Hello all! First, a huge thanks to everyone who contributed to the fall fundraiser — thank you! All who donated will be getting a personal thank you this week, but I wanted to express my gratitude to the world now. And thanks for being so nice to the hilarious Uncle Lumpy in my absence. He was kind enough to cull the best comments for this week, though I alone choose the top comment of the week:
“My name is Judge Alan Parker. You panned my book. Prepare to die.” –LP2004
And yet we all must admit that the runners up are extremely hilarious!
Gasoline Alley: “This revelation heralded a disturbing new turn in Slim’s relationship with Clovia. ‘I want your your tongue all over my face Clovia! No — more slobber! Yeah, oh, yeah, that’s it! … Now, bark!’ –Cloudbuster
Luann: “WHAAAAAT? Are you saying that Quill is both an Australian and Luann’s boyfriend?! Thanks for reminding me, I almost forgot.” –Doyle
Gil Thorp: “This will all be worth it if he’s silent because he has a really high, silly voice, and he’s tired of people making fun of him, instead of the deep, dark secret we know it’s going to be.” –bbofun
One Big Happy: “This is like the most relaxed, chill version of The Raven ever. “So this raven comes into my room/I fed him some breakfast cereal and made him sleep in a doll bed/No biggie.” –Joe Blevins
“OMG! Mary Worth is turning into a geriatric lesbian porno right before our eyes.” –Baka Gaijin
Judge Parker: “OH THANK GOD! I’ve been on the edge of my seat for weeks wondering what pre-dinner drinks these twats would order!” –pugfuggly
9 Chickweed Lane: “Wait a minute… absolutely everything in this strip except the occasional one-off involving Thorax or the cat is about the psychologically unhealthy assertion of power through sexuality. Nazism, classical piano, dance, prejudice against homosexuals, religion, the organized priesthood, the legal system, friendship, psychotic breaks with reality, secret government surveillance, veterinary medicine, furniture, language, clothing, education… everything. These aren’t even characters, they are walking, junior high school-level manifestations of Freudian mental illness with self-parodyingly pretentious vocabularies. How did I never notice this before?” –Master Softheart
“Luann has morphed into a blow up sex doll. Even as an inanimate object she has more personality than Quill.” –Everything Is Better with Monkeys
Luann: “If her lips go back to skinny after this dance, I’m calling complete bullshit. A priest told me it can’t be done, no matter what the Internet says.” –Esther Blodgett
Dick Tracy: “This is what happens when you install Apple Maps on your space coupe.” –Naked Bunny with a Whip
Rex Morgan, M.D.: “Warning — absolutely NO ONE will be seated during the stirring glop-cutting sequence!” –Shrug (no coughing or paper crumpling, either)
Mary Worth: “Mary looks bored to death today. No wonder, since the subject has moved away from ‘Mary Worth is great’ for a whole ten seconds. I expect her to interrupt any minute now: ‘Okay, Shelly, blah blah, you work with homeless people or astronauts or zoo animals or whatever it is, I get it, blah blah blah, can we talk about ME, already?’” –Alison
Family Circus: “Last time Daddy picked someone to win that person lost and Daddy owed some big guys a lot of money.” –Liam
Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.
Click the banner to contribute to the Comics Curmudgeon. Details here.
Did you know that they publish comic strips every day? It’s true! And without the heroic efforts of Josh Fruhlinger, some of them would slip through unread and worse, unmocked. Unless you’re willing to rise from bed every morning for the rest of your life with the words, “OK, gotta go read Luann now.”
Yeah, I didn’t think so!
Keeping the Comics Curmudgeon fresh and up to date is hard work! So twice a year I host a fundraiser to thank Josh for the time, effort, and talent he puts into giving newspaper comics every bit of the attention and respect they so richly deserve.
To contribute by credit card or PayPal, click the banner at the top of the page and follow the instructions on the secure PayPal site. To contribute by check or money order, email uncle.lumpy@comcast.net and I’ll reply with an address. Full details here, along with an index to the 50 banners in rotation at the top of the page and banners from previous fundraisers — more than 400 in all!
Thank you, generous readers!
– Uncle Lumpy
Greetings, readers! A couple of points of interest. First, if you are in or near New York City and would like to see me read funny words at a reading Williamsburg, you will have the opportunity to do just that on Tuesday, October 15! I’ll be part of the always amazing/hilarious Animal Farm series, and I’ll be reading with other funny people at the Over the Eight bar at 594 Union Avenue in Brooklyn. Event info is here (that link is on Facebook, but you should be able to see it even if you are not a Facebook person).
