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...

Tuesday quickies

$ · January 16, 2024

Crock, 1/16/24 I'm not sure what series of facial expressions I would make if I spoke to my institutionalized mother about the fact that she's so dissocated...

Dramatic-ish developments

$ · January 15, 2024

Mary Worth, 1/15/24 Well, thank God, surely now that this Mary Worth story has wrapped up in the most boring manner possible we can move on to something more...

The guy who he was going to sell the loot to is probably also pretty sad

$ · January 14, 2024

Beetle Bailey, 1/14/24 I know I spend more time thinking about the logistics of what happens in-universe in newspaper comic strips than just about anyone...

There's no ties in basketball, but he's giving it his best

$ · January 13, 2024

Mary Worth, 1/13/24 There's been a few complaints from the commentariat that I haven't been covering the end (?) of the Keith-Kitty-Brad-Sonia saga. The...

Metapost: Brr! It's cold out there for a COTW

$ · January 12, 2024

Laugh yourself warm with this comment of the week! "Sexy plotlines and I'm learning Spanish? Top that, Duolingo!" --Old School Allie Cat These runners up...

Black suit/dark grey shirt is another warning sign

$ · January 12, 2024

Dick Tracy, 1/12/24 Yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, Tess is a private investigator and her agency deals with different aspects of the same shadowy underworld...

Maybe he can hunt down the Ben Franklin golf grifter guy, for revenge

$ · January 11, 2024

The Lockhorns and Blondie, 1/11/24 The word app, as a shorthand for application in the computer programming sense, was as attested as early as 1992, which...

Moon over Flagstontown

$ · January 10, 2024

Hi and Lois, 1/10/23 You know and I know that Trixie Flagston has been doing her thing ("her thing" being sitting unattended on the floor for hours at a time...

Bowling ... the most erotic of pastimes for the divorced man

$ · January 9, 2024

Slylock Fox, 1/9/24 Foolish animals! Did you really think that you could overthrow the humans and that your dominion over the Earth would be secure? In fact,...

"It's for the drinks!" Oh, ok, that's normal then, I guess

$ · January 8, 2024

Dick Tracy, 1/8/24 "Wait," you're probably thinking, "Why is that any better? Why is getting back at Dick Tracy by killing his wife somehow easier or less...

Sadly, most health insurance plans don't cover "bonkus of the conkus"

$ · January 7, 2024

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/7/24 Oh my goodness, Rene's reign of grifting terror is finally at an end, stopped once and for all by the deliberate and heroic efforts...

Daddies, daughters, doctors, etc.

$ · January 6, 2024

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/6/24 Personally, if I had fled in the middle of the night from the people I had defrauded in order to avoid a lawsuit, and also was...

Metapost: Another year, another COTW

$ · January 5, 2024

Start 2024 off with a bang and with your first (but by no means last!) comment of the week! "Today's Rex Morgan is far more interesting if you read 'CLAP!'...

Hairy beasts

$ · January 5, 2024

Hagar the Horrible, 1/5/24 Many medieval Scandinavians communities relied on herding for meat and milk, so controlling wolves and other canines was a task...

Hope you like room temperature tap water, buddy, because that's what the Mitchells have on offer

$ · January 4, 2024

Dick Tracy, 1/4/24 So the goth pasta pun lady is also a stage magician, and this guy on stage with her yelling "Oh, yeah!” is an audience volunteer, and I...