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Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/24/25

One of my favorite terms of art from the world of standup comedy is “street joke.” A street joke is a joke a comic tells on stage that they didn’t write — but isn’t one that they lifted from another comic or writer, which is a significant sin among standups. Instead, a street joke is just one you heard from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone, or (in these days where most jokes spread online) from someone who saw it in a blurry, repeatedly reposted meme of some sort. Upon reading today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, I immediately pegged its dialogue as a street joke, and some quick searches confirmed my instinct: you can find it posted in uncanny Facebook groups called things like “Strange World” and “Deep Relationships,” tagged as being of “disputed origin” on a post in the r/quotes subreddit, or for sale on human made merch on Etsy or truly upsetting AI-generated t-shirts on Amazon. There are, of course, worse sins than putting a street joke in your comic strip, though I must once again remind comics creators that if your main characters are anthropomorphic birds, and you put in street jokes that involve birds, it really leaves the reader puzzling over whether the birds in the joke are also supposed to be anthropomorphic birds that the main characters interact with, like do the rooster-men in the Mother Goose and Grimm world scream like a person every morning or what, and frankly I don’t think that’s really the effect you’re going for with this.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/24/25

Oh, just to keep you up to date on the Rex Morgan, M.D., stalker plot: the stalker got kicked out of the museum, and then Augie and Summer went to the cops and they were like “What do you expect us to do, protect you somehow? Get back to us when he’s actually murdered you or something,” and so they went back to Summer’s place and Augie agreed to stand guard. Then there was a loud noise, which implied that something exciting happened, but nope! Nothing exciting happened. Just Augie accidentally closing a door too vigorously! More on this story as it continues, against all odds, to fail to develop.

Sam and Silo, 3/24/25

The thing I like about this strip is that Sam doesn’t respond to Silo without prompting. Frankly, it’s as if he wasn’t really talking to Silo in the first panel to begin with. This was all an internal monologue! “Why is this guy even talking to me,” he thinks to himself. Anyway, these two are supposedly best friends and spend all their time together.

Alice, 3/24/25

Big news, everyone: it seems that Alice, the title character in the syndicated newspaper strip Alice, has discovered the recreational drug known as “marijuana”. Brace yourself, things could get wacky!

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/16/25

One of the most famous and beloved Far Side panels involves a group of vultures sitting in a circle on the ground, and one of them is wearing a cowboy hat and jacket and saying “Look at me, everybody! I’m a cowboy! Howdy, howdy, howdy!” Is it dark? Sure, but the darkness is leavened by the fact that the vulture is being silly in a very specific way, and, somewhat crucially, by the fact that the presence of the dead and now mostly naked cowboy is only implied, his body obscured by the scavengers who are in the process of eating it. In today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, by contrast, a rotting human corpse is quite visible, and the vultures are merely celebrating with bug-eyed, manic expressions as they prepare to feast on his rotting flesh. I don’t think the vibes are anywhere near as good in this one, to be honest.

Blondie, 3/16/25

Today’s Blondie, like a substantial majority of Blondies, is pretty forgettable, but I do really enjoy Blondie’s deadpan “uh-huh” in the dead center panel. You gotta imagine that being married to Dagwood, or to any of the primary characters in legacy comic strips, is, you know, a lot.

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Dick Tracy, 3/5/25

“You telling me this guy died poor or alone, or maybe under strange circumstances so his family doesn’t know he’s dead and can’t claim him? Sounds like a real piece of human garbage to me. Shame he’s dead so I can’t kill him. I take consolation in the fact that I can still shoot him.”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/5/25

I kind of like the fact that the older bird-ladies of Mother Goose and Grimm have tenuous boyfriends rather than being honestly married. Sure, they’re playing the field, but they’re not going to get tied down to a guy if he sucks. And these guys suck, is the joke in like every single strip about them.

Archie, 3/5/25

Check out how genuinely stricken Mr. Weatherbee looks in the third panel here. He really could’ve died! Ms. Beazley’s food is extremely dangerous!