https://joshreads.com Comics Curmudgeon Archive https://joshreads.com/2005/01/first-armstrong-williams-now-this/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Sally Forth,</i> 1/10/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050110sallyforth.gif" /></p><p>I don’t know which thought is more disturbing: that the creators of <i>Sally Forth</i> may have taken payola from Target, or that they may have taken payola from Rush.</p></section> Sun, 11 May 2025 08:00:07 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/a-brand-new-person-with-a-bottle-of-bad-wine-back-at-his-cheap-hotel-room/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Mary Worth,</i> 1/11/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050111maryworth.jpg" /></p><p>Holy crap, look at the tweaked-up expression on Anna’s face in the second panel. The tight, nervous smile, the eyes the size of dinner plates — she’s found a drug more powerful than meth, everybody, and it’s called <i>love!</i> Her expression is all the more striking when you compare it to her look in the first panel. She goes from dignified, Katherine Harris-esque adult to grinning, moon-eyed teenager in a mere moment. So versatile! So emotionally unstable! Just the person you want to jump into a relationship with after a draw-out, ugly divorce!</p><p>That profile shot of Dr. Brian in panel two gives us a good look at how … <i>shiny</i> … his hair is. Better not run your fingers through it when you get back to his room back at the Holiday Inn Express, Anna: they might get stuck.</p></section> Sun, 11 May 2025 08:00:08 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/a-match-made-in-heaven/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Gil Thorp,</i> 1/12/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050112gilthorp.jpg" /></p><p>I’ve done a lot of diligent reading over the past few weeks, but I still can’t say for sure that I can tell you exactly what’s going on in <i>Gil Thorp.</i> I’d heard that the strip was a hotbed of conservative agitation, and it seems to be living up that reputation: one of the two (or possibly three) plots going on right now involves Hadley, a player for the girls’ basketball team, who’s outraged that nobody pays attention to the girls’ basketball team. This results not in an onslaught of sisterhood and feminist agitation on the part of the other team members, but rather a lot of eye-rolling and belittling. In a classic move used against feminazis everywhere, Hadley’s teammates have decided that what she needs to shut her yap is a boyfriend. Unfortunately, as we see here, they’ve set her up with Steve Luhm, an effeminate poindexter who’s every bit as determined to smash the patriarchy as she is.</p><p>Which brings me to the thing that actually interests me most about <i>Gil Thorp,</i> which is the hair. The barbers in the blighted, high-school-sports-obsessed burg where the strip takes place seem to have never met a flattop that they didn’t like, but Steve’s puffy, floofy ‘do may be the weirdest featured in this space since good ol’ <a href="https://joshreads.com/index.php?p=83" target="new">Tommy</a> went back to the clink. Panel one looks like what they used to call a “flattop with fenders”; panel two looks like he stuffed his hair into pantyhose and let it fall over his forehead. It makes the weird, Susan Sontag-ish white streak in Hadley’s hair look kind of normal.</p></section> Sun, 11 May 2025 08:00:09 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/its-like-imary-worthi-with-more-spandex/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Spider-Man,</i> 1/13/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050113spiderman.jpg" /></p><p>When I did my first <i>Spider-Man</i> comic, almost <a href="https://joshreads.com/index.php?p=164">a month ago now</a>, I said, “Presumably the ass-kicking will begin in due time.” Oh, how naive I was! How, bitterly, bitterly wrong I have been proved to be! In that time we’ve had marital spats, a little aimless Web slinging, a press conference to announce the opening of new theme restaurant, and the firing of an incompetent waiter. The closest we came to ass-kicking was when Kraven brushed aside some no-doubt trained crocodiles. And now … <i>this!</i> “Cage of loneliness?” I have to sit through some camped-up supervillain’s <i>attempts to flirt via ham-handed metaphors?</i></p><p>I tell you, there’d better be some damn ass-kicking soon, or Stan Lee will be getting a <i>very</i> nasty note.</p></section> Mon, 12 May 2025 08:00:13 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/if-you-have-to-ask/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Mary Worth,</i> 1/14/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050114maryworth.jpg" /></p><p>Can I lick your tonsils? Just askin’.