The Comics Curmudgeon

No no no no no it’s looking at me noooooo

Gasoline Alley, 5/24/13

If I were a better person/student of the great history of the comics medium, I suppose I’d be more interested in the Slim and Walt go to the Comics Retirement Home storyline? As it is, I can only work up the energy to care about it when something truly unusual happens, like when a dapper, nightmarish pig-man wanders into the foreground of the panel, giving you a sly look that you’ll see every night for the next three to eight weeks as you desperately try to fall asleep.

Dennis the Menace, 5/24/13

“When I was a kid, we pretended we lived in violent, lawless frontier towns, where the only respite from attempting to murder each other over cattle or women came when we had to battle the last desperate remnants of the region’s indigenous population, who we were working to displace or exterminate. Now all kids care about is exploring fantastic new worlds and adding to our culture’s scientific knowledge and whatnot. It’s fucking bullshit.”

Six Chix, 5/24/13

It sure is ironic that looking to buy for something to rest on can itself be tiring, amiright? In related news, don’t ever lie down on sample beds in furniture stores, the people shopping for beds are drenched in sweat, gross gross gross

Herb and Jamaal, 5/24/13

“Uh-oh, I’d better make sure 9-1-1 is on speed dial, because it looks like Herb is finally going to put his money where his mouth is on that whole chainsaw murder spree thing he’s been talking about for months!”

Marvin’s parents are talking about this like it’s normal, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

Herb and Jamaal, 5/21/13

I don’t expect naturalistic dialogue from Herb and Jamaal, but wow guys this is some badly-translated-from-the-Slovak weirdness right here. Herb’s facial expressions as he stares at the money and then ever so slowly pulls out his wallet and slips the cash inside it are also pretty creepy. Especially his heavy-lidded zonked-out look in the final panel. Pretty sure he plans on “blocking out the memories of the experience” with powerful opiates, which are what he needs the money for.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/21/13

Speaking of unnatural dialogue, “Another anniversary, Elviney?” is certainly a weird way to offer congratulations to your best friend and her husband! “Another anniversary, Elviney? I thought you swore you’d be widowed or divorced by now?” “I married Lukey fer life! An’ I assumed that our community’s poor medical care and unusually short life expectancy would either kill off my husband or leave me in the sweet embrace of death long ago!”

Marvin, 5/21/13

Normally when someone brings a baby to a movie theater — which, let me just mention, is one of the worst things you can do as a movie goer, what the hell could you possibly be thinking — you can’t blame the baby. You should blame the parents, for being thoughtless morons. But … look at Marvin’s face. That evil smile. He’s looking forward to disrupting the cinema experience for everyone involved. The question is, will he start off by crying, thus driving everyone around him into a rage right away? Or will his opening move be a massive diaper dump, filling theater patrons with disgust and nausea?

If only Beth’s mother were here, to point out the warning signs

Funky Winkerbean, 5/4/13

Oh, man, Darrin’s bio-dad is just not going to give up on his mission of assholery, is he? I have literally no idea what he thinks is going to happen if he goes public with the knowledge that Dead Lisa had sex as a teenager and had a kid and gave it up for adoption. Will the Westview citizenry gather in the town square and ritually burn all copies of Lisa’s Story, as is the accepted fate for Whore Literature? Fools, they already bought the books, and Les already got paid! You bought the book too, Darrin-bio-dad! You bought it in hardcover!

Mary Worth, 5/4/13

Haha, awesome first date strategy, Tom. “I know how to eat better! I just didn’t bother because I didn’t care if I lived or died! I wanted to commit suicide the slowest, most passive-aggressive way possible. But after one trip to the grocery store, one awkward dinner with your mom and some random old lady in our apartment building, and 10 minutes of orange food prep, I know I want to live! You’re the only one keeping me alive, Beth! NEVER LEAVE THIS ROOM OR I’LL KILL MYSELF WITH A VEGETABLE PEELER I SWEAR TO GOD”

Herb and Jamaal, 5/4/13

Herb’s mother-in-law lives with his family and works at the soul food restaurant he runs with Jamaal, but we don’t really know much about her social life. Did she always live in this town, or did she uproot herself from her social networks to come here? Does she have a circle of friends her own age that she spends time with? Are they the ones that she apparently got hella drunk with last night?

