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Blondie, 2/8/25

Man, what’s your least favorite part of this deeply unpleasant Dagwood dream sequence? A lot of people are going to say “the glasses on the sandwich” or “the pot of gumbo on a burner that’s just kind of floating in space” or “the way you can’t quite tell if Dagwood is driven to chase the anthropomorphic sandwich by hunger or something more darkly sexual” or maybe even “why did they bother mentioning the Super Bowl but not put any football stuff in the dream sequence”, but for me, it’s the little “Po Boy” label on the sandwich. Like, come on. Do you expect us to believe that Dagwood would need to have a sandwich label in his own dream? Absolutely not. I don’t care if the idiot readers at home need to have the fact that this is “the Big Easy”‘s signature sandwich spelled out for them, I refuse to accept the way it compromises the verisimilitude of the dream sequence.

Hi and Lois, 2/8/25

Feel like this strip is the result of coming up with “the big bag store” as a darndest thing a kid would call Costco, but that’s really undermined by the fact that there are no bags in the strip. Everything is in boxes! That’s actually one of Costco’s whole things! Plus “big box store” is already a thing people say so you could have it be a double meaning? C’mon, man!

Six Chix, 2/8/25

Sorry to get all indignant there for a minute, I’ll try to chill out. Hey, were you worried that, what with all the apps today and such, Cupid wasn’t getting laid anymore? Well, good news.

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Crock, 2/3/25

Look, man: if you’re going to do a comic about a restaurant where they serve flies instead of fries, I think you can get away with just having the customer indignantly pointing at his plate, which is swarming with flies, and saying “I thought I get fries with this.” That could be it! That could be the whole comic. If you’re still not sure that people are getting it, I guess you could have a waiter saying “Oh, that’s a misprint on the menu.” A little on the nose, but sure. What you don’t need is an entire second panel where you spell out the joke in very literal detail. And look, probably the smart cynics will say, “Oh, you’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of Crock readers,” but as a daily Crock reader myself, I am telling you, we are capable of getting jokes! You don’t need to be so condescending. Reading Crock every day is punishment enough, the least you could do is treat us with common decency.

Blondie, 2/3/25

You know Blondie spent several minutes outside the door, gathering herself and preparing herself emotionally to see Dagwood sitting in a bathtub full of hearty soup, slurping it up with a big ladle or maybe just his hands. Honestly what she’s seeing in panel three is a best-case scenario, Dagwood-wise.

Six Chix, 2/3/25

Here’s some snowpeople engaging in straight-up cannibalism! Pretty messed up, in my opinion.

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Dennis the Menace, 1/14/25

Now, look, today I’m not really interested in litigating whether this is wildly non-menacing (“Aww, I need to show all the parts of my body that they’re loved, just like my parents show me they love me”) or quite menacing, actually (“If I train my body to accept arbitrary stimulus as the equivalent to human affection, eventually I will have no need for emotional contact with others”). No, I want to focus on Joey’s jaunty body language as he slurps refreshing water through his straw and watches Dennis put on socks. “Wow, so they go between your skin and your shoes, huh? I could see that having a number of positive impacts on the overall foot experience.” I’ve had my issues in the past with strip colorists so I gotta give props to whoever correctly figured out what was going on here and made sure Joey’s ankles were flesh-colored, as this is clearly the first he’s hearing about socks.

Mary Worth, 1/14/25

Mary Worth has delivered any number of outrageous and delightful word-sequences over the years, and though it’s not as flashy as some, I immediately believe that “My parents were successful pharmacists” is up there on this list. Who could’ve imagined that this town’s two top pharmacists, respected by their peers and earning a fine salary, possibly working as a team or maybe each with their own pharmacy to better provide prescription drugs and related goods and services across the region, would get divorced? And why would they do it? Probably because their son’s a huge asshole, is my guess.

Zits, 1/14/25

I haven’t always been on board with the realism of the depiction of teen behavior in this strip, but teens are fairly notoriously terrible kissers, so I’m going to have to hand it Zits for this one.

Six Chix, 1/14/25

What better way to establish how chaotic 2025 will be than choosing to “start the year” a full two weeks into January? Six Chix is doing it exactly right, something I don’t say lightly.