The Comics Curmudgeon
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Type of site
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Blog |
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| Available in | English |
| Owner | Josh Fruhlinger |
| Created by | Josh Fruhlinger |
| Revenue | unknown |
| Website | www.joshreads.com |
| Alexa rank |
 156,992 (April 2014[update]) |
| Registration | none |
| Launched | July 11, 2004 |
| Current status | Active |
For each blog post, Fruhlinger selects two to eight comic strips for comment, usually focused on topics such as poor artwork, inappropriate coloring, nonsensical plots, and sexual subtext or innuendo. Long-running soap opera-style comic strips such as Apartment 3-G, Mark Trail, and Mary Worth bear the brunt of Fruhlinger's humor, an emphasis that he attributes to their being "[the] perfect targets for the sort of metatextual detached irony that is our generation’s terrible contribution to Western civilization."
Fruhlinger's blog also features commentary on long-running legacy cartoons like Family Circus and B.C. Weekly "metaposts" update readers on notable events in Fruhlinger's life, such as his July 22, 2008, appearance on the game show Jeopardy!, offer critical commentary on the comic strip industry, and include a "Comment Of The Week" that highlights the best comments posted by the blog's readers. The blog's original name was "Josh Reads the Comics so You Don't Have To", which is reflected in the site URL, joshreads.com.
The Comics Curmudgeon was among the blogs criticizing what they deemed was the declining quality of the Canadian family strip For Better or For Worse, and who were noted for "harsh attacks" on creator Lynn Johnston. Humorist John Hodgman, in a review of comic-strip reprint collections, said the website "regularly ridicules the creaky war horses like Hagar the Horrible [sic] and Mary Worth, the opaque woolgathering of Ziggy, the dull crypto-evangelism of B.C." A blog contributor's July 21, 2008 post broke the news that a recent Blondie strip had been recycled almost verbatim from one published in 1952. This was followed in March 2009 with a similar report of strip recycling in Family Circus.
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