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
145 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!”
“At last! Our comic strip is saved!”
No COTW this week but deserves notice.
MW: No sooner does Wilbur have his epiphany, than a huge tentacle rises from the lake…
RMMD: I’m starting to anticipate the moment that those twin smirks are wiped from their faces.
The Familliar Mucus: Billy and Dolly are exposed to “69 Weirdchick Lame”, engage in elbow sex,and cause Thel’s face to melt! An action packed episode!
Bizaro: ZZ BOTTOM.
Sex Organ V.D.:Finally some justice as Background guy proudly urinates in Thing #1’s soda!
Crock: Wait. Email? Not, like, carrier pigeon mail? …You printed an email? …….Email exists?
FW: That guy in the first panel is drawn way too detailed to be a made up background character. So who is it? Has a second Tom Batuik entered the strip?
Hagar: Freud would say that the last panel really indicates that Lute is going to play his instrument by himself now that the date is not going to happen.
Crankshaft : …Wasn’t Earth 2 (at least the version Bat
iukTON THOMAS openly pines about) destroyed in 1985?“I wanna live in a fictional parallel universe” nothing, there’s the obsession with something that stopped being relevant 40 years ago!
************
Flash Gordon : …I forget, does Frigia know Bok and his friends keep LOSING that shield, over and over? I feel like she’d be less permissive about letting them use the one memento she has of her lost lover, if she knew they keep misplacing it all the time.
************
Ripley’s Don’t Believe It :
a) Wait… Tofu, in the 18th century? Is that a “Doritos were invented in Ancient South America” thing?
b) If you are not american, this is the only thing you’ll ever know about Zachary Taylor (should have included which number president he was, so people know where he fits in the timeline)
c) In retrospect, advertising that he would meet ANYONE who came to him, and that he’d let people come into his house within derringer-range of him, was kind of a bad move on McKingley’s part (even if it did win him the election)…
************
Sally Forth : If I was Katherine, I’d be a lot more shocked that the picture these total strangers showed seem to include me (Jackie *IS* her exact lookalike) before recognising an elderly person as an older version of a roughly-same-age sibling.
…Too soon?…Ah, remember when the worst kind of spam email (a new term at the time) you would get was a bunch of bad jokes? Mid-1990s to early 2000s, say? Well, with Crock, you can never be sure whether this is a reprint from that time or if they’re genuinely writing new strips and just don’t realize times have changed.
In a way, you feel just as lost as these legionnaires! Immersion!
Crock: Today’s strip is almost 30 years old. Just sayin’.
Mary Worth Mashup: @5 MKay inspired this mashup. Whaddya think?
Bizarro: Look at the signature – this comic was written by a Waymo. Not content with being superior to human drivers (under certain controlled conditions that some experts argue are not a fair comparison), now they’re proving that they’re superior to… well, not comics artists in general, but the ones who do Bizarro, anyway.
Sex Organ,V.D.2 :”We scored Free Big Salads™! Wait’ll Uncle Georgie Costanza hears about this! Don’t forget I get credit for this scam!”
RMMD: well you could try to seduce Rex. Who knows he may have a twins fantasy.
@17 Professor Well Actually: Yes, Rexy has a twins fantasy: two pieces of wedding cake gets him off.
Batiuk and Battom would team up to read comic books and wallow in nostalgia.
Luann: Whether or not you can continue having a housemate after childbirth is a major life decision, and it’s being treated way too flippantly here. I’ll say it again: Luann is Christian fundamentalist propaganda. Because fundamentalists love ramrodding young people into marriage and children without giving them any guidance, beyond “stay in the church.” Because your children need their values too!
CS: Buddy, you “retired to Earth-2” to a long time ago. In fact, I expect that to be the headline if they ever have to haul you off to the funny farm.
MW: So Wilbur’s new endearing quirk is acting like alcohol was his entire problem. If he’d never taken a drink in his life, he’d still be the same creep.
Shadow COTW Contenders, Part 1
Bob Tice
July 18th, 2026 at 2:10 am Reply
Heathcliff: You know how the claim is that there are some things that are best experienced when you’re stoned — like, for example, Pink Floyd’s music? I wonder if the same is true for this strip.
A Grave Mind
July 18th, 2026 at 4:16 am Reply
Heathcliff: This may be the most Heathcliff that Heathcliff ever Heathcliffed, and I’m just not sure I was ready for this kinda energy today.
Scratchy Scrotum LXIX
July 18th, 2026 at 4:51 am Reply
Mary Worth: In the category of “A Blind Dog Slips in His Own Vomit Every So Often” or whatever the aphorism is, Mary Worth finally nails it.
