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Many longstanding Comics Curmudgeon readers know (or know of) Dingo, who was a hilarious and raunchy commenter on this blog from its earliest days. He hadn’t been posting much over the past couple of years, and I knew he had been ill with brain cancer, and now Uncle Lumpy brings the sad news that he lost his fight.

I heard from his sister Joyce that Jeff Gillette, who posted here as Dingo, died Sunday evening after a long illness. She wrote, “He loved Comics Curmudgeon and the fact that others, besides me, enjoyed his sense of humor.”

Jeff will be buried Friday near his home in Illinois. Joyce asked that any in memoriam contributions be sent to either the National Brain Tumor Society or The Art Institute of Chicago.

I’m planning to send flowers to the funeral home on behalf of his friends here. If you’d like to chip in by PayPal, specify uncle.lumpy@comcast.net as recipient: I’ll split any extra between the Society and the Institute.

Here’s a very in-character Dingo Comment of the Week from 2009, a story and picture from a 2009 fishing trip with his Dad, and another picture (far right) from a 2007 meetup.

Let us give thanks for all the fun times Dingo’s jokes brought us. I’m jealous of those of you got to meet him in person.

Update: Thanks to Dub Not Dubya for digging up the link to this hilarious bit of Dingo photoshop action.

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Curtis, 1/3/12

I do need my Christmas-to-New-Year’s break from the site to recharge my comic-mocking jets, but it does always make me sad that I end up missing most of the Curtis Kwanzaa madness. For those not in the know, each Kwanzaatime (note to self: find out if “Kwanzaatime” is a word; if so, attempt to register kwanzaatime.com) the strip takes a break from its main characters to offer up a tale, generally set in a stylized pre-modern African locale, built around some kind of lesson. It also usually features hallucinatory madness, with bat-winged bears and giant telepathic otters and whatnot. This year’s story has been not quite that level of insane, though it has featured a protagonist so traumatically ugly that his features cannot be drawn, lest the newspaper comics readership be driven mad by the hideousness. Today it appears that we’re learning the tale’s moral: even if you are mind-warpingly ugly, people will like you if you’re rich.

Apartment 3-G, 1/3/12

Since I am now becoming as mired in nostalgia as the comics I mock, there’s nothing that thrills me more than when continuity strips bring back random minor ancillary characters from the past. Take Mim, for instance! She was Lu Ann’s teenage niece who showed up at the apartment one day after she got knocked up by some dude named Chuck and then Margo tried to sell the baby but it didn’t work and then she had the baby and that’s the last we saw of her, I’m pretty sure? Along the way we learned about Margo’s unreasoning hatred of the New York Public Library. Anyway, that was in 2005, because I’m super old, and so that baby is seven now and Mim is an adult and has shorter hair and probably has some nice comforting things to say to Lu Ann or whatever. I can’t wait!

Mark Trail, 1/3/12

The last Mark Trail adventure ended with Mark not only refusing to write about the hot story that led him (presumably on his employer’s dime) to the Canadian woods, but also erasing Kelly Welly’s camera so she couldn’t write about it either. Looks like Mark finally screwed Kelly — just not the way she wanted! Ha ha! See, because Kelly desperately wants to have sex with Mark, but he finds anything have to do with “those parts” “down there” confusing and scary.

Anyway, Mark’s line in panel two would be pretty high on the extensive list of Things Said By Characters In Mark Trail That Would Never, Ever Be Uttered By Actual Humans (Ranked In Order Of Improbability). Mark’s facial expression also strikes me as just a wee bit smug. “Tommy and his wife are struggling to scrape by on a dog-trainer’s salary in this ongoing, grinding recession! But don’t worry, honey, since I write for a print magazine aimed at outdoorspersons, we have all the money we need. I can even refuse to write articles if I want to protect the privacy of weird bear-domesticating hermit ladies!”

Crankshaft, 1/3/12

I really love the look of shock on and guilt on Pam’s face! I assume that it means that the family is in fact building a prison cell for their hated matriarch.

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Hey, everybody, I’m back! And let’s get right into the horror, because when you think of the holidays around the end of the year, you think of sheer gut-wrenching terror. So, what was the most terrifying event that the newspaper comics industry belched out during my absence?

Panel from Judge Parker, 12/23/11

Was it when Randy’s language-generation unit started shorting out, producing a sentence that was almost but not quite something an English-speaking human would say?

Panel from Gil Thorp, 12/24/11

Was it when Gil stared at you with his meaty face and empty, soulless eyes, wishing you a Merry Christmas as a thousand tiny explosions twinkled behind him?

Panel from Mary Worth, 12/24/11

Was it when Mary Worth tried to make your head explode, with her mind?

Panel from Judge Parker, 12/25/11

Was it the moment that you realized that you were forbidden to even open your Christmas presents in the privacy of your own home until Sophie gave you permission?

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 12/26/11

Was it when Lu Ann started hearing Margo’s voice, even when Margo wasn’t present?

Panel from Beetle Bailey, 12/29/11

Was it when lovable Zero was revealed to be Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies?

Panel from Mark Trail, 1/1/12

Was it when we learned that the deformed child-thing known as “Rusty” was dimly aware that time passes outside the Lost Forest compound, and that humans traditionally make “resolutions” to mark the beginning of a new year? What sort of “resolutions” does the Rusty-creature “need” to make?

Dick Tracy, 12/24/11

Anyway, terrifying as all of those were, none of them could compare to the night when Dick Tracy and his wife desecrated the memory of the baby Jesus by engaging in Linus-Sally sex roleplay. Gross!

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 12/28/11

When Dan Diller scrawled “TOMMIE” on one of his old Allman Brothers 8-tracks and told her it was her new album, that was really more “pathetic” than “terrifying.”

And what does the new year have in store for us? More of Spider-Man dodging his responsibilities, I bet!

Spider-Man, 1/2/12

“I was about to tackle these hoods myself, until Thor came along! Hopefully someone will come along soon to take care of Thor for me?”

Anyway, I’m back on my usual routine tomorrow morning, promise. But, as threatened, I must use the beginning of the month to remind you of the existence of my various social networking shenanigans! If you want to keep up with my doings while you waste time on the Internets, feel free to follow me on:

• Twitter!
• Facebook!
• Tumblr!
• Google Plus!

I post more or less the same stuff to each of these, so if you should probably pick your favorite service and just follow me there rather than subscribing to all of them.

No new COTW until Friday, but still I must thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

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