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Oh my gosh it’s the very last day of the 2026 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser! Hurry! Thank you!

Crankshaft, 7/24/26

Boy, these multiverse stories sure get complicated! Like when Barry Allen Flash teamed up in the past with Jay Garrick Flash to battle The Thinker, The Fiddler, and Shade so Barry could persuade real-world writer Gardner Fox to write a comic book about their adventures! Or when Spider-Men Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire team up to defeat Electro, Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man: No Way Home to keep the hordes of people who know Spidey’s not-so-secret identity from overrunning our world. Or here, where transparent authorial self-insert character “Batton Thomas” teams up with opaque actual author self-insert character Tom Batiuk, presumably to Fight Crime. I don’t know, but if I were Lillian Mackenzie, Harry Dinkle, or Ed Crankshaft, I’d watch my back—these guys are cartoonists—they have erasers and they know how to use them.

Bizarro, 7/24/26

Whoops, looks like the stress finally got to our guy. Forget what I said yesterday.

Crock, 7/24/26

“At last! Our comic strip is saved!”

Phantom, 7/24/26

Chatu “The Python” has surrendered and put on the AI-enabled “Tokoloshe” control anklet, and I’m frankly a little disappointed in him. I mean, this is the guy who tried to Ebolify the whole world through an infected fruit-bat scheme, and blew up half of downtown Mawitaan just to get back at his nemesis the Phantom. He may or may not be a coward, but there is no way he’s gonna let some rich upstart out-evil him! All those years in that cage must’ve softened him up, or maybe he went mad from that interminable drum solo. Either way, get ready for an epic supervillain match-up and battle—now enhanced with AI!

No Comments of the Week on my watch; last week’s victor Victor Von gets a twofer.

—Uncle Lumpy

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Rhymes with Orange, 7/20/26

Lady lets herself be intimidated by inanimate objects. Gonna be a long day.

Six Chix, 7/20/26

Unhealthy, infected, diseased, rotting, morbid, disgusting meat. How to say you’re vegan without saying you’re vegan.

Dustin, 7/20/26

The animosity between Ed Kudlick and his son Dustin is well-established, but doesn’t it seem lately that their barbs are getting sharper? I mean, today’s exchange is basically, “You’re lazy and doomed to failure!” / “You’re stupid and can’t speak English!” It won’t be long before these breakfast chats devolve into cursing and flinging coffee and cereal.

Phantom, 7/20/26

The Phantom’s very first nemeses—the pirates of the Singh Brotherhood—were in it for the loot. But the motivations of the current crop are harder to parse:

• Leopold Braga, Admiral in the navy of landlocked Rhodia, says he serves its ruling junta by serving Ignis Vindicta, but how? Is there some bribe, contract, alliance, or other alignment of interests between the parties, and if so to what end?
• Chatu “The Python”, Wambesi terrorist, used his native Bangalla as a safe haven to carry out attacks in Rhodia. So why does Rhodia, through Vindicta and Braga, want him on the team?
• Eric Sahara started out a billionaire playboy, then took up recreational lone-wolf terrorism as “The Nomad”, taking over Chatu’s gang when he thought the Phantom had killed its leader. Why? Don’t know!
• Elon Musk Ian Mollusk Ignis Vindicta (tr. “Fire of Vengeance”) is a wealthy motormouth nutjob who wants to rule the world from space. He surrendered all control of his Nomad/Chatu project to an AI programmed on his own bullshit, and constantly brags about how he has no influence over what it does. Why? Got me.

Beyond “bad guys do bad things,” these villains are united only in their hatred of the Phantom, which kinda seems like a side quest, and hasn’t worked out well for any of them in the past.

—Uncle Lumpy

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The Phantom, 7/15/26

Ahh, it looks like the promised Nomad-Python supervillain teamup really is happening, coordinated by the mysterious “Ignis Vindicta” (JUST KIDDING HE IS NOT MYSTERIOUS HE IS CLEARLY OBVIOUS ELON MUSK STANDIN “IAN MOLLUSK” WEARING A MASK). Anyway, it’s kind of funny that freeing the Nomad involved elaborately working through a web of corruption in order to extract him from Guantanamo Bay, something only someone extremely wealthy and connected could do, whereas freeing the Python just required sending some mid-range drones to blow up the big open-air cage they keep him in. Sounds like someone could’ve done that a while ago, if they had shown any initiative!

Mark Trail, 7/15/26

Meanwhile, just as Mark’s dad is trying to get married to his scam gorilla sanctuary catfish girlfriend, Rusty’s raccoon adventure has descended into full-on folk horror. Back off, scouts! Dunno if they give out a badge for “recognizing when your friend has rabies and is beginning to succumb to madness,” but your friend has rabies and is definitely beginning to succumb to madness!