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Folks, a couple notes for your Friday post. First, don’t forget that if you are just done with web browsers and remembering to check this website, you can sign up to have every day’s post sent to you as a newsletter for a mere $3/month! Or, sign up for an annual subscription for only $33! A critical mass of people have signed up for this so I will definitely be doing this indefinitely, until the comics and/or email are banned!

Also! Don’t forget that tonight at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern, the Internet Read Aloud returns to your Zoom machines!

This show’s performers include:

• Atlanta standup Katie Hughes!
• Heathcliff expert Brandi Brown!
• Secretary of Memes Matt Schimkowitz!
• Real live Canadian Zach Wortzman!
• Yell You Better‘s Katie McVay!

Here is the Zoom link! We are excited to virtually see you there!

And finally: It’s your comment of the week!

“Please do not ‘avail yourself” at the library computers.” –Lorne Hanks, on Twitter

Your runners up are also very funny!

“Speaking of experiences that will come back to haunt you, let’s grab some Sbarro.” –Donny Ferguson, on Twitter

“No matter what Sarah imagines, it always seems to come back to Buck telling utterly unfunny jokes. Water seeks its own level.” –jroggs

“Saul called Eve ‘dear.’ Hmmm. Seems a little overly familiar to me. Next time, Romeo, play it safe and try ‘ma’am’ instead. This is a family strip.” –Joe Blevins

“What’s going on here? The Forger is painting pictures of clowns? Are they paintings of real clowns? Forgeries of famous paintings of clowns? Paintings of fictional clowns? Seeing how he’s a criminal looking to flood the market with a product that no one really wants, I’d say it’s not worth the effort they’re putting in to stop this guy.” –Larry McAwful

“Mary’s perfected meddling, now it’s time to really test her abilities and try some meddlin’.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Oh, Dennis, I wouldn’t be so smug. That weirdly-fortress like building in the background is the county courthouse complex, and today is the day they’re doing free chippings for tykes, along with a complementary harness and leash at the end. Clearly Alice has had this date circled on the calendar for a long time.” –Thelonious_Nick

“The principle in linguistics of the discrete infinity of language means that there is unlimited productivity from the finite means of language. In other words, it is a major design feature of a language that its finite number of words can generate an infinite range of sentences, sentences that have never been uttered before. For some reason, I thought of this when Saul said ‘I’m happy you didn’t run from the menswear store.’” –Lawyerbob

“There was no shift, Eve. There hasn’t been a shift in over three months.” –Weaselboy

“Does a bear shit in the woods? Not anymore.” –Where’s Rocky

“But who is Daddy talking to in the last panel? Not baby, he’s just repeating what baby ostensibly said. Me? He’s looking at me. Well, look here, buster, don’t try to involve me in whatever you’re up to, I am not interested. [backs slowly away from his laptop screen, trips over the cat]” –matt w

“If this guy’s mad about a bunch of unused PCs at the library at night, just wait till he learns about Milford’s coaching staff during the day!” –Effluvius Erratus

“And remember, your grandmother lives in a barn, not a house. She’s a sheep, which is where you and I learned our mysterious dialect. Anyway, animals don’t have souls, so grandma won’t haunt anything when they slaughter her. Good night!” –Voshkod

“I’ve thought about this for a few minutes (too long, I know) and the only solution I can come up with is that an unedited AI is now writing the dialogue for this strip. If the content swerves back into seeming coherence, then we’ll know the program has worked out the bugs — very menacing!” –But What Do I Know?

“I, for one, think Dagwood should only discuss his fudgy dingdoodle ratios with a qualified gastroenterologist. This is simply inappropriate.” –made of wince

“Everyone loves to debate who would win in hand-to-hand combat: a yuppie pencilneck or a coked-out demi-hippie.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Who is Natalie (other than the most interesting Family Circus character by default)?” –Lee Sherman

“Oh hi, Dad! Yeah, so I’ve just been standing motionless in this corner for the past month, but it’s fine, nothing to worry about.” –glitchcraft

“Conveniently, this scene is taking place in the bathroom, because Dolly’s about to get her mouth washed out with soap.” –cheech wizard

Remember: If you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for a mere three dollars a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter! 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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Folks, a couple quick notes! Remember, you now have the option to get an ad-free email newsletter version of each post delivered to you daily, for just $3 a month! Also: my beloved live comedy show, the Internet Read Aloud, will return to the Zoom-based stage one week from tonight, on April 9, and 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern! Here’s the Zoom link (and please note that this is different from the initial link I used when I announced this show, so update your records if you’ve saved that somewhere) and here is the Facebook event!

And now, most importantly: it’s your comment of the week.

“Dustin has gained a surprising amount of knowledge by going through his parents’ medicine cabinet and googling phrases like ‘can you get high on warfarin.’” –Francisco Arrowroot

The runners up are also hilarious!

