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Folks! Your comment of the week in a moment, but speaking of comments … faithful reader/Joshreads dot com tech guy Adam Norwood updated my server and the WordPress software that runs this site to the latest versions of everything last night, and that may have caused a little weirdness with the comment moderation bot, combined with the fact that I put the letter sequence “ex ex ex” in the title of the this morning’s post despite the fact that that’s exactly one of the letter sequences the modbot hates the most. Apologies! I do want to gently suggest, however, that if you find your comment moderated, you should email me at bio@jfruh.com rather than doing endless tests to see what the modbot will do, because (a) if you keep doing things the modbot thinks are spam, especially if you do them over a short period of time, it may decide you’re definitely spam and make it more difficult for you to post in the future, and (b) I will eventually get to the modbot queue and if I find a bunch of “test!” “will this work?” posts, what am I supposed to do with them? Free them and leave them on the site where they’ll look odd, or leave them as spam and count them against your modbot karma? Anyway sorry to be cranky and I know it’s annoying, but that’s my advice to you!

Anyway, nobody could possibly moderate this delightful top comment of the week:

Keep it up, baby, keep it up! Atlas is dead and only you can hold the sky, preventing Uranus from copulating with Gaia once again and producing monsters.” –Ettorre

These runners up could only annoy the most unfeeling artificial intelligence:

“I’m kinda bummed that Dustin’s sister made that quip, mostly because it sucks ass, but also because we don’t get to see the follow-up on Dustin’s Dad’s comment. You know, where he asks a store employee to get involved in a personal discussion about the tastes of a family member of theirs who isn’t present? Really wanted to see where that was going.” –pugfuggly

“Apparently, people void their bowels at the point of death, so Marvin will at least die doing what he loves.” –Rosstifer

“They don’t call jealousy the green-eyed monster for nothing, but did she have to be so precocious and annoying?” –pastordan

“Just calling my shot early. Somehow, Vidpa plagiarizes Sarah’s letter and his next book is Kitty Cop Says Thanks To His Godlike Creator.” –Victor Von

“‘Call me ACE OF SPADES!’
-Taken
‘King of Spades?’
-Taken
‘Ja…’
Taken” –Lorne Hanks, on Twitter

“No cell phones, just vibing (by which I mean that Loretta has brought someone over to watch Leroy humiliate himself in person instead of making it into a viral video like anyone else would).” –matt w

“The joke is that they’re getting Dennis neutered? Right? Right!?” –The Rambling Otter

“Today’s Lockhorns also explains why they live in a featureless void: any time he tries to decorate the place, Leroy suffers a grievous injury.” –Thelonious_Nick

“Apparently, June likes to display blank plates that say absolutely nothing and have no artwork whatsoever. It’s a shout out to let us know what this strip is about.” –Sequitur

“That’s just great, you get home from your Fashion Police job only to find out your wife is wearing a pink blouse with a red belt. Will she never learn to respect the badge?” –made of wince

“‘Indian princess burned at the stake’ seems like it’s going to be a little … problematic on Instagram.” –Tom T.

“Birds eat cicadas, so this strip is not going to end well for someone.” –Pozzo

“Not rendering judgment on anyone’s artistic abilities, but I do think the current Mary Worth art has a tendency to depict its characters as more fluid and, well, conventionally attractive than many other strips. So I was initially disappointed that we would not get to experience panel one — in which Ashlee appears to be anxiously following orders to ‘do the sprinkler, but with more hip dislocation’ issued by a sniper somewhere to Drew’s left — in the pure Dadaist glory of, say, old-school Dick Tracy art. But on reflection I think it’s even more effective this way. Would we even understand how awkward that scene is, if the artist had not mastered both perspective and biceps? Does not a diamond gleam most brightly against black velvet? Well done, Moy and Brigman. Well done.” –Skedastic

