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Hello there! Your COTW in a moment, but first: Someone left a comment on the previous post complaining about a video ad that played sound unprompted when they opened my site. They are correct to complain about this, as my current ad providers aren’t supposed to supply video ads at all, let alone ones with sound! However, I can’t diagnose this problem without more info about where exactly the ad appeared, and unfortunately the person did not leave any contact info with their comment. If this was you (or if it wasn’t but you have recently encountered such an ad), please email me at jfruh@jfruh.com so I can get the details from you. I promise not to be mad, thanks!

I’m definitely not mad about this delightful top comment of the week:

“The only activity these birds seem to do besides work and TV is hanging out in an empty bar being depressed so where they get off acting like the ballet is too lame for them I have no idea.” –jerp jump

And only good vibes come from these hilarious runners up:

“‘I’m wondering why I even bother to see this doctor’ is actually an extremely common attitude among Rex’s patients.” –Ace

“Honestly kinda wild that yesterday Rex and June were laughing about how ridiculous it would be to wear cargo shorts, and today Buck is hanging around in cargo shorts while Mindy insists no, you look great, I bet Rex is going to be so proud of you, he has a lot of respect for you I swear.” –Dan

“Do the animals actually use the parking meters, or did the animals rise to power and keep all the meters full as some sort of sovereign wealth fund?” –DevOps

“‘What do they do now?’ I love that the running joke in the background of most Hi and Lois strips is that Hi has very little idea what is going on with his kids, and, as that quick grab of a magazine attests, not much interest in learning more.” –pugfuggly

“Notice the uneasy look on the unarmed duck bailiff’s face. ‘What am I supposed to do if shit goes down in this courtroom? Tackle this guy? He’s twice my height and has vampire fangs! Vampire fangs!’” –Joe Blevins

“‘They text me the links.’ ‘The links? Like, golf links? Sausage links? Links in the chain? That’s crazy talk, you sound crazy, Lois.’” –Voshkod

“So, Dollar Bill only wears a dollar bill in his headband? What a disappointing Dick Tracy villain. I would have expected him to, say, have gotten plastic surgery to look like Washington, then dye his hair green and wear it in an absurd rectangle framing his face.” –Emily Riposte

“Talking about what the interchangeable kids might possibly do in a game is even more boring than talking about what they’re actually doing.” –TheDiva

“Are you two back together now? Because usually when a man brings a lady her favorite smoked salmon brand, it means he’s trying to court her, so I assumed you’d finally gotten over what’s-her-stripper-name and succumbed to my charms. No one likes a tease, Tommy.” –jenna

“The germ of an idea was planted in Dollar Bill’s mind. No, there was no instruction manual for street corner drug dealers. At least, not yet. But he could put his insight and years of experience to work, allowing others to benefit. And so the book that would eventually become known as ‘People’s Exhibit A’ was born.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Knock it off with the yuks and get those balls silky smooth they way I like ’em.” –nescio

“You know Santa doesn’t like you when he gives you a black and green candy cane. What is that, creamed spinach and licorice? That’s just savage.” –made of wince

“As someone who’s had to wait in many a long-ass Santa line, I’m here to tell you that there is never any reason to smile. Not while your child is sitting on Santa’s lap, and you’re hoping that they behave and quickly ask for the thing you already bought them, and certainly not while you’re waiting in said line, where you grit your teeth while every other kid sits on Santa’s lap, willing them to hurry the hell up so you can go home. So I say, to Siena and her parents, and I say this with as much holiday cheer as I can muster: Go to hell.” –Carsick Yankee

“Is no one going to comment on the fact that in Gil Thorp’s world, some cars are descendants of the Israelites and some, like Doug Guthrie’s, are gentile?” –Sherry Chiger

“Emotional eating? With your drab personality? No wonder you’re losing weight!” –Just John

“There is a lot of confusion on the degree of overlap of the circles for ‘cruel’ and ‘capable in a fight’ on a Venn diagram. Being the former doesn’t preclude being the latter, but it is very much not a surefire indicator.” –Tom

“The reason a lot of people can’t understand what’s going on in Funky Winkerbean is something called ‘forced perspective.’ The band figures look a bit large, too.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Leroy’s going to be so angry he’s not going to notice the taste of rat poison. Well played, Loretta.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“I admire the Boss’s commitment to the division of labor and proper job roles. He could easily grab the gun on the bar and shoot these two intruders, but NO! He hired goons to do that and by God, if those goons aren’t going to do that, he will stand around and complain about them! This is going on their quarterly performance review, darned it!” –Dread

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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Yippee! It’s this week’s top comment!

