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Hello, faithful readers! Did you have a good Christmahanukkwanzaa? Are you ready for a return to comics blogging form, here on your favorite website, joshreads dot com? Well, good news: I’m back and prepared to read the comics so you don’t have to, once again.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/25/24

So what did you get up to on Christmas? Did you wait around for your doctor to call you up and tell you it was OK to walk on your treadmill, which he’ll only do after sarcastically asking, “I dunno, do you think someone might stab you the minute you leave the safety of your chair”?

Gil Thorp, 12/26/24

Or did you just straight-up go to jail, like Marty Moon?

Gasoline Alley, 12/27/24

Or did you give, or possibly receive, yet another cursèd doll, to go with the one your friend group already has, doubling the number of demonic toys out in the world and ensuring the ultimate destruction of the human race???

Mary Worth, 12/25/24 and 12/28/24

But whatever, I didn’t have time over the holiday week to think about evil dolls because Dawn’s Christmas Day hunk date turned out to be exactly the blockbuster event that I predicted. First up: turns out Dirk is kind of an asshole — ha ha, what are the paces he’s planning on putting her through that he requires her to protienmaxx at dinner? — but also, it turns out that Dawn 100% thinks of being vegan as a “diet” rather than an ethical framework for respecting animal life, so honestly I don’t feel that bad about it.

Mary Worth, 12/29/24

“Ha ha, Mary, I know, young people really do rush into things instead of taking the time to get to know somebody! It sure would be terrible if I got fingerbanged in the front seat of a car by some hunk I met two days ago instead of spending the last 20 years ‘getting to know’ an angry failed academic decades older than me! Ha ha!”

Mary Worth, 12/30/24

Uh oh! Conflict incoming! Will shallow hunk Dirk still accept Dawn if she has to wear glasses, like she used to?

Mary Worth, 12/31/24 and 1/1/25

Obviously he will not accept them, duh. Remember “negging,” the emotional manipulation technique promoted in the late ’00s by pickup artists and others amongst worst people alive? Well, Mary Worth has finally gotten wind of it in the year of our lord 2025, and obviously Dawn Weston is the first victim.

Mary Worth, 1/2/25

And it worked! She’s 100% in love with this guy, already, despite the fact that he has not been particularly nice to her! In 2025, we’re going to discover: is Dawn going to find that the thing she’s been seeking has been inside her all along? Or has the thing she’s seeking only gone inside her fairly recently? (I’m talking about Dirk’s penis, if that’s not clear.)

Curtis, 1/2/25

Oh, also, Curtis did another Kwanzaa storyline, but instead of being about cool shit like giant telepathic otters it’s about how when you die, you’re reborn as a child in an endless white void and are very confused until you eventually run into your mother. A bit theologically confused and zero giant magical animal content. I give it a C+, but I believe that 2025 has the potential to be at least a B-, comics-wise. Stay tuned!

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Judge Parker, 12/23/24

Aw, isn’t that nice? Sam is going to let Alan enjoy the holidays and wait until the new year until he yells at him for sheltering his criminal daughter. Personally speaking, I’d like to get it out of the way now, you know? No worse way to spend the holiday then dwelling on “Ah, what kind of pissy scold am I going to get from Sam Driver about my latest criminal antics” when I could be exchanging gifts with my family or getting drunk or whatever.

Blondie, 12/23/24

Look, I’m not afraid to say it: A giant stocking stuffed full with cookies and two kinds of meat sounds disgusting. It’s all going to get mixed together and lint from the stocking will stick to everything! I’m not a food snob by any stretch of the imagination but Dagwood’s whole deal is very gross.

Gasoline Alley, 12/23/24

Santa, famously, sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake. To this list of surveillance crimes, add another: every time somebody gives birth, anywhere in the world, he’s watching. He’s watching … and he remembers. He remembers everything.

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Hi and Lois, 12/21/24

Hmm, Ditto, interesting: canonically, in the Bible, Joseph doesn’t have any lines (in the sense that no direct speech is attributed to him), while the shepherds actually do, at Luke 2:15. So you’re not making a ton of sense here, unless … your play’s script is heretical??? Are they teaching heresy in our schools and/or churches (not actually clear where this is taking place) now? I think it really says a lot about society and such. Giving Joseph lines. Hmph. The very idea!

Gil Thorp, 12/21/24

Now, normally, “Guy falls off the wagon and immediately gets into an altercation with the cops while the locally beloved idiot teen who says ‘yeet’ all the time looks on and sadly says ‘yeet’” would be the point at which said guy has truly hit rock bottom. But this is Marty Moon we’re talking about. He let loose a string of on-air profanities at a teenager in a pirate outfit! He lost a bunch of money making “friendly” golf bets with a guy who looks like Ben Franklin! He’s got a long way to fall, is what I’m saying.

Gasoline Alley, 12/21/24

Oh, man, I don’t think I realized that Ida Knoe the evil talking doll left Arty the AI to die in his crashed spaceship on the surface of Mars! Unlike the children, Arty doesn’t need oxygen to live, but his batteries will eventually run out, so he’ll have days or maybe even weeks alone to contemplate his own failures and how they led to his inevitable doom. Not sure if Ida Knoe left him there because she was jealous of him or because her magical powers of teleportation won’t work on something without a soul.

Mary Worth, 12/21/24

RED ALERT, REPEAT, RED ALERT

BOWLING HUNK CHRISTMAS WEEK STORYLINE IN MARY WORTH

THIS IS NOT A DRILL