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Marvin, 3/25/25

“Wow,” many of my longtime readers have no doubt concluded, “So Josh makes money by flying into a rage whenever the comic strip Marvin does jokes about shitting? Nice work if you can get it.” And that’s fair, but it isn’t all fun and games. For instance, part of my job also entails dispassionately and meticulously keeping track of the timeline of Marvin’s parents’ lives and relationships. We already knew that Jeff is 35, which means that he put “Who Let The Dogs Out” on a mix CD in college ironically, rather than sincerely. Today we learn that that he and Jenny have been married for seven years, since he was 28, another interesting data point. It is, of course, difficult to get a handle on how old Marvin is exactly, what with him walking around and talking in complete sentences but also not being potty trained, but he’s definitely several years younger than seven, which means there was a fairly extended Marvin-free period in Jeff and Jenny’s marriage. Now, the question this raises is: did they originally love one another, and the introduction of the awful Marvin in their lives lead them to the Lockhorns-like state of enmity we see in the strip? Or did they always hold each other in blistering contempt, and that anger made Marvin the hell-infant that we all know and loathe?

Andy Capp, 3/25/25

Speaking of comics character ages, it occurred to me the other day that, what with all the cultural signifiers in Andy Capp being ossified in a milieu quite foreign to me (working-class northern England sometime in the late 1950s), I had no idea how old Andy is supposed to be; any number between his mid-50s and, like, 28 seemed potentially realistic. Fortunately, today the strip introduces (?) a respectful zoomer character, “Young Tommy,” who “do[es] internet dating” so Andy can remark on it. I met my wife on the internet in the very early days of doing internet dating, which means that Andy is probably a few years older than me, which you can imagine comes as a great relief.

Luann, 3/25/25

Ha ha, remember back in the day, when Brad and Toni’s relationship was alive with a level of over-the-top ribaldry that they seemed to enjoy even though right-thinking readers all found it deeply distasteful? Well, they’re married now, and the passion is long gone, and now all that they have to look forward to is the grim, relentless cycle of sex for the purposes of reproduction. Right-thinking readers also find this deeply distasteful, but can at least take solace in the fact that Brad and Toni don’t like it either.

B.C., 3/25/25

Ha ha, remember back in the day in 2001, when you had to worry about whether B.C.’s Easter strips were maybe anti-semitic? Well, now it’s 2025, and you have to worry about whether B.C. is encouraging children to do whip-its. Life comes at you … well, not fast, exactly, but it does come at you. I know you’re all thinking “This isn’t a problem because no children actually read B.C.,” but I do think they’re marginally more likely to read B.C. than Judge Parker, so we’re slipping into dangerous territory here.

Shoe, 3/25/25

Being a syndicated newspaper comics artist doesn’t carry the rewards it used to, in terms of money or cultural impact. But there are few better ways, outside of a moderately successful Twitter or Instagram account, to share with hundreds or maybe even thousands of strangers your annoyance at a minor inconvenience you encountered in your daily life.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/24/25

One of my favorite terms of art from the world of standup comedy is “street joke.” A street joke is a joke a comic tells on stage that they didn’t write — but isn’t one that they lifted from another comic or writer, which is a significant sin among standups. Instead, a street joke is just one you heard from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone, or (in these days where most jokes spread online) from someone who saw it in a blurry, repeatedly reposted meme of some sort. Upon reading today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, I immediately pegged its dialogue as a street joke, and some quick searches confirmed my instinct: you can find it posted in uncanny Facebook groups called things like “Strange World” and “Deep Relationships,” tagged as being of “disputed origin” on a post in the r/quotes subreddit, or for sale on human made merch on Etsy or truly upsetting AI-generated t-shirts on Amazon. There are, of course, worse sins than putting a street joke in your comic strip, though I must once again remind comics creators that if your main characters are anthropomorphic birds, and you put in street jokes that involve birds, it really leaves the reader puzzling over whether the birds in the joke are also supposed to be anthropomorphic birds that the main characters interact with, like do the rooster-men in the Mother Goose and Grimm world scream like a person every morning or what, and frankly I don’t think that’s really the effect you’re going for with this.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/24/25

Oh, just to keep you up to date on the Rex Morgan, M.D., stalker plot: the stalker got kicked out of the museum, and then Augie and Summer went to the cops and they were like “What do you expect us to do, protect you somehow? Get back to us when he’s actually murdered you or something,” and so they went back to Summer’s place and Augie agreed to stand guard. Then there was a loud noise, which implied that something exciting happened, but nope! Nothing exciting happened. Just Augie accidentally closing a door too vigorously! More on this story as it continues, against all odds, to fail to develop.

Sam and Silo, 3/24/25

The thing I like about this strip is that Sam doesn’t respond to Silo without prompting. Frankly, it’s as if he wasn’t really talking to Silo in the first panel to begin with. This was all an internal monologue! “Why is this guy even talking to me,” he thinks to himself. Anyway, these two are supposedly best friends and spend all their time together.

Alice, 3/24/25

Big news, everyone: it seems that Alice, the title character in the syndicated newspaper strip Alice, has discovered the recreational drug known as “marijuana”. Brace yourself, things could get wacky!

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Hi and Lois, 3/23/25

Look, you know I’m a genuine fan of Hi and Lois’s new melancholy, punchline-free vibe, but I’m sorry, “spring is here, time to ramp up our loathing of our aging bodies” is too dark and I’m going to need them to ratchet things back a bit.

Mary Worth, 3/23/25

OK, we all knew from the get-go that Wilbur’s vacation fling with funny hair was going to show up at his condo from the get-go, but I don’t think any of us could’ve predicted that she would arrive just as Wilbur was sorting through his surprisingly diverse shoe collection as part of his plan to strike the perfect balance between aesthetics and endurance for his upcoming karaoke outing. Will Belle be into Wilbur’s whole shoe deal, will she be repulsed by it as somehow unmasculine, or will she not find anything noteworthy about a bedroom with shoes strewn randomly around the floor and bed? The answer will tell us all a lot about this lady.

Heathcliff, 3/23/25

Heathcliff! You probably shouldn’t be putting forth the effort to communicate with the dog community in their own language at all, and if you’re going to stoop to that level, it should be to make them quake in fear, not chortle at your wit. You’re letting down all your dogcatcher fans!

Luann, 3/23/25

“I guess you know you’re old when you used to live in a civilization with a strong literary culture but now you need drastic pharmaceutical intervention just to stay alive.” “Ha! Under no circumstances should you put that on a t-shirt, it’s way too depressing.”