Also! Your favorite Uncle Lumpy will be taking over for me for just over a week, starting tomorrow. I’ll be back with slightly extended comments of the week on Sunday the 20th. Until then, be good! And enjoy this comment of the week:
“Tommie probably extended her Italian vacation to attend the Realcon, the cosplay convention dedicated to postwar Italian neorealist film. She’s going as the bicycle from The Bicycle Thief.” –David Lynch’s Pompadour
And the runners up! Very funny!
“‘Millions of shows to choose from,’ eh, Plato? Well, it’s good to know that I’ll be able to watch Fat Chuckling Nude Man on my forehead-mounted SillyScreen at home and on-the-go … until the devices are recalled after millions of fatalities, mostly involving the controversial ExtendoArm attachment.” –Joe Blevins
“Gee, Mrs. Rabbit, maybe if Rodney got a girlfriend he’d be too busy to rip you off every five minutes. Think big picture, lady.” –Digger
“‘Ah! Amigos! I am all wet!’ ‘So am I! I can’t fight in damp fatigues! They will chafe!’ ‘So it is agreed, then? We’ll go home to change?’ ‘Si. You win this time, wallcrawler.’” –pugfuggly
“It sounds like Mary’s announcing a terminal illness or something. ‘I’m sorry, Jeff. I too am going on a trip, but I won’t be coming back this time. It’s time to take my meddling to a higher plane … there are several things I need to have a word with Our Lord about.”” –Meg
“Alternate theory: The Fly III. This is how de-evolution works: Jeff Goldblum; Eric Stoltz; Francis from Momma.” –Crankenstank
Apartment 3-G: “When Reinhold Niebuhr wrote The Nature and Destiny of Man way back in the early 1940′s, he had no way of contemplating the actual end of human existence, which is apparently to be stuck in the middle of a pissing match between Lu Ann and a teenager. Not even Jesus himself can break this infinite loop. Well, it’s been nice knowing you, folks!” –The Rt. Venerable Pasdordan
“Ah, New York. If you can meddle there, you can meddle anywhere. Will the ceremony be hosted by Neil Patrick Harris as is now the custom for all award shows? Will Mary drop by the Daily Show and meddle Jon Stewart into not taking so much time off? Will she straighten out Elmo the Anti-Semite? Reduce soda size to 8 ounces? They need you, Mary, now more than ever.” –Gabacho
“I’m not one to praise the art in Mary Worth, but you have to admit they perfectly captured the face of suicidal despair on Doc Jeff as he drives his car off the pier and into the ocean. ‘Just one more burst of noise as she screams,’ Jeff is thinking, ‘and then the silence of death.’” –Voshkod
“Actually, he’s more like the fall leaves in that his veins have begun to shrink and close off in reaction to certain environmental factors in the weeks leading up to now.” –Chareth Cutestory
“So as long as you can do half-assed wordplay, there’s no cause for alarm? ‘He’ll be fine. He’s like dilapidated churches; his organs don’t work anymore.’ ‘He’s like the New York Giants; he shits the bed and chokes.’ ‘He’s like synthetic fabrics; he doesn’t breathe.’” –Doctor Handsome
Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.
Greetings, faithful readers! Your comment of the week in a moment, but first a brief reminder that open talk warning shirts are available for purchase at my CafePress store. Here we see faithful reader/genius A-wel Cruiz, who designed the logo, modeling his own attractive work:
So what are you waiting for? Go forth and purchase!
Also, go forth and enjoy this fine comment of the week:
“Is that really what Jeff looks like? Mary’s been ignoring him so long I think she’s starting to forget. ‘Let’s see … Frank Sinatra eyes, Mitt Romney hair, John Goodman chin … did he have a neck? Probably, but I won’t include it in my vision until I check the photos.’” –pugfuggly
And the enjoy these runners up!
