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Hagar the Horrible, 1/5/24

Many medieval Scandinavians communities relied on herding for meat and milk, so controlling wolves and other canines was a task entrusted to only the most skillful hundafangari, or “dog-catchers.” This role would be assigned by a vote in the thing, the traditional Norse assembly that represented one of the earliest democratic bodies in northern Europe. Truly, Hagar’s schoolmate has brought honor to his clan by achieving this exalted position, and he wields his ritual net of honor, woven from the finest thread, with great and justified pride!

Pluggers, 1/5/24

Speaking of dogs, or bears, or what have you, today’s Pluggers is obviously about how if you’re a fisherman, you’d have a mailbox shaped like a fish (I guess? I mean, would you? Would you really?) but because the plugger in the panel is himself shaped like a bear, I can’t help imagining that in the Pluggers world of apparently all mammalian human-animal hybrids, the equivalent of a furry would be someone who likes to dress up as a reptile or fish, and so Andy Bear here (YES THEY HAVE OFFICIAL NAMES AND YES, FOR MY SINS, I KNOW THEM) is letting the whole neighborhood know that he’s a “scaly” and proud of it.

Hi and Lois, 1/5/24

I mean … yes? You would count that? It’s one of the layers you’re wearing? That’s how layers work???? Chip, why are you saying any of this, do you think this is flirting, do you think not counting your t-shirt as one of the layers of clothing you have on is what “game” is, what the hell

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Blondie, 12/21/23

Huh, well, I guess “Josh uses his dumb blog about comic strips to talk about the infancy narratives in the Bible” year had to come around eventually, and it looks like 2023 is the year! Anyway, a fun fact about the infancy narratives, plural, is that there are two of them, one in the Gospel of Matthew and the other the Gospel of Luke (John and Mark just jump right into Jesus’s baptism and ministry), and they are almost completely different from one another, beyond the basics of the virgin birth happening in Bethlehem. Matthew (and only Matthew) has the killing of the innocents, and the flight into Egypt; there’s no indication in that story that Mary and Joseph aren’t already living in Bethlehem, and it’s explicitly stated that they end up in Nazareth to get away from King Herod’s son and successor. Only Luke has the stuff about Mary and John the Baptist’s mother being cousins, and only Luke has the story about the census bringing the family to Bethlehem and Mary giving birth; afterwards they go home (to Nazareth, in this version) and there’s no mention of Egypt at all.

But because both these stories were canonized, most people have an idea of the infancy narrative that basically just mashes all these incidents together into one sequence. Even the colorful characters that appear together in manger scenes are actually from two completely different stories: the wise men, guided by a star, are in Matthew, while the shepherds, summoned by an angel, are in Luke. This is a long way to get to my point, which is: A GPS joke would’ve worked better with wise men rather than shepherds, right? Like, I guess technically they’re coming in from the fields, but Bethlehem was a pretty small city back then, and the wise men are coming from a completely different country. Frankly, I think whoever wrote this joke is kind of mixing the shepherds and the wise men up, so — and here’s a sentence that I’m frankly proud could be found nowhere else but on Josh reads dot com, your source for newspaper comics and musings on the textual history of Christianity — I firmly believe that today’s Blondie really demonstrates the complex ways that these two contradictory narratives have become a single story in our collective mindset.

Beetle Bailey, 12/21/23

Beetle Bailey is frankly almost as old as the Bible, and its devoted readers have internalized its logic as dogma, so I guess it can get away with doing a strip where Beetle’s like “What if it’s not sunny tomorrow” and then Sarge says “Then I’m going to beat you into unconsciousness.” Doesn’t make it right, though! Doesn’t make it right.

Hi and Lois, 12/21/23

This year, Hi and Lois is letting us know about the real meaning of Christmas: being stiffed by retailers and your boss, and then forcing yourself to attend social obligations with people you hate. I do think that Hi and Thirsty genuinely like each other, or at least have trauma bonded at their job, but you have to admit it’d be pretty funny if the whole gang were saying all this while heading over to the Thurstons, their neighbors and also two of the few people we ever see them interacting with socially.

Pluggers, 12/21/23

If a plugger slips and falls on the ice, and no one is around to hear, because he’s alienated his family with his unhinged Facebook posts and his neighbors with his extremely bad vibes, and then he slowly freezes to death out there, taking his final breath on Christmas morning, vaguely hearing happier people laughing and enjoying each other’s company … wait, what was the question again? Anyway, pluggers, please salt your front walk, I’m begging you.

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Crock, 12/14/23

Not that I will ever give up on my long-running feud with Crock, but even I have to admit that this is a decent joke. Sure, in order for it to really work for you, you have to know a little about the characters and understand that Captain Preppie’s whole bit is that he’s handsome and egotistical, but for my sins, I am someone who does in fact understand Captain Preppie’s whole bit, so it does, in fact, work for me. Sometimes you just have to give the devil his due (in this analogy, the syndicated newspaper comics strip Crock stands in for the Adversary, the Lord of Lies himself).

Dick Tracy, 12/14/23

I was about to do a riff here about how today’s Dick Tracy is aimed at the fairly narrow audience of people who like to erotically ruminate on the prospect of being bested in combat by Cate Blanchett weilding a rare book case in one hand and an épée in the other, but honestly that doesn’t seem like a particularly narrow audience now that I think about it. It’s probably significantly broader than the audience for the Dick Tracy comic strip, if we’re being honest.

Pluggers, 12/14/23

I’m on the record as being cranky when Pluggers just generalizes the long-contested definition of a plugger into “pluggers are old”, so I appreciate today’s strip, which tells us that pluggers are old and also their refrigerators are more disgusting than you could possibly imagine.