“In Drew’s ‘Salute to America,’ we have blue ‘spacious skies’ as a backdrop. The clouds play the part of ‘purple mountains majesty’ while Ashlee fills in the ‘fruited plains’ and her outfit conjures ‘amber waves of grain.’ It’s patriotic, over-the-top, and over-sexualized. It’s awe- and laugh-inspiring. It is America.” –Voshkod

“Is this the library or just a literary-themed singles’ bar with a really bad drink selection?” –jroggs

“We were led to believe that libraries were needed for poor people such as Zane since his family can’t afford a computer at home. However, it’s because his house is so small that he can’t get any privacy and needs public services such as libraries for a quickie. I’m no Kellyanne Conway, but I believe that platform will resonate with the electorate.” –Scratchy Scrotum LXIX

“Joke’s on the boss; he made the mistake of speaking to Leroy at a party, and is now forever trapped in an endless void of infinite nothing. Sometimes he’ll make out half-realized shades of other people, smiling and enjoying drinks far away, but mostly he’ll wander through a pink and purple mist for eternity as Leroy obliviously huffs his way home to complain about Loretta’s roast. Good luck, Boss! Enjoy retirement.” –Dan

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Gil Thorp, 5/28/21

They say a happy marriage is one where each partner can still surprise the other, and by that definition my longtime partnership with soap opera comic strips has still got it. When this saga began at the library board meeting, little could I guess that it would lead here here, with a librarian gently letting a teen boy that she’s been acutely aware of his erotic assignations in the stacks, and looking over her glasses as she asks pointedly if he lacks for company tonight.

Hi and Lois, 5/28/21

Every once in a while, Hi and Lois likes to remind you that Beetle Bailey is Lois’s brother. Look, Chip has a picture of his Uncle Beetle on his nightstand! Also, it looks like Beetle has left the army and works for a fast food franchise now? Or maybe he’s joined a Communist army?

The Lockhorns, 5/28/21

I guess the joke here is that Leroy has made so little impression that his boss doesn’t even know his first name, but it’s pretty clear based on the banner that none of the underlings know their boss’s name either! Just a real sad lack of workplace camaraderie all around.

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Mary Worth, 5/27/21

We all frankly know that the intertwined personal and (aspirationally, on both parts) professional relationship between Drew and Ashlee is going to hilariously unravel into unhinged acrimony at some point. The delicious narrative tension arises from the question of how, exactly, this will go down. Personally, based on panel one here, in which Ashlee’s limbs are splayed in random directions and her mouth twisted into a rictus grin, my bet is that Drew is going to post a bunch of these pictures to his Instagram and they will be terrible, just laughably bad, thoroughly humiliating Ashlee online and producing a ragestorm that will make her public meltdown from a few weeks ago seem like a calm and rational conversation about a misunderstood scheduling conflict.

Anyway, this panel has delighted me like few others in recent memory, and while I’m not sure I have the energy to run a formal contest, per se, along the lines of the ones I did for self-clubbing Tyler in Gil Thorp and Rex and June’s funeral facial contortions, I certainly wouldn’t object if anyone were to attempt to reproduce Ashlee’s pose/outfit/whole vibe here, photograph themselves in the process, and email the results to me at bio@jfruh.com, and I would definitely post any photos I received on this very blog!

Beetle Bailey, 5/27/21

Hey, guess what year the sale of leaded gasoline for personal vehicle use was fully phased out in the United States? 1996! Guess what the average age of a private in the U.S. Army is? Less than 20! If you think those two numbers seem at odds, maybe contemplate what the average age of a Beetle Bailey reader is instead.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/27/21

I am a squeamish indoor kid who does not like bugs, so I am experiencing zero regrets about the fact that I no longer live in Baltimore, which is currently ankle deep in screaming cicadas, according to all my friends there. Anyway, each of those cicadas now befouling lawns across the Mid-Atlantic was laid as an egg 17 years ago, it’s fun to think of them as “teens” to whom you would not loan your car, just like regular teens! That’s because every single neuron in their tiny brains is focused on fucking and then dying, just like regular teens.