MKay
July 18th, 2026 at 5:10 am Reply
Mary Worth: A zinger?? From Mary?? To WILBUR?? I’m only glad I lived this long.
TheDiva
July 18th, 2026 at 7:09 am Reply
Luann: She’s happy now, but wait until she realizes the kid has half of Brad’s DNA.
Ukulele Ike
July 18th, 2026 at 7:42 am Reply
Phantom: Don’t do it, Python! It’ll stretch your dress hosiery entirely out of shape. You haven’t had an income for five years and you’ll go broke buying new Brooks Brothers socks.
UncleJeff
July 18th, 2026 at 8:04 am Reply
Luann: It wasn’t until later that Toni realized in her fumbling haste that she peed on a Sharpie.
richardf8
July 18th, 2026 at 12:38 pm Reply
Mary Worth: Wilbur doesn’t even merit an original platitude. He just gets the tiredest, laziest cliche in the book. Tommy’s been helping Mary in the garden. No way she as going to side against him.
A Grave Mind
July 19th, 2026 at 3:37 am Reply
Slylock Fox: Perhaps the note was horrible because it was full of misspelling, use of the passive voice, and it just went nowhere narratively? Rachel knows you can do better, Reeky Rat. We ALL know.
Guillermo el chiclero
July 19th, 2026 at 4:09 am Reply
Family Circus: Go ahead, Jeffy. Stick that umbrella up Dolly’s butt. We know you want to.
Pozzo
July 19th, 2026 at 4:59 am Reply
Mary Worth: Speaking as a recovering alcoholic, the thought of having anything in common with Wilbur Weston is more than enough to keep me sober.
Voshkod
July 19th, 2026 at 6:16 am Reply
Mary Worth: “You almost ruined your life with alcohol, Wilbur, but then you took a step back from the literal edge when everyone was cheering for you to jump, so you just ruined all of our lives instead.”
Tabby Lavalamp
July 19th, 2026 at 7:40 am Reply
Slylock Fox: The animals may have taken over but they haven’t yet grasped how humans were able to make perforations in paper towel rolls and Count Weirdly sure ain’t tellin’ ’em.
Victor Von
July 19th, 2026 at 7:47 am Reply
Slylock Fox: The withering look Slylock is giving Reeky is amazing. “Come on, dude,” he seems to be saying, “I’m a fox, I eat rabbits, but these kinds of slurs? They’re beneath you. Think about that, Reeky. An action that’s beneath YOU.”
Even the reptiles have gathered ’round to judge Reeky. The snake’s shocked, but the turtle? He’s disappointed.
Banana Jr. 6000
July 19th, 2026 at 7:57 am Reply
Mary Worth: Of all the disgusting, self-destructive things Wilbur Weston has done in his life, alcoholism isn’t even in the top ten.
Ukulele Ike
July 19th, 2026 at 9:54 am Reply
Dick Tracy: “Let’s see…we sold ten to various little old ladies from Pasadena who only use them in church on Sunday mornings, and one to a fat computer hacker with a weird haircut. Now let me pooch my ass out again for your viewing pleasure.”
GarrisonSkunk
July 19th, 2026 at 11:13 am Reply
Dirk Twacy Hollistic Defective: “We sold 11 of these chairs to people in this community, Detective.” “Did any of them have weirdly shaped heads?”
Scratchy Scrotum LXIX
July 20th, 2026 at 3:47 am Reply
Slylock Fox: I love the high stakes Reeky Rat is going for – a pair of gloves! If he teams up with the Doublemint Twins in Rex Morgan, they could rule the world.
The Quiet Man
July 20th, 2026 at 4:00 am Reply
Gil Thorp: Ye gads, this wedding has opened the Ark of the Covenant! The crowd is melting before our very eyes!
But What Do I Know?
July 20th, 2026 at 4:58 am Reply
The Ghost Who Appears More Frequently When Uncle Lumpy is Filling In — There’s going to be a data center with skull marks all over it by the end of this!
MKay
July 20th, 2026 at 5:41 am Reply
Six Chix: If I owned a deli, I would DEFINITELY sell incurable meat. Also, reprehensible slaw.
Shadow COTW Contenders, Part 2
The Rambling Otter
July 20th, 2026 at 6:18 am Reply
Six Chix: “I show the Late Thread Cuisine, so Baja doesn’t have to”
~Isabella Bannerman (probably)
Philip
July 20th, 2026 at 8:17 am Reply
Six Chix: The bottom meat has fillers, artificial preservatives, and screwworms
MKay
July 21st, 2026 at 3:44 am Reply
Mary Worth: Wilbur’s in a full-out pout! Mary’s going to have to dangle a squeaky hamburger toy in front of him. “Who’s a good boy? Who?”