“Pluggers continues the series of strips in which the dog has usurped the man’s place in the woman’s heart, yet the man is also a dog married inexplicably to a chicken woman (perhaps the one from The Kids in the Hall?). My theory that the comics page reflects the true reality we refuse to see in order to protect our sanity (the horrors revealed by 9CL, Slylock, Luann and Pluggers) seems more and more rational. At night, I now dream of the lost glistening city and hear the chanting of eldritch frog people (again, the men in 9CL certainly share a batrachian quality). I fear I may not survive to post again. Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” –Everything Is Better with Monkeys
“Great use of that owl, making direct eye contact with the reader. ‘WHO can prevent the animal uprising? Only you.’” –Joe Blevins
“Note there is a time skip between the penultimate and last panel, so we don’t know quite how far he took the analogy. I’m guessing ‘slaughtered like pigs’ came in at some point, and perhaps ‘boiled down for glue.’” –Danel
“Ed’s feeling it too, and I KNOW what it is — another STROKE! Ha ha, get it? No, but seriously, call 911.” –Chyron HR
“‘Momma, we have a difference of opinions…’ ‘…and we’d like you to solve it.’ ‘Please! I’m not King Solomon. But I have received divine instructions to slice both of you in half.’[or:] ‘Please! I’m not the Hague. But some legal authorities do consider this strip to be a crime against humanity.’ [or:] ‘Please! I’m not the DC Circuit Court. But I do have several vacancies where Alzheimer’s has eaten away my brain.’” –Nekrotzar
“Man, I hate Mond… what? Are you serious? Miss Buxley’s just gonna steal my Mondays riff? I COOKED A DAMN LASAGNA FOR THIS.” –Dan
“This is the freshest air I’ve breathed in a long time! And, hey, look at that bobcat about to kill that white rabbit I brought with me and just released into the wild. That’s what I really came here to see: bloodshed! Not that pansy-ass arguing they call ‘bloodshed’ in Washington. I want to see a living thing be torn apart just for my amusement. Well. Say, Dusty, have you ever read a story called ‘The Most Dangerous Game’?” –Christopher
“Meanwhile, Pac-Man watches Heathcliff’s travails from within his giant obsidian cloud-ship. He laughs bitterly at the follies of man. Or cat, or ape, or whatever this comic strip is about, I don’t even know.” –C. Sandy Cyst
“Senator, meet Dusty Rhodes, and his fellow rangers Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka and George ‘The Animal’ Steele. They’d like to have a discussion with you about your policies. Oh, look! A vicious bobcat! You’d better get in this protective steel cage with the rangers!” –aphthakid
“Y’see, there are cult classics, such as Rocky Horror, The Room, Battle Beyond the Stars, and Garbage Ape. They became cult classics because their humor was unintentional. They were chosen for veneration by the fans. Then there are pandering attempts to court the midnight movie audience (Can’t Stop the Music, The Worst Movie Ever Made!, Trash Chimp), and the results can be smelled a mile away. Basically, I’m saying: Don’t screw this up for me, Heathcliff.” –The Mighty Untrained FOOZLE
“I’m jest one gimpy leg from the glue factory! Also, Snuffy fucks me! So yeah, the horse comparison is pretty solid.” –Doctor Handsome
“Don’t try to figure out what’s happening, Mark. It makes no sense to us, either. Just stick to your strengths: bide your time until someone admits being evil and points a gun at you, then beat them savagely. You might as well go punch the oil rigs as try to make sense of American energy politics. If you actually try to influence the legislative process, you’ll probably end up with the Keystone XL Pipeline running through Cherry’s kitchen.” –Master Softheart
“Note how Marvin and friend are looking back on a past event so traumatic that only now, these many months later, can they bring themselves to speak of it openly. It’s not enough that the strip continues to mine rich veins of unpleasantness unfit for the comics page. No, it must also tease us with the suggestion of long-repressed memories that will now come spewing forth from Marvin’s subconscious, very much like a tsunami of regurgitated processed-meat products, until we long for that simpler time when all we had to worry about were poopy-diaper jokes. ‘We didn’t know how good we had it,’ we’ll say. Well played, Marvin. Well played.” –Dr. Moreau
“I like the way the pizza makers are now completely bored with Heathcliff. It’s like, ‘Yeah, the talking cat came in, we got the birds, we baked the pizza and now we’re just so totally over the whole thing.’” –Lily Sincere
“4-20 blackbirds? Finally, a clue to the inspiration behind Heathcliff.” –zaratustra
“‘It’s sort of like how we shed flakes of dead skin, except we do it constantly. Trees only do it when they’re about to go into their winter hibernation. We’re shedding flakes of dead skin all the time. That’s what all the dust all over our house is made of. You know what’s really cool? Little tiny dust mites all over the place eat up all that dead skin. And then they turn it into a totally different kind of dust by shitting it all over the place. You know where you find the biggest concentration of dust mites? Mattresses. When you go to sleep at night you’re sleeping with billions and billions of mites eating your dead skin and shitting all over you.’ And thus Dolly plants the seeds for Jeffy’s obsessive compulsive disorder.” –Christopher