Spider-Man, 5/4/13

I mean, we’re all imagining Kingpin speaking in a gravelly, menacing voice, dramatically stretched out over two panels, right? “Now, and only now, it’s time — to awaken Spider-Man! …in the dullest, most pedestrian way possible, by splashing him with water out of a mid-sized Rubbermaid container. HAHA, I was soaking my sore feet in this all afternoon, the water is totally gross! Take that, wall-crawler!”

As good a time for a social networking plug as any

Herb and Jamaal, 4/16/13

Ha ha, people sure do enjoy putting silly comments and cat pictures on their Facepages, and then we all read them on our … wait, what are Herb and Jamaal looking at exactly? A briefcase? Do they have the Internet on briefcases now? For looking at our Facepages? I guess Herb and Jamaal, as usual, are way, way ahead of the curve. (BTW I haven’t mentioned in a while but if you want you can follow me on your briefcase on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+! WARNING: I WILL POST SILLY COMMENTS AND OCCASIONAL CAT PICTURES)

Mary Worth, 4/16/13

Not even the Mary Worth narration box can commit itself to something interesting happening to Beth this week. “WHEN BETH CAN’T BRING HERSELF TO CALL TOM, SHE DECIDES TO GO TO THE STORE … WHERE FATE MAY HAVE OTHER PLANS FOR HER! THEN AGAIN, IT MAY NOT! WHO CAN TELL! PROBABLY SHE’LL JUST COME HOME WITH A BAG OF GROCERIES AND WATCH TV THE REST OF THE NIGHT WHILE HER MOTHER TRIES TO READ! ONCE IN A WHILE SHE’LL SIGH HALF-AUDIBLY!”

Herb even mentions the video format! I’M SHOCKED

Herb and Jamaal, 4/13/13

The only thing Herb and Jamaal loves more than eschewing concrete nouns is rerunning the exact same joke every few years, so you’d think the last thing it would do would be to make a joke about a very specific television program that aired only a couple of weeks before the strip was published. I guess a mildly accurate recounting of the Bible from the same cable channel that brought you Ancient Aliens generates enough excitement to break longstanding strip traditions! Anyway, obviously Hip Young Reverend Whose Name I Forget is referring to the actual Bible in the punchline, but wouldn’t it be a bazillion times funnier if he were talking about this, which is a real thing that exists?

Apartment 3-G, 4/13/13

Oh, man, New York’s hot, devil-may-care governor is so intensely interested in having sex with Lu Ann Lu Ann’s art-classes-for-veterans’-kids charity that he isn’t even bothering to talk to anyone else at this party. This quickly establishes his personality (i.e., we now know he has sent a non-negligible number of pictures of his penis to lady constituents via various electronic communications platforms) and also saves the strip artist from the terrifying prospect of drawing a crowd scene.

Also, I think Eula just drugged the gumbo, call the cops ASAP

Funky Winkerbean, 4/11/13

So Lisa’s Story has been picked up for direct-to-TV movie fame for big bucks, and I have to admit that I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I find the unrelenting grimness of the Funkyverse fairly awful, so I suppose I should be glad that some good has actually befallen the characters. On the other hand, Les is smug and intolerable and now I actively enjoy seeing him tortured. So I’m now rooting for this story to end in crushed dreams as Funky Winkerbean plots inevitably do. Sorry, Cayla, you seem nice but then again you married Les so you clearly have problems. I don’t care if the bad thing that happens is Les being forced to rewrite Lisa’s Story in a way that betrays the memory of his beloved dead wife, or if he gets swindled by his agent and loses all his money, or if he and his whole family are killed by a runaway police horse at the movie’s gala premiere; I just want suffering.

Herb and Jamaal, 4/11/13

All right, we know that Herb and his mother in law have a troubled relationship, but I’m very disturbed that she sits silently in the corner of his dentist’s office while he’s undergoing oral surgery, watching, remembering. “You don’t see me, Herb,” she thinks, “But I see you. I see you.”

Mark Trail, 4/11/13

Mark sure is looking awfully confident in panel three about his plan to get his outdoorsy, cabin-dwelling wife and Shelley Thompson, about whom he knows nothing except that she’s rich and doesn’t care for the outdoors, to make friends with each other! “I’ll bet Shelly has the same parts that Cherry has that are different from my parts! I’m sure they will have a lot to talk about!”