The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Comments are closed

Young people annoy their elders

Post Content

Gasoline Alley, 4/6/23

Oh, hey, Ida Knoe the evil talking doll who can travel through time, wild that you’re only now worried about the consequences of disrupting the spacetime continuum! Maybe you should’ve thought of this before you time travelled with a bunch of children, who are notorious for being idiots. I’m talking about all children, not these ones in particular, and maybe “idiot” is a bit harsh but if you’re looking for someone with both the mental acuity to understand what will and what won’t change the course of history and the self-control to act on that understanding, a bunch of seven-year-olds is not your best bet.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/6/23

One of the funnier possibilities in this storyline is that Mud Mountain Murphy and Dr. Mirakle are entirely sincere and have just picked the worse possible venue for a long-established artist to unveil an entirely new repetoire/personality. Like, I don’t mean to talk smack about the great pastime of going on cruises, but I think the cruise lifestyle largely caters to people who want a certain nonthreatening consistency out of a vacation, and if you try to “mix things up” you will end up with patrons like Yvonne in panel three, literally praying to hear just one song she already knows the words to, just one.

Dennis the Menace, 4/6/23

Look, kid, the swinging can’t start until you go to bed already

Comments are closed

Don’t worry, Ed, therapists rarely euthanize their patients

Post Content

Mary Worth, 4/5/23

Ah ha, we’ve finally arrived at the big dramatic twist in this storyline: Estelle has to convince Dr. Ed to go to therapy! I look forward to the next several weeks in which she gently overcomes his emotional reserves and lets him know that admitting he needs help isn’t a sign of weakn–oh, wait, what’s that? He said he’d be into it literally the first time she mentioned it? Ah. Well. I guess I look forward to the next several weeks in which he tries to figure out if Estelle’s therapist takes his insurance.

Family Circus, 4/5/23

Look, Dolly, I get that your whole job is saying the darnedest things, and there are only so many darnedest things available to say in the relatively limited space of a Family Circus caption, but I feel it’s very important that you not imply some kind of appliance vore fetish scenario here, because this panel will get posted in some web forums that none of us will be comfortable with.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/5/23

I think there’s something of a divide between people who say “fucking” to mean any kind of sex stuff generally, and people who say it to mean specifically p-in-v or -a intercourse. We know Eddie’s had a longtime romantic relationship with a mermaid, and today I guess we’re learning that this relationship’s sexual component has fallen into definition one but not definition two above — at least so far. I mean, that’s what this strip’s about, right? The prospect of penetrative sex with a mermaid? It’s not a strip with another joke that also slyly makes reference to “how exactly would it work for a guy to stick his dick in a mermaid?” Like that’s pretty explicitly what this one’s about?

Comments are closed

Cantankerous Tuesday

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 4/4/23

I think an underrated and probably quite realistic aspect of Beetle Bailey is that its motley crew of characters, thrown together by their duty to the military and forced to spend almost all their time with one another, for the most part don’t really care for each other and their relationships could degenerate into open brawling with very little provocation.

The Lockhorns, 4/4/23

It gives me no pleasure to say that this panel does not live up, in my opinion, to The Lockhorns’ usually high quality standards. There’s nothing realistic Loretta could’ve said that text-to-speak would’ve botched into the names of these objects, and I feel the choices of what we’re seeing are aiming for an “LOL so random” vibe that is not what we come here for. That said, it is very in character for Leroy to not ask for clarification but to instead buy all of these obviously incorrect items, perhaps spending his entire day going from store to store looking for them, just to come home and rub Loretta’s mistake in her face.

Blondie, 4/4/23

I don’t really have strong feelings about panels two or three of today’s Blondie. But the first panel? The one where a stone-faced news anchor announces “National Humor Month” next to a smiley-face graphic, while a curmudgeonly old man says “Humor month?! With all the problems in the world today?” It’s perfection. No notes.