Rosstifer
July 21st, 2026 at 4:14 am Reply
Mary Worth: I had no idea Wilbur was sober now, probably because he’s still an unlikable slovenly idiot failure, but also because I don’t care.
Where’s Rocky?
July 21st, 2026 at 4:31 am Reply
Mary Worth: Wilbur is just bitter that he missed out on all that prison sex. He’s extra very lonely right now, you see.
Professor Well Actually
July 21st, 2026 at 4:34 am Reply
Mary Worth: I see Wilbur as more of a sullen, belligerent toad than troll. But that’s just me.
Dennis Jimenez
July 21st, 2026 at 7:15 am Reply
Mary Worth: In panel two – Wilbur’s look says the bran muffin just kicked in…
ectojazzmage
July 21st, 2026 at 7:28 am Reply
Mary Worth: Y’know, Wilbur, you’re kinda proving Mary’s points by glowering like you’re moments away from strangling her to death just because she very lightly criticized you and suggested you be a little nice to someone.
Abram Beazer
July 21st, 2026 at 7:54 am Reply
Mary Worth: We know what this is really about: Wilbur’s jealous of Tommy’s hair! You think he wouldn’t try the classic little tweaker ponytail if he could?
Lauralot
July 21st, 2026 at 8:24 am Reply
Dick Tracy: I refuse to believe anyone has ever deliberately spelled “new” that way. No one tell me otherwise, lest I have to paint my ass white and run with the antelope, forsaking humanity and its L337 speak forever.
Guillermo el chiclero
July 21st, 2026 at 9:48 am Reply
Pluggers: As old plugger waxes nostalgic over the long defunct dime store he conveniently forgets that a dime was his hourly wage back then.
Artist formerly known as Ben
July 21st, 2026 at 12:46 pm Reply
Rex Morgan: “We’ve also received reports that, counter to regulations, you’ve been running your talking Wilbur Weston balloon only inflated to 80%.”
GarrisonSkunk
July 21st, 2026 at 4:32 pm Reply
Six Chex And A Cat Named Ginger, The Taco Bell™ Dog In Search Of A Punchline: So..Tuesday Chick keeps her Sex Sandwhich™ partners unassembled in her briefcase that only appears when other characters mention it?I think we have the makings of a Joe Pesci movie here.
Bob Tice
July 22nd, 2026 at 2:15 am Reply
Judge Parker: “So who is this ‘Ezra Barton’ person, anyway, Sophie?”
” ‘Ezra Barton took an ax/And gave this comic forty whacks’ !”
“Wow! — I like the guy already!”
Bob Tice
July 22nd, 2026 at 2:18 am Reply
Mark Trail: “It could be an infection! — or, more likely, they all got their hands on one of those ‘Mary muffins’ from over at Mary Worth!”
A Grave Mind
July 22nd, 2026 at 3:28 am Reply
Mark Trail: “They call this a Urine Monkey, why is that? Oh. Think I just found out.” – Krusty The Clown
Hibbleton
July 22nd, 2026 at 4:45 am Reply
Family Circus: One of many Keane family rules: No one is allowed to hold a pointed knife within stabbing distance of Jeffy’s stupidity.
Schroduck
July 22nd, 2026 at 5:45 am Reply
Mark Trail: This strip is substantially improved once you realise everyone is in opposite corners of a huge gorilla enclosure, yelling at each other. Mark Trail screaming at the top of his lungs “GORILLAS CAN CONTRACT INFECTIONS LIKE THIS IN CARELESS CONDITIONS!“
TheDiva
July 22nd, 2026 at 6:41 am Reply
Mary Worth: Most of the comics page’s repulsive characters are awful on a single level: the Kudlicks are cruel and mean-spirited, Batton Thomas is a smug egotist, Luann is an idiot, etc. Wilbur Weston, however, displays many facets of loathsomeness: he’s unattractive and slovenly and ignorant andself-absorbed and entitled andhypocritical and incapable of any kind of self-knowledge or improvement. He contains multitudes, and all of them are terrible, terrible people.
Hibbleton
July 23rd, 2026 at 4:34 am Reply
Plugger tummy brains call uber eats directly.
Old School Allie Cat
July 23rd, 2026 at 6:37 am Reply
Rhymes With Orange: Have you been to a nursing home? They’re going to wreck it with old-person smell. That takes forever to air out.
