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It’s Sunday, folks, the day when newspaper comics include a couple of panels that can be excised based on the vagaries of print layouts. Taken in isolation, these “throwaway” panels can be kind of fun!

Panels from Blondie, 12/3/23

Here’s the panels from today’s Blondie, for instance! It sounds like they’re discussing the possibility of doing some wife swapping, but actually this just leads into a dumb bit about Christmas decorations.

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/3/23

And here’s the panels from Snuffy Smith! Snuffy looks like he’s going to make sweet love to that radio. In fact, he’s going to listen to horse racing with some horses, which, considering how many horses die as part of the horse racing industry, is pretty grim.

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 12/3/23

On Sundays Dennis the Menace uses its throwaway panel space to do a title block, which is fine, except in this case it seems to be drawn by someone who thinks boy band members wear suits and ties, which isn’t fine at all. Anyway, the main strip is about how Mr. Wilson hates Dennis but his wife forces him to endure the child’s company.

Mary Worth, 12/3/23

For Mary Worth we need the full strip, though, so we can see that Keith and Kitty’s big smooch is interrupted by some cruel soul razzing them! I suppose the razzer is Sonia, whose anti-authoritarian streak is so strong that she calls her own mother by her first name, but it would be very funny if it were just some random acquaintance of Kitty making fun of Keith’s cartoonish physique for no good reason.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/3/23

Oh come on! Are you going to tell me that the whole Mirakle Method was actually stolen wholesale from this old guy, somehow? C’mon! The Method was Rene’s one accidental success! It really worked on at least one guy! You’ve got to give him this! He needs this!

Rhymes With Orange, 12/2/23

Sorry I got so worked up there, I just really care about my boy Rene. Anyway, here’s a comic strip about teen starfish having sex!

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Crock, 12/2/23

Today’s Crock is just a real rollercoaster and I feel like I have to document my approximate emotional state as it unfolded:

PANEL 1: Wait, a snowflake? In “winter”? In the Saharan Desert? No, absolutely not. And he’s talking about this as if it’s a regular occurence? Insane. Madness.

PANEL 2: Oh ha ha, have you heard that the mysterious nation of “China” has developed a relatively low-cost and acceptable-quality manufacturing sector, upending the traditional nature of global trade? Oh, what’s that, you had heard that? Because it’s not 1997 anymore, so actually you’re pretty well aware of it? Well, OK, I gue–JESUS CHRIST that is enormous, I don’t know WHAT it is but it is NOT a SNOWFLAKE

PANEL 3: Wow, wow, Figowitz is the most put-upon sad sack in the entire canon of Crock, and yet here he is, the first Crock character to receive a message from God Himself. Surely this direct communion with the Divine will change his life and put him on the road to happin–oh, huh, the snowflake melted. Guess it really was a snowflake and they really were in the Sahara after all, whaddya know.

Pluggers, 12/2/23

No rollercoaster here; I don’t care that this panel isn’t a “joke” per se and doesn’t really get us any closer to the answer to the age-old “What is a plugger?” question, I just love it because it’s a bear-man staring in trepidatious disgust at a frankly enormous clod of shit on his shoe. That’s what art is, to me, and I encourage newspapers to keep printing it.

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New month, old week, best comments:

“The idea that Gil Thorp is the ‘most beloved man’ in Milford is both baffling and sad. Doesn’t this town have a charismatic politician? A prominent philanthropist? A moderately attractive evening news meteorologist?” –TheDiva

And your very funny runners up!

