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! Tina’s Groove, 5/8/24 So Tina’s Groove is one of the “new” comics I’ve been reading lately, though in the interest of total accuracy I should note that these strips aren’t new at all, seeing as Tina’s Groove stopped publishing in 2017 and a cursory glance at the copyright date would reveal that this strip in particular is 15 years old. But who cares! I still hate on Crock de ..read more

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! Shoe, 5/7/24 A classic Shoe bit is to use the structure of a test question at Skyler’s school to deliver a bad joke, even though the result is a test question no teacher, no matter how outlandish their pedagogy, would ever write. Anyway, I appreciate that today’s strip is mixing it up by changing the bad joke delivery mechanism to a pub trivia event, which is a fun and excit ..read more

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, 5/6/24 Milford has its own Native American reservation and, we learn today, its own institution of higher learning. Soon, having accrued all the necessary components of a robust civic life, this high-school sports crazed town simply won’t need the rest of the United States. That’s when Phase 2 begins. Hagar the Horrible, 5/6/24 “Let me explain! The castle’s main ..read more

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! Hi and Lois, 5/5/24 I guess the point of this strip (to the extent that any given Hi and Lois comic can be said to have a “point”) is to shore up the Walker-Browne brand and remind American that the Camp Swampy gang and the Flagstons’ suburban hellscape coexist in a single universe of shared IP. Personally, I’m more intrigued by the comic book time effects: when the strip la ..read more

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! Daddy Daze, 5/4/24 Look, I’m just going to say it: I find the Daddy Daze baby, with his fixed, manic smile, his uncanny ability to move about and manipulate objects despite his infancy, and his inscrutable language of “ba”s, to be off-putting and frankly a little scary. So no, I’m not on board with the Daddy Daze daddy telling him to go out and start collecting memories from ..read more

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! cotw COTW COTW COTW! “Amen, sister. Don’t we all wish we were Kristy? I have no idea what this is about, and I don’t care: being Kristy just seems right.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women And your very funny runners up! “I hope someday the quote at the beginning of a Sunday Mary Worth is just, ‘Fuck you! Stupid ass.’ –Old Man” –Brian Houska, on Blu ..read more

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! Judge Parker, 5/3/24 Hey, guys, remember Pavel, a Russian crime boss and the first interesting new character Judge Parker introduced in years? In the old days of the strip, after threatening some ultra violence against our heroes for a few weeks, he would’ve quickly become their friends, but in the year 2024, he instead died when April’s mom suicide-bombed him. But the good ..read more

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! Shoe, 5/2/24 Yeah, man. Giant bird with prehensile hands and opposable thumbs? Wears clothes and plays guitar? Not part of any Earthly biome I’m familiar with. Real fucked up if you ask me. Dennis the Menace, 5/2/24 “My dad is a ventriloquist dummy” is kind of a stretch as a menacing burn in my opinion, but it at least offers an explanation of why he dresses like that for o ..read more

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! Pardon My Planet, 5/1/24 I don’t generally have anything nice to say about Pardon My Planet, but I will say this: this lady (I think the Pardon My Planet regulars have names, but I refuse to learn them) has a facial expression that genuinely makes her look like she needs her life changed and she’s contemplating whether a bath towel is the mechanism that could make that happe ..read more

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, 4/30/24 This week in Gil Thorp we’ve learned that star Mudlark pitcher Leo Atazhoon is Native American (this may actually not be new info but rather just something I forgot) and also (definitely new information) lives on the “Milford Rez.” This spent me spinning into new realms of the perennial “Where is Milford, anyway?” question until today, when we learn that h ..read more