Post Content

Like sands through the hourglass, so go the very funny top weekly comments. Here’s this week’s!

“My favorite part of this is the narration box: ‘As Toby tells Mary about her latest situation…’ First off, Toby doesn’t actually have problems, just situations. Secondly, this is just another in what promises to be an endless series.” –Joe Blevins

And here are the hilarious runners up!

“I love Billy’s smug expression. ‘She thinks she’s happy now, but wait till she sees this awesome card I made her. It’s got a butterfly, a heart, and a photo-realistic drawing of the two of us. I’ll definitely be her favorite after this.’” –Weaselboy

“Batman spent years training like a ninja so he could disappear into the night precisely to avoid anyone hitting him with a brick. You think you can just pick up a broom and fight (???) crime, Street Sweeper?! You’re not ready for this!” –Truckosaurus

“As I have mentioned before, I have actually lived in a city with a masked crime fighter. I have never lived in a city where bricks are just lying around in the street.” –Rube

“To Mary Sue, Dying in Westview: Smart girl, to slip betimes away/ From towns where glory does not stray/ And early though the cancer grows/ It takes some time before Les knows.” –But What Do I Know?

“I’m unnerved by Toby still working on the same muffin over the course of several days’ worth of panels. It looks like it has regenerative properties. Can you imagine what that’s doing to her gut?!?” –taig

“If the sign above the loaded sales guy can be believed, Henry Mitchell is in the market for a genuine Lrrruriui. That’s a nice car, but not practical for a family man. He should be looking at a Pttrprtooo or maybe a Oeebbanll crossover.” –Old School Allie Cat

“Between Toby being mentally five years old, Wilbur being a manchild who throws tantrums, and Helen attempting to report Toby to ‘School Management’ which isn’t actually a thing, but probably something a kid would assume is, I am getting a feeling that Mary Worth, all this time, has been kids playing pretend. Very, very boring kids.” –Giant Telepathic Otter

“He asked if he could pay with a check. [wry chuckle] Anyway, we’ve got the next few months to look forward to, what with me up nights and weekends trying to assemble a doomed defense and with no earthly hope of recompense. It’s a hoot. How’s your spaghetti and watermelon?” –Vice President John Adams

“And I said, you’ll learn a thing or two about fraud when you experience my so-called barely-going-through-the-motions defense.” –Dennis Jimenez

“The three panel comic strip is obviously the perfect medium for telling a story about sports, as the spectacle of a blind pitcher chasing a baseball around the infield by following it directly, the same way the dumber of my two cats chases a laser pointer, is limited only by my imagination.” –Drew Funk

“The Lockhorns are of the WWII generation, that’s always been clear. The reason we can see them as they are is because they’re on a world so incredibly distant that their images are only reaching us now. Which means they’re too far away to ever reach us and be a part of our world, for which I guess we should be grateful.” –cheech wizard

“The *DAGWOOD* is proud of his brood. Already the void forms within them demanding precious resources to fill its emptiness. Soon they will be ready to leave his world and burrow into a new one demanding endless tribute of sandwiches and sacrifices from its inhabitants.” –Dread

“It’s a funeral in Westview, so you can be sure that the Grey Cross will be there, offering relief to those nauseated by Les’s monologues.” –pugfuggly

“Life is rigged, you simply cannot win! Well, I now need to go back home to polish the Oscar the movie based on my book won.” –Ettorre

“Well, I guess it’s not so much a funny joke as a depressing anecdote about a man with a crippling gambling addiction. Anyway, the moral is that I mostly spend my time waiting for death these days.” –jroggs

Remember: If you want an ad-free version of this site sent to you every day via email, for $3 a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon newsletter subscriber! And if you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for the same low price you can become a Comics Curmudgeon website subscriber! And if you just want to give me money directly, you can put some scratch in my tip jar, or back me on Patreon! Thanks to all for your support and readership!

Post Content

Blondie, 5/12/22

You ever stare at a sentence for a long stretch of time and become increasingly convinced that it doesn’t really make sense as something a native speaker of 21st century American English would say? Probably not, as you don’t have a semi-successful comics blog you’ve got to churn out content for every day, but the point is that “How much are you wanting?” fell into that category, for me, until I finally convinced myself that it would sound right if it were in a comical fake Irish accent from an old-timey movie. “How much are ye wanting then, lads?” See, doesn’t that sound better? Or at least funnier? Wouldn’t it be funnier if Dagwood spoke in a comical Irish accent? Have I finally cracked the code necessary to read Blondie every day and find it funny, after all these years?

Hi and Lois, 5/12/22

“Is that why your face is constantly immobile, your mouth perpetually in an O of surprise? The price of beauty is wearing a dead mask, every day of your life?”

The Lockhorns, 5/12/22

The long, unkempt beards of Greek philosophers were meant to signify that they were so invested in the life of the mind that they couldn’t be bothered to concern themselves with ordinary, quotidian matters like hygiene, and in the early 20th century, many men at Ivy League colleges indulged in a similar aesthetic impulse for similar reasons, making a vogue out of a disheveled, slovenly style of dress. In the 1940s, students at the elite women’s colleges cast off their girdles and began to imitate their male counterparts, and a key part of their new uniform was a baggy cardigan referred to as a “sloppy joe sweater.” This is a long-winded way of me saying that fine, I admit it, I was wrong, the Lockhorns are definitely not Millennials.

Post Content

Gasoline Alley, 5/1/22

I gotta say, this Gasoline Alley was a real journey for me, in the sense that the opening title led me to hope that, finally, Rufus and Joel, my least favorite characters out of a cast in which I don’t like anybody, would be horribly murdered by some kind of undead fiend who drained their bodies of blood, but then it turns out to be some kind of weird meta-thing involving people and details I refuse to research further. On the bright side, though, we do get pretty solid confirmation at the end that our rustic duo are thoroughly illiterate.

Blondie, 5/1/22

Look, if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when comics stretch out what could’ve been been a weekday strip to fill the Sunday panels and trash all their world-building and continuity in the process. What I’m saying is that Dagwood has exactly one friend, and it’s Herb, and they don’t even like each other. I have no idea who these other two people are. I assume they’re Dagwood’s neighbors whom he vaguely knows, and they’re being a lot more polite about this than I would be.

Mary Worth, 5/1/22

Mary Worth, on the other hand, often does a pretty good job of doing a Sunday strip that’s mostly a recap of the week’s plot but contains one little detail that rewards you for reading it in addition to the dailies. Today, that detail is Ian’s little note in the fourth panel. Ian is 100% a guy who would have an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student that was destined to leave her emotionally fucked up for decades and then write “with much affection” in her yearbook.

Pluggers, 5/1/22

Hey, look, buddy, the point of Pluggers is to use furries to illustrate down-home real American anecdotes that manage to be self-deprecating and smug at the same time, OK? It is not a venue for working out your extremely petty and very specific marital grievances, do better everybody