The Comics Curmudgeon

Metapost: More comedic comments of the week!

BALTIMORE AND ENVIRONS! If you enjoy fun, come to this comedy show starring me and other funny people, tonight? Or, you know, just enjoy this week’s comment of the week:

“Artists may come and go in Mark Trail but the product placement for Brylcreem® is grandfathered in.” –Oregonian

And enjoy these runners up!

“I’m profoundly grateful to Bob Weber, Jr. for not using the word ‘selfie’ in today’s Slylock Fox.” –Congo Bill Bailey

“Are there no male cats in the Slylockverse? Is this why poor Cassandra has to throw herself at dogs and foxes, violating the very laws of nature?” –Digger

“Right now, we might be witnessing some of the most creative and experimental comic strip writing of our lifetimes! James Allen first chooses two peculiar words or phrases, then spins his storytelling web outward from there. Innovative to say the least! Like today, for example, where he takes two of your Grandpa’s favorite joke terms for farting, ‘ol’ growler’ and ‘noisy geese.’” –Chareth Cutestory

“Wait, isn’t that Alan Parker standing next to Abbott? I sure loved his book. Abort the mission!” –AhClem

“Woody Wilson loves me, and that is why he gave me this perfect distillation of the essence of Judge Parker. The cocoon of oblivious privilege wrapped around the main characters, the unconscious sense of invulnerability that arises from unearned success, and the delightful lunacy of Alan’s ‘Don’t they know we’re having a wedding here?’ as though it were self-evident that Romanian arms dealers willing to circle half the globe for vengeance against the man who ruined their business and their lives should care about the marriage of mouth-breathing, incompetent Harvard legacy admission Randy and the lithe D-cup of gleefully murderous rage who managed to capture his vague and unreflective affections. The impossibility of being absolutely and completely certain that the artist or writer are not in on the joke and writing an extended Marxist critique of contemporary America. I don’t usually cry at weddings, but this time I might make an exception.” –Master Softheart

“Does Mary spend her days listening at the door, waiting for an anxious footstep so she can ‘casually’ wander into the hallway at just the right time? Or perhaps she crouches on the floor, sniffing until she catches the sweet perfume of desperation wafting under the door, which will summon her presence.” –bourbon babe, unbuckled

“You can always tell when death is the subject at hand in Dick Tracy. The trenchcoat and hat emit an aura of darkness that cloaks their current host. Soon, yes soon, they will feed.” –dmsilev

“And just like that, totally out of nowhere, Beetle Bailey finally pulls its big reveal. The reason the strip has been stuck in the WWII era for the last 60 years is that Beetle was killed in the war, and has been carrying on as a ghost all along. This realization comes to him suddenly, right in the middle of a conversation about pets, and suddenly the illusion drops and the afterlife reveals itself for what it truly is — an empty, nearly featureless void.” –Brad

“Iris is pretty far from okay. She just entertained the possibility that Wilbur understands something about life that she doesn’t. This is a man who still does not know how a DVR works.” –Joe Blevins

“You know your mail order prescriptions are held up at a FedEx Smartpost upstate when you want to jump into the screen and start punching Stanley just because his stupid, stupid face is stupid.” –Lily Sincere

“Cherry is finally getting some affection after all these … I assume ‘decades’ of being married to Mark and you can tell from the look in her eyes that it’s taking all of her strength to not burst into flames of lust right there.” –Roto13

“Now if I’d just been born with a functioning rectum I’d be fine, but, no, there’s no place for the food I take in to go. I just keep swelling like a balloon. An increasingly necrotic balloon full of filth. Guess I could look a lot worse, huh?” –Christopher

“If this were a CSI episode, the killer would be the person who shows up early in the investigation and acts all helpful, and then you don’t see or hear from them until the big reve–oh my God Les Moore killed John Darling!!” –TheDiva

“Today’s Funky Winkerbean looks like storyboards for a video assignment made by the most misguided film student ever. ‘OKAY, WE OPEN AND SHE’S PUTTING AWAY SOME CAMERA EQUIPMENT AND HE’S FEEDING THE BABY BUT NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO THE BABY CUZ HE’S TALKING TO HER. THIS WILL MAKE SENSE LATER. THEN WE CUT TO AN EXTERIOR SHOT OF THEIR APARTMENT. YEAH I KNOW, ‘ESTABLISHING SHOTS’ USUALLY GO FIRST BUT TRUST ME, I’M ONTO SOMETHING HERE. THEN WE CUT BACK INSIDE, THE INTERIOR IS ALMOST COMPLETELY DARKENED AND BOTH CHARACTERS ARE SMUSHED INTO THE FRAME WITH A COMPLETE LACK OF SPATIAL AWARENESS.’ So yeah, ‘fuck Funky Winkerbean’ is what I’m saying.” –Irrischano

Luann: “Such masterful dark foreboding. Of course they’ll remember this night forever, at least those who survive. Though semi-vegetative, Luann will still remember the bloody cummerbund and realizing that Quill’s head was the wrong way round vividly. Rosa, until her dying day, will awake regularly, shrieking Gunther’s name and trying to rake the imaginary brain matter out of her hair. On the good side, the strip will now be called Tiffany and we will have a likable protagonist for the first time in the history of the strip.” –Everything Is Better with Monkeys

“So the joke here is that Francis is high, right?” –pugfuggly

“I understand now. Mossman is serving 25 to life for killing John Darling, Jessica’s father, and life without the possibility of parole for not killing Les Moore, humanity’s bane, when he had the chance.” –Mikey

“I hope her meeting with Plantman is something like Silence of the Lambs. ‘Tell me about the bushes Jess.’” –Dartpaw86

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our sponsors:

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Email me at bio at jfruh dot com if you’re interested in text advertising in this space! I’ve started using BuySellAds as a platform where you can buy banner ads on a CPM basis. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

Metapost: Lovely spring COTW

A reminder: there are still 16 of you who gave money to my fundraiser but haven’t replied to me confirming your address and/or desires for rewards! Please email me at bio at jfruh dot com, if you are one of these people!

