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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

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Crock, 6/9/24

Crock is a strip in perpetual reruns for obvious reasons, and today’s (“today’s”) strip is a delightful puzzle to try to figure out when exactly it was published. Honestly the list presented of things we’d all prefer to be shot to avoid is a testament to the long human lifespan, littered as it is with complaints both contemporary (Facebook) and outdated (boomboxes). If I had to guess, I’d peg this around 2009 or so, as social media started becoming unavoidable, the financial crisis had cratered many people’s IRAs, and health care and global warming were both issues the new presidential administration seemed poised to tackle. Old age, of course, will never go away as an object of fear and driver of those who would seek a more exciting death, but honestly trying to map all this out has only made it seem closer for me.

Six Chix, 6/9/24

OK, look, I know enough about modern mating rituals to know they happen on the apps, but as a happily monogamous married person, I don’t know much more than that. Do people use … hashtags, on the apps? Hashtags, the thing famously developed to make it easier to search on specific terms? Are people on the apps out there searching on “#annielikestocuddle”? People who want to cuddle, with other people named Annie, specifically?

Shoe, 6/9/24

Honestly rude of the Perfesser to blame the slovenly state of his home on his barely tolerated nephew/ward, when it’s quite clear that the mess is mostly his own doing. Very sad that, by design, the poor boy will keep getting the message that he’s an unwanted imposition right down to his uncle’s final moments.