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Mark Trail, 8/11/20

So as anyone would’ve predicted, this abandoned cat was befriended by Andy, brought into the Trail household/menagerie, and dubbed “Tabby.” Mostly I’m showing you today’s strip because it seems wild to me that Cherry, whose father is literally a veterinarian, is shocked to learn that sometimes people abandon their pets. But if Doc has indeed sheltered his daughter, who I’m reasonably sure is now in her 30s, from the more sordid aspects of the life of domesticated animals, it could also explain how she apparently doesn’t really know what sex is, either. (Remember, this is what Cherry thinks sex is.)

Funky Winkerbean, 8/11/20

You know, I’ve always had a sort of unreasoning hatred of Tom Cruise as an actor, to the extent that sometimes I avoid movies he’s in that I otherwise might enjoy. But when Vanilla Sky came out in 2001, its marketing campaign teased that Cruise’s character would become hideously deformed over the course of the movie, and I was like “Tom Cruise? Hideously deformed? Hell yeah” but it turned out I hated that even more, somehow! What I’m trying to say is that Funky Winkerbean is trying to stop me from doing more rants about how this isn’t the way urban wildfires or LA geography works (are they driving from … Burbank? Hollywood? NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE) by at least teasing me with the prospect of Les and Mason becoming terribly burned, like maybe their whole faces will get burned off, but sorry, you’re not going to fool me again! I still hate it!

Pluggers, 8/11/20

I was going to complain that the whole point of pluggers is that they hold down honest, solid jobs in factories and on construction sites where literal equipment malfunctions are actually a workplace hazard, but then I realized that this is probably a half-remembered reference to “wardrobe malfunctions” and I think it means that we as a nation are finally, finally getting over the time where we almost but not quite saw Janet Jackson’s nipple during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004.

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Family Circus, 8/6/20

I get what’s going on here — the water is icy cold, which Dolly is blissfully oblivious about — but I have some notes on the visuals being used to convey this information. I guess those are supposed to be “shiver” lines around Big Daddy Keane’s legs, but they look more like steam (giving the exactly opposite impression of what the panel’s going for) or maybe stink lines, which one also doesn’t usually associate with cold. Although that is a creepy combo, isn’t it? A cold stink. Very Lovecraftian. Also Daddy’s skin seems to be turning black below the knee, representing some kind of horrific rapid-onset gangrene. I take it back, this panel is amazing, actually.

The Lockhorns, 8/6/20

This panel manages to pack two incredibly sad facts into a single efficient gag: that once, long ago, when Loretta met and fell in love with him, Leroy was actually a thoughtful, careful person, but now he leans into his own incompetence as if performing for some invisible audience, all the time.

Pluggers, 8/6/20

Pluggers are familiar with the technology that was prevalent when they were younger, in ways that others, who didn’t grow up with that technology, are not. That sure is a Pluggers joke, all right!

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Pluggers, 7/29/20

You know, sometimes I feel like you guys don’t appreciate what I go through to bring you the densely referenced metatextual content you’ve come to expect here on josh reads dot com, so I thought I’d pull back the curtain on the “process” behind this post I’m writing right now, which involved searching my archives for posts that featured Pluggers and contained the word “dying.” Was it harrowing? You bet. But it was worth it because I confirmed my hunch: as a rule a plugger only owns one suit, and his primary reason for wearing it is to go to a funeral. You can understand why he might eventually buy some more, though, what with the constant parade of death and their bodies waxing and waning with the vagaries of their medication regimen. That’s what I love about these pluggers, man: I get bigger, and they stay the same age (i.e., dead).

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/29/20

GET IT, REX? ARE YOU GETTING THE PICTURE? THE MEDICAL PRACTICE COMES AT A PRICE, AND IT’S A LOT MORE THAN A DOLLAR