The Comics Curmudgeon

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Some gross stuff today, not gonna lie

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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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Barry rightfully refuses to risk his good rep as an editor and participant in the African diaspora wikiproject

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The Phantom, 2/2/25

A fun thing about The Phantom (the comic strip) is that it’s one of the oldest superhero franchises, and the Phantom (the character) hasn’t really changed much since the strip launched during FDR’s first term, so he recognizably fits into the “superhero” slot in our collective understanding of the word but one of his primary “superpowers” is “shoots guns”. The current Sunday storyline is sort of a Phantom: Origins flashback, showing what the current Phantom’s Phantom ancestor was up to during the Moroccan invasion of the Songhai Empire in the 1590s. Turns out what he was up to was using his “shoots guns” superpower, even then! Hey kids, you want to see a guy get shot in the chest, right here in the newspaper? It’s OK, it’s, uh, old-timey.

Curtis, 2/2/25

Don’t panic, Curtis! All you have to do is create a Wikipedia page for “Toby Wilkins,” complete with plausible-looking citations, before Mrs. Nelson gets home tonight! Admittedly that doesn’t really sound like something that’d be in your skill set, now that I think about it. Seems to be more like a Barry thing to be honest. Should’ve been nicer to your brother, Curtis! I personally would not quickly whip up a bogus Wikipedia page to help a guy who calls me “troll” on the regular.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/2/25

Your nephew’s band? Is it a roots country band??? We haven’t seen any roots country action in this strip since November, I’m starting to panic

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Sorry, nothing that goes on in the Bumstead home constitutes a “healthy lifestyle”

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Blondie, 2/1/25

You know, this strip originally became a cultural sensation when it was about a dissolute failson who wooed and married a flapper and got disinherited over it, but then for a lot longer than that it was about a suburban dipshit who was married to a woman wildly out of his league, and I’m not going to say that’s good or anything, but it’s a hell of a lot better than a strip in which people encourage their children to “vlog” about “healthy lifestyle ideas.” This one is even going so far as to imply that getting involved in the online influencer grift could get you laid! It makes me sick.

Hi and Lois, 2/1/25

Lois was smart to do this: Thirsty is wearing an orange sweater, clearly signaling that he was prepared to go “Garfield mode” on that lasagna. Of course, the sassy orange cat would never let a nagging note stop him from devouring the Italian dish he loves so much, which is why Thirsty, as much as I hold him in great affection, is not a top-tier comic character and never will be.

Shoe, 2/1/25

I’ll say this much for Shoe: when it has characters say jokes like this, it at least has the good grace to make them look like they want to die.