“Snuffy is freaking out because he’s severely allergic to peanuts. Is this an innocent mistake on Sheriff Tait’s part, or has he decided to rid himself of the Holler’s peskiest outlaw once and for all? Either way, I can’t wait to find out how this strip spells ‘anaphylactic shock.’” –Mr. A

Woo-hoo! It’s the hilarious runners up!

“I assumed ‘cheesecake‘ was a term of endearment until I remembered this is Dick Tracy. Not only is Cheesecake her actual name, she’s also wearing graham-cracker shoes.” –Peanut Gallery

“Does any anywhere still say ‘hey, gang’? That line is actually required to be followed with ‘let’s put on a show! My uncle has a barn.’” –Everything Is Better With Monkeys

“Love is like a faucet. It starts out nice and shiny but you do have to scrub it once a week so it doesn’t become gross, unless you buy one of those nice matte-finish ones. Sometimes you have to call the plumber and then it gets really, really expensive, for even the commodity parts, like a gasket that you could buy at the hardware store for ten cents. But when it’s working right, the warm fluid comes out whenever you want it, and then you can shut it off and forget about it for indefinitely long periods of time. Yes, love is precisely like a faucet.” –The Breathtaking Bonehead Brothers

“This Funky Winkerbean feels pointed. ‘Oh, you wish this comic wasn’t such a long parade of human suffering? You want it to go back being the funny gag strip you remembered? Well, guess what: those jokes sucked shit.’” –BananaSam

“The key to understanding this joke is that the plugger is a bear, so he has been awakened during hibernation. The pot of coffee was brewed in September.” –seismic-2

“I assume here that ‘the club’ is an old viking ritual wherein enemies of the clan are brought to the center of the village and clubbed to death. It’s a great way to meet the ladies!” –pugfuggly

“I grew up drinking instant coffee so this is the first occasion I can say ‘Them pluggers shore is fancy.’” –nescio

“I wonder when this was made? The lines make one think of late Deutscher Werkbund, but the matte finish just screams of the influence of the Kilkenny Design Workshops. The whole motif is Danish, but the skeuomorph along the drip basket bring to mind emotional design. [Sigh.] I really thought that Master’s in industrial design would prevent me from becoming a plugger, but I guess form does follow function.” –Voshkod

“Look, whoever-writes-Gasoline-Alley, I’ve got some bad news: kids today do not read Gasoline Alley. They may have long ago, when entertainment options were limited and newspapers common, but now the vast majority of children have no idea what Gasoline Alley is nor are they especially interested. The good news is you can swear all the fuck you want!” –jenna

“Oh, Brandy, he’s taking you to that boardwalk so he can propose again. Your only hope now is to wait until the car’s speed drops below 15 MPH, then jump out.” –Joe Blevins

“I’ve written and deleted a lot of things about the presumptive politics of a guy who looks like Aquarius these days, and none of them were good ideas, so I’m just going to relax and appreciate ‘Humft!’” –matt w

“I’ve gotta go with Snuffy on this one: I honestly cannot think of one crime that a peanut butter sandwich would be the just punishment for.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Nice car, Andy Bear. Where’d you get it? At the Not Nice At All Car Store? ZING! I was kidding about it being nice, just so you know.” –Just John

“It takes a certain grim determination to hang a man from a palm tree, I should think.” –WLP

“While the French Fourth Republic collapsed due the Algerian war, leading to the return of De Gaulle in 1958, there was another attempted coup in 1961 against De Gaulle who was carrying out negotiations for Algerian independence. It collapsed immediately because conscript soldiers heard De Gaulle speak on their portable radio and disobeyed their career officers. I think it was just passive resistance and they did not murder their officers, but since what is at stake is not just democracy in France but eliminating annoying Crock characters, I’ll allow it.” –Ettorre

“I don’t care about the joke in Six Chix. All that matters is that after seeing the anxiety-inducing super spreader event happening over the course of weeks in Funky Winkerbean, I can scroll back up to the soothing sight of the ultimate self-isolator.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“I love that things at this department store have broken down to the point where one customer just shows up to the gift-wrapping booth with a loose cookpot: no lid, no box, no warranty and presumably no receipt. ‘Yeah, I dunno, just make it look like a bicycle or something.’” –Doctor Moreau

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, do not forget: TOMORROW on December 5th, at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern, yet another Zoom version of my beloved comedy show, The Internet Read Aloud, is happening! Special ZOOMSUKKAH edition! Featuring me, Katrina Davis, Jupiter Baudot, Laurie Bolewitz, and Brian Bahe!

Here is the Zoom link, which will let you into the show at the appointed time, and here is the Facebook event, if you find those useful for your event record-keeping!

