As the snow comes down and that icy wind begins to blow (on you, not me; I live in Southern California), please warm yourself with laughter at this comment of the week:
“‘Liquid protein‘ is made out of people! It’s people! You’ve gotta tell them! You’ve gotta tell them!!!” –BigTed
“A Mary Worth character’s grip on their own identity is so fragile, Iris resorts to frantically thought-ballooning the correction to herself: ‘My name is IRIS. Not Irene. I must remember. My name is IRENE. Irene, Irene … No, IRIS! Wait, is it Iris or Irene? What’s happening to me? I’m almost sure it’s Irene … Or is it Iris?’” –Peanut Gallery
“Hi and Lois gives us both ‘Lois’s obsessive perfectionism destroys the joy of the holiday season’ and ‘Hi is anxious about his inadequacy in satisfying Lois’s emotional needs’ and you ingrates want a punchline???” –matt w
“Today’s Mary Worth has the energy of the beginning half of one of those rambly stories Heath Ledger’s Joker would tell in The Dark Knight explaining how he got his facial scars, right before the people in them started carving up each other’s faces.” –The Great Joe Bivins
“My favorite part about today’s Mary Worth — and there are so many to choose from — is that Iris has clearly been holding this pose/face for a real-world five minutes while waiting for Zak to look up from his favorite website, sepiaindexcards.com. I urge you to try it: spread your hands to the side of your face, clench your teeth just as hard as you can, stare at someone three feet in front of you who’s not paying you the slightest attention, and finally grit out ‘Zak dear … do you notice any resemblance between me and someone from your past?’ while keeping that Joker grin firmly in place. Have you ever sounded angrier/more deranged? My money’s on no.” –els
“So, Gasoline Alley ran for weeks with the ‘Can we somehow arrange for old Walt to ride on a garbage truck? It’s the one thing he wants in the world!’ Then the mayor says she’ll just take a garbage truck ride too. Walt’s fondest wish is the mayor’s afterthought.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge
“Whenever Hi is feeling inadequate, he heads over to Thirsty’s home to watch his sad life and regain some self esteem. The uncared-for house and lawn, the sloppy drunkenness, the vicious domestic spats? It’s all good stuff. But seeing a once proud American man reduced to watching soccer? That’s too grim even for Hi.” –jroggs
“I am fascinated by the electrified voice bubble from the TV in Hi and Lois. Aside from the choice to sidestep any sports-related dialogue (e.g. ‘So, as we enter our 80th scoreless minute…’), the oddly specific callout of the location feels like either Walker-Browne Enterprises has been successfully co-opted via sportswashing by the Qatari royal family or that soccer has mainstreamed in the U.S. to the point where naming the host country was the only way to make it seem sufficiently alien to even an aging, golf-loving audience.” –Vice President John Adams
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the boy, ‘Did God say, You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’ The boy said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ But the serpent said to the boy, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing Greg’s feet.’ So when the boy saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, he took of its fruit and ate; and promptly regretted it.” –pastordan
“Uriah can’t be killed, because the consequences of doing so would be worse for Hootin’ Holler than whatever slight started the feud in the first place. Uriah for one is one of the few legitimate workers in Hootin’ Holler whose efforts bring cash into the subsistence economy. On top of that his work brings in Social Security checks to this area with no utilities; let alone broadband/Wi-Fi and online banking. Killing Uriah would also risk the Newnited States sending law enforcement in at worse, or simply having them cut off Hootin Holler from the Postal System altogether, and the last thin link to mainstream society. No, Barlow cannot violently attack Uriah, so instead a Cold War of sorts is going on where Barlow seeks to mock Uriah’s industriousness by putting forth his own effort to make Uriah’s job more difficult. Like the Cold War, it’s sparked a small technical arms race where the feuding parties go bigger as they match wits. Will this innovation manage to actually grow Hootin’ Holler’s economy (ie. Uriah’s stilts use actual purchased lumber instead of found materials, and perhaps could be repurposed to harvesting higher-hanging wild fruits when Barlow moves on to other tactics)? Likely no, but it’s not 100% determined yet.” –Philip
“That TV boss has the look of someone who knows exactly what kind of hell he’s lived his entire life in so he’s going to come up with the damned pun first but instead saying it with a smirk he’s going threaten everyone around him who might dare repeat it. I think he may well be the one person I like in the Funkyverse.” –Tabby Lavalamp
“Barlow went to a lot of effort for a very mild expected payoff. Imagine if Uriah hadn’t made the stilts. Barlow would be peeking through the curtains and chuckling to himself: ‘He’s lookin’ at it! He’s shakin’ his haid! He’s walkin’ away mildly frustrated! Hot dang, I’ve still got it!’” –Tom T.
“Based on the hat Uriah is wearing, the postal service is not his only job with the federal government. He also clearly served in the Union army in the Civil War and is still stationed in Hootin’ Holler. This comic strip is set during Reconstruction, which explains a lot, actually. Thank you for your service Uriah.” –KMD
“Wow, this Judge Duncan sounds devious and interesting. How come he doesn’t have a strip?” –pugfuggly
“Dustin is canonically unable to get laid no matter how many fern bars or coffee shops he frequents. That’s the face of a young man who has masturbated himself raw.” –Where’s Rocky?
“The writer of the comic strip Dustin really has no business describing a form of entertainment as a ‘waste of time.’” –Rube
“Dustin is so committed to its core premise, in which Dustin personally is the sin eater for whatever young person thing is annoying Kelley at a given moment, that it’s leaning right into ‘teen girls don’t get the point of TikTok.’” –Dan
“Ah, isn’t it cute? Crock misses his days with the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne, his volunteer time with the Nazis on the Eastern Front. He misses the cold and the fear and the hordes of Soviet soldiers, the roar of the massed Red artillery, the blood and the mud at Pomerania and the choking dust of shattered buildings in the last days of Berlin. He misses the humidity and green, such verdant green, of the valley of Dien Bien Phu, the flat crack of the Viet Minh artillery raining down from the hillsides, the screams of men caught on the wire and the slow death of Béatrice, Gabrielle, Anne-Marie, and Isabelle. He longs for the ambushes along La Rue Sans Joie, when every peasant was a potential terrorist, and every hut a potential stronghold. And now he’s stuck here, when the real action is in Algiers and Philippeville, left with the shallow joy of taking potshots at nomads, and hanging the occasional captive. I have only felt alive in the presence of death, he muses, and wonders if he just pushed Poulet over the wall to his death. Maybe then he’d feel something.” –Voshkod
“Sadly for Crock, his bloodlust will not be sated today, but, happily for him, he’s about to fall head over heels for the new ‘Cannon-Core’ genre of music that’s sweeping the nation and its assorted colonial holdings.” –Urlance Woolsbane
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!
