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Blondie, 5/15/22

There are, as you might guess because you’re reading these words on a website called “The Comics Curmudgeon,” a number of things that irritate me about the comic strip Blondie, and one of them is that we have been repeatedly told that Dagwood’s job title is “office manager,” despite the fact that he never does any office management and what work activity we do see out of him involves working on “contracts” that seem related to the core business of DithersCo and not about buying office supplies or whatever. And now we’re supposed to believe that there’s someone who’s worked at the company for a while and the office manager doesn’t know him? Perhaps the company is meant, for the purposes of this joke, to be so large that there are multiple office managers, with the people “down the hall” not mingling with Dagwood’s bunch? This makes no sense! I protest, do you hear me? I protest!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/15/22

Gotta respect Funky Winkerbean here: a lesser strip would choose to either make a professional school picture photographer the butt of the joke for not knowing what kids mean when they say “gram,” or this lonely nerd the butt of the joke for having no friends. But this is Funky Winkerbean, where they want you to know that all of their characters, even the walk-ons, are contemptible losers.

Mary Worth, 5/15/22

Wow, it turns out Toby understood exactly what it would take to dissuade Cal from his schoolboy crush: putting him in the nuclear blast zone of Ian’s sexuality. This has sent him scrambling for an age-appropriate partner so he can pretend that he’ll never get old, and Maddie, who happens to be nearby, is the lucky (?) winner!

Panel from The Lockhorns, 5/15/22

Well, this strip’s been running for 54 years, and Loretta has finally “gone there,” by which I mean she has threatened her spouse with murder. “You buy that boat and I’ll kill you and set you and it on fire,” she says. “I’ll fucking do it. It won’t even be in the water, just in our driveway. I’ll be long gone at that point, though, Leroy. Long gone.”

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Hi and Lois, 5/14/22

As readers of this blog well know, I like that Thirsty has in recent years been allowed to once again be the moderately functional alcoholic he was intended to be when this strip launched in the ’50s. Sometimes this is the crux of the joke, but sometimes it just adds to the strip’s flavor. Like, it’s funny that Thirsty is standing next his friend like, “Doing a chore, huh? Couldn’t be me” but it’s funnier that he’s probably had a buzz on since about 10 am.

Mary Worth, 5/14/22

I certainly hope that Helen has slipped her resignation letter under the door of the School Management office and is heading out of Santa Royale forever tonight. How could you ever show your face around town if people knew you held lifelong feelings for Ian? Toby, of course, is far beyond human shame now, but Helen must still have a shred of dignity.

Pluggers, 5/14/22

You’re a plugger if your life isn’t worth living anymore because the only people who still talk to you are the ones coordinating the elaborate series of pharmaceutical interventions necessary to keep you alive.

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Shoe, 5/13/22

Sometimes a long running comic strip will dip deeply into its well of accumulated goodwill among its readers and craft a gag that reflects its own internal world-logic, played out by its cast of memorable characters. Other times, however, the gag writer for the day will just put in some joke they saw during a late night binge of Jack Benny YouTube compilation videos. The latter is almost certainly what happened with today’s Shoe, and I regret to inform you that this is the first Shoe to elicit a genuine laugh from me in many years.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/13/22

I mean, think how wrong the “craft a gag that reflects its own internal world-logic, played out by its cast of memorable characters” route can go! You could end up with one of those characters inflicting a perfectly deranged monologue about life’s futility on the other, in the rain, at a funeral! Do you want that? Nobody wants that! No punchline you could steal would possibly be this unpleasant!

Mary Worth, 5/13/22

“Are we doing show and tell? Do you want to ‘show’ me off? Is this a ‘life drawing’ session, and you need an unusually handsome model? Am I finally getting the birthday present I asked for? Ha ha, just kidding. But what if…?”