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Happy 2024, everybody! How did you celebrate the recent holiday season?

Mary Worth, 12/25/23

Did you, like Mary Worth, place yourself in the role of the Magi from the Gospel of Matthew? Before you object to this strip as blasphemous, remember that the Magi accidentally and/or passive-aggressively let it slip to Herod that the Messiah had been born, resulting in the Massacre of the Innocents, which you have to admit is a pretty Mary Worth thing to do. “Oh, your majesty, I apologize. I had heard that the new king of the Jews had been born nearby, but it appears that you haven’t added a new member to your dynasty recently. My mistake!”

Gil Thorp, 1/1/24

Or did you, like Gil Thorp, place yourself in the position of Jack Nicholson in the iconic final shot of Kubrick’s The Shining? Not gonna lie, this seems pretty dark. The divorce is not going well, I guess?

ANYWAY! It is I, your Comics Curmudgeon, back in the saddle and doing another year of the thing that I do best (making fun of syndicated comic strips for the delight and edification of you, my faithful readers). As is my wont, I took the last week of the year off, but as is also my wont, I cannot resist checking in with my beloved continuity strips, so here’s a quick catchup on what you missed!

Judge Parker, 12/25/23

You remember Declan, Neddy’s beloved (?) boyfriend, who’s visiting the Spencer-Driver compound for Christmas? Well, Abbey’s trying to marry Neddy off to him, and he’s on board! And why shouldn’t he be? His family goes unmentioned, he’s getting to party at the aforementioned rich person compound, and he’s experiencing the first Spencer-Driver holiday in years that isn’t marked by emotional or physical violence!

Mary Worth, 12/27/23

Keith, his attempts to form a family bond having been rebuffed, spent the holidays alone at Santa Royale’s own ALL BEEF, with a plan to push the soy bomb out of his guts and replace it with a massive bolus of healthy, delicious cow flesh.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/27/23

Oh, hey, were you worried that the sudden revelation that the whole Mirakle Method was plagiarized might result in some ongoing conflict of some sort involving our characters? Well, fret not: Old Man Ollman immediately dropped that lawsuit as soon as Buzzy and Mud agreed to simply replace “Rene” with “Ollman” everywhere in their contracts and accounting procedures. Problem solved!!!!

Gil Thorp, 12/28/23

Gil and his coaching staff would like to remind you that, while there is no I in team, some team members are more important than others, and we must do obeisance to them. Shower this young man with praises! All blessings flow from him! Do worship unto him, with the same hand gestures that you would use for our Lord Satan!

Mary Worth, 12/28/23

[record scratch] Brad … is eating … at ALL BEEF? Where they serve meat? What in tarnation???

Mary Worth, 12/29/23

OK, finally, the ongoing question of “Is Brad trying to sleep with Kitty or sleep with Sonia” has been answered (he was trying to sleep with Kitty, and thus was a sexual rather than paternal rival for Keith). Anyway, remember when Keith choked down a vegan hamburger that he hated in order to be polite to Sonia and prove himself as a worthy partner to Kitty? Well, when he did it, it was good. But when Brad did it? It absolutely merited the savage beatdown that’s about to happen.

Dick Tracy, 12/30/23

Remember Rikki Mortis, Dick Tracy’s goth girl villain? Well, she’s back, and she’s here to remind you that even though goths say they’re into creepy horrors beyond the comprehension of normal society, a lot of goth culture is just terrible puns like “fettuccine afraido”.

Mary Worth, 12/31/23

Sunday’s Mary Worth is incredible, not just because it actually advances the storyline for once by establishing that Keith will be using blackmail to secure sexual access to Kitty, but because it also features Wilbur enjoying New Year’s Eve with his dearest friend, a very large hamburger that he’s about to eat.

Judge Parker, 1/2/24

Ha ha, so, fun fact, did you know that as of this July, I will have been doing this blog for [swallows heavily] 20 years? You have to dig pretty far back into the lore of your serial strip to come up with a character I haven’t seen, and apparently Judge Parker has done so, so … congrats?

Mary Worth, 1/2/24

Keith’s evil plan worked! You have to admit that “I’m volunteering with Greenpeace, forever” is a pretty funny way to let someone down easy because a terrifyingly large ex-Marine found out you were lying about being a vegan.

Curtis, 12/26/23 and 12/28/23

Oh, and it wouldn’t be a holiday season with a wild Kwanza fable from Curtis! You know the old saying “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”? Well, this year’s tale puts a spin on that by having a fish perform “magic” by teaching a man about the virtues of self-sufficiency and self-reliance. (I guess the fish is performing magic by talking as well, but never mind that for now.)

Curtis, 1/2/24

Will the fish take his philosophy to its logical conclusion by teaching the man how to build a lover from the discarded corpses in the local cemetery? Stay tuned to The Comics Curmudgeon at Joshreads dot com daily to find out, and to see what’s up in the other strips as well! If you’re really serious about it, you could subscribe to get an ad-free site and/or get the daily post emailed to you as well! Or not, if you’d rather not! I’m gonna keep posting anyway! Happy New Year, and I love you all!

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Gil Thorp, 12/15/23

Oh, wow, I think this is the first year we’re ever seeing ice hockey take its rightful place in the pantheon of Mudlark sports! And it’s truly a line up of large, beefy boys signing up to participate. You know, I grew up in Buffalo, a huge hockey town, but the school district didn’t run a varsity hockey league because of the liability issues, so instead we had a “club league” that was technically not affiliated with or run by the district, but each team only had students from one school and was coached by one of the school’s gym teachers and had pep rallies before big games in our auditorium. The uniforms were a different color from the other teams, which I guess provided enough plausible deniability? Anyway, the Valley Conference isn’t even doing that sort of charade, though this is the same state where for-profit prisons can legally pit juvenile delinquents against each other on the gridiron, so I guess aggressive tort reform long ago replaced the civil court system with “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

Hi and Lois, 12/15/23

Hey, Hi and Lois, it’s almost the weekend! Lighten up a little, you do not need to go this hard with the Mr. Wavering strips.

Intelligent Life, 12/15/23

Oh no

Oh no

Who’s gonna tell her

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Dick Tracy, 11/30/23

I have to admit that it’s a little discomfiting to learn that X. Libris, a wealthy, sinister rare book collector who dresses in a severe black suit all the time and looks exactly like Cate Blanchett, belongs to a Planet Fitness where she goes after work to lift free weights of whatever. I was going to grudgingly acknowledge that this humanizes her a bit, but you know what? Part of Dick Tracy’s whole deal is that its villains are inhumanized, in the sense that their skulls and faces are deformed in disturbing and biologically improbable ways and they die impossibly agonizing deaths, so I’m going to have to give today’s strip a thumbs down.

Gil Thorp, 11/30/23

Welp, it took more than a year, but it seems finally everyone’s acknowledged that Gil is a Newly Divorced Dude, and so the question arises: Is he getting the emotional support he needs as he goes through this huge change in his life Who’s he gonna have sex with? Is it this kid’s grandmother? Apparently everyone in town wants a piece, but this kid was thoughtful enough to get dibs for his grandmother.

Hi and Lois, 11/30/23

“Please, just a few moments of human contact! You usually leave me alone on the floor in the middle of the living rooms for hours at a time. You don’t even close the curtains! I’m so sunburned!”