“It wouldn’t be Gasoline Alley if it wasn’t some unholy mixture of 100 year old comedy bits and bafflingly specific infodumping.” –Evelyn Waughluigi, on Bluesky

“So they’re remaking the movie 10, but with Bo Derek’s part played by vermin? Having simultaneous writer’s and actor’s strikes really did take a toll on Hollywood!” –BigTed

“Tracy, like the rest of us, wonders what the hell Sam is talking about; but if there’s enough blood and gore that he needs a snorkel to navigate, he’s all in.” –Hibbleton

“‘I’m going to use the reasonable suspicion already established by the evidence we’ve compiled so far to get a warrant, and then tell her we need a DNA sample, because I’m pretty sure doing it any other way would be inadmissible in court and probably get the Major Crimes Unit into trouble!’ ‘Sam, this is Neo-Chicago. Nothing will ever get the Major Crimes Unit into trouble, but if we start asking for warrants before we do stuff, people are going to expect us to do it all the time!’ ‘ Okay, then wacky plan it is!’” –Horace Broon

“Pluggers are too embarrassed to ask their techie nephew how to turn off parental controls on their router and therefore last saw a stranger’s breast in 2004.” –Schroduck

“I refuse to believe that pluggers’ wardrobe malfunctions don’t involve farting (or attempts to do so).” –nescio

Hey! listen up! I’m Coach Ochoa. Welcome to full contact chorus! You, stop dancing, and turn down the Glee soundtrack. Thank you.” –Little Blue Bicycle

“The descent of Kubrick’s Black Monolith continues; today, it can only find work as a teaser panel in Gil Thorp. I used to be someone, you can hear it think. I was a thing of wonder and mystery. I was full of stars! And now, this. The Misdirect? Stanley never misdirected.” –Voshkod

“If I understand my slang of [decade that is unmoored in time in just the right way to appear in a newspaper comic strip] correctly, Dennis’s dad is a cocaine dealer?” –matt w

“At first, I thought Dagwood had abandoned the 21st century completely, and had gone back in time and was dealing with an elevator operator, someone who existed before people could push their own buttons. What a relief to find out he’s just some modern-day asshole!” –Buck Ripsnort

“I like that the wallet moth(?) is still in the same position in the last panel, which suggests to me that its actually some kind of spring-loaded prop that Stumpy McRage placed in there to drive his point home. Buddy, if you’re going to go to those lengths to get five bucks you might want to try a more subtle hook.” –pugfuggly

“You were right to ask me, a weapons expert, to examine these autopsy report. Look closely at how neat this stab wound is! It’s like, wham, you’re dead, bro! It would take a real weapon expert — I mean like Conan the Barbarian or Darth Maul, not me — to kill someone this precisely and awesomely. Sorry, I don’t really have a professional insight to offer, I just love this kind of stuff.” –jroggs

“Winnie-the-Pooh might be a bear of very little brain, as the books have it, but here we have proof positive that Ditto is, to use scientific terms, a fucking moron. Honey is a viscous liquid that sticks to the inside of clay jars, making it at least plausible that a determined enough bear might stick his head into said jar to get every morsel he can. Cookies, though, are not a liquid of any kind, so all one has to do to get them all out of the jar, Ditto, is to use something readily available to every human being on the planet: gravity. Just … just turn the jar over. Just turn the jar over! There are crumbs! Next! To!! You!!! Know why?! APPARENTLY NOT.” –els

“None of those sanitized, watered-down nursery rhymes for Hi’s baby! This is the REAL Mother Goose! The one where Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten by the wolf, Bluebeard murders six of his wives, and Cinderella’s sisters hack off their toes. There’s no sense sheltering the child; someday she’s going to have to live in the real world, where such things are a common occurrence.” –Peanut Gallery

“I was wondering why Trixie can’t understand the stories and thought maybe what she monologues to herself in is some sort of non-English baby talk translated for our comprehension, but then I realized that she’s an infant who doesn’t yet grasp the concept of ‘fiction’. Babies are stupid. I bet she can’t even do taxes yet.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“I’m not a father, but 7:28 pm seems to be the ideal time to read to an infant. Gets it out of the way early, leaving plenty of time for drinking.” –Pozzo

“Rex does a surprisingly good imitation of me when they announce the lineup at our county fair. Toughen up, Doc! It’s not like you had to deal with Ted Nugent practically in your back yard!” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“I’m so glad I lived long enough to see Rex Morgan, M.D. do Jazz Hands.” –MKay

“Why does June close her eyes during sex? See panel three.” –bartorama

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