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Hi everyone! The Internet Read Aloud live show is on hiatus for February, but I will badger you to come again in March. So you can spend this entire post luxuriating in the comment of the week!

“One the one hand, the comics desperately need new blood. On the other hand, I don’t immediately know every character in Daddy Daze‘s foibles. Does the baby poop like Marvin? Does the dad have a crappy office job with a controlling and incompetent general/owner? I need to have somehow learned all this by osmosis decades ago because I do not read the comics page to LEARN things.” –toxic

You can also enjoy the runners up!

“So the Keane ancestors are demigods? Be very afraid.” –Tonio

“Later, all the snow falling dissipates the cloud, and Dolly and Jeffy are crushed by the heavy weather control machine.” –nescio

“‘On second thought, we don’t want a wake-up call.’ ‘I am going to give you one anyway: your horrible marriage is not an imposition, you are both comfortable in it because you enjoy the masochism tango and you fear that the real obstacle to your happiness is not your partner, but your horrible personality.’” –Ettorre

“Ok, let me understand this correctly: A hot young rich guy who totally worships you, regardless of your advanced age and deteriorating body, and insists on telling you so. Who suggests a doctor visit because he’s so concerned? Who accompanies you to said doctor’s appointment? Who cheerfully picks up your pharmacy order after dropping you off for your nap? Who happily functions as your personal meals-on-wheels service and shares/enjoys your medically-proscribed limited diet with you? This is not just a continuity strip, people. This has fully crossed the line into nursing home pornography.” –Hopester

“Speaking a someone with Celiac disease, there is no medical condition on earth, whether it be hypothyroidism, a concussion, or a psychotic break with reality, that would induce a person to say that any type of gluten-free sandwich is ‘really good.’” –Marcus Theory

“The women will be especially mad when they see that ‘BINGO TONITE‘ sign and find that it points to a tiny fortress with no way for them to get inside unless they want to climb through that window one at a time. Seriously, this building is such an architectural impossibility, the fact that Crock and Captain Poulet somehow managed to get to the roof constitutes a ‘moral victory’ in and of itself.” –Joe Blevins

“But how does robbing payrolls emulate a freedom fighter battling a totalitarian regime inspired by the backmasking panic of the early 1980’s?’ ‘…Look, can we just skip to the part where you become my futuristic robo-bride?’” –TheDiva

“Ugghh. Is he gonna force her watch that video? If he combines it with Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart,’ she may not make it. I know I didn’t.” –Mikey

“Isn’t determining if you want to speak to someone before you answer the phone just hilarious? Sorry, I meant ‘screening calls’. Isn’t determining if you want to speak to someone before you answer the phone just screening calls?” –JJ48

“Iris lost about 40 pounds overnight. I’m thinking it’s less love and more cocaine and enemas that agree with her.” –Where’s Rocky?

“I just realized that Mary must be about to unveil her new gluten-free muffin recipe. No one escapes that easily, Iris!” –Peanut Gallery

“‘To make you stronger‘ says Odin, not wanting to admit his son was right, the lightning and thunder take a lot of practice to control and no he should not be borrowing them.” –pachoo

“I’m really hoping that Leroy hasn’t been fired, he’s just been demoted to scaring pigeons away on the roof. Just imagine it; 8 hours a day, outside, in all weather conditions, shooting pigeons away, getting covered in bird shit, still wearing a full suit and tie because there’s no goddamn way he’s telling Loretta this just so she can have something else to mock him with. The daily dry cleaning is costing more than his paycheck, but fuck her, she’s never gonna have this to hold over him.” –Rosstifer

“A third eye? No son of mine will grow a third eye. We’re Innsmouth folks, born and inbred, and you’ll grow scales and gills like your grandfather and your great-grandfather, and you’ll swim down to Devil’s Reef some moonless night to mate with a flounder. Third eye … what do you think your mother was, a shoggoth?” –Voshkod

“Today Leroy Lockhorn ascends to face God. He is unfazed.” –Lee Sherman

“‘Global warming is of course a laugh riot, but do you know what else is comic gold? An outbreak of a new virus. Absolutely no way this joke will come across badly when it appears in papers a month from now!’ –the writer of Arctic Circle, some time in December probably” –Schroduck

