Very curious. I cannot find a copy of a Curtis comic strip that uses quotation marks.
I thought that quotation marks were used to differentiate between narrative voice and first person spoken word. Since word balloons or word clusters with a diagonal line “aiming” the words towards their speaker exist in most if not all comic strip frames, wouldn’t the use of quotation marks be completely redundant redundant?
The second Curtis down is a pretty poor use of quotation marks here
The classic put down for the use of quotes for “emphasis” is this sentence.
The hotel reservations are in the name of John Smight and “wife.”
This drives me almost as crazy as the apostrophes in plurals idiocy. Don’t use quotes unless you’re actually quoting someone or being sarcastic. There’s no other use for them!
At a gas station I go to, they’ve got a sign on the pumps advertising “fresh made” breakfast sandwiches. I’m so tempted to point out that those quotes make them look sarcastic about the food’s freshness…
Whenever I see grammar mistake’s, I literally boil with rage 
In that case, this article will literally make steam come out of your ears.
I saw a particularily horrible example at Costco today. There was a sign advertising a free tote bag if you signed up for a credit card:
ok, the one around free makes sense, but you really don’t expect credit compainies to be that honest
I was on the Chicago El yesterday and saw I sign like this:
