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Hi folks! Your COTW in a moment but first … Dropout, the streaming service from the College Humor folks, has a great geek-culture panel game show called Um, Actually, and I wrote some questions and jokes for the new season! The first episode is up now, and features several of my questions, including one that readers of this blog will see and say “Oh my GOD that is DEFINITELY a question Josh wrote, huh.” Anyway, the show is super fun and I urge you to check it out! (And if you have Dropout, you might also want to check out WTF 101, an animated show from a few years back that I did research for.)

But enough about me! This metapost is all about you, and your funny comments, including the comment of the week!

“The gloomiest thing is that Andy Bear picked up that line from Dead Poets Society. If you were a teenager crushing on Ethan Hawke or Alexandra Powers in that movie, you’re a plugger now! I don’t make the rules, the inexorable march of Time does.” –matt w

It’s also about the very funny runners up!

“The plugger isn’t speaking Latin, God forbid. Turnovers made for bears are, of course, actually filled with carp.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Usually when you hear about a pair of 3 inch heels, it’s 3 inches in height, not length.” –nescio

“Mary forgot to say ‘the neighboring town’ to modify Taft. Toby will have no idea!” –But What Do I Know?

“At this point, Rex Morgan’s writers are just messing with us. You can’t accidentally write a strip where two boring characters sit around listing more exciting things they could be doing.” –Victor Von

“I always love when the comics try to do a strike story, because it always feels like a 7 year old’s idea of the world. Some unspecified workers have walked off the unspecified job, so Dithers is going to use the most powerful union-busting technique he knows: going up to the laziest, most pliant worker he knows individually and asking him nicely.” –Schroduck

“Gertie has successfully gotten the town’s oldest man to drink the spiked soup with the memory-wiping drug. Now no one can stop the council’s diabolical plan that involves renaming the town somehow.” –Morgan Wick

“In tonight’s dreams, Gil Thorp is going to see those scarves extending, entwining, then wrapping around him and smothering him. Just goes to show, never reunite with your family.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“One thing you can say about Walt is that he takes the second commandment very seriously. No fancy, painted images of things in heaven or on Earth for him. Just plain white canvases as God intended, dammit!” –Old Man Shadow

“Plan your Spring escape in style! Whatever your next move, you’ll be ready for action. This chic cashmere-blend outfit in an elegant mauve is perfect for a last-minute getaway! The close-fitting bodice is accentuated at the natural waist by a buttoned accent belt at the back, with a pleated skirt that drapes beautifully whether standing still or on the run! Slightly puffed sleeves at the shoulder ease the form-fitting, cuffed long sleeves for complete freedom of movement, so you can wave away admirers, or hail a taxi in comfort. Add the silk-lined kid gloves and matching pumps in spring’s latest color, Cement, and top off your outfit with a mauve cashmere beanie. Get the look, on sale now at Sacks.” –Charterstoned

“YOU KNOW IT IS BRILLIANT DRAMA BECAUSE THERE IS LOTS OF YELLING!!!!” –Peanut Gallery

“Yes, Keith is quite a serious conventional man, unlike the weird and wacky characters that Mary usually surrounds herself with! Why there’s the stodgy professor, the boring advice column writer, the doctor whose entire personality is ‘boat’, the women who are so indistinctive they could swap places without anyone noticing and … others, presumably? Anyhow, it’s amazing that Keith feels at home in this free-spirited commune of kooky characters.” –pugfuggly

“We’re getting to eat some of the stuff Keith brought back from the stables. He says it’s edible, and I have no reason to distrust him.” –taig

“This is why we shouldn’t let children read Richard Lovelace and other Cavalier poets. Dennis recognized the message of ‘To Althea, from Prison’ and now knows his mind and soul are free even if his body is not. And the Roundheads like Mr. Wilson will know fear when Dennis grabs ‘a sword, a horse, a shield’ and works on restoring the Stuart monarchy. Next time make the kids read Tennyson or Keats or Marvell or other poets who won’t encourage this strange mix of being libertarians and absolute monarchists.” –KMD

“‘He’s learning farrier skills at the local stable.’ That’s quite a euphemism for ‘Keith is riding that old mare Kitty like there’s no tomorrow, and he also has a foot fetish.’” –brendancalling

“Thanks, dear. We’re all good at something. You’re a talented artist and a great friend! See? I’m good at telling people what they want to hear! Now eat up, dear. Your food isn’t getting any grayer!” –Chance

“Mary’s idea of great friend is someone who will listen to your prattle, ask inane questions, accept platitudes as wisdom, and praise you. Toby is, all in all, less work than a dog.” –richardf8

“Curtis realizes that having physical media is the only way of ensuring you have access to it for years to come, and at that price, he must be into vinyl too. Good for him, that li’l forward-thinking hipster rascal.” –Tabby Lavalamp

Remember: If you want an ad-free version of this site sent to you every day via email, for $3 a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon newsletter subscriber! And if you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for the same low price you can become a Comics Curmudgeon website subscriber! And if you just want to give me money directly, you can put some scratch in my tip jar, or back me on Patreon! Thanks to all for your support and readership!