“That recycled DTM joke has been in the archives for decades waiting on a Tonight Show host with the proper length name to fill the space where ‘Johnny Carson’ appeared forty years ago when this first ran in print. They just couldn’t make ‘Jay Leno’ fit the blanks and ‘Conan O’Brien’ came and went without the art team noticing.” –KrisTM

“The real menace in today’s panel is hiding in plain sight: ungrounded electrical outlets. Mr. Wilson should sleep easier next door, content with the knowledge that his young nemesis is simply one power surge away from a fried videogame system or (god of schadenfreude willing) burning to death in a house fire.” –Mighty Sean Young

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Arctic Circle, 1/31/20

Another one of the new strips I’m reading, in addition to weird tales of stir-crazy dads, is Arctic Circle, and before you smugly say “Hey, what are these penguins doing in the Arctic,” know that their migration there is part of the bit. Anyway, the strip mostly seems to be the penguins looking on his horror as ecological collapse leads to narwhals savagely impaling each other, so it should be a hoot to follow!

Pros and Cons, 1/31/20

Pros and Cons, meanwhile, promises to extend the Law and Order model by including not just cops and prosecutors but defense attorneys and psychiatrists in its examination of the criminal justice system. Or so the King Features site would have you believe; this week features people who without that intro would read as generic white collar professionals making extremely broad social commentary in various eating and drinking establishments. Still, you can see the strip’s highbrow aspirations here: where else on the comics page will those fat cat modern architects, who greedily demand payment for the professional services they provide, get what’s coming to them? In Blondie? In Hi and Lois? I think not.

Dennis the Menace, 1/31/20

Damn, this strip is having a particularly non-menacing week. “America’s lovable late night clown prince, Jimmy Fallon, is keeping me from getting the rest I need to excel at school” isn’t quite as non-menacing as “These onions are bullying my eyes!”, but it’s pretty close.

Six Chix, 1/31/20

As a certified public transit enthusiast, I’m very glad the influential comic strip industry is weighing on one of my pet peeves. While many people who don’t routinely take transit focus on point-to-point speed, they fail to take waiting time into consideration, and often don’t see the point of funding frequent service. [low muttering] But headways low enough to allow passengers to “show up and and go” at the time of their choice [muttering grows louder, shouts of “get him off” become audible] are often more important [I am physically dragged off stage, but break free] than express service when it comes to [a net falls over me, leaving me unable to flee] the passenger exper[a single tranquilizer dart hits home and I lose consciousness]

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Daddy Daze, 1/30/20

So this week I’ve decided to add some new strips to my rotation, and one of them is Daddy Daze, billed by King Features as being about “Paul, the single dad who amicably shares custody of little Angus with ex-wife Amy, as he juggles an at-home job and domestic duties.” Admittedly I’ve only been reading it for a week or so, but it seems to be more about “Paul, a single dad imprisoned in some featureless void with only a preverbal infant for company, eventually driven to madness by his loneliness and inventing increasingly deranged and nightmarish imagery out of his son’s babbling.” It’s real grim stuff.

Judge Parker, 1/30/20

So one of the ongoing Judge Parker plots is that Sophie, still suffering PTSD after her kidnapping, is, much to Abbey’s consternation, hesitant to apply to college because really, why bother, why should we act like any of us have a future, anyway? But it seems she’s now discovered a way to add meaning in her life at least in the short term, by helping her family friend and actual criminal Judge Parker Emeritus get elected mayor. Sophie’s political views are somewhat eclectic, ranging from “climate change is bad” to “any self-respecting polity ought to have a fleet of secret flying death robots to wreak havoc on its enemies,” so she should do great with Future Mayor Parker’s campaign, which mostly seems based on the idea that “Uh hey guys I went to jail for a while and it turns out jail sucks.”

The Lockhorns, 1/30/20

Have I ever liked Leroy Lockhorn? No, of course not. He is, inherently, not a likable character. But do I want to see him hurled to his death off the roof of whatever depressing suburban office building he works in? No. That’s too much. It’s too much!