Jym Dyer
July 23rd, 2026 at 12:34 pmReply
Mary Worth: Don’t let Wilbur happen to you.
Bob Tice
July 24th, 2026 at 2:28 am Reply
Bizarro: Gosh, that one Smith Brothers cough drop guy has sure fallen on hard times, hasn’t he.
GarrisonSkunk
July 24th, 2026 at 4:39 am Reply
Sex Organ,V.D.2 :”We scored Free Big Salads™! Wait’ll Uncle Georgie Costanza hears about this! Don’t forget I get credit for this scam!”
Shadow COTW
——————
I speak Jive
July 18th, 2026 at 8:16 am Reply
Gil Thorp: I can’t wait to see the coverage in “Ugly Humanoid Wedding” magazine.
@Schroduck: Look at the signature – this comic was written by a Waymo.
________________________________________________________________________________________
A lame-o with A Waymo”- Al Franken on Fred Silverman.
Phantom: After all these years I still read “Mawitaan” as “Matiwaan” and think, “The Ghost Who Walks is in Jersey now?”
Bizarro: The height of this prophet of doom would seem to indicate a crash test dummy modeled after a child. The beard, however, indicates an unholy amalgamation of plastic and living tissue. Imagine, if you will, The Fly, except there’s a crash test dummy testing the transporter when a teratoma slips into the chamber.
MW: Looks like Mary held Wilbur’s feet to the fire —literally! As the bandages on his feet attest. Still, it does seem to have brought some sense to him.
@Baja Gaijin: Thank you for the Shadow Mentions,Baja!
@Rusty: I see them as the Earth-1 and Earth-2 NostalgiaMan, watching a drowning person and debating whether Jay Garrick’s or Barry Allen’s method of running on water would be most effective at saving them.
@Baja Gaijin: @14: Yay!
Thanks Baja!
MW: Do we have a date certain for when Wilbur “freed himself from addiction”? I guess I’m primarily interested in which of his idiotic displays can’t be blamed on alcohol, since — as many have pointed out — some of his most egregious drunken displays were after the cliffside meddle, so that couldn’t have been what “cured” him.
Thanks, Baja!
CS: Wait just a cotton-pickin’ second. The creepy-looking guy flipping through the longbox in panel one is supposed to be the *actual* Tom Batiuk?? Good grief!!
I was going to make a joke how if I heard someone talking like Batton Thomas is I’d be calling up the men in the white coats with butterfly nets, but now I have to ask if Batiuk is some sort of masochist to sign off on being made to look like the kind of guy who tries to give candy to kids from an unmarked white van!
Ph: Welp, THAT was easy! Chatu, why are you doing this? Granted, we don’t know how many drones Schmelon Schmusk sent, or what kind of super-duper propulsion system they have that allows them to not only stay aloft but stable when firing *that* much ammunition at you, but they don’t look all *that* big. You could have gone serpentine and they would have run out of ammo sooner than you’d think. Unless Schmusk enabled the ‘infinite ammo’ cheat code on his little video game here.
GT: I, for one, am *very* disappointed at this lame banner. Since when was this strip broken into chapters?
RMMD: You’ve apparently drained all color from the world, like Mr. Mime in that one episode of The Powerpuff Girls. I don’t think you can get much more evil than that, honey.
MW: My, Wilbur sure is erudite in his inner thoughts when no else is around…
Pleased to be on the shadowy, non-canonical float! The Wall is Near indeed!
@Ken: I believe the last time we were explicitly shown Wilbur drinking was when he fell off the cruise ship. Which would make him sober for the Wilburman arc and the Belle Batsfrey plot.
Thanks Baja!
Just curious, if Batiuk is so obsessed with exciting action-y superhero comics, then why are his own comics dreary slice-of-life?
I mean, (Newspaper) Spiderman, Flash Gordon, The Phantom. He COULD have done a superhero comic but for some reason decided not to.
I would have loved to see the characters on his mind, that caused DC and Marvel to turn him down.
@The Rambling Otter: Actually, he probably pitched Starbuck Jones to them, and the heroes on all of the “covers” that he showed over the years.
Like “The Sunset Kid” and that Time Travelling girl.
Thanks Baja!
Never, ever draw yourself looking straight at us again, Batiuk. I’m going to have nightmares for weeks.