</p><p>When I was trying to describe to my fiancée <i>Gil Thorp’</i>s fast-paced, breakneck pace (which is ten times more fast-paced and breakneck than the pace of an actual high-school basketball game), she remarked, “It’s like the anti-<i>Mary Worth.</i>” This is, I think, a pretty accurate assessment. In <i>Gil Thorp,</i> gender-equality-supporting pair Steve and Hadley went from awkward introductions to revolutionary power couple in three panels. Anna and Dr. Brian’s lip-locking reunion, meanwhile, has been in the works for nearly ten weeks.</p><p>This is as good a time as any to relay an exchange from the <i>Golden Girls</i> sent to me by faithful reader Luna:</p><p>Blanche: I love my comics. Every day, <i>Marmaduke</i> and <i>Apartment 3-G.</i><br /> Dorothy: I haven’t read <i>Apartment 3-G</i> since…1962.<br /> Blanche: Oh, well, let me catch you up! It is later that same day… </p></section> Mon, 12 May 2025 08:00:14 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/international-jewish-conspiracy-infiltrates-comics-pages/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Curtis,</i> 1/15/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050115curtis.gif" /></p><p>If you weren’t convinced by <a href="https://joshreads.com/index.php?p=17" target="new">Barry’s reckless use of the word <i>chutzpah</i></a>, here’s more evidence for you that <i>Curtis</i> is actually written by an elderly Jewish man. In fact, I’m not even sure that actual elderly Jewish men exclaim “Oy!” repeatedly in response to lower back pain these days.</p><p>This strip summoned up from somewhere deep in my primal pop-culture consciousness memories of novelty rap group 2 Live Jews and their hit single “Oy, It’s So Humid.” In retrospect, it’s kind of amusing to think that there was a time when the group that 2LJ (as I’m sure their fans called them) spoofed, 2 Live Crew, was <i>not</i> considered a novelty group. Remember when the most dire threat offered against Western civilization was a song called “Me So Horny”? Good times!</p></section> Mon, 12 May 2025 08:00:15 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/the-five-people-you-get-jiggy-with-in-heaven/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>The Boondocks,</i> 1/16/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050116boondocks.gif" /></p><p>Did you ever notice that whenever Martin Luther King, Jr., appeared in public, he almost <a href="http://joehilldispatch.org/ipw-web/gallery/albums/Martin-Luther-King-Memorial/King_March_On_Washington.jpeg" target="new">always</a> <a href="http://www.greatestcities.com/1391pic/839/CP11839.jpg/06.bmp" target="new">wore</a> a <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/general/mlksculpture/MLKnCaption.gif" target="new">suit</a>? Well, Aaron McGruder (or a member of the team of artists over at <i>Boondocks</i> Enterprises) apparently did. I’ve always noticed that as well, which is why this cartoon amused me as much as it did with its departure from the seemingly iron-clad halo-and-wings-and-flowing-robes conventional cartoon depiction of the dearly departed. The contours of the suit make the fanny-shaking in panels two and five all the funnier. </p></section> Tue, 13 May 2025 08:00:09 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/ellie-patterson-homewrecker/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>For Better Or For Worse,</i> 1/17/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050117fbofw.gif" /></p><p>You know, I’ve been on plenty of long, dull car trips with my mother, and I’m pretty sure that she’s never subtly encouraged me to pursue someone else’s spouse. Mostly we just play word games (“My name is <i>Cathy,</i> and I live in <i>Cleveland</i> and I sell … <i>canaries!”</i>). </p><p>I’ve been told (and as usual am too lazy to do the actual research to back this up) of a charming tradition in Mexican <i>telenovelas:</i> when the series is about to end, all the stops of these usually ever-so-subtle programs are pulled out, and all the main characters meet melodramatic, often fiery and violent, deaths. <i>For Better Or For Worse</i> is in fact going to wrap up in the near future, and perhaps that’s the plan for the strip. Elizabeth ends up in a vicious catfight with the hugely pregnant Thérèse for Anthony’s love. Michael and Deanna are pursued through the Northwest Territories by the Mounties after finally killing Deanna’s mother in a fit of wholly justified rage. John starts prescribing himself potent opiates and spends most of his days staring at his train sets in a blissed-out haze. And Ellie and April join forces to finally track down Kortney and give her what’s coming to her.