Several historical deep dives 15 Apr 2025, 11:25 am

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Blondie, 4/15/25

When I read today’s Blondie, I had one immediate and overwhelming thought: isn’t Dagwood’s beloved living room chair blue, rather than the sort of grey-white we’re seeing here? Now, if this were a blog that, against all trends in online content production, had only been started a few weeks ago, I would’ve been stuck with that nagging Mandela effect feeling forever, as recent strips all had the grey chair. Fortunately, however, I have posted a statistically significant sample of Blondie strips every year for the past two decades, so I was able to do an in-depth study of this chair situation, and am happy to report that he had a blue chair in that spot since at least December of 2004, and was still sitting in it as late as April of 2024, which is a pretty good run for a chair, really. The grey one made its appearance sometime in the subsequent month. Too bad it’s the last thing he’s ever going to sit in, as the Council of Gynarchy has clearly decreed his execution, if I’m reading his facial expression in panel three correctly.

Mary Worth, 3/15/25

I was originally going to start this post with “I know Wilbur is hard up,” but you know what? Wilbur is not hard up. Between Iris, Fabiana, and Estelle, he’s had a more varied sexual history than just about any other recurring character in this strip. That’s why I’m saying something that I can’t believe I’m saying: Wilbur, you can do better than someone who tries to initiate sex by letting loose an evil chuckle. You really can! Dawn, meanwhile, once thought that the most brutal life could get was being dumped by some dude named Dave, but she never imagined that someday she’d be listening through Charterstone’s thin, thin walls to her dad fooling around with a lady who’s trying to kill her.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/15/25

Update to my previous Rex Morgan, M.D., update: this guy isn’t the widower of the late (?) former stalking victim Debra, but rather her father; and he didn’t shoot this guy with a magical booze and pills gun, but rather just strangled him to death with his bare hands. Don’t leave your windows rolled down when you pass out drunk and/or high in your car if you’ve made a lot of enemies, is the lesson I’m learning from this.

Milky Monday 14 Apr 2025, 11:25 am

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out!

Gil Thorp, 4/14/24

Look, my mission is as always to read the comics so you don’t have to, but sometimes with the continuity strips you really do need to read them daily, because the seemingly insignificant ones are there to set up the highlights. For instance, today’s strip, in which Marty is doing Step 9 of the twelve AA steps at the lady who took over his job and his beloved wooden crate press box, is much funnier if you had read Saturday’s strip, which establishes that he’s doing this in the middle of a game, probably in the hopes that some of his apology goes out on-air and people feel sorry for him and proud of the hard work he’s doing and give him his job back.

Heathcliff, 4/14/25

I’ve always assumed that Team Heathcliff resents Garfield at some level because, even though Heathcliff was the first orange cat comic on the block by several years, it never became the multimillion dollar marketing and merchandising juggernaut that Garfield evolved into. But then I see strips like today’s and realize that Heathcliff clings fiercely to its punk rock ethos. “You hate Mondays because you’re pandering to some sub-Dilbert level workaday everyman relatable feeling,” you can imagine Heathcliff saying here. “I love Mondays because I get to make other people hate them by ripping their face off and stealing their milk. We are not the same.”

Slylock Fox, 4/14/25

Wow, the post animalpocalypse society really is becoming more and more like ours every day, as Slylock (who I assume works for the Forestville Bureau of Investigations) becomes increasingly focused in getting one up in the bureaucratic war against the FSA (“they rely too much on high-tech gadgets and refuse to do the real legwork of law enforcement!”) and kind of forgets to do anything about Weirdly and the current giant robot situation.

Pardon My Planet, 4/14/25

Hey, man, uh, what do you think is in the milk you buy in the store. Like, for real. Because I don’t think milk works the way you think it works, like, at all?

Soapy Sunday 13 Apr 2025, 11:23 am

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/13/25

Oh, a thing I forgot to tell you about that happened in Rex Morgan, M.D., is that Summer managed to track down other people her stalker had stalked, and messaged one of them on Facebook while Augie was checking the perimeter. Apparently that lady, “Debra,” is dead (from … stalking?) or at least no longer in charge of her phone, and her … widower? … has it, and he got the message, which led him across town to confront the stalker … with a gun. A gun that shoots booze and pills straight into your bloodstream, I guess!

Mary Worth, 4/13/25

Hey, remember that time that Wilbur was having a fantasy about being a superhero, but actually he was having a series of wacky, clumsy misadventures while lost in his fantasy, but actually he saved a guy from getting killed, so maybe the superhero thing wasn’t a fantasy, after all? Well, I guess we’re seeing something similar here, with Wilbur saving Dawn from that poisoned tea in the process of reaching across the table for no readily apparently reason. Unless … he knows that the tea is poisoned, and just hasn’t said anything because he’s hoping to get laid a couple times before he calls the cops on his murderous paramour? I think we may have found a way for Wilbur to go Too Far, and I dread the consequences.

Dick Tracy, 4/13/25

Sorry, I misspoke Thursday, that guy with the flattop isn’t a cop; he has a much higher calling, as an insurance investigator, and he and the dentist are going to crack this case wide open. Imagine thinking you could disguise a corpse by simulating someone else’s dental work in a superficial way, without taking into account the natural wear and tear that occurs over time! It makes this good doctor furious, and he’s showing his anger by baring his teeth — his beautiful, beautiful teeth — as is custom among his people.

The Phantom, 4/13/25

Speaking of customs among the people, it seems our Wambesi city kid has gone straight from never looking down on the old ways to hopping straight over Chesterton’s fence into the Forbidden Zone. Sure, it’s not permitted for you to go in that direction, rube, but Nia has a metal detector and a shirt from the Gap. She’s going to be fine! Stop complaining!

Death, doom, etc. 12 Apr 2025, 11:24 am

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out!

Mary Worth, 4/12/25

Welp, looks like Dawn’s about to die in agony after drinking a powerful drain cleaner … and that’s the tea, sis! Ha ha, get it, because Belle poisoned the tea, in order to murder Dawn? Anyway, I feel like it’s relevant that Dawn has eaten Mary Worth’s cooking for years, but I can’t tell if constant exposure has hardened her system enough that she can survive drinking Wilbur’s off-brand Drano, or if it’s merely numbed her senses of taste and smell so much that she won’t be able to detect the toxic substance as she drinks it.

Shoe, 4/12/25

Wow, Madame Zoo Doo’s facial expression is extremely grim here. See, all this time you thought she was crazy or a fraud, but it turns out that she can really see into the future — she just can’t change it. Free will, she knows all too well, is an illusion: nothing we do can change our fate. Why burden her customers with this terrible knowledge?

Hi and Lois, 4/12/25

Hey, Hi, I don’t want to make things awkward, but you know your friend’s an alcoholic, right? Like, it’s kind of his whole personality? It’s right there in his name? Sorry you had to find out like this, but, c’mon.

Metapost: The comments … they call out to you for the reading 11 Apr 2025, 3:43 pm

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out!

This week: The comment of the week: Right here: Right now:

“What sells this is the final panel. Remember, Dustin’s equally-terrible-but-in-a-different-way father has no idea what his son’s dream was. All he knows is that Dustin suddenly says, apropos of nothing: ‘I keep having the same nightmare.’ Maybe the young man is on the verge of a killing spree. Maybe he wants to talk about his feelings. Both prospects are horrifying.” –Joe Blevins

The runners up: Also right here and right now:

“I was about to let Beetle in on the secret I’ve discovered in my 23 years of cooking for myself: You can just eat potatoes with the peel and you get more flavor and more nutrition. Though I suggest washing them carefully and peeling off any unsightly black parts. Only after staring at the strip for another minute did I figure out he’s talking about punishment detail. Of course Beetle gets to personally peel pretty much every single potato consumed by Camp Swampy. And on that reflection, I wonder, is a lifestyle of constantly disrupting exercises and disobeying his officers really worth it?” –Amelie Wikström

“Ha ha, oh yes, how silly, you’re right. I certainly don’t have a one-way flight to some South American tropical paradise where I’ll never have to hear about spreadsheets or kids or fucking Sunbeam ever again. Let me just, uh, pack this suitcase for no reason. You just go back to sleep, and if you hear something that sounds like an Uber outside at 3 AM, ignore it.” –Schroduck

“Ed’s swinish co-worker might be passive-aggressing him by making sure ‘great’ didn’t modify ‘wife and two kids,’ but teasing Ed about his wife won’t work. Helen is way out of his league looks-wise, and her black heart full of evil is frankly a bonus, for him.” –matt w

“There’s a lot that I don’t like about this strip, but I have to admit, the art is good. Today, for instance, they’ve managed to perfect capture the look of a guy who you absolutely hate in spite of the fact that he’s pleasant and nice, in a way that makes you realize that maybe the problem is with you. I mean, most people would realize that, not Dustin’s dad, obviously.” –pugfuggly

“I, for one, support Suburban Fairy Tales pivoting toward a darker, more Brothers Grimm oriented take on their characters. The world is full of dangers, and the children in their pedestrian hostile suburbs need to learn the truth!” –Philip

“I can’t believe I’m saying this about a strip in which a man appears to be smoking a corncob pipe through his nose, but TOO REAL, HI & LOIS.” –Guts Dozier

“Poodles are depicted as sexpots in comics. Grimm is not having memory problems here, he’s upset that he can’t control his sex addiction. Mother Goose had better wash her throw pillows.” –nescio

“Dude … you’re wearing a hat that says ‘Trash.’ You knew what the job was when you took it: collecting refuse, lying about recycling plastic, laundering mob money, and occasionally making a corpse disappear.” –Old Man Shadow

“Professor, I’m writing to you from the Sullivan site. it is everything we hoped, I feel it will finally unlock the secrets of early 21st century society. Oh Professor, it is astonishing, it seems that these people actually worshipped plastic! I believe that, as an act of devotion to their hydorcarbonic gods, they heaped great mounds of broken plastic a few miles away and downwind of their cities. I do not wish to get ahead of myself, Professor, but I believe this discovery will secure our place as the greatest archeologists since the mysterious events that made the people of our future time incredibly stupid.” –BananaSam

“I’m still trying to work out if it has a nucleus, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, or lysosomes! Say, do you feel like we’re being absorbed through an external membrane?” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“When this joke was written weeks ago, it was about the cost of eggs due to the bird flu. But now it can be applied to the fact that tariffs can fail to restore domestic production because they increase the cost of production inputs! Sometimes the comics production lag can accidentally improve a joke!” –Ettorre

“Can’t beat a Horrocks Family party. NOTHING says rockin’ like a couple of balloons, a plate of sandwiches all to yourself, and hangin’ with the same dude you apparently spend every day of your life with. If you hold that comic up to your ear, you can almost hear ‘Who Let The Dogs Out.’” –A Grave Mind

“Dick Tracy is a manly man, but he’s also hip and with it. While he wouldn’t go anywhere near the internet or, ugh, social media, even for an investigation, he’s not averse to people bringing him printed out screen shots.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Like many people, today’s strip confuses the difference between ‘frogs’ and ‘toads.’ Here are some key indicators: frogs are smooth-skinned and are the favored form of enchanted princes, whereas toads have dry bumpy skin which you lick to get high. Hope that helps!” –TheDiva

“More evidence, if such were needed, that ‘Dennis’ is a figment of Mr. Wilson’s burgeoning psychosis. Always there, in the same clothes, when he’s least wanted, a voice in Wilson’s ear, telling him exactly what he doesn’t want to hear, raising his blood pressure. In this case, Wilson is reasonably worried about his health, but then … there’s that annoying little akuma-boy, taunting, ‘You look great! Eat! Eat all you want, of delicious butter, salt, meat!’ A bead of flop sweat trickles down Wilson’s temple. Is the terrifying imp in his bathroom correct? Should he give in to temptations — minor temptations to be sure, but at his age definitely inadvisable? ‘Read meat doesn’t raise cholesterol,’ the smiling imp whispers.” –Chance

“Ghosts often serve as otherworldly portents within fiction, issuing ominous predictions or dire warnings to the living. While the Ghost of Pop(s) doesn’t expressly say it, the subtext of his warning is still chilling: if you live and die wearing a very stupid hat, you will be damned for eternity to wear a very stupid hat.” –Wilktoast

“Where does Wilson hide that giant scale when not in use? Seriously, with two seniors in the house and a cramped bathroom, that’s a major trip hazard. Let alone maneuvering around Dennis who seems to want to hang out in there.” –Hibbleton

“Man, I’ve never seen the Rex Morgan, M.D., narration box this worked up before. It knows the guy’s trying to be stealthy, and is just screaming, who is this guy, why is he here, pay attention to him. I wonder if it knows that only the reader can hear it, and that we don’t particularly care. Either way, what a tragic way to achieve sentience.” –Dan

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