***
I can forgive a lot of inconsistencies if a joke is funny, but if it’s not then I’m left questioning how eight pages of jokes got printed onto two pages, one of which just disappeared, or why the email got printed out in the first place, or how a “lost” patrol in the desert has access to office supplies, electricity, and the internet, or why they don’t use Google Maps if they have the internet. I would let that all slide for a funny joke.
FC: Both Billy and Thel look incredibly angry at Dolly for a simple question.
“How dare you talk over…(checks date) Dean Jones!”
Thanks, Baja. Here’s what I got:
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Liam
July 18th, 2026 at 5:18 am Reply
Crankshaft-We then see Ed on a nearby roof with a sniper rifle. “Not today, Lillian. Not today.”
Horace Broon
July 18th, 2026 at 11:48 am Reply
Crank: Good news, everyone! Despite earlier claims that it was all just a dream, Centerville has been swallowed by a black hole after all!
Artist formerly known as Ben
July 18th, 2026 at 1:01 pm Reply
C-Shaft: The assassin hired by Eugene had Lillian in his sights but suffered a last minute failure of nerve.
Ukulele Ike
July 18th, 2026 at 7:42 am Reply
Crank: The “iris effect!” I believe that was invented by filmmaker D.W. Griffith around 1914, or possibly Georges Melies a decade earlier. You, uh, don’t see it much these days.
MW: ”Oh, I see what you mean! Yeah, thank god she isn’t hanging out with a black guy.”
Lauralot
July 18th, 2026 at 4:54 am Reply
MW: Nice try, Moy. I will not be getting my hopes up that Mary will actually give Wilbur a serious dressing down for his many, many failings (including but not limited to: alcoholism, stalking, pushing an old man into traffic, letting his loved ones think he was dead for over a week, allowing a would-be murderess to stay in his own despite his daughter’s objections, threatening animal abuse, continually having Mary do his job for him, catfishing, dumping his dog on Estelle, getting into a literal pissfight with a cat, and advocating that his partner throw out her struggling son because said son didn’t find a job in two days). You and I both know that the most Mary will ever say critically about Wilbur’s “endearing quirks” is that sometimes he drinks too much.
I speak Jive
July 18th, 2026 at 8:16 am Reply
Mary Worth – This is a first – Mary pulls an appropriate cliche out of her ass.
richardf8
July 18th, 2026 at 12:38 pm Reply
MW – Wilbur doesn’t even merit an original platitude. He just gets the tiredest, laziest cliche in the book. Tommy’s been helping Mary in the garden. No way she as going to side against him.
MKay
July 18th, 2026 at 5:10 am Reply
MW: A zinger?? From Mary?? To WILBUR?? I’m only glad I lived this long.
BF: Maeve is in dire need of Mary Worth.
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Hibbleton
July 18th, 2026 at 7:03 am Reply
H&L: Both Hi’s expression and Thurston’s quip make more sense when you remember that he’s drunk.
Maltmash3r
July 19th, 2026 at 3:36 am Reply
FC– I guess it would have been a stretch to have her say, “It looks like rainbow is coming out my ass”
Maude R. Fawker
July 19th, 2026 at 8:15 am Reply
FC: Something, something, vertical smile.
Bob Tice
July 19th, 2026 at 4:26 am Reply
Mary Worth:
The anagram of “Wayne Dyer” is “a Dry Weeny.”
Coincidence? — I think not.
nescio
July 19th, 2026 at 4:27 am Reply
MW: Wilbur almost ruined his life with alcohol, but there wasn’t anything substantial to ruin.
TheDiva
July 19th, 2026 at 6:07 am Reply
MW: To paraphrase Winston Churchill, today Wilbur Weston is sober, but he’s still Wilbur Weston.
Voshkod
July 19th, 2026 at 6:16 am Reply
“You almost ruined your life with alcohol, Wilbur, but then you took a step back from the literal edge when everyone was cheering for you to jump, so you just ruined all of our lives instead.”
cheech wizard
July 19th, 2026 at 7:16 am Reply
MW – “Remember?”
“No, I was having blackouts that whole time. You mean I used to be an alcoholic?”
Banana Jr. 6000
July 19th, 2026 at 7:57 am Reply
MW: Of all the disgusting, self-destructive things Wilbur Weston has done in his life, alcoholism isn’t even in the top ten.
Little Blue Bicycle
July 19th, 2026 at 9:26 am Reply
MW: “Hypocrisy is such an endearing quirk.”
Artist formerly known as Ben
July 19th, 2026 at 3:31 pm Reply
MW: Mary remembers how Wilbur’s BO formed a giant cloud that was, for reasons no one really wants to explore, pink and purple.
