Crabgrass by Tauhid Bondia for July 09, 2022

Need to talk to Amelia.

This is good. Kevin is cutting right through all the racist crap and getting to the point: don’t let superficial things like skin color matter. Just be friends with you you like

The girl will have fireworks if she’s a redhead!

A winter-themed comic in the summer? Wouldn’t it make more sense to save this one for january?

There was a great point in this comic strip. I wish that all of this world was like that.

Boys, the true measure of a friend is by his actions. Not his race or his gender or his sexuality. Friends come in all colors, shapes and sizes.

Great strip.

Fireworks? Yep. She’s got a good many onboard. Maybe one day she’ll show ya. Careful! You might get burned.

This is well done. The whole “race & gender talk” is really forced in a lot of pop media today. This strip puts it out there with reason and rationality, demanding nothing and accepting all, all while still being funny! Nice work.

While I appreciate the anti-racist theme of today’s strip, I just endured an entire week of neighbors setting off fireworks (which are illegal to possess or use in my community) at 11:00 every night. I also read in my newspaper this morning that a 42-year-old in a nearby community has died from injuries suffered from setting off said illegal fireworks on the 4th.

Any lighthearted promotion of fireworks is unconscionable, in my opinion, and that punchline destroyed most of my respect for the cartoonist’s original intent.

IMO, the syndicate should have reviewed this repeat before sending it out. It is as objectionable to me as was the 9 Chickweed Lane strip last December which caused many newspapers to drop it, and GoComics to permanently remove same from the archives.

Ah. I should have pegged to this sooner, but what we’re looking at here is an attempt to satisfy two different and volatile fanbases:

namely, introduce the characters to dead-tree readers by showcasing the characters’ defining moments, while simultaneously so far not showing two strips from any one storyline so as to have as few of the original online audience as possible tune out until they start getting totally-new antics.

It’d be a tough path to triangulate under any circumstances; it’s likely even harder with Big Nate trolls all over the comments and in two varieties: the pro-Big Nate ones who contrast Crabgrass unfavourably with it, and the anti-Big Nate ones, who compare Crabgrass unfavourably to it.

I’d say something needed to be done about that paired set of last problems, but the problem is I don’t know of a solution other than comments going away and none of us pre-existing types are likely to want that!

I read too fast and thought Kevin said “did you have friends back at your old place” and miles said “you mean black people” I was soo confused Lmfao