But for now … it’s COTW time:

“Leonard, you’re the quarterback. Now move slightly to your right so I’ll be pointing directly at you, we wanna see team players here.” –Dan

And time for the runners up!

“Blondie’s motionless resignation as Dagwood explicitly leaves the marital bed to have sex with a roast turkey is the most chilling thing on a comics page that also includes a lovingly detailed closeup of a noose. Something something 2020.” –Applemask

“So while Shoe can’t ever seem to remember that it features birds, the artist of Mother Goose and Grimm has sufficient ornithological awareness to show a goose throwing up stones from her crop in fear. Well done!” –Voshkod

“Look Tommy, completing one task at work is not impressive and it’s definitely not evidence that you’re sober. I complete several work tasks every day, and I’ve been drunk since March.” –Rosstifer

“No time to talk, Babe, I’ve got three more displays I want to get up before lunchtime, or maybe I’ll just skip lunch, great ideas aren’t just going to just all of the sudden materialize into reality, am I right, ha-ha, I mean, listen to this, see if it doesn’t blow your mind: instead of putting the soup cans on the shelf vertically, the way they’ve been displayed since, I don’t know, since the Druids (wouldn’t that be cool, Druid Soup?), we put them on the shelf horizontally, with some sort of rack for them to roll on, I think I can put something together, I saw some welding equipment out back. Now, if I was addicted, I wouldn’t be able to ride the heartbeat of the universe this way, would I?” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“So uh, Tommy. Do you think you would be able to do your job as well if you had, say, chlamydia?” –pastordan

“What a tableaux Hi and Lois has given us today. Whole family in a hideous living room, staring in wonder that someone owned that many books, contemptuous that someone might want to know something that isn’t on Facebook and looking to assure the rest of the family that they didn’t waste any money on books and that they certainly will never actually READ them. After all, that encyclopedia is so old it probably doesn’t even have an entry on the latest season of The Masked Singer. The Last Gasp of the American Mind, by Hi and Lois.” –jerp jump

“Ooh, Buck’s got the ’rona! He’s already lost his sense of taste — just look at that shirt!’ –Uncle Lumpy

“I love that the entire division is so incompetent that they just drove their tanks into an open field to face each other and then couldn’t figure out what to do next. They’ve been sitting there all day, eyeing each other and occasionally checking their field manuals.” –pugfuggly

“Also, the diner is a tree. That’s why you can see the moon even though the rest of the drawing looks like it takes place inside. I don’t know where the door came from, I’ve never seen it before. We really trashed decades of world-building, for this joke?” –matt w

“Buck’s son (what was his name? Dingleberry? Skidmark? something like that) sees Buck sprawled on a couch, hands behind his head, glasses pushed up to his forehead, and he can’t figure out that this is a nap. ‘What are you up to, Dad?’ he says, like an idiot. I hate this kid for so many reasons, not least of which is that he emphasizes the word ‘you’ in that question, as if he’s making an accusation.” –Joe Blevins

“I’m surprised that Westview High has moved on from blackboards. Doesn’t chalk dust cause cancer?” –Midtown

“Yes, drugs never enhance performance and Tommy will be the first clean person on the US Olympic Grocery Store Display Team.” –Mikey

“Today, we learn that the mouth-on-the-side-of-the-face style of comic-strip drawing doesn’t work when a character has a goatee. I mean, it’s weird enough that there are still Sears employees left — the last thing we need is to see his freaky, hairy cheek-hole.” –BigTed

“Toilet paper is still relevant, but less scarce for those of us who get Six Chix in a print newspaper.” –Where’s Rocky

“What I appreciate about Gil Thorp is that it takes sports, something I normally find boring, and makes them tediously, painfully, mind-numbingly dull.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“‘Oof!’ The time-honored sound of a Yeti releasing a giant spider. You can’t miss with the classics.” –Pozzo

“Dick might not get to shoot the villain this time, but between that solid steel door and his godawful trigger discipline there’s a strong chance he’ll at least get to negligently kill Sam with a ricochet.” –jroggs

“WAAAAIIIIIITAMINUTE. Waitwaitwaitwaitwait. How are we supposed to chuckle at the backwoods rubes of Snuffy Smith, mired in their lives of inescapable, soul-crushing poverty, when they can just GET IN A CAR and GO DANCING IN THE BIG CITY ANYTIME THEY WANT? This is like finding out that Gilligan and Skipper could just up and leave the island whenever they felt like it! Or that the last line of No Exit is really ‘Oh, look, gang, there’s the exit!’ Oof. I’m gonna need some corn squeezins to deal with the implications of this.” –Doctor Moreau

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!