Post Content

Dustin, 6/24/23

Being a diagnosable Twitter addict, like I am, is not particularly rewarding, but it does provide you with a few fairly useless special powers. The ranks of Twitter addicts are fairly small — the number of daily users has never matched networks like Facebook or Instagram or TikTok — but is disproportionally made up of journalists and academics and tech “thought leaders,” so ideas and memes that originate on Twitter often eventually leak out into the real, non-Twitter, world, so one of those aforementioned useless powers is the ability to spot one of the aforementioned ideas/memes and think “Oh, no, this bastard is inflicting a bad Twitter thing on the hapless normies.” For a while, one of the bad Twitter things has been accounts that post pictures of Eastern European models in various contrived everyday situations accompanied with text like “You encounter this beautiful woman in the market. What is your romantic approach?” The goal for these accounts is either to push pickup artist bullshit or just get enough followers so that they can eventually pivot to crypto scam artistry, and I regret to inform you that it appears that at least someone at Dustin HQ has been sucked in.

Dick Tracy, 6/24/23

Dick Tracy hasn’t gone in for nightmarish ultraviolence in years, but current the creative team still likes to unsettle and disturb in their own way, like by offering unpleasant closeups of normal human mouths in action.

Hi and Lois, 6/24/23

This is a good addition to my “Hi and Lois is embracing Thirsty’s characterization as the neighborhood drunk” files. Honestly, the combination of the bright red nose and the fact that he’s clearly passed out in his lawn chair with his mouth hanging open while children gawk at him is a little too much! Getting a little grim! Might want to ratchet it back!

Judge Parker, 6/24/23

Good news, everyone! Sam and Abbey are going off on a trip together to have sex! Sam’s wearing a dumb baseball hat and they almost-matched their ecru shirts because that’s the sort of bland shit that really gets them going, I guess. Hopefully we’ll be treated to the same uncanny flavor of sexuality that marked their last recorded erotic encounter.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/24/23

“Oh, wow, you’ve managed to parry exactly one question with a confident but unquantified assertion. I’m sold!”

Post Content

Hope you’re all enjoying your June as much as I know you’ll enjoy this week’s comment of the week!

“From inside the burlap sack, Jones listened carefully. It had taken a year of fasting and surgical alterations that his doctor called ‘highly unusual and disturbing’ for Jones to fit into the chicken costume, but the time was finally here. He’d show Smith a thing or two about chickens, he thought, caressing the sawed-off shotgun cunningly built into his beak. The costume’s beak. They were the same now. The man, the chicken, the gun, they sweated in the sack, waiting to hatch. Waiting to count.” –Voshkod

Your runners up are also quite enjoyable!

“As a criminal, isn’t claiming to own a time machine just begging the cops to pin every single crime they can think of on you? Weirdly now has no alibi for anything — not JFK, not the black plague, not the assassination of Julius Caesar. He is going DOWN.” –jerp+jump

“‘What’s got you smiling, Biz?’ ‘I’m extremely high on varnish fumes!’” –Lorelei

“You might think, ‘doesn’t the Catholic Church forbid divorce?’ However, Hagar takes place in the early Middle Ages, while marriage as a sacrament, like many other Christian dogmas that seem original, became part of Canon Law only in the late Middle Ages. For this feudal lord, divorce is just a regular part of life. Unfortunately, dying by an heathen’s axe to the head is also another regular part of life.” –Ettorre

“It’s nice to see some consequences for Slylock’s nonsense. He’s had so many cases thrown out allowing repeat offenders to commit so many minor crimes that he’s been bumped down to investigating mean e-mails, and even that’s not going to go well when word gets back to the captain. ‘He WHAT??! Printed them out and used a magnifying glass? FOX! My office, NOW!’” –Tabby Lavalamp

“LEVEL 5 CATEGORY OMEGA WARNING: FAMILY CIRCUS SUCCESSFULLY PULLED OFF POST-MODERN META-HUMOR. I REPEAT, FAMILY CIRCUS SUCCESSFULLY PULLED OFF POST-MODERN META-HUMOR. GO HOME, HUG YOUR FAMILIES FOR THE LAST TIME, AND PREPARE FOR THE END” –Schroduck

“The other really sad thing about Hi and Lois is that Chip is a teenager but he only comes up to his parents’ shoulders. I don’t care if he’s holding a sandwich with a bite out of it (like a saint holding the instrument of her martyrdom), feed that boy!” –matt w

“So wait, is Milford ‘juvie’ just a division of the high school athletics department? How many other municipal services do they run? It’s no wonder this town is obsessed with their high school sports: if they make it to regionals the town might be without police or firefighters for a week.” –pugfuggly

“Woah, Lois really wasn’t expecting her family to actually care about this information. Look, they’re smiling. They’re expressing interest! It’s blown her mind. She needs to put more sedatives in their food before things get nuts.” –made of wince

“If you’re going to tell a poo-related joke, maybe don’t give us a glimpse of the character’s rear at the same time? Especially when they have … tailfeathers? Honestly, I don’t know what the heck is going on back there, and I don’t want to.” –BigTed

“‘I didn’t see it, but I sensed it went vaguely that direction!’ ‘Good enough! We’ll just amble in that direction! We’re bound to run into the perp!’” –Buck Ripsnort

“I’m not worried. When they see Greta’s bow tie, the fighting dogs will assume she’s a referee, and follow her commands.” –Chazhouston

“How many food trucks will they have been lead to and ordered from before they realize Max cannot track Greta?” –Kevin On Earth

“You’re going to take well-paying work? When you could be getting the high quality education available at a college that’s so desperate that it accepts people who apply at the end of June?” –Rube

“We are supposed to believe that Dennis was such a hellion that he drove her to tears. However that’s not how these things work. What really happened is that her boyfriend broke up with her by text, and she cried herself to sleep. He is now reviewing the thread on her phone for tips and techniques for when he, inevitably, has to do the same with Margaret.” –richardf8

“We can take some comfort knowing Snuffy uses French about as incorrectly as anyone could ever use French. What are we thinking, folks? ‘Ow contryary?’ “Oh contreeree?’
‘Eau d’country?’ Either way he just lifted Uriah’s wallet.” –Blackdrazon

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

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

So it seems that Niki is going to turn down the college scholarship he earned by helping Rex recapture some escaped prisoners, because he’s found a new passion — auto mechanics! And indeed, this is a line of work that can be quite lucrative, though I’m a little worried that he’s cut his teeth on classic cars and is going to show up on his first day at his new job and start panicking when he sees how many computer chips are involved. Anyway, I love panel three because Kelly has just reached that point in a Big Relationship Talk where the other person starts waving their index finger in your face, which you know means things are going great.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/23/23

I’m sorry, there is no way on earth that Snuffy Smith is going to utter the phrase au contraire. Absolutely fucking not. It’s days like today when I really come to terms with what a crushing burden it is to be the last person alive who cares about consistent characterization in newspaper comics that are literally more than a hundred years old.

Dennis the Menace, 6/23/23

Dennis casually looking at his phone as he delivers this line is in fact quite menacing and extremely funny, and I have no choice but to respect it.