Meanwhile, April is really here, and it’s nice, at least where I am! Here, enjoy this spring-y comment of the week:

“Jack seems to be overly fixated on Tommie’s turtleneck. He’s half-heartedly carrying on this nature vs. nurture debate, but on the inside he’s thinking, ‘Is that from Ann Taylor Loft?’” –Joe Blevins

And the runners up! Very funny!

“There’s a lot going on in this little dream sequence, but I think it’s especially interesting to note some of the outfits. Marylou has on a decidedly un-white wedding dress (because she’s a slut!), her moneybags husband has on a tux, and Momma is dressed in black. Like what you’d wear to a funeral. A funeral for your newly married daughter and son-in-law who mysteriously fell into the ocean on the way to Moneybags Island. And who would suspect the little ol’ lady who just came along for the ride?” –pugfuggly

“It’s so edgy the way Apartment 3-G continually subverts the notion that the comics are a visual medium.” –Ed Dravecky

“Stanley should just text the nurse a photo of himself at that moment, with one eyeball so swollen that it’s overlapping the phone. No one could deny that this man shouldn’t be allowed to leave the house.” –Guts Dozier

Mary Worth: “I am glad that we’re not being shown what we’d see dropping in on most able-bodied 19 year olds without girlfriends home alone when they’re fresh out of prison ‘Wha? What are the cameras doing here? This week’s story line was supposed to be at that sandwich place! This wasn’t on the production schedule!’” –hogenmogen

“I just might be able to finish it before the sun burns out. Which will be in a week or two. Stage four cancer of the corona. The astronomers thought those sunspots looked a little off, but we had no idea how far along the disease was, and you know the Sun — so stubborn, didn’t want to see a doctor.” –Voshkod

“‘She looks like those pictures in your browser’s history file, Dad, except with no arms.’ #betterdennislines” –ratnerstar

“Speaking of freaks, Tommie, is there some reason why you keep walking around me in circles backwards?” –Christopher

“The thing that really interests me is the young cop on the left. Sure he looks cool with his mirror shades and no-nonsense expression, but there are hints of amazing depth here. First, his right arm. It is clearly shriveled and atrophied, possibly from a mishandled breech birth like the one that permanently maimed Kaiser Wilhelm II. Does he have to jam a gun into his barely-functioning right claw at the beginning of the day and hope for no firearms accidents? Has he compensated, again like Kaiser Wilhelm, by overdeveloping his opposite arm into a hypertrophied bulge of muscles and nursing a burning resentment toward his mother, Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter?” –Master Softheart

“Today we do see the limits of the Parker’s wealth: the best celebrity wedding officiant they could scrounge up was 70′s-era Don Ho. ‘But I wanted 90′s Freddie Prinze, Jr.!’ whines a petulant April.” –The Mighty Untrained FOOZLE

“I was going to make a joke about how that’s Dagwood’s couch, but then it got all Suessian in my brain: ‘Who said/ that Souphead/ could nap good/ where Dagwood/ Bumstead is normally/ Jughead is ornery/ The forthcoming knife fight is gonna be porn to me.’” –Doctor Handsome

“I saw a movie one time with another character who called himself Prof. Jugs and he also sold a potion that promised guaranteed animal attraction. It was quite different from what’s happening here.” –Chareth Cutestory

“If the old man turned off his hearing aid HOW DID HE HEAR HIS WIFE TELL HIM HE DOESN’T LISTEN TO HER UNLESS THE ANSWER IS HE READS LIPS REALLY WELL IN WHICH CASE HE WAS IN A SENSE STILL LISTENING TO HER WHICH MEANS NOT ONLY IS THE JOKE NOT FUNNY BUT IT IS ALSO LOGICALLY SELF-DEFEATING SO ALL I’M ASKING FOR IS A RETURN TO THE PANT-SHITTING HUMOR WAIT WHAT AM I ASKING FOR?” –Flippin Arkansas

“Heathcliff isn’t Bat Man. He’s appropriated the costume design for his career as a superhero championing the virtues of nothingness, with his blank logo displaying his contempt for the idea of needing a symbol of any one phobia to strike dread into his enemies. We will forever remember the ‘Meh’ flag as the initial warning sign of his descent into nihilism, recognized as such far too late.” –Enlong

“And as her grandma, you should probably give her the money you would have given her on her birthdays. $120 should cover it.” –Kevin on Earth

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! And, just as an advertising program note, I’ve started using BuySellAds as a platform for you to buy ads directly on my site on a CPM basis. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

Metapost: Two brief notes re: fundraiser rewards and site layout

• Fundraiser reward note: Thanks to all who contributed to last month’s fundraiser! As of today, everyone who has confirmed their address and reward desires with me has had their reward sent off in the mail. Please let me know if you don’t see it in about a week or so. That said, 31 of you gave enough to get a reward but never replied to my email asking which rewards you wanted and whether I have the right address for you. I’ve been burned often enough by Paypal passing along an incorrect address that I don’t send out rewards until I have this confirmation; if you haven’t received an email from me, please check your spam filter or just write me at bio@jfruh.com and we’ll talk!
• Website technical thingie note: I’ve tweaked the formatting for the site again, so if things look really wonky, you may need to reload the page while holding down the shift key, and if that doesn’t work, you might need to clear your browser cache.