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Judge Parker, 5/20/06

Yeah, you’re a great guy, Randy. A great, hairy guy. Did you think that loosening your tie, unbuttoning that top button, and unleashing that thatch of chest hair would keep April from running off to the CIA? That she’d think, “Damn, why should sign I up for an exciting world of espionage and intrigue when I could be running my fingers through that sexy, sexy torso rug?”

Sadly, Randy, you’ve miscalculated. Now button up, please, in the name of all that’s good and decent.

Mark Trail, 5/20/06

Is the Lost Forest located in some county were all zoning decisions incomprehensibly take the form of a jury trial? Is the courtroom full of redheaded clones in grey suits? Does everybody forget that Tony is Evil Baldy’s grandson, not son? Why do I care about the answers to these questions? Why? Why? Why?

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Gasoline Alley, 5/19/06

If you weren’t paying attention (and you almost certainly weren’t), Gasoline Alley had a halfway exciting plotline going on a few months ago: Sheezix and Gertie were in a dark, scary forest, tangling with what they thought was an escaped psycho killer.

Then the supposed psycho killer turned out to be a cop, who was looking for the real psycho killer. Then he noticed that Sheezix’s driver’s license had expired, so Sheezix had to hire Gasoline Alley’s two horsedrawn hillbillies to tow his car home. Then he had to go get his driver’s license renewed, which meant that he had to get info from the Social Security Administration, which meant…

Well, what it really meant was that a storyline that contained suspense and action and the threat of violence was transformed by degrees into a storyline that involved an old man doing battle with surly government bureaucrats trying to get his paperwork in order.

Which brings up a question: Could this storyline be made even more boring? “More boring that the DMV?” you ask. “That’s a tall order!” Well, perhaps. But I’ve got some ideas!

• On his way out of the DMV, Sheezix has his pocket picked. Now he has to go through all the stuff he just went through to get his paperwork in order again, plus he has to go down to the police station to file a report with a bored desk jockey.
• On the street, Sheezix bumps into an old friend. “Hey, Sheezix, what’ve you been up to?” he asks. Sheezix proceeds to tell him, in great detail.
• Sheezix gets home to find that his wife is having the house repainted. “Don’t touch any of the walls until the paint dries!” she says. He sits down to watch and wait.
• Sheezix dies. His body is embalmed, placed into a coffin, and buried in the soil. Over the course of years, the wood of the coffin rots, and his corpse decays to its organic components, nurturing the soil. Some four billion years later, the Earth’s sun becomes a red giant, and the Earth is destroyed.

Also, in Rex Morgan, M.D., we learned that Dr. Troy likes clown art:

I don’t know what the hell this means, but it can’t possibly be good.

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Hi everybody! This is going to be the first of a monthly feature here at the Comics Curmudgeon. It’s come to my attention lately that many of my readers are unfamiliar with all the stuff that this site has to offer. So, once a month, I’m going to highlight it all for you! If you’re totally familiar with all the doodads and hoohahs along the left side of your screen, you can just skip all this; but if you’re not, you might want to read on. It may surprise you! And in future installments of this post, I will highlight features that were added in the previous month.

Anyway, here’s some of the features of this site that go beyond the front page!

Archives. This site has been publishing for nearly two years now, and every single post is still available for your amusement. Check out the archives menu just below all the advertising (or click here to jump there). You can see all the posts that deal with a particular comic; see all the posts from a particular month; or search on a keyword or phrase. If you’re feeling reckless, you can also click on the Randomly Selected Post O’ Mystery and enjoy an arbitrary entry from the past; this post will change every time you reload the page.

Discussion. Everybody knows that you can put witty comments on each post. But did you know that there’s a full-fledged Comics Curmudgeon discussion board where you can chat with your fellow comics fans? It’s true! Before you sign up to participate there, though, you should read the posting and discussion policies (which apply to comments on the main blog too, for that matter).

Subscribing. Tired of hitting “Refresh” on your browser over and over? Would you like to be alerted every time this blog is updated? You can, thanks to the magic of RSS Webfeeds. Check out the “Subscribe” heading in the left-hand navigational column. Click the “RSS” icon to get the URL to my feed for the newsreader of your choice. Alternately, you can click on any on any of the icons below it to add my site to a variety of popular feed-reading services. You can get updates on your My Yahoo!, My MSN, or Google homepage; add me to your Bloglines or Newsgator page; or even to your Livejournal friends list or your del.icio.us page, with just one click!

If the idea of getting Comics Curmudgeon updates automatically appeals to you but you have no idea what the hell anything in that last paragraph means, feel free to e-mail me and I’ll try to help you out.

Josh’s other comics projects. I do a bit of Comics Curmudgeoning on other sites as well. I write a weekly column called Cartoon Violence on Wonkette, a snarky political blog; it’s pretty much the same schtick as I do here, only with political cartoons, and lots more swearing, and it’s updated every Friday. I also write a short blurb called the Geek Comic of the Week for ITworld.com, a site that focuses on computers and IT; it focuses on Web comics and other cartoons outside of your daily paper with a geeky twist to them, and it’s updated every Sunday night.

Merchandising. Those smiling faces at the bottom of the ad bar aren’t just for show. They’re modeling delightful Comics Curmudgeon gear, which is available for purchase on CafePress! Yes, you can wear and/or drink out of merchandise reminding you of classics Comics Curmudgeon moments, such as “More zippers, mule!”, “In the absence of weights, I am employing isometrics”, Milford’s big gambling bust, “Roadside”, and Fence Post Frank. Um, and I realize that some of these catchphrases are pretty old by now. New ones coming soon! Maybe.

Advertising. Comics Curmudgeon readers are collectively the best people in the entire world, it goes without saying. Therefore, you’d be wise to market your product or service to them. And you can, by advertising on this site. Thanks to BlogAds, you can do so pretty easily. Just click here to get started. I think you’ll find the rates quite reasonable!

Tipping. “Gosh,” you may very well be saying, “Josh does all this for me; what I can do to make his life a little easier?” Well, you can always put a bit of scratch in my virtual tip jar through the magic of PayPal. Rest assured that every dollar I get allows me to spend less time on my boring real job and more time putting hilarious stuff on my site. Click here to start!

Anyway, thanks to all of you for your support, readership, and hilarious commentary. I’m way too narcissistic to keep doing this without knowing that you’re all out there reading this, so keep it up!