“Today’s Rex Morgan is quite sad. I know that most human unicorns face a lot of mockery and pain in their lives, but they need to overcome this, see themselves for the wonders that they are! Not seek out some shadowy doctor who’s willing to run a back-street hornectomy. Face it, Buck, even without the horn, the trail of glitter you leave behind and your creepy attraction to virgins is going to make it clear what you really are.” –Voshkod
Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! And as always, we must give thanks to our advertiser, who has sponsored the mobile version of the site this week:
- Chicken Outfit: The comic: Rusty McDoodle isn’t having the best week. His web clients aren’t paying, his girlfriend left him and his social skills have deteriorated from freelancing in a vacuum. His best friend Stan works in online porn, toiling away in a virtual sweat-shop lorded over by a maniacal boss and his dog-like cronies. When Stan’s latest project goes up flames late one night, he asks Rusty to join the company and help him uncover the truth behind his Kafkaesque employer. These two web-lackeys soon discover a series of events have been set in motion so bizarre, that their world is engulfed by epic chaos. With the help of an alcoholic psychic and his fishing buddy, they’re roped into a nightmarish struggle with bloodthirsty demons and money-mongering yes-men. Can they keep their jobs and sanity intact when they can’t trust anyone and there’s an axe lurking behind every back?
To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s mobile version or RSS feed, click here.
Good Friday, all! Are you ready to enjoy today’s comment of the week?
“Mary, I don’t know how to tell you this but … the ratio has finally flipped. I am now more sandwich than man. My organs are naught but lunch meat and lettuce, my blood is mustard. The doctors give me a week until I start digesting myself from the inside out. It’s … it’s everything I ever wanted, Mary. I’m so happy, Mary.” –Tophat
And the runners up! Verrrry amusing.
“Okay, I’m pretty sure that by the end of 2014, every Marvin strip is simply going to consist of the word ‘PISS’ in gigantic letters. Daubed in faeces.” –C. Sandy Cyst
“When you have a constantly-shifting skull structure kneading your brain like bread dough twenty-four hours a day, you’re gonna end up with some brain trauma. I imagine you can hear it when you stand next to one of them. ‘He’s gone, (squittcchh) Zoey — (glurrkk) Just (schplutt) gone (bluttcchh)!’” –Joe Btfsplk
“Why does the phone ring whenever I’m about to eat in order to build up my energy to get down with my dark-as-ebony-yet-paradoxically-radiantly-glowing phallus that I also keep charged and ready on the kitchen counter?” –Cra_Mastercra
“This is a theme restaurant where the theme is low-key hostility.” –Joe Blevins
“Mark, alone in his room, talks to himself out loud, explaining the obvious. Fortunately the phone rings before he has to ask himself to repeat that more slowly, since he didn’t quite follow himself the first time.” –Shrug, Earlyish for Once
“I think we can decisively conclude that the true cause of Marty’s dad’s brain tumor is his puny human mind struggling to process the insane, non-Euclidian geometry of a world where someone dramatically turns away from the person they’re talking to, only to see that person standing, in the same pose, right in the middle of their new field of vision.” –The Ben
“Mary, there’s something I have to tell you. I have cancer of the sandwich-gizzard —- wait, let me start over! There’s two things I have to tell you. First, Mary, I have a sandwich-gizzard.” –Perky Bird
“I’ve been trying to figure out which DC restaurant this is, and I finally got it: 1962.” –bourbon babe, unbuckled
“Does anyone think that the one swirling piece of debris above his head in panel two looks more like a slice of pizza in the far background? No real joke here, I’m just imagining a beautiful world of pizza-nadoes.” –Chareth Cutestory
“Like many a woodland spirit, Mark cannot resist the mercurial impulses that characterize faerie nature and apparates behind the very mortal who moments ago offered him aid, yanking the chair out from under her. ‘And should the senator fail my woodsy clime, / Thy firstborn son shall e’er be mine.’” –David Lynch’s Pompadour
“Their eyes met, and in a flash they understood each other. ‘Well, Dad could use a vacation,’ the blond said, mischief sparkling in her dark eyes. ‘Maybe I can talk him into going there!’ Her eyelashes fluttered like dying butterflies. Mark raised his cup to hide a smile. ‘Good idea, Anne Marie,’ he said in a low voice. ‘He used to enjoy hunting. I can arrange for a hunt that area.’ He could see it now, the old man panting through the woods as Mark sighted down the barrel. One shot, and the woods would take care of the rest. Anne Marie would have her inheritance, Mark would get the oil money. Then they’d go their seperate ways. What could go wrong?” –Voshkod
“I asked my editor to just give me my job back when I got home, but apparently newspapers are pretty much run like Thunderdome these days. Two guys in the lobby were having a knife fight to see who gets to run the city desk.” –Dan
“Neddy’s frustrated plea for a Hellfire missile fired into a densely populated urban area in the developing world as the best way to solve a problem that may or may not be just a scam enabled by her own naivete and badly applied high technology offers yet another reason why I maintain that Judge Parker is the best social commentary on the comics pages today. F. Scott Fitzgerald only wished he could develop characters like this.” –Master Softheart
“I like Leroy’s Pulp Fiction suit. Wearing a costume from a good movie when your wife drags you a bad one is much subtler than his usual schtick.” –Doctor Handsome
Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.
