Into the Curmudgeonverse
Post Content
Click the banner to contribute by PayPal or credit card, or see below for other options.
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
3 replies to “Into the Curmudgeonverse”
Crankshaft: Want a story about aging nerds in a comic book store entering the multiverse? We could either watch “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” or read Crankshaft. They both feature characters we thought we were done with but who will seemingly go on forever, but at least one of them is kind of funny. The other is technically “the funnies,” but we know how misleading that term often turns out to be.
Crock: Since this strip is from 1998, it kind of makes sense that someone would “email” them “jokes” rather than sharing memes on social media. On the other hand, MapQuest first went online in 1996 — if they have an internet-connected computer to receive emails, can’t they use it to help the Lost Patrol navigate their way home? Of course, they’d better hurry, if they want to get everybody back safe before Y2K destroys the world.
Bizarro:
Gosh, that one Smith Brothers cough drop guy has sure fallen on hard times, hasn’t he.
Phantom:
“Now the AI drone will visit ridicule and opprobrium on him for sporting that declasse tank top! — my subjugation is complete!”