Archive: Herb and Jamaal

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Curtis, 4/10/15

Oh, give me a break, Greg. Facebook is for people who have a pathetic, insatiable hunger for the attention of friends, relatives, acquaintances, and people they met at a party once three years ago to feel like they matter. People who have a pathetic, insatiable hunger for the attention of strangers use Twitter. In unrelated news, did you guys know you can follow me on Twitter? I make tons of funny jokes there and sometimes post pictures of my cat! Follow me! Love me! I need this!

Gil Thorp, 4/10/15

Hey guys, it’s base/softball season in Gil Thorp! Trust me: you don’t want to know why they call Addison Radley “Boo.” It’s a story that starts twenty years ago … on a night, and a softball diamond, just like this one, when promising pitcher Addison Radley died in a tragic accident. Ever since then, her shade has haunted the field, pitching balls at superhuman speeds. You see, they call her “Boo” because, even though she doesn’t know it, she’s … a ghost. ADDISON RADLEY: TEENAGE GHOST PITCHER: SUNDAYS THIS FALL ON THE CW.

No, wait, they call her that after the character Boo Radley from the beloved classic To Kill A Mockingbird? Huh. Not sure why we wouldn’t want to know that, unless we’re trying to avoid falling afoul of Harper Lee’s lawyers.

Herb and Jamaal, 4/10/15

Oh my God, Eula is a reverse chrononaut, using dark magic or forbidden science to travel backwards along her own timeline! And she’s on the verge of revealing her causality violation to a time-standard individual! Chances of a class-three temporal paradox are up to 85 percent, we need an intervention from the Time Corps, stat.

Marvin, 4/10/15

This is your occasional reminder that, after decades of doing jokes about babies pissing and shitting, Marvin introduced some dog characters so it could do jokes about dogs pissing and shitting. I’m not sure which would be worse: if “go potty” were a euphemism imposed by the syndicate in a desperate attempt to impose some kind of sanity, or if that’s how the joke was originally written, too make it “cute.”

Spider-Man, 4/10/15

My number one biggest laugh in the comics pages today came from seeing Spidey wordlessly peacing out in the first panel of today’s strip. “Welp, I’ve put Mary Jane under the protection of the Black Widow, and probably nothing can go wrong! My fellow superhero certainly isn’t going to, say, push her off a building, that’s for sure. Later, everybody!”

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Herb and Jamaal, 4/7/15

I’m not sure who Herb is talking to on the phone here, as his only friend as far as we can tell from the strip is Jamaal, who is both unmarried and probably close enough to the family to know a little something about Sarah’s wardrobe. Thus, I have to assume that Herb, desperate to trade vaguely derogatory wife-anecdotes with a bro, has called some kind of pay service who will provide the simulacrum of male camaraderie. “Yeah, women, they sure like shopping!” says “Jeff,” Herb’s new pal, sitting in an muggy call center in the Philippines, following the script on his screen. I worked so hard in my English classes in college, he thinks to himself, and for what? For this?

Judge Parker, 4/7/15

Hey guys, remember when Abbey was pretty blasé about the prospect of Sophie buying a boy? Well, here’s some important historical background on that!

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Apartment 3-G, 3/10/15

Oh, snap, remember Sam, Margo’s harried and possibly love-struck assistant, whom she summoned out of the narrative ether nearly eight years after his last appearance to cater to her mother’s every insane whim? Well, turns out he’s treating that more as a personal favor and not as part of his no doubt ill-paying job. Frankly, it makes Margo sick, violently ill, hopefully with emphasis on the violent.

Family Circus, 3/10/15

Billy’s pig-nose is making the front of his big melony head look even more flat and squished than usual! I certainly hope that the weight of his backpack caused him to pitch face-first onto the sidewalk, where he lay for several minutes, struggling to right himself.

Crankshaft, 3/10/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because when a woman wants to spend time with a man instead of leaving him to stew in isolation and aimless, thrashing loathing, it’s a trap!

Herb and Jamaal, 3/10/15

This last panel is really great: it’s perfectly capturing the facial expression for “Wait, is he having a stroke or am I?”