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Crock, 7/6/25

I like the fact that Crock reruns are keeping their publication year in the strip now because you can tell exactly the era that created the dated and terrible joke you’re reading. Like, I guess in [squints] 1997, if you were 67-year-old cartoonist, the valence of “computer virus” would be “a thing that might happen to a nerd, which I take to be meaningless as a setback (since nothing that happens on a computer is real) and therefore proof of how soft these dorks are and how ludicrous the thought of one of them joining the Legion would be.” Today, of course, having your PC or phone infected with malware could result in major financial damage or identity theft on the sort of life-ruining level that would make joining the Legion seem like your only option, so this strip definitely hits different today.

Pluggers, 7/6/25

I assume that all of you faithful readers have different long-ago bits of Deep Lore about joshreads dot com ready for quick recall; personally, one of my favorites is how in the summer of 2006 four comics did jokes about how WILD it was that people would PAY EXTRA for jeans that were ALREADY TORN??? Anyway, one of those comics was Pluggers, obviously, and it was a defiant, contemptuous panel of a plugger throwing a pair of torn-up jeans in the garbage to show what he thought of the kids today and their depraved values. Today’s panel instead shows a plugger being humiliated by his own thrift and/or giant ass, with the fact that young people like the torn jeans look mentioned in a value-neutral way, as a comparison by which pluggers frankly suffer. Perhaps it makes me a plugger to feel slightly sad that it’s come to this!

Shoe, 7/6/25

Not thrilled about how Roz seems to be openly leering in the first panel here. It’s not just me, right? That’s the face of a woman who hopes to be treated to a story about how this lady and the Shoe had sex at the opera, in front of God and the tenor and everybody?

Blondie, 7/6/25

You know that I rely on Blondie to keep me up to date on what the old people are up to these days, and today’s strip confirms what I’m hearing from other sources: what the old people are into these days is pickleball.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 7/6/25

The Lockhorns aren’t into pickleball, though! Just more proof that they are, in fact, millennials.

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The Lockhorns, 6/30/25

You all know that I hold the Lockhorns in a great deal of affection, but I am not blind to the truth, which is that they are squat, gnome-like people whose skulls are — let’s be real — lumpy and misshapen. We allow for this because they are, of course, cartoons, but it’s also true that stylized cartoons of the Lockhorns’ ilk are only meant to be viewed from a limited set of angles: in a very real sense, they do not exist in a complete three-dimensional space like you or me. Leroy and Loretta specifically should not be viewed from what appears to be an in-store security camera pointing down from the ceiling of whatever sad local drug store they’ve stopped by in order to browse the get well cards. This point of view really makes quite clear the aforementioned misshapenness of their skulls, in a way that I don’t think any of us asked for.

Marvin, 6/30/25

Two beings trapped together in a miniature world just big enough for them, yet still participating in an economic system where one must be indebted to the other? This is a grim scenario that no water-themed pun can cover up!

Pluggers, 6/30/25

Before today I would’ve said the bar for “What constitutes a joke or bit of wordplay in Pluggers” was so low that no installment of the strip could possibly fail to clear it, but that was before today, when I was confronted with “Pluggers stop at all the neighborhood kids’ lemonade stands,” accompanied by a drawing of a plugger stopping at a lemonade stand. This maybe could’ve been salvaged by showing that the plugger in question was precariously holding multiple cups to emphasize the scope of his generosity and/or thirst, but real heads know that Rhino-Man absolutely cannot afford to do that.

Mary Worth, 6/30/25

Ha ha, can you imagine being as ignorant of all the twists and turns of Wilbur’s love life as Dr. Jeff? Probably feels great! Sure, Mary’s about to tell him about it in vivid detail, but he can just open up the throttle on his powerboat until the engine is loud enough to drown her out.

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Panel from The Lockhorns, 6/29/25

One of the great mysteries of The Lockhorns that haunts all of us Lockheads is the identity and nature of the non-Lockhorn people who make occasional appearances in the strip. They never have any dialogue, instead just staring dumbly at our title duo as they engage in their passive-aggressive antics, and generally are not, with the exception of a few medical professionals and Leroy’s bartender, recurring characters. And yet we must assume a certain degree of intimacy has somehow developed before we see the vignettes in which the strangers appear, because often they’re in the Lockhorn home! I suppose we can guess at what drives their interest in seeing the inner workings of this hell-couple’s dynamics. For instance, this lady no doubt wonders if the rumors are true: does this seemingly anti-intellectual downwardly mobile lower-middle-class suburbanite pair really enjoy playing chess at home? And does Leroy really lurch about in a grotesque parody of a victory dance when he wins? Still and all, now that her curiosity has been sated, the visitor won’t be back. For most people, a little of this goes a long way.

Mary Worth, 6/29/25

On the one hand, Wilbur’s glad Belle is once again being heavily medicated by her brother, who looks exactly like him but taller. On the other hand, he still wants to grab a last-minute ticket on Spirit Airlines and jet over to Florida and have sex with her. Is this normal, Mary??? Oh, wait, you’re saying it is normal? I, uh, did not expect that, and frankly don’t really like it.