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It’s the 2022 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser!

Soapers, joke-a-day, and occasional adventure strips are the meat and potatoes of The Comics Curmudgeon, but sometimes a body just craves something sweet. Prime your insulin pumps!

Rose Is Rose, 8/31/22

With Dondi’s 1986 retirement, Pasquale Gumbo became the undisputed Most Annoying Child in comics. Wikipedia says he “embodies the innocence that we only find in youth.” He has no bad traits, worships his Dad, plays with his Guardian Angel, works hard in school, goes on fantastical dream-adventures, and inhabits a world of adorable birds, squirrels, rainbows, and stars. He is also the Zodiac Killer, Ebola virus Patient Zero, and directly responsible for the 1999 Indo-Pakistan War.

Breaking Cat News 8/31/22

Normally a joke-a-day strip, Breaking Cat News is midway through an extended arc about how the rediscovery of a sealed-off addition to the Big Pink House will somehow resolve a financial crisis that threatens The Family with eviction. Here, the Robber Mice return from patrol to announce that the addition’s funky dècor is untouched since the 1970’s so a good dusting will make it move-in ready. How this will resolve the financial crisis is not yet known, but awwwww … CATS!

Mutts, 8/31/22

In related Cat News, anybody who’s met a real cat knows that ladybug has about ten seconds to live.

Daddy Daze, 8/31/22

Angus is in fact invisible; this child is an imposter. Watch your back Mr. Daze!

Mark Trail, 8/31/22

Once a rough-and-tumble adventure strip where Mark and Johnny Malotte clawed their way across ice floes to kill and eat delicious seals, Mark Trail has evolved through twists and turns into an ensemble comedy with a floating cast of vaguely nature-themed social-media oddballs, including, increasingly, Mark himself.

In the current story, Mark teams up with BikBok [sic] goose wrangler and Cherry heartthrob Rex Scorpius on the road to investigate Tess Tiger’s Tiger Touch Roadside Zoo/Spa and Secret Cult for fox-lovin’ Amy Lee, Mark’s Teen Sparkle editor and producer Diana Daggers’ old Racoon Rangers pal. Here, Rex ditches client Jimmy Songbird’s keytar recital to Facetime his puppy. Who‘s a good boy?

The ringing in your ears is normal and will pass if you lie down for a few minutes. Maybe eat a seal or two.

–Uncle Lumpy

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Mark Trail, 7/9/22

Hey everybody, remember Sassy? He was Rusty’s adorable little puppy (distinct from Andy, Mark’s big macho dog), and he was always prone to getting into trouble, just like Rusty! He sort of faded away in the past few years of the strip but now he’s back! … just in time to die horribly from whatever gross skin disease is afflicting Lost Forest. RIP Sassy, 1981-2022, you will probably not be missed.

The Phantom, 7/9/22

Man, I’m barely even going to try to explain the current Phantom plot, which has been very, very long and difficult to follow but is mostly a series of nesting narratives from Old Man Mozz explaining how the Phantom will ruin his life if he tries to bust his former flirtation partner Savarna out of prison, and it’s never quite clear if we’re watching the big guy actually doing this stuff or just hearing Mozz spin a what-if narrative about it, but the point is that you can apparently show a couple guys just straight-up dying from taking a bullet to the chest, right here in the funny papers! It’s Saturday, I guess? You can show dudes getting shot to death, on the weekend? And maybe if it’s just a story-within-a-story told by a wise old sage and not something really happening in the strip? Do the practices and standards departments at major newspaper comics syndicates take into consideration the layer of narrative distance at which a violent murder happens?

Mary Worth, 7/9/22

“I mean, I’m definitely going to have a lot of different opportunities to explore once the state Physician Assistant Board finds out about our extremely inappropriate relationship and I get my license taken away!”

Slylock Fox, 7/9/22

Welp, let’s take a look at the details here and see if we can guess the six diffOH MY GOD, is that a human femur, is that GRANDMA’s femur, oh my GOD

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/6/22

Man, wouldn’t it be cool if Funky Winkerbean made an abrupt change in its narrative style and suddenly became a retro-cyberpunk strip (set in the original 1980s heyday of cyberpunk, even) where Harry Dinkle used his computer hacking prowess to gain authority over Westview High without his techno-ignorant colleagues even noticing? It wouldn’t even have to be a permanent abrupt change. Just for one storyline would be a relief from the endless puns. Computers in the ’80s couldn’t make puns, right? That was beyond their capabilities?

Dustin, 7/6/22

I’ve made some jokes about how the unstoppable passage of time has shifted Dustin’s core “Boomer vs. Millennial” concept to a significantly less bankable “elder Gen X vs. young Millennial/first-wave Zoomer” scenario, but I think we can agree that no matter what the actual ages of the people in the strip are, the main engine of the whole thing is Boomer dude condescension. How else do you explain today’s punchline at the expense of Abba, a band that was always pretty beloved and has undergone a critical appraisal of late? “Ha ha, Abba,” says the strip’s viewpoint character, about one of the best-selling music acts of all time, which spawned a wildly popular stage musical and film series, “I think we can safely do a punchline predicated on notion that we all agree that they suck!”

Mark Trail, 7/6/22

Look, it’s come to our attention that Mark Trail’s core audience may be tired of long storylines about how cryptocurrency is bad or whatever. So, we’re going back to the core story topics that have made this strip great: animals, and their gross rashes. Hope you enjoy the close-up drawings of weeping sores, freaks!

Gasoline Alley, 7/6/22

Gasoline Alley: the long-running continuity strip that’s in touch with everyday real Americans, their lives, and their problems. Also, it features a talking bird who strictly enforces sexual morality. It’s a real nightmare place!