</p><p>Elizabeth’s paper coffee cup is a nice visual touch. Presumably they’ve taken time out from plotting adultery to make a quick layover for supplies at the Stop N’ Go/Arrêtez Et Allez.</p></section> Tue, 13 May 2025 08:00:10 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/butterflies-are-tacky/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Apartment 3-G,</i> 1/18/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050118apt3g.jpg" /></p><p>Jiminy Cricket, that is one ugly paperweight. The image quality isn’t very good, so you may not be able to see that the little tag hanging awkwardly off the side of it reads “Butterflies are free.” It’s sad, but probably accurate, that the sort of people who would be nice enough to send a holiday gift to a pretty young middle-class white stranger who was briefly forced to work in a sweatshop are also the sort of people who would be charmed by this kind of heinous kitschy crap.</p><p>Ironically, the paperweight itself was almost certainly made in a sweatshop somewhere in Southeast Asia.</p><p>In the aftermath of her release from captivity, Margo had threatened to start thinking of others before herself and worrying about important issues in the world at large. In other words, she was on the verge of becoming as dull as LuAnn, though admittedly smarter. Fortunately for <i>Apartment 3-G</i> lovers everywhere, the outpouring of sympathy and devotion she’s receiving here will no doubt soon inflate her ego back up to its appropriate level.</p></section> Tue, 13 May 2025 08:00:11 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/a-post-about-sally-forth-the-main-character-in-isally-forthi/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Sally Forth,</i> 1/19/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050119sallyforth.gif" /></p><p>Today, we’re going to talk about a fun game you can play when if you’re bored. It’s called <i>Exposition.</i> Here’s how it works. You and a friend wait to encounter a mutual acquaintance, or for a famous person known to you both to come up in conversation. Identify him or her first by a role that he or she plays, and then by name. Whoever can offer the most crushingly obvious description wins. Examples:</p><p>“Look, Ted, it’s your wife, Janice Kerploski.”<br /> “Did you see the speech on TV given by the president, George W. Bush?”<br /> “I sometimes wish that the lead singer of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jimi Hendrix, hadn’t choked to death on his own vomit.”</p><p>Check out the worker drones in the background of this strip. Sally and Alice are so busy worrying about their new manager, Jefferson Jowdy, that they forgot that today is Wear-Only-White-Or-Black-Clothes-And-Shoes-And-Powder-All-Exposed-Flesh-A-Ghoulish-White Day. Those kids over in HR really know how to cut loose!</p></section> Tue, 13 May 2025 19:18:07 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/middle-child-syndrome/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Family Circus,</i> 1/20/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050120famcirc.jpg" /></p><p>Normally, I try to avoid directly discussing the writers and artists of comics in this blog, on the logic that they’re real people whose feelings would be hurt after being on the receiving end of cruel mockery from yours truly. Today, however, I’m making an exception on the part of Bil and Jeff Keane, since I figure that they have the love of millions of children and parents around the world, along with their enormous piles of money, to emotionally sustain them. Anyway, it’s fairly well known that the <i>Family Circus</i> family is not-so-loosely based on the family of artist Bil Keane. Now that Bil’s son Jeff, who apparently has enough clout to not be known professionally as “Jeffy,” has taken over most of the creative duties, I’ve been keenly interested in how young Jeffy is treated in the strip. And, as near as I can tell, he is almost always treated badly. If Jeffy is ever featured in the daily panel, he’s almost always being yelled at (as he is here), <a href="https://joshreads.com/index.php?p=65" target="new">being shot at</a>, <a href="https://joshreads.com/index.php?p=72" target="new">saying something stupid</a>, or otherwise being crapped on. He’s not the oldest, he’s not the baby, he’s not the girl: he’s just Jeffy, and he has a lot of anger to work out. One wonders if he goes out of the way to make the art as crude and talentless as possible (and the jokes as stupid as possible) when “Billy” takes over in a pathetic attempt to get back at his parent-favored older brother.