I speak Jive
July 19th, 2026 at 12:19 pm Reply
Mary Worth – Which one is going to mention how Mary advised Wilbur to sing karaoke in the shower, which completely cured him of his alcoholism?
Poteet
July 19th, 2026 at 3:42 pm Reply
MW: I had completely forgotten that Downward-Drunk Wilbur had maniac hair. Thanks for the memory, Karen and June!
Tabby Lavalamp
July 19th, 2026 at 7:40 am Reply
Wilbur, the only difference between legal drugs and illegal ones are their lobbies.
Anyone who runs a comic or gaming shop knows the critical skill of tuning out. While this guy goes on and on about Earth Two, the proprietary is letting the theme song from Animaniacs run through his head on repeat.
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
TheDiva
July 19th, 2026 at 6:37 am Reply
C’shaft: “Well, to answer your last question first, Medicare C or ‘Medicare Advantage’ is provided by private insurance companies, although there are multiple drawbacks including increased denials of coverage and fraudulent claims for non-existent conditions designed to rake in as much taxpayer money as possible. John Oliver did a whole segment about it on Last Week Tonight, although I’m guessing you wouldn’t be interested as his deep dives get a little complicated and are actually funny.”
Luann: It’s nice to know that Brad and Toni have sex so rarely that Toni can pinpoint exactly when the conception happened.
2+2=7
July 19th, 2026 at 9:35 am Reply
LUANN: Toni: “Like the shower we took three weeks ago?”
Brad: “Well…no, because the Sunday strips have no continuity with whatever’s going on Monday through Saturday.”
Toni: “Oh…yeah…right…” (hides pregnancy test behind her back.) “um…Anyway, I need to go find TJ. I have something very urgent to tell him….”
LUANN (2): “Yippee! This makes up for seeing that orphanage burn down!”
LUANN (3): Also, I suspect some of the TruFans were also having sexy water-babies fun in the shower with Toni because they’re acting as if Toni is having their baby. I’m just saying I have never seen people so unbelievably enthusiastic about the sperm count of a fictional character
Ukulele Ike
July 19th, 2026 at 8:43 am Reply
RMMD: ”We’re here from corporate to check you people for drinking on the job. Now, do you see two of us, or four of us?”
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Banana Jr. 6000
July 20th, 2026 at 4:25 am Reply
Pluggers: No, you’re thinking of Nirvana t-shirts. Leave it to Pluggers to be 20 years out of date in a joke about being 20 years out of date.
Lauralot
July 20th, 2026 at 4:57 am Reply
RWO: I don’t have this problem because I only have one mug with text on it, and that text just says “I Heart Butt Drugs.”
But What Do I Know?
July 20th, 2026 at 4:58 am Reply
RwO — “World’s Best Mom” would seem a more appropriate motto to fail to live up to.
Dennis Jimenez
July 20th, 2026 at 5:24 am Reply
RwO – Try Not to Shit Your Pants….
MKay
July 20th, 2026 at 5:41 am Reply
RwO: My favorite coffee mug says, “Eew, People,” and I mean it.
MW: Wow, I’ve never seen Mary call in her chips before. Is Tommy nudging Wilbur out of the #1 position?
Liam
July 20th, 2026 at 6:13 am Reply
MW-The difficult time being the death of a fish.
@Anonymous: Tofu was invented over 2000 years ago, yeah.
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Horace Broon
July 20th, 2026 at 10:50 am Reply
Crank: Yeah, I’m out. A solid month of glurge followed by Batton Freaking Thomas? No, thank you.
Does Batton know that, once you’ve bought one collection that includes Flash #123, you’re allowed to read it more than once without having to buy another one? It doesn’t count as data piracy or anything!
Banana Jr. 6000
July 20th, 2026 at 11:17 am Reply
CS: Batton Thomas buys random comic book collections, in hopes of that they might contain The Flash #123 so he can read it again. Just like how I often buy baseball card collections because I need to review what Rickey Henderson’s 1982 statistics were. When the world gets to be too much, sometimes I just have to go back to Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum!
Braxwell Brontë
July 21st, 2026 at 4:22 am Reply
Mary Worth
Mary has never(?) regretted saving Wilbur from the bottle.
Well you know what?
I do, and I resent her for it.
MKay
July 21st, 2026 at 3:44 am Reply
MW: Wilbur’s in a full-out pout! Mary’s going to have to dangle a squeaky hamburger toy in front of him. “Who’s a good boy? Who?”
Ukranazi Stepan
July 21st, 2026 at 4:02 am Reply
Wilby is about to rush to the nearest liquor store and chug down a litre of their cheapest whisky. That’ll show Mary!
