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Curtis, 12/24/21

The most recent Curtis storyline has invovled our hero chaperoning Michelle to and from the dentist in her family limo because she’s neglected by her parents, and helping her home after she was extremely doped up on novacaine. This has taught him the true meaning of Christmas … and is maybe setting up the wildest Kwanzaa story yet? Only time will tell! Sadly, though, you will have to spend that time without me mocking the comics, because I am off on my end of year holiday journey and will be back January … 3rd? Ish? Stay tuned!

Oh, hey, also, remember last week when I promised you my return to live comedy, in Los Angeles? Well, our theater is taking a little Omicron Pause over late Dec/early January, so that’s postponed! Probably till February 4th! Stay tuned for more developments!

Finally, I will leave you with one last comment of the week for 2021:

“No need to spike the punch. But that didn’t stop me from spiking it anyway. Why am I like this, Hi? I was saving that booze for breakfast, and now I’m just gonna have to buy more.” –made of wince

These runners up were also very funny!

“A lot of you have been curious who Cynthia Ivy is. Well, guess what? You’re wrong to be curious! In fact, if you didn’t already know, her local news team has already revealed this information! Instead of being a grown adult like me, she’s actually a little girl! Just check out Glenwood’s obscure small-town news website and you can find out her name, her address, the school she goes to, what she looks like, who her friends are — everything! But you shouldn’t do that, because that’s bad! So please, do not seek out this fully available information now that I’ve confirmed it definitely exists and told you where you can easily find it!” –jroggs

“Leroy, you dummy! The line to see Santa is only three deep, man! This is your big chance! You have a bunch of things you could ask him for — like, maybe being put in a 50-year coma. Wouldn’t that be sweet?” –Joe Blevins

“Cassandra Cat used to dress like a temptress but now dresses like a lumberjack, probably to avoid accusations of sexism. Jokes on you, authors! You stop appealing to someone’s fetish just to end up pleasing someone else’s fetish! It’s Sisyphus pushing Rule 34 up a hill forever!” –Ettorre

“The line ‘We need to get diapers‘ not ‘I need to get you diapers’ heavily unnerves me.” –The Rambling Otter

“Mary Worth: When Barney Google is offpanel, he probably walks around thinking things like this about Snuffy and Loweezy.” –Anonymous

“I don’t know how broken up Dick really is. Having your admin assistant check eBay for the stolen crap isn’t really Dick trying his best, I mean hell, he hasn’t even shot anyone yet.” –jerp+jump

“Mary Worth has the luxury of walking around, freely thinking about how ugly Wilbur is, while poor Estelle has to constantly squash that thought if she’s going to get through the day and the night.” –jenna

“I heard somewhere that people are drawn to one another to learn lessons necessary for growth. [Mary is suddenly drenched in ominous shadow] You have not learned, Estelle. I am not done teaching you.” –Dan

“And that’s why I’m sittin’ here rappin’ / While my infant just never stops crappin'” –Peanut Gallery

“‘And now that I’ve put my face out there, I hope this won’t make too many problems for us.’ Hate to tell you this, my dude, but that face? Nothing but problems.” –els

“Does Does Kyle Vidpa’s wife have any expressions that don’t look like she’s being held at gunpoint?” –Violet

“Man, I would hate to see the Apparatus’ Gantt Charts. ‘Wait, wait, wait. This is all screwed up. You’ve got Recruit someone with management experience as a directly dependent task for Establish escort service, but there’s no duration calculated, and you didn’t even bother to include Corrupt with friendly package delivery service. How are you going to line that up with the Work Breakdown Sheet? Bro, do you even have a task code??? What is this, Waterfall Planning for Idiots?!’” –pastordan

“Blondie is a lot more entertaining if you imagine Alexander is just Dagwood’s younger self, terrible fashion sense and all, come to the present, and the two of them proceeded to get zooted on psychotropics while watching a Gene Autry marathon.” –Irrischana

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Crankshaft and Curtis, 12/1/21

I’m genuinely of the opinion that “gaslighting,” as a word, at one point conveyed a useful concept but has had its impact significantly reduced by ever-broadening use. But still! These two strips use a structure common to mild domestic comedies, where a child or old person is unfamiliar with or confused by a concept intuitively understood by an adult of a normal age. But in this case, the concepts are, respectively, “There’s a thing called a ‘smart pad’ that everyone has, maybe everyone is required to have” and “ghost flush,” and gosh darn it if I don’t feel as if I’m Ingrid Bergman being manipulated by Angela Lansbury and Charles Boyer! Am I an old person, like Lillian, flummoxed by the “smart pad” revolution and unable to remember where I put mine and increasingly suspicious that I don’t even own one? Am I a child, like Curtis, who has never heard of a “ghost flush” and would immediately assume that it was about a ghost, flushing? Am I full-on in the Berenstein Bears universe now? WHAT IS HAPPENING

Dick Tracy, 12/1/21

Oh wow, it looks like Dick’s decision to dabble in hoodies was actually just a way to help him to transition to full on disguises, huh. You know, I never pegged Dick as a supergenius or anything, but I have to respect the fact that he saw the flaw in in this criminal gang’s “Let’s wear identity-obscuring gimp suits at all times, even when we’re just hanging out with each other at the office” shtick before they did.

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Family Circus, 9/10/21

A lot has changed for me, both in my life and vis-à-vis my relationship to the comics, since I started this blog in 2004, and definitely the one change I would’ve been least likelty to predict is that I would come to have an occasional grudging admiration for the Family Circus. And I didn’t even have to become a parent for it to happen! Yes, the strip is like 75% darnedest-thing-saying and reused art by volume, but every once in a while you get a great image like today’s, when Daddy has very clearly just had the epiphany that he could be doing literally anything else right now.

Curtis, 9/10/21

Curtis is doing a thing this week where our title character confronts rival mobs of pro- and anti-mask parents in front of his school and I have literally no interest in engaging with it, but I do want to say that “Look, everyone, a child wearing his hat backwards wanting to speak!” is definitely the funniest thing I’ve read this week.

Mark Trail, 9/10/21

A lot has changed for Mark Trail over the years, too, but I’m happy to report that there is one constant in the Trailian multiverse and that is that Mark is absolutely ripped.