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Crock, 7/6/25

I like the fact that Crock reruns are keeping their publication year in the strip now because you can tell exactly the era that created the dated and terrible joke you’re reading. Like, I guess in [squints] 1997, if you were 67-year-old cartoonist, the valence of “computer virus” would be “a thing that might happen to a nerd, which I take to be meaningless as a setback (since nothing that happens on a computer is real) and therefore proof of how soft these dorks are and how ludicrous the thought of one of them joining the Legion would be.” Today, of course, having your PC or phone infected with malware could result in major financial damage or identity theft on the sort of life-ruining level that would make joining the Legion seem like your only option, so this strip definitely hits different today.

Pluggers, 7/6/25

I assume that all of you faithful readers have different long-ago bits of Deep Lore about joshreads dot com ready for quick recall; personally, one of my favorites is how in the summer of 2006 four comics did jokes about how WILD it was that people would PAY EXTRA for jeans that were ALREADY TORN??? Anyway, one of those comics was Pluggers, obviously, and it was a defiant, contemptuous panel of a plugger throwing a pair of torn-up jeans in the garbage to show what he thought of the kids today and their depraved values. Today’s panel instead shows a plugger being humiliated by his own thrift and/or giant ass, with the fact that young people like the torn jeans look mentioned in a value-neutral way, as a comparison by which pluggers frankly suffer. Perhaps it makes me a plugger to feel slightly sad that it’s come to this!

Shoe, 7/6/25

Not thrilled about how Roz seems to be openly leering in the first panel here. It’s not just me, right? That’s the face of a woman who hopes to be treated to a story about how this lady and the Shoe had sex at the opera, in front of God and the tenor and everybody?

Blondie, 7/6/25

You know that I rely on Blondie to keep me up to date on what the old people are up to these days, and today’s strip confirms what I’m hearing from other sources: what the old people are into these days is pickleball.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 7/6/25

The Lockhorns aren’t into pickleball, though! Just more proof that they are, in fact, millennials.

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Crock, 6/21/25

Not sure if we’re seeing a singular mind at work here or if this is the product you’d expect to get from someone who’d been writing a comic for 20 years by 1997 and had arrived at a specific creative/cultural milieu as a result, but insulting someone by referring to their leadership style as “real barf” is extremely funny to me. Since this blog is like 20-25% hatred of Crock by volume, I think you know that I’m being very sincere here. “Real barf”: real funny.

The Lockhorns, 6/21/25

I do praise The Lockhorns a lot, so perhaps it’s lost its oomph when I do it now, but I also think this meh joke is elevated by the way Leroy is holding that bowl of burnt (?) coal slaw aloft, like Hamlet contemplating Yorick’s skull.

Blondie, 6/21/25

Hmm, what’s that, Dagwood? You were in the middle of preparing a midnight snack, but then you just dozed off face-first into the sandwich you were making, capturing in one sad moment your terribly disordered relationship to both food and sleep? And yet you claim to be perfectly happy in the situation, thus encapsulating the vibe your character has been giving off on the comics pages for decades now? Interesting. Interesting.

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Blondie, 6/20/25

Imagine how much funnier this strip would be if Blondie had spent any of the past 90 years or so developing the characters and backstories of Dagwood’s coworkers. Instead, we’re left staring blankly at the antics of the guy who apparently thinks he’s fat, doesn’t-want-to-be-upside-down guy, and Garfield lady, DithersCo’s #1 Garf superfan. Honestly the most intriguing person to me is the guy Dagwood runs into in the elevator, who is absolutely seething at the idea of an office having “funny t-shirt day,” a proposal that is simply wildly out of step with the current sociopolitical climate. How dare they!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/20/25

Look, I get that when you have comics with dogs in them, you’re gonna do some jokes where the punchline is “a fire hydrant or a tree is for them what a toilet is for us!” and that’s fine. But please, I’m begging you to fully think through that metaphor when you do strips like this. Would you draw a person lurking in a room of giant toilets thinking “I’ve died and gone to heaven!”, the message clearly being that they love pissing? Of course you wouldn’t. They’d put you on a list and they’d be right to do it.

Pluggers, 6/20/25

It’s very distressing to me that this plugger is wandering around outside, with no visible houses or any other kind of structures to be seen. If he were in his living room, I would be like, “Ha, pluggers do be losing track of stuff! Relatable!” But as it is, I feel like we need to issue a Silver Alert post-haste.