Bob Tice
July 21st, 2026 at 4:12 am Reply
Mary Worth:
“Of course, when you think about it, your having overcome that dependence gives you one less excuse now for your continually obnoxious behavior!”
Rosstifer
July 21st, 2026 at 4:14 am Reply
I had no idea Wilbur was sober now, probably because he’s still an unlikable slovenly idiot failure, but also because I don’t care.
Professor Well Actually
July 21st, 2026 at 6:14 am Reply
MW: I foresee Wilbur, in his hilariously inappropriate job as an advice columnist giving spectacularly bad advice leading to alcoholism, murder-suicide and jail. Wilbur gets sued into oblivion.
CanuckDownSouth
July 21st, 2026 at 6:22 am Reply
MW I wonder if Moy even remembers that Wilbur’s an advice columnist. Because I could see him pretending to go along with giving Tommy a chance and venting by inventing a gave a recovering junkie a chance and it was a disaster, what do I do?? letter to respond to. Of course, this plot would require Dawn to read her father’s column for it to go anywhere, and I think even *she* has higher standards for her reading material.
ectojazzmage
July 21st, 2026 at 7:28 am Reply
Mary Worth: Y’know, Wilbur, you’re kinda proving Mary’s points by glowering like you’re moments away from strangling her to death just because she very lightly criticized you and suggested you be a little nice to someone.
TheDiva
July 21st, 2026 at 7:05 am Reply
MW: Wilbur was clearly expecting Mary to validate his behavior, and now that he’s not getting that he looks like a five-year-old who’s been told he can’t have ice cream for breakfast.
RMMD: The manager looks like Wilbur Weston’s less successful cousin, which may explain why he’s being such an idiot about this.
Scratchy’s Scrotums of the Week
Baja Gaijin
July 21st, 2026 at 4:35 am Reply
Pluggers: It’s shocking that the Plugger doesn’t understand inflation: has he never seen himself in a mirror?
Ukulele Ike
July 23rd, 2026 at 6:39 am Reply
FC: Yeah, that….playsuit?….sundress?….was definitely a Bil purchase, or maybe the old man with the binoculars who lives next door. Thel only wears it when they hide all of her other clothes.
ValdVin
July 23rd, 2026 at 7:04 am Reply
FC: Thel, don’t freak out about discovering how Billy invited 21 kids over for you to feed. Statically speaking, three of the kids who’ve been in the pool without adult supervision have already drowned. You can freak out about the upcoming DA charges, funerals, and TV reporters camped out in your driveway.
Special Scrotal Awards to the Best No. 69 and Beyond of the Week
69. Pervy McKinkerson
July 19th, 2026 at 8:29 am Reply
Pluggers: Disappointing to see Andy Bear shave off his wife Sheila Roo’s landing strip. This comic strip is all about metaphor, right?
69. Liam
July 22nd, 2026 at 8:32 am Reply
Crankshaft-“Please, sir, can you leave. I want to close the store and go home.”
C’shaft: Does Batiuk think that if he draws himself in the same panel as Batton Thomas, we’ll be convinced that the latter isn’t an obvious self-insert character?
Phantom: I’m disappointed. The Python struck me as a “go down fighting” kind of guy, or at least smart enough to realize those drones have a limited capacity for ammunition and probably poor maneuvering skills in the jungle canopy. Still, there’s hope that he’ll realize Tokoloshe’s hallucinations (not to be confused with actual AI hallucinations) can’t hurt him, and punch out Schmusk and his lackeys so we can finally move on to something interesting.
Phantom: It looks like Python is but the latest victim of villain decay, preceded by The Nomad. Of course, Ian Mollusk/Ignis Vindicta will not suffer this fate because he was never menacing in the first place.
Unrelated, have any of you been reading the new Phantom comics from Mad Cave Studios? They’ve had maybe seven issues (spread out between a five-issue series and two one–shots) acting as a sort of reintroduction of the character and Bangalla. And they’ve got another coming up (not sure if it’s a one-shot or a mini-series). Anyway, they’ve been enjoyable: good art and action and some welcome updates to the portrayal of the Bandar.
DT: I’m sorry, but no man who dresses like Professor Emeritus Ned Flanders and reads books at his desk in his old-fashioned study complete with floor-standing globe is disrupting that quaint aesthetic with a high-end gaming chair.
Dustin: Are Parker and/or Kelly married? If so, what do their spouses think of them universally portraying women as heartless golddiggers and nagging shrews?