“I want to tip my hat to the artist of this strip for making an effort to depict human beings playing video games, the world’s most beloved activity that creators in popular media just can’t ever seem to understand. The use of the couch just as a backrest is very true to life, the controllers aren’t being June Brigman’d, and the artist seems to have used an actual game screenshot to portray authentic gameplay. So close. So very close. Unfortunately, the game in question is single player without a split-screen despite the two characters using controllers, which is like depicting a baseball game with two players batting simultaneously. Also, Sega has a strong defamation case against the strip’s creators for suggesting their valuable IP is played by people like Dustin.” –jroggs

“I found myself wondering what led to this phone call. Did Blondie or Dagwood decide to just check in during the workday? Or is Dagwood stalling before having to confess he lost the kids’ college fund on a very entertaining online poker game?” –jenna

“Not a good sign when your new storyline opens up with the dialogue box struggling to come up with something interesting to say, and characters immediately start fleeing the strip.” –pugfuggly

“In fairness, when Jeffy wanders the post-apocalyptic wasteland after the rest of his family is raptured, roaming between scattered tribes of survivors saying things like ‘they call it Thunderdome because it’s the sound of grampa clapping for me in heaven,’ that blanket’ll make a decent cloak.” –Dan

“When I die, imminently, from whatever massive and terrifying beast tore my blanket to shreds, can I take my blanket with me?” –The Great Joe Bivins

“Rather reluctantly, I have to admit that this passes the smell test. Ippon seoinage, the one-armed shoulder throw in judo, is intended to lessen the advantages of a taller, heavier opponent. When the opponent is this much taller and heavier, however, the move can be countered quite simply by stone-cold not giving a shit.” –boojum

“Dennis mocking Mr. Wilson checking the guest registry as he calls and thanks the people who came to his wife’s wake. Truly menacing.” –Hibbleton

“Personally, I wonder what Dennis’ companion is pondering so theatrically. Hopefully, it’s that this supposed friend promised to show him something cool, and now he’s just staring at an old man in a burgundy sweater calling his oncologist.” –Joe Blevins

“(Ominous music) ENTER SHADEBEAM.” –Peanut Gallery

“Today’s Baby Blues is about how human interactions are overrated, because your friends are not as friendly as you remember. That’s one way to convince people to stay quarantined until vaccinated, I guess.” –Ettorre

“I have to say, over the course of — what’s it been for this plotline, like, twenty years or so? — I’ve become a fan of Eve’s bandana: simple, one color, functional (good for catching drool and for robbing trains), and always tied precisely the same way. I like it.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Something squamous holds a sign over a doomed man’s head as he contemplates in mute horror a sudden eruption of terrifying fecundity. It is April, fools, April, the cruelest month, and instead of lilacs from a dead land we get olives from the sterility of alcohol. Bacchus is emasculated, Athena seizes Athens from the wrath of Poseidon (again, a sea creature, with tentacles writhing) with a gift of olives, myth cycles descending into myth spirals all the way down into the madness that drove the wreckers from the sea (Viking, sea creatures, decorating their ships with kraken’s tentacles) to burn and pillage. Such depth in a simple comic.” –Voshkod

“A thousand bookmarks for a woman with one book and a few events a year is overkill. Especially if she’s writing a mystery series, which means the bookmark will be outdated as soon as #2 is published. On the other hand, if they tape them all together, they’ll make a biodegradable and appropriate burial shroud.” –Bill’s Tummy Brain

“Amelia is really good at cost-benefit analysis and economies of scale. We both work for free when you could easily afford to pay us, but don’t let that throw you.” –Banana Jr. 6000

“The Rex Morgan team carries out a daring experiment to test which is more exciting: The usual Rex Morgan action, or watching paint dry.” –matt w

“‘Does that mean your ghost boyfriend will have more time for you, or less?‘ ‘You’re thinking of my ex, Billy. Zane is transitioning. He hasn’t fully left the land of the living, that’s why he can still play ball.’ ‘You mean–‘ ‘Yes, he’s not the Wholly Ghost.’” –pastordan

Remember: If you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for a mere three dollars a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter! 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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Hello all! I have some news that a certain subset of you may find exciting! We all know that it can be difficult to keep up with your favorite websites today, what with the death of Google Reader and social networks’ algorithmic feeds sometimes hiding the daily links. Well, if you’re tired of missing your daily Comics Curmudgeon post, and want the burden of remembering to type “josh reads dot com” into your browser lifted, perhaps you would like to subscribe to my newsletter? Like, literally, subscribe to my newsletter! For a mere $3 a month, you can get a banner-ad free version of each day’s post emailed to you every morning. Just fill in your email and payment info below! UPDATE: The thing that was making this not work has now been fixed, so if you tried it once and it didn’t work, give it another shot!

(Newsletter delivery infrastructure is taken care of by Buttondown, which handles payments in conjunction with Stripe. See the privacy policy for more details.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Please, another money making scheme?” Well, yes, yes it is. But I hope it’s a scheme that provides something that you want! Email newsletters are having something of a renaissance these days as various factors make it harder actually get web content you want on the regular, so if you’re sad about missing my posts sometimes and don’t want to deal with ads, this might be a good option for you. It’s the same price as being a Website Subscriber, which gets you an ad-free version of the website, if that’s more your jam!

It’s possible that this newsletter is a thing that’s nobody’s jam, and that’s OK! If I don’t get a critical mass of people signing up for it, I may cancel the experiment after a couple months. (Anyone who has signed up for it will be refunded in full at that point, so if you’re at all interested, you’ve got nothing to lose!)

I do want to assure you that the main website will always remain free of charge for as long as I produce it, and the ads upon it will not go beyond the industry standard for annoying, by which I mostly mean they won’t play audio without your consent. But if you do want to pay for some extras, well, I’ve got a couple ways you can do that now. And if you don’t want to sign up for a subscription but just want to throw a little cash my way, well, I’ve got ways you can do that too.

Also, something else that’s free: I’m going to be on What’s Going On, a free Twitch comedy panel show, tonight at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern. Come check it out!