</p></section> Tue, 13 May 2025 19:18:08 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/lets-hurry-it-up-here-people/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Rex Morgan, M.D.,</i> 1/21/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050121rexmorgan.gif" /></p><p>FOR GOD’S SAKE, IT WAS A HUMAN THIGHBONE, OKAY? WE ALL SAW IT! WE ALL KNOW WHAT IT IS! THAT WAS ALMOST TWO WEEKS AGO NOW! IT WAS A HUMAN FEMUR! JESUS CHRIST, AREN’T YOU PEOPLE SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE <i>MEDICAL PROFESSION</i> OR SOMETHING?</p><p>Ahem. This post has been brought to you by the Committee to Advance the Plotline in Rex Morgan, M.D., in a Reasonably Speedy Fashion (CAPRMMDRSF).</p></section> Tue, 13 May 2025 19:18:09 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/and-speaking-of-exposition/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>The Phantom,</i> 1/22/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050122phantom.jpg" /></p><p>Here’s another game much like Exposition, called <i>Tenterhooks.</i> The point is to talk around something that everyone knows about for the sole purpose of artificially creating suspense. You know, like referring to your Secret Nazi Whoosit as “what we came for” rather than just <i>saying</i> it. On the other hand, if this bunch of watery grave-robbers typically conducts themselves with such a lax view towards security that they can’t be bother to remember how many rubber-suited villains are in their party, then maybe they’re better off being as indirect as possible.</p><p>On the other hand, it’s possible that they aren’t being indirect at all, and really are just an innocent band of historic meter-long aluminum tube enthusiasts.</p><p>Bonus observation: the Ghost-Who-Ruminates-Aloud apparently can’t decide what type of word balloon best represents his underwater running commentary. Nice to see that he’s always trying new things out.</p></section> Tue, 13 May 2025 19:19:07 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/why-cant-johnny-feel/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>FoxTrot,</i> 1/23/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050123foxtrot.gif" /></p><p><a href="https://joshreads.com/index.php?p=159" target="new">As sad as I was about the recent <i>Baltimore Sun</i> comics purge</a>, there were a couple of bright spots for me: <i>Foxtrot</i> and <i>Get Fuzzy</i> were two of my favorite comic strips when I turned to the <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i> for my funny pages needs, and I was very excited to be getting them on a regular basis. But now it’s been six weeks and my reaction to the triumphant return of both to my life has been: meh.</p><p>Sunday’s <i>FoxTrot</i> is representative of my malaise. It took me two or three reads to get the actual point of the joke: Jason’s iguana has eaten Paige’s shoe, and in response she’s drawn an extremely long flipbook of her bashing her little brother with a mallet. The problem is that it’s not immediately obvious that the people in the flipbook are supposed to be Jason and Paige, at least to me, which led to several minutes of bafflement. <i>Get Fuzzy,</i> which arguably was my favorite strip in the paper as of 2002, has been even worse, spending what seems like the entire last six weeks focusing on the extremely un-funny running battle between Bucky and Fungo the ferret, with events grinding on at an excruciating pace worthy of <i>Mary Worth.</i></p><p>But anyway, I come to you today not to insult these strips, but to get introspective. I know, intellectually, that I used to like the both of them. It’s been six weeks now, and they’ve yet to elicit a real laugh from me. Have they gone downhill that fast? Are both in an extended rut? Or have I fallen into the grips of the postmodern condition as a result of writing this blog and general Gen-X-ed-ness, whereby I can <i>only</i> enjoy things ironically? Because that would be kind of sad.</p><p>Still and all, Jason is holding a star-shaped glob of iguana vomit in the last panel. Maybe that counts for something.</p></section> Tue, 13 May 2025 19:19:08 +0000 https://joshreads.com/2005/01/the-tragedy-that-haunts-george-w-bushs-past/ <section class="post-content"><p><i>Gil Thorp,</i> 1/24/05</p><p><img decoding="async" src="https://www.joshreads.com/images/0501/i050124gilthorp.jpg" /></p><p>Speaking of enjoying things ironically: in today’s <i>Gil Thorp,</i> we learn that Gil’s irrational aversion to supporting women’s athletics stems from bitter memories of a tragic male cheerleading accident. Sometimes this stuff just writes itself.</p></section> Tue, 13 May 2025 19:19:09 +0000