MW: Yes, you have come a long way, Wilbur! Why, you used to be drunken buffoon with no social graces and a callous indifference to the feelings of others, and now you’re a sober buffoon with no social graces and a callous indifference to the feelings of others!
MW- I think I’ve missed something here. So when did Mary tell Wilbur to go jump in the lake?
Thanks to Baja and Uncle Lumpy.
Crankshaft-Well hurry up and retire then.
MW-Sorry, Wilbur. Once a drunken alchy loser always a drunken alchy loser.
RMMD-“Roll them up in a rug and throw them off a bridge.”
RMMD-“We’ll kill the first born male child in the household.”
FC-“And they do what to a popcorn bucket?”
Thanks, Scratchy.
Thank you, Baja and Scratchy!
CS: Who exactly is that bearded bald guy rummaging through the comic books? He showed up a few months ago at a book signing event or something to heap praise on Batton. Is he a shill or something?
LH: Careful, Loretta. You’re straying dangerously close to Plugger territory.
Wizard of Id: The roots of chess boxing go back further than we thought.
Luann: TJ learned how to ploy people with cooking and dessert. This will serve him well in a dating world overrun with traditional men who want a brood mare/maid/therapist hybrid.
Blondie: Alex staying out after curfew? If this isn’t a nod to “Wake Up Little Susie” (where a couple innocently fall asleep watching a dull movie) I’m not buying it.
Dustin: The idea that Kevin and Dustin can only afford to frequent a bar where it’s not safe to park a Ferrari is spot on.
RMMD: Scamming a meal in the food court? Glenwood apparently doesn’t have any hot dog carts to flimflam.
Dennis the Menace was less a bundle of joy than he was a bundle of “there were no baby boxes in this county”.
I bet Batiuk believes that if he self-inserts himself into his world, he’ll end up being able to enter his world for real.
I can only see Batiuk wanting to Isekai himself into boring, contrived Misery-Cancer ville.
@Rover Berkeley: We think he’s a guy who bought autographed versions of all the Funky Winkerbean books at one of Tom Batiuk’s 500,000 book signings (all in the Cleveland area). Tom Batiuk said on his blog that he was going to draw this person into future strips as an extra.
Thank you, Scratchy!
@Banana Jr. 6000: If I’m reading Uncle Lumpy’s caption correctly, this guy is none other than Batiuk himself, hence why he looks so unnervingly realistic compared to the standard Potato-Nose people surrounding him.
@The Quiet Man:
Pretty sure that’s correct.
@The Quiet Man: Tom Batiuk didn’t draw himself into the final Funky Winkerbean https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/funky-sunday-finale-annotated/ when he drew his wife and child into it. So I don’t think he’s doing that here.
Somebody get a splint or something to whoever “draws” Croc! It’s usually pretty badly drawn, but today’s is clearly drawn by a right-hander with their left hand.
@Anonymous, S4th/JP:
“Oh, wait! I have photos!”
{Shows picture of Ezra Barton’s grave}
“Silly me! We must have crossed the streams!”
{Meanwhile…}
“Sophie, why are we all black and white, and Grandpa is so young?”
So we’ve got a store filled with comic-book nerds, including the Earth-Prime creator showing up for a cameo, and not one of them has the decency to point out that Batton Thomas’s time-share was almost certainly obliterated by the Crisis on Infinite Earths back in 1986? And by decency, I mean the opportunity to mock his relentlessly for his nerd failings?
Crankshaft: Not only is this entire discussion incredibly stupid and making Batiuk look like a fucking maniac who can’t distinguish between reality and fiction, but it’s also exposing how completely ignorant he is of the history of the very medium and franchise’s he claims to be championing. There are, like, three or four separate depictions of “Earth-Two” in DC’s canon because of the Crisis reboot of the 80s, at least one of which is very much not a place you’d want to retire.
Bizarro: Does Bizarro usually have continuity like this between strips, or does it only engage in that when it would be bizarre (ha) to do so?
Crock: Crock as a series feels incredibly “out of time” in a way I struggle to pin down. The French Foreign Legion obviously still exists and is active today, so it’s not impossible for a comic like Crock to be set in the modern day. But everything about it feels so incredibly like it’s set a hundred or so years ago in some “Lawrence Of Arabia”-like time period, which makes it head-tilting when the characters casually bring up something like email.
The Phantom: This comic is not going to capitalize on the bevy of dick jokes it can make with Python at all.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Hmmm… I wonder if this crazy super-fan was one of the guys relentlessly defending Funky Winkerbean on Comics Kingdom some years