The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Archive: Gearhead Gertie

135

Ceci n’est pas une course automobile

Post Content

Gearhead Gertie, 11/20/25

Gearhead Gertie’s loved ones are trying to break through her epistemological bubble that only allows her to think about NASCAR nonstop through the power of art. They started simple, with representational paintings; unfortunately, she was quickly able to assimilate that concept into her warped worldview by conflating the signifier and the signified and treating NASCAR-related objects as meriting display. So now they’ve escalated to more abstract pieces. And it’s working! This museum is beginning to rewire Gertie’s damaged psyche, but right now the only way she can process that is by mapping it onto visions of the destruction of her precious race cars. Excited to see if this leads to a breakthrough!

Beetle Bailey, 11/20/25

A thing I learned recently that I really enjoyed is that a lot of heterosexual ’80s metal guys thought that Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, whose stage costumes very much came out of the gay leather daddy subculture, looked cool and badass in a completely straight way and spent the better part of a decade emulating his look. Just thinking about that for no reason as this new recruit, outfitted by the culturally savvy Beetle Bailey team in the a classic “tough guy” outfit, looks positively delighted at the thought of Sarge’s forceful discipline!

Crankshaft, 11/20/25

“Also, it wasn’t really that hard to figure out. He only changed one letter!”

130

Nothing worse than finding trust fund kids in your canal

Post Content

Andy Capp, 11/6/25

I know increasing globalization means that cities around the world are becoming more and more similar to one another in their interlocked material and aesthetic conditions, but it is unsettling to learn that even in Andy Capp’s Hartlepool, hipsters are leading a wave of gentrification as they snap up apartments in formerly industrial waterfront areas. I guess I can console myself that a Hartlepool hipster is entirely unrecognizable to any normal person as such (buzz cut, minty green suit) and that the canal is still full of drunks in an unironic way, for now.

Beetle Bailey, 11/6/25

The essential tragedy of Cookie is that he really does enjoy his job, but is constantly crestfallen when the troops react to his offerings with disdain and disgust. Well, today you can see that they’ve finally broken him. Do they think he just churns out slop day after day? Well, he’ll give them slop. Why bother trying. Why bother caring. Eat your slop, piggies!

Gearhead Gertie, 11/6/25

Sorry, I absolutely refuse to believe that Gertie would spend the off-season reading the NASCAR rule book, a tome that she long ago memorized in every detail. No, she would kick back and enjoy working through the puzzles in the 1990 original Days of Thunder Movie Family Fun Book from Exxon. A steal on eBay at only $6.99! Grab one today for the Gertie in your life!

Comments are closed

We haven’t even heard “Muddy Boots” yet, come on guys

Post Content

Gearhead Gertie, 10/2/25

I was actually visiting a friend in Durham on the day Dale Earnhardt died, a date that I will always think of as “North Carolina’s 9/11,” so I know the strong feelings that his life and death elicit, and hopefully I’m not about to step out of line in this post, but: Dale Earnhardt died in a car crash during the Daytona 500? Because he ran into a wall at 160 miles an hour? And had previously complained about some rules that NASCAR had changed that slowed down races, and so NASCAR tweaked the rules again for the “aerodynamic package” allowed for cars, in order to (in the words of the remarkably detailed Wikipedia article on the subject) “keep cars bunched up close together and to allow more frequent passing at high speed”? Anyway, Gearhead Gertie has been a lot of business about her petty gripes with her husband lately, so I’m pretty excited that today’s panel is about Dale Earnhardt’s ghost or soul or whatever, which has been trapped in a photo on Gertie’s end table, saying, “Learn no lessons from my death. Go faster. Ever faster. Never slower. If they tell you to slow down, tell ’em to go to hell and leave them in your dust.”

Mary Worth, 10/2/25

Santa Royale is a bucolic California seaside college town, a fairly transparent stand-in for Santa Barbara, so it’s very funny that we suddenly have introduced into canon the idea that it’s immediately adjacent to a vast, dense forest, with no cell reception. I assume that Saul is terrified because he knows it’s full of … brigands? Wolves? Fae folk? Looking forward to finding out!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/2/25

Look, I’ve talked a lot of shit about the roots country Americana Ameripolitan scene on this blog, but I’m not such a hater that I won’t admit that a wedding full of musicians who are all playing for one another would be extremely fun and interesting! Not Rex and June, though. They need to go home and go to bed. They’re very boring people!