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Woo! It’s the week’s top comment! Woo!

“Beasley, you imbecile. That’s not an award. The cup with ‘#1’ on it is given out to all the mail carriers, on account of they don’t give them time for bathroom breaks anymore.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

WOO! IT’S THE HILARIOUS RUNNERS UP! LEMME HEAR YA SAY “WOO!”

“Holy hell, Keane, you got outsmarted by goddamned Jeffy. It’s time to finally step out to the store for the pack of cigarettes and start a new life in a new city under an assumed name, but you’ll probably screw that up because you got outsmarted by goddamned Jeffy.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“By the by, Gertie, once you’re done wigging out over cicadas in bananas, call the police! There’s a giant bug monster in the house!” –ectojazzmage

“I shared this strip with my 20-something children, and they asked to be removed from the will.” –taig

“I can see why strips about precocious children appeal to the newspaper comics’ aging demographic. Both the very young and the very old live in a hazy cultural sphere where they’re aware of the existence of things but aren’t entirely clear on what those things are.” –TheDiva

“Dagwood must be high as fuck on Scotchgard fumes if he made it all the way home without food stains on his beard.” –nescio

“Wait a damn minute — he left while Mary was mid-bake. You don’t want those muffins once they get cold, friend.” –Old School Allie Cat

“Get your guns and body armor. Call up your militia buddies. We’re going to war, because I’ll die before I live on ‘Renewable Energy Alley.’” –Voshkod

“There once was a former Marine/ Whose intelligence wasn’t so keen/ So to answer the question/ Due to steroid ingestion/ He has a non-functioning peen.” –astroboy

“Mailherb didn’t even deliver any mail today, junk or otherwise; he just wanted to show off. Still, at least he put in more effort than the artist art compiler, who could not be bothered to find (let alone draw) more appropriate hand-grip assets to go with that clip-art trophy.” –jroggs

“I like that this strip seems to imply that postal workers can just deliver junk mail to whoever they want, whenever they want. The next time I end up with a big fat wad of sushi menus and political pamphlets I’ll know its because I pissed someone off.” –pugfuggly

“So Snuffy Smiff met God and refused to pay $50 for a painting. God punished Snuffy by making his mouth vanish, depriving him of speaking such insights as ‘purty good thar, feller.’ Did God punish Snuffy for not buying the painting? For calling him ‘feller?’ For praising His divine work as only ‘purty good?’ For murdering the English language? Parsons might explain away this depraved diety every Sunday but it boils down to a simple fact: you can’t spell ‘Hootin’ Holler’ without ‘Hell’ — and that explains a lot of Snuffy’s and the town’s miserable existence.” –KMD

“On second look and seeing Plato, looks more like a failed attempt to get some of that sweet Bose noise cancelling headphone product placement money. [Hangs up landline] ‘That was Bose. It’s a hard no. Hmm, run it anyway.’” –Hibbleton

“‘Oh no, no, no! I’m not stupid enough to walk into this trap!’ Buddy, you knew what you were into when you signed up to appear in a Judge Parker strip as a short-lived villain. If you had developed a schtick with a pun-based stage name you could have been in Dick Tracy.” –Philip

“Beetle is practically a Bodhisattva. He has no interest in being conscious or having physical sensations like food for Sarge or music for Rocky or sex with Miss Buxley. His only desire is to sleep and let his ego dissolve with consciousness. Truly, he’s the epitome of enlightenment! Or clinical depression, whatever.” –Ettorre

“Oh no, no, no! I’m not stupid enough to walk into this trap! If I walk through that door, I’m committing to at least a 10-minute interaction inside! Which in this strip will take six months or more to play out! Not for me! So long, suckers!” –cheech wizard

“Not to be a stickler, but it’s ‘Wooo!! Choo-choo!!’ when trying to get your kids to eat.” –Kevin on Earth

“Honestly love the idea of little Billy Keane trying to namedrop his family at school while the teacher groans at his shit. ‘Oh, I’m sorry ma’am, I was busy coming up with malapropisms for … [lowers sunglasses] The Family Circus.’ [teacher is already stamping an F on his paper]” –Dan

“Billy simply drew his panic attack! The huge numbers on the blackboard and the droplets of sweat are nice touches but the kids laughing at Billy’s incompetence are the strip’s tragic, crowning glory. It’s going to take more than a little art therapy to fix this kid.” –Victor Von

Remember: If you want an ad-free version of this site sent to you every day via email, for $3 a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon newsletter subscriber! And if you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for the same low price you can become a Comics Curmudgeon website subscriber! And if you just want to give me money directly, you can put some scratch in my tip jar, or back me on Patreon! Thanks to all for your support and readership!

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Got a late start this morning but a comment of the week is welcome any time of day, I feel:

“‘Keith! How things are with your former girlfriend and your daughter?’ ‘Well the problem is that they are now my current girlfriend and my former daughter.’” –Ettore Costa, on Bluesky

And your runners up? Very funny!

