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Archive: Gasoline Alley

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Friday is for fluids

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Shoe, 2/16/24

I was about to start this post with “Sorry I’m the Perfeser facial expression parser now,” but why should I apologize for that? You, my faithful readers, have specifically chosen to point your browser to josh reads dot com, the Comics Curmudgeon, or have perhaps even paid to receive post from that domain via email, so surely you of all people want the facial expressions of a clinically depressed cartoon bird man explicated to you, in a curmudgeonly way. Anyway, today’s strip is about how the Perfesser, in addition to being very depressed, is an alcoholic. You can tell because he looks like he wants to die in the first panel but after downing a tumbler of liquor in the second, he looks like he’s on top of the world. It won’t last!

Gasoline Alley, 2/16/24

We still don’t know what the shocking news in Gasoline Alley is, but we’ve heard characters talking a lot about how shocking and disturbing it is, and now Walt is going on a hunger strike, so I’m assuming it’s something like “LOCAL VET OF WORLD WAR I STILL ALIVE, GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS AIM TO HARVEST HIS BLOOD TO CREATE IMMORTALITY SERUM”

Marvin, 2/16/24

“Our readers love it when we talk about Marvin pissing. Love it! But like all fetishists, they always need to escalate. What they want to see now is Marvin being pissed on. There’s nothing that the millions of sickos who read Marvin want more than to think about a toddler who’s simply covered in dog piss” –the Marvin creative team, who must be stopped, by the intervention of the U.S. military special forces if necessary

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Honest Josh’s Comics Emporium

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Gasoline Alley, 2/12/24

Good (?) news, everybody: Slim didn’t freeze to death in his car, and it turns out that the supposed “love note” his wife found was from his granddaughter, so everything’s fine! Or … is it? The newspaper and TV are telling them something unbelievable. Probably something about how the martyred Abraham Lincoln’s memory is being used to promote a sale on sofa beds or Toyotas or something, as panel two hints.

Family Circus, 2/12/24

A friend of mine had a kid who used to just describe strangers to them in public, e.g., “You’re bald,” “You’re short,” etc., and when my friend told her she couldn’t do that because it was rude, she just started looking people in the eye and saying “I’m not allowed to name you.” Anyway, most of the darnedest thing saying in the Family Circus is pretty stupid, but “you have a beard but you just have a face” is the sort of genuinely off-putting thing a child Jeffy’s age might actually say and I frankly think this strip should do more like it.

Shoe, 2/12/24

It’s good to see the Perfesser has finally realized he doesn’t have any loved ones, not Skyler or anyone else, who care enough about him to plan or pay for his funeral, so if he doesn’t want to just get dumped in the river, he’s got to put something together himself. Will tacos be enough to get his various vague acquaintances, like Roz and the guy who fixes his car, to show up? Only one way to find out, though I guess he’ll never really know for sure.

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The circle of life

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Gasoline Alley, 1/29/24

One of the central and increasingly untenable contradictions of Gasoline Alley is that it is and always has been a strip where the characters age in real time, but it’s also a strip that’s been continuously published since 1918, and Walt Wallet, one of its central characters, is now improbably someting like 130 years old. But they can’t let him die, or even retire gracefully to the semi-fantastical Old Comics Character Home like they hinted they would back in 2006 and 2013, I guess because extensive market research showed that once Walt is allowed to stop suffering, the few remaining Gasoline Alley trufans will simply abandon the strip and do something more interesting with their lives. Anyway, that same research showed that nobody gives a shit about Slim, so, uh, RIP Slim, 1970(?)-2024, you taught me that it’s pretty easy to freeze to death in your car.

Dennis the Menace, 1/29/24

Saw what you will about Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC not being innovative, but they were the ones who had the nerve to say, “Hey, I know in the ’80s they made us stop doing jokes about some of our characters being drunks, but what if we start doing that again, just to see if anybody still cares?” The experiment proved that, in fact, nobody did care, and now other comics are reaping the benefits. Ha ha, it’s funny because Mr. Wilson drinks to escape the pain of Dennis ruining his retirement, but now he’s old and he can’t really handle it anymore!

Dustin, 1/29/24

“Sure, yes, I have a device in my pocket that would grant me immediate access to health information, the lastest in journalism, the complete archives of Highlights magazine, and even soothing videos of fish swimming free in their natural habitat rather than suffering in a tiny, dirty tank. But I’m not going to take it out and look at it, on principle” –the Dustin dad philosophy distilled into its most potent and unpleasant form