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I returned from my absence this week to once again judge the living and the dead, the funny and the not-funny, and I decree the following to be this week’s top comment:

“Actually, Daddy Keane isn’t listening to a word coming out of Jeffy’s lemon-headed-mouth. He’s completely blown away by this retconned edition of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. ‘What the … No Tudor house in forest? A grass hut next to some palm trees? What the HELL man’” –Carsick Yankee

These runners up are also amusing in my sight:

“Don’t bug me about making plans — I’ve been spending all my time learning to smoke through a mask.” –Pozzo

“It is my lady; O, it is my love! O that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses; I will answer it. I am too bold; ’tis not to me she speaks. [Editor: Too high-falutin, William. Please re-work.] Can’t believe she broke up with me because I don’t get along with her stupid cat. It’s not my fault she has a crazy furball as a pet.” –I Used To Post At Comics Curmudgeon, And Now I Still Do

“For a supposed badass, Dennis is sure into some lame shit. ‘Wanna watch two old guys play chess?’ ‘Do I!’ [cloud of dust as he takes off]” –Joe Blevins

“Straight-up mocking Mr. Wilson’s early-onset dementia is easily the most menacing thing Dennis has ever done. Meanwhile, straight-up reminding DtM’s core readership of their own inevitable mental decline isn’t even the worst thing the strip has done this week.” –Doctor Moreau

“‘What friends?’ I said, hoping against hope that I put enough acid into the words to hide the pain. What friends indeed? Victims, co-workers, nemesii, but friends? What friends? A tear rolled down my cheek into a mask already soaked. That’s why I wear black. To hide the tears. To hide the pain.” –Voshkod

“I look forward to some great banter between these two, along the lines of ‘Ha ha, usually the only magazines I deal with are the ones that I empty into fleeing suspects!’” –pugfuggly

“‘You’re 10 seconds late, Kianna!’ ‘Sorry, coach! I had to say hi back to someone I was unfortunately within earshot of!’ ‘You had to? I’ve had enough of your politeness. You’re off the team.’” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Look, if I were reading a copy of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears that was the same length as Little Women I might drop the voices halfway through, too. I get it, Jeffy: you pick the longest book imaginable in order to stave off bedtime a little longer. We all did it. But you can’t ask for Jim Dale-quality narration AND the longest fairy tale in existence. Pick one. For your father’s sanity. Look at his eyes, Jeffy. LOOK AT HIS EYES.” –els

“Did kids used to brag about their parents, or did they used to say ‘my dad can beat up your dad’ in an admission of the shockingly low threshold of willingness to resort to violence to address personal and social problems?” –Francisco Arrowroot

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Family Circus, 9/10/21

A lot has changed for me, both in my life and vis-à-vis my relationship to the comics, since I started this blog in 2004, and definitely the one change I would’ve been least likelty to predict is that I would come to have an occasional grudging admiration for the Family Circus. And I didn’t even have to become a parent for it to happen! Yes, the strip is like 75% darnedest-thing-saying and reused art by volume, but every once in a while you get a great image like today’s, when Daddy has very clearly just had the epiphany that he could be doing literally anything else right now.

Curtis, 9/10/21

Curtis is doing a thing this week where our title character confronts rival mobs of pro- and anti-mask parents in front of his school and I have literally no interest in engaging with it, but I do want to say that “Look, everyone, a child wearing his hat backwards wanting to speak!” is definitely the funniest thing I’ve read this week.

Mark Trail, 9/10/21

A lot has changed for Mark Trail over the years, too, but I’m happy to report that there is one constant in the Trailian multiverse and that is that Mark is absolutely ripped.

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Gil Thorp, 9/9/21

Big news, everybody! Usually football dominates the Gil Thorp fall storyline, just like it dominates the American sports fan’s mind, but this year we’re going to acknowledge that there are other sports happening in the fall as well, sports like volleyball and gymnastics, and that girls play them too! So far the main point of this plot seems to be “if you play two sports the same semester, you don’t have much time for a social life,” but the last time we did a gymnastics plot in this strip, it ended with racists getting beat up so I’m willing to see where this goes.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/9/21

Speaking of being willing to see where something goes: A mysterious figure from Jordan’s possibly retconned past has showed up, tempting him with a big payday to go on one last mission. Good news, though: Jordan’s not going to do it. No hard feelings, says Griff, as he leaves the strip forever! Whew, that was almost interesting there for a minute.

Dick Tracy, 9/9/21

OK, fine, I’ll stop ranting about time travel stuff in Dick Tracy and talk about something else. Like, in today’s strip, isn’t it kind of weird that we appear to have skipped over exactly one sentence of dialogue between panels one and two, and it’s a sentence that Dick himself needlessly summarizes? I guess it’s structured this way so that the dialogue alternates between Dick and Chief Patton. Or, maybe Diet’s time-viewing experiments have started interfering with the very nature of reality, causing temporal discontinuities in everyday l[I am felled by a single sniper’s bullet to the head]