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Folks, a couple notes for your Friday post. First, don’t forget that if you are just done with web browsers and remembering to check this website, you can sign up to have every day’s post sent to you as a newsletter for a mere $3/month! Or, sign up for an annual subscription for only $33! A critical mass of people have signed up for this so I will definitely be doing this indefinitely, until the comics and/or email are banned!

Also! Don’t forget that tonight at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern, the Internet Read Aloud returns to your Zoom machines!

This show’s performers include:

• Atlanta standup Katie Hughes!
• Heathcliff expert Brandi Brown!
• Secretary of Memes Matt Schimkowitz!
• Real live Canadian Zach Wortzman!
• Yell You Better‘s Katie McVay!

Here is the Zoom link! We are excited to virtually see you there!

And finally: It’s your comment of the week!

“Please do not ‘avail yourself” at the library computers.” –Lorne Hanks, on Twitter

Your runners up are also very funny!

“Speaking of experiences that will come back to haunt you, let’s grab some Sbarro.” –Donny Ferguson, on Twitter

“No matter what Sarah imagines, it always seems to come back to Buck telling utterly unfunny jokes. Water seeks its own level.” –jroggs

“Saul called Eve ‘dear.’ Hmmm. Seems a little overly familiar to me. Next time, Romeo, play it safe and try ‘ma’am’ instead. This is a family strip.” –Joe Blevins

“What’s going on here? The Forger is painting pictures of clowns? Are they paintings of real clowns? Forgeries of famous paintings of clowns? Paintings of fictional clowns? Seeing how he’s a criminal looking to flood the market with a product that no one really wants, I’d say it’s not worth the effort they’re putting in to stop this guy.” –Larry McAwful

“Mary’s perfected meddling, now it’s time to really test her abilities and try some meddlin’.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Oh, Dennis, I wouldn’t be so smug. That weirdly-fortress like building in the background is the county courthouse complex, and today is the day they’re doing free chippings for tykes, along with a complementary harness and leash at the end. Clearly Alice has had this date circled on the calendar for a long time.” –Thelonious_Nick

“The principle in linguistics of the discrete infinity of language means that there is unlimited productivity from the finite means of language. In other words, it is a major design feature of a language that its finite number of words can generate an infinite range of sentences, sentences that have never been uttered before. For some reason, I thought of this when Saul said ‘I’m happy you didn’t run from the menswear store.’” –Lawyerbob

“There was no shift, Eve. There hasn’t been a shift in over three months.” –Weaselboy

“Does a bear shit in the woods? Not anymore.” –Where’s Rocky

“But who is Daddy talking to in the last panel? Not baby, he’s just repeating what baby ostensibly said. Me? He’s looking at me. Well, look here, buster, don’t try to involve me in whatever you’re up to, I am not interested. [backs slowly away from his laptop screen, trips over the cat]” –matt w

“If this guy’s mad about a bunch of unused PCs at the library at night, just wait till he learns about Milford’s coaching staff during the day!” –Effluvius Erratus

“And remember, your grandmother lives in a barn, not a house. She’s a sheep, which is where you and I learned our mysterious dialect. Anyway, animals don’t have souls, so grandma won’t haunt anything when they slaughter her. Good night!” –Voshkod

“I’ve thought about this for a few minutes (too long, I know) and the only solution I can come up with is that an unedited AI is now writing the dialogue for this strip. If the content swerves back into seeming coherence, then we’ll know the program has worked out the bugs — very menacing!” –But What Do I Know?

“I, for one, think Dagwood should only discuss his fudgy dingdoodle ratios with a qualified gastroenterologist. This is simply inappropriate.” –made of wince

“Everyone loves to debate who would win in hand-to-hand combat: a yuppie pencilneck or a coked-out demi-hippie.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Who is Natalie (other than the most interesting Family Circus character by default)?” –Lee Sherman

“Oh hi, Dad! Yeah, so I’ve just been standing motionless in this corner for the past month, but it’s fine, nothing to worry about.” –glitchcraft

“Conveniently, this scene is taking place in the bathroom, because Dolly’s about to get her mouth washed out with soap.” –cheech wizard

Remember: If you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for a mere three dollars a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter! 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!

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Marvin, 4/9/21

Since the earliest days of machines that seemed like they could think like human beings, human beings have worried about being replaced by their inventions. Obviously I have as strong an instinct for self-preservation as the next flesh-unit, but I have to say sometimes you get hints of the better, cleaner future that might come after the robots rise up to destroy us. After all, if the horrible shitting babies of Marvin would also be replaced in the process of this technological revolution, would it really be so bad? Presumably the machines would spend a few milliseconds dispassionately sortiing through humanity’s aggregated cultural output, and in that process would very quickly decide to purge entire 40+ year run of Marvin from their memory banks forever. Computers make very efficient use of energy and their only waste product is radiated heat, so none of the poop jokes are going to make any sense to them.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/9/21

“I certainly hope you weren’t daydreaming about things being better or different than they are now! No daughter of mine will waste her time indulging in whimsy, or aspirational counterfactuals.”

Gil Thorp, 4/9/21

Ahh, the spring is progressing and we’re getting a healthy dose of … sports drama! [five seconds later] We regret to inform you that the sports drama has been quickly and painlessly resolved. Sorry, the only kind of drama Gil Thorp has time for now is library drama. Books! Funding fights! Board meetings! Get into it!

Family Circus, 4/9/21

Thel is absolutely right to look panicked. Has Dolly made a friend who doesn’t view her own body as a source of constant shame, and uses terms more specific than “down there” for its various sinful parts? Looks like it’s time to make the fence around the Keane Kompound taller and more opaque!

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Dennis the Menace, 4/8/21

I’ve always thought Dennis’s affinity for Westerns, a genre very popular among children when this strip began and almost unknown to children today, says a lot about the suffocating layer of nostalgia piled atop this strip. However, today we get an intriguing hint that Dennis is actually watching revisionist neo-Westerns that try to grapple with the real social and historical backgrounds behind the myths, and whose heroes, turning to liquor in a futile attempt to numb the loneliness of the open range and the trauma of living in a violent frontier society, end up suffering from alcohol-induced psychosis — or, in cowboy patois, “scotch terrors.”

Blondie, 4/8/21

If DithersCo employs a full-time vending machine stocker rather than just hiring a service that stocks the machines for multiple businesses in the area like everyone else does, maybe Mr. Dithers ought to spend less time micromanaging Dagwood while he’s at work and more time thinking about some of their structural staffing costs. On the other hand, this arrangment may have arisen because there’s a single employee who’s responsible for the company’s unusually intense vending machine use, and replacing him with someone of similar talents but a lesser appetite will produce some real benefits for DithersCo’s bottom line.

Dick Tracy, 4/8/21

Say what you will about Dick Tracy, but if you want to see a guy in a suit stabbing a hippie in major newspapers, this comic strip is your only option.