Hi all! Your comments of the week in a moment, but first: as you may or may not have noticed, I tweaked my site layout a bit to accommodate somewhat larger ads in the left-hand nav bar. The nav bar should just expand a bit so that it can contain the wider ads; however, a few people have let me know that they’re seeing the ads stick out over the actual text of the posts. If that’s what you’re seeing, your browser is using a cached version of the stylesheet that defines the site layout; holding down the shift key and reloading the page should solve the problem, though you may have to do it a few times. If it doesn’t, please email me at bio at jfruh dot com, telling me what web browser and operating system you’re using, and I’ll see what I can do to help.
And with that tech matter out of the way, here is the comment of the week for you to enjoy!
“I’m attracted to Mary Beth, and I don’t know why, because she isn’t exhibiting any secondary sexual characteristics yet. Then again, we’re birds, so who even knows, right?” –Lumaca Morente
And the runners up! Very funny!
“If Skyler is under the impression that puberty will clarify his budding sexuality, his current anguish is but the tip of a terribly confused and horny iceberg.” –digupthebones
“‘Gardening all day?’ how long does it take to water seven flowers?” –Dartpaw86
“I assumed Daddy Keane was extolling the get rich darn fast glories of multi-level marketing: ‘See that little boy in the kitchen? You get 5 sucker — I mean associates — signed up, and you’ll get something just like him. Ten associates, you get a bigger one, like the kid in Zits, only useful.” –jim, some guy in iowa
“Jarod slouches more than Les. How does that even work? Will we just see him propped up against various walls (and, inevitably, a police officer) but never see how he got from one wall to the other? He needs a posture pal just as much as he needs nicotine gum, and I’m sure will, over time, learn to welcome both.” –Lily Sincere
“Jarod’s been smoking for three whole panels, and hasn’t managed to get cancer. Who are you, and what have you done with Funky Winkerbean?” –Dan
“The absolute most clever thing about this ruse is that outside witnesses and video evidence will still show that the ‘Tarantula’ is saving the day while ‘Spider-Man’ is sitting on his ass, tied up. His reputation remains intact!” –Chareth Cutestory
“Credit where credit is due to Crock for showing and not just telling. We know the restaurant is bad not because it’s directly stated, but because of the hollow-eyed corpse on prominent display there.” –Dragon of Life
“The hardest part was keeping this fake mustache on, but I’m still the guy with the webbing … HEY! That would have been so much easier than this glue I used. Oh man, it’s like sometimes I forget I even have superpowers.” –Brad
“I really sympathize with that grouchy background waiter in today’s Crock. ‘Eight years of acting lessons for this? And that guy is clearly reading his one line off that pad of paper! This is bullshit.’” –Joe Blevins
“Those damn birds ruined every coat Johnny Walker’s ever owned! His vengeance will be swift and technological!” –gleeb
“Mark bends forward in panel one to help give the country some of the gas Johnny claims it needs.” –Illustrator Steve
“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes. Fortunately, Gregor could still use silverware, and his new-found extra limbs let him use three at once. So he went out to dinner at a fine establishment, where he found himself vague disgusted by the human couple talking about their relationship problems.” –Voshkod
“Discovering that Ed follows a polytheistic religion involving ritual sacrifice via schoolbus is by far the most interesting thing that has ever happened in this strip.” –Esther Blodgett
Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! And as always, we must give thanks to our advertisers:
To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.