“Considering Rex’s actual personality, I’m going to assume that ‘chirpy bedside manor’ is not a typo but instead a reference to a model mansion full of finches that Rex had placed next to Rene’s bed in hopes of driving him insane(r).” –beneprism.rip, on Bluesky

“Brisket with milk? ‘Sam’ rips off his rubber mask to reveal he is, in reality, Not-Kosher-Man! The hero who always shows up when something about the situation is decidedly Not Kosher!” –Peanut Gallery

“Mud is right to phrase Rene’s admission of nephewdom as a guilty confession. The authorities might have overlooked Rene’s scams and murder attempts, but there’s no way anyone can forgive a crime so heinous as being related to Lyle Ollman.” –jroggs

“The unbelievable news can’t be that this strip is finally ending after 100 years, because TV news doesn’t chase the audiences old enough to read Gasoline Alley, and the newspapers don’t have reporters to cover the corruption in City Hall, let alone that a favorite(?) comic strip for their aging readers is ending.” –Philip

“And I want my coffin to be a giant flour tortilla. I won’t be remembered for much, so let’s get nuts.” –made of wince

“Wisely, Jeffy’s parents never allow him to handle money, which is why he’s unfamiliar with two of the most prominent faces on coins and bills. Of course, most kids these days probably know their folks’ AmEx and Venmo numbers by heart, or just go straight to the Amazon app no one remembers to close on the family tablet. But the punkinheads aren’t savvy enough to figure those things out, which is why they still rely on dusty old American History books that cover the period from Washington to the current Great War.” –BigTed

“I wonder if Shoe actually takes place in our world, exactly as it is, but the cartoonist has this weird mental problem that translates everything he sees into birds and bird-friendly environments. Where other people see an office building or a restaurant, he sees a tree or a branch. It would really explain quite a lot and solve several problems.” –BeckoningChasm

“‘Hey, this strip is going to run just a couple days after the superbowl, do you think a football ref–‘ ‘No.’” –pugfuggly

“Clothes are a thing in the Shoeniverse but nobody confronts Shoe over his constant nudity. I can only assume they live in so much fear of this cloacahole’s newspaper destroying them that they just let him get away with everything short of murder. When someone like that walks naked as the day he hatched into your office, you’re not going to ask him to put out a cigar.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Arctic Circle has been a long-running experiment to find out under what circumstances you can depict the act of motorboating a woman’s breasts in the newspaper. Turns out you can, as long as the motorboater is a penguin and the motorboatee has seven fingers.” –Schroduck

“There are food dishes you can have fun writing words in sauce on top of, and there are food-wrapped-in-bread solutions that may permit the Earl of Sandwich to eat one-handed with a minimum of complications whilst indulging in his gambling addiction unimpeded, but the overlap between those two is clearly nonexistent. I’m sorry Blondie, but this is literally not a sandwich. And come to think, it looks about the size and shape of a double decker pizza? Why not call it that? Surely that’s the sort of novel food monstrosity Dagwood loves.” –Amelie Wikström

“The position of Cookie’s head bothers me. Is she part owl?” –Pozzo

“Like the mighty python, Keith can take days or even weeks to digest disappointing news.” –Voshkod

“LET’S CHECK IN ON JUNE’S ‘AUNT’ TILDY AND HER HUSBAND ‘THE COUNT’. SEE IF THEY’RE DOING ANYTHING INTERESTING. OH, THEY AREN’T. STILL, WORTH IT FOR THE ‘SCARE QUOTES’.” –Applemask

“‘How relaxed and open my neighbor has become,’ thought Mary. Carlos Alora had warned her about this — the decrepit sewage system at Charterstone wasn’t prepared for such frequent use. ‘These muffins ought to help him become a little more … constrained,’ she cackled softly, to no one at all.” –But What Do I Know?

“Mary will bring muffins. She will bring muffins and remind Keith that there is no objective reality. So what if Sonia is not his biological daughter. He has raised this adult for nearly a few months and even ruined a relationship. She’s as much his daughter as Keith is now Mary’s son.” –moscowtheclown

“Since Marvin’s mom has apparently abandoned a toddler in a public place, I think putting him in a red snowsuit is kind of burying the lede in terms of parental cruelty.” –Rube

“The Perfesser’s subsequent creativity was limited to donning purple leg warmers. What a feeling!” –nescio

“I like Gertie’s exclamation point in the last panel. ‘Yeah, your uncle refused life-providing sustenance, but I figured it was just a whim. But you’re saying it’s an indication that the news deeply troubled him? I never would have realized!’” –Westing1992

Remember: If you want an ad-free version of this site sent to you every day via email, for $3 a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon newsletter subscriber! And if you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for the same low price you can become a Comics Curmudgeon website subscriber! And if you just want to give me money directly, you can put some scratch in my tip jar, or back me on Patreon! Thanks to all for your support and readership!