The Comics Curmudgeon

Three "anyways"es

$ · March 1, 2024

Curtis, 3/1/24 The weird thing about arrested-in-time strips like Curtis is that we, who have been reading this strip for decades, have internalized the...

Leap into comics!

$ · February 29, 2024

Mary Worth, 2/29/24 Yes, blah blah blah, Toby and Mary are still going on and on about Keith's virtues (as a singer and a [squints] farrier?) and unorthodox...

Comical suffering

$ · February 28, 2024

Judge Parker, 2/28/24 Judge Parker Senior's wayward daughter Ann, having escaped her captor when he decided that Judge Parker Senior was too scary, has...

Thorp-off

$ · February 27, 2024

Gil Thorp, 2/27/24 Under new writer Henry Barajas, Gil Thorp has introduced a more diverse cast, kept old characters around, and even rescued Gil's children...

Love to sit, and read about sitting

$ · February 26, 2024

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/26/24 Every once in a while, the Rex Morgan, M.D., creative team remembers the "M.D." part of the strip title and realizes they're...

Gloomy Sunday

$ · February 25, 2024

Pluggers and Gasoline Alley, 2/25/24 Old people! Do you enjoy the Sunday comics as one of your last pleasures in life? Well, the whimsical "funny pages" are...

The old, the young, the beautiful

$ · February 24, 2024

Family Circus, 2/24/24 The Family Circus was originally drawn by Bil Keane, with the characters all being thinly veiled versions of him and his real family,...

Metapost: C [clap] O [clap] T [clap] W [clapclapclap]

$ · February 23, 2024

Woo! It's the week's top comment! Woo! "Beasley, you imbecile. That's not an award. The cup with '#1' on it is given out to all the mail carriers, on account...

Friday fast takes

$ · February 23, 2024

Gasoline Alley, 2/23/24 In 1918, when this strip began, most American cities, even small ones, had electric streetcar networks. These were only beginning to...

A criminal AND a judge? Bad news

$ · February 22, 2024

Beetle Bailey, 2/22/24 Beetle Bailey has always added new characters to cash in on the latest fads, and a fun fact is that "Rocket '88'," considered by some...

And what about those car warranty calls, amiright folks

$ · February 21, 2024

Blondie, 2/21/24 I am coming around to the opinion that the primary value of the syndicated newspaper comic strip Blondie is to provide anthropological...

Keith loses his cool

$ · February 20, 2024

Mary Worth, 2/20/24 OK, I'll officially be back on this storyline's side again if instead of manfully failing to mention those inconvenient paternity test...

Josh has advice

$ · February 19, 2024

Dennis the Menace, 2/19/24 Let me tell you, as a guy who writes jokes for a living, that no matter how bad you think the jokes on this website are, there...

Sunday short takes

$ · February 18, 2024

Family Circus, 2/18/24 "Oh, hey, does my toddler have a bunch of friends who I don't know, who somehow got into the house without me having noticed? Sure,...

Saturday is for the terrible children

$ · February 17, 2024

Hi and Lois, 2/17/24 In a happier family, Hi would relay this story with a rueful smile on his face, acknowledging that it was a disappointing game while...

Metapost: Slightly lackadaisical COTW

$ · February 16, 2024

Got a late start this morning but a comment of the week is welcome any time of day, I feel: "'Keith! How things are with your former girlfriend and your...

Friday is for fluids

$ · February 16, 2024

Shoe, 2/16/24 I was about to start this post with "Sorry I'm the Perfeser facial expression parser now," but why should I apologize for that? You, my...

Coffee is for Thursdays

$ · February 15, 2024

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/15/24 Welp, I guess we've finally wrung all the narrative content we can out of Rene getting extremely injured and also involuntarily...

Love is in the air

$ · February 14, 2024

Arctic Circle, 2/14/24 Arctic Circle is usually a strip about climate change and other environmental issues, but on this special day of St. Valentine, it...

Tuesdays are for awful chimeras

$ · February 13, 2024

Pluggers, 2/13/24 Wow, I feel like the backstory that lead up to today's Pluggers is even grimmer than usual. Chicken-lady is thrusting this inoffensive but...

Honest Josh's Comics Emporium

$ · February 12, 2024

Gasoline Alley, 2/12/24 Good (?) news, everybody: Slim didn't freeze to death in his car, and it turns out that the supposed "love note" his wife found was...

Multiple no-necks in today's strips, honestly

$ · February 11, 2024

Crock, 2/11/24 You know, some days I open up the ol' comics in my newspaper web browser and think, "After all these years on this blog, do I truly have...

Even his perm is wilted

$ · February 10, 2024

Mary Worth, 2/10/24 While we've heard a lot about how Keith is a good romantic partner and putting in the work as a father figure, we haven't actually seen a...

Metapost: Look upon these comments, and rejoice

$ · February 9, 2024

Would you describe yourself as "working for the weekend"? Well, good news: It's almost here, and this week's top comment heralds the fun: "Wouldn't it be...

Kids these days

$ · February 9, 2024

Hi and Lois, 2/9/24 I have not been on the "dating scene" since I met my wife-to-be back in 2002, but I try to keep abreast of the discourse and the lingo...

Love and death (mostly death)

$ · February 8, 2024

Mary Worth, 2/8/24 Move over, "celler door!" There's a new most beautiful two-word phrase in the English language, and it's "odd rock." "Race you to that odd...

Hell is other people and also other animal-people

$ · February 7, 2024

Six Chix, 2/7/24 I said my piece a while back about why I'm not the biggest fan of cartoons about hell, but you know me: I can't resist looking at a comic...

Tuesday is for the children

$ · February 6, 2024

Hi and Lois, 2/6/24 God, this one is super bleak. Lois has convinced herself that, sure, things are tight and they can't afford to order pizza very often...

Medical monday

$ · February 5, 2024

Mary Worth, 2/5/24 Say, remember way back at the beginning of this storyline, when Sonia showed up at Keith's doorstep insisting that he was her father, and...

Boomers and horses

$ · February 4, 2024

Blondie, 2/4/24 I am of course more than happy to call Blondie wildly out of touch, culturally. But I gotta say, I trust this strip implicitly when it comes...

Lotta good farming there, "green" is right in the name

$ · February 3, 2024

Hagar the Horrible, 2/3/24 Man, I remember when poetry was orally transmitted, when anyone could get in front of the assembly and fire off some verses that...

Metapost: Early morning COTW

$ · February 2, 2024

The best part of waking up is learning what the top comment of the week was on josh reads dot com, the world famous comics curmudgeon blog: "Once again, Shoe...

Beetle and Sarge Face the AI Onslaught: A Comic Strip Odyssey

$ · February 2, 2024

Bizarro and Six Chix, 2/2/24 Were you, as an adolescent, fascinated by Dante's Inferno, and in particular by the book's weird geography, in which hell is a...

I guess he really is the Man Who Cannot Die

$ · February 1, 2024

The Phantom, 2/1/24 So, big news everybody: The "Death of the Phantom" arc, which started, I swear to God, way back in 2017, is finally over, and,...

Wednesday horror

$ · January 31, 2024

Mark Trail, 1/31/24 Having helped a bunch of guys get in touch with their emotions via fishing, Mark is now being dispatched on a much more dangerous...

Is annoying Rex Morgan considered "good," because he's done lots of that

$ · January 30, 2024

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/30/24 Oh yeah, so it turns out that Lyle "Old Man" Ollman is actually Rene/"Jimmy"'s uncle! I admit I made fun of Lyle for not having the...

The circle of life

$ · January 29, 2024

Gasoline Alley, 1/29/24 One of the central and increasingly untenable contradictions of Gasoline Alley is that it is and always has been a strip where the...

Feel like the Uniform Code of Military Conduct is being violated here, just my take

$ · January 28, 2024

Dennis the Menace, 1/28/24 Folks, let me tell you something about my brain (and yeah, sorry, you're reading a blog with the URL josh reads dot com, you...

Soapy ... conclusions? Fingers crossed

$ · January 27, 2024

Mary Worth, 1/27/24 Remember when Keith first showed up in this strip as a closed-off, taciturn man who tried to get through his interactions with Mary with...

Metapost: The comments ... the comments are good

$ · January 26, 2024

FRIDAY MORNING MEANS COMMENT OF THE WEEK TIME EVERYBODY!!!! "Rene's Scooby Doo reference is frankly unearned. The Mystery Inc teens actually put in the...

Friday quickies

$ · January 26, 2024

Dick Tracy, 1/26/24 Fan fact, everybody: "the Amazing Baxter" is actually Fata, in a very clever disguise as a man, which the square, conventional minds of...

Troubling Wednesday

$ · January 24, 2024

Hi and Lois, 1/25/24 Wow, that is a sinister expression on Dot's face there in the final panel. "If I had the God-like power to erase anything from...

Soapy catchups

$ · January 24, 2024

Judge Parker, 1/24/24 Oh, yeah, so it turns out that the long lost Parker sister is in fact a scam artist -- not, to be clear, that she's only pretending to...

They should be marketing a whole line of corpse-guy Successories posters honestly

$ · January 23, 2024

Dick Tracy, 1/23/24 I think it's sweet that these two ladies keep a poster of their deceased corpse-guy (he was a corpse-guy before he was deceased, to be...

Historical Monday

$ · January 22, 2024

Family Circus, 1/22/24 Look, I'm not going to stand here and claim that the line between "saying the darnedest things" and "heresy" is a clear and bright...

Sunday sadness

$ · January 21, 2024

Shoe, 1/21/24 This is a truly terrible joke and I don't want to deal with it on any of it's "humorous" levels but I think we should pause to think about the...

St. Slim preserve us

$ · January 20, 2024

Gasoline Alley, 1/20/24 Longtime faithful readers know that in most of the strips I comment on here, there's at least one character upon whom I wish every...

Birds? On a boat? Sounds dubious

$ · January 19, 2024

Shoe, 1/19/24 I was going to go on a long rant here about how comics gag writers so frequently come up with a joke and then work backwards from it even if it...

Nobody in the Dusin family should know real human affection. I forbid it

$ · January 18, 2024

Dustin, 1/18/24 I think my record on the themes and narrative content of Dustin is pretty clear -- I find them extremely objectionable, perhaps more than any...

Even the courthouse has those patched curtains, incredibly sad

$ · January 17, 2024

Blondie, 1/17/24 I gotta say, "In honor of Kid Inventors Day, I created an alarm clock app that doesn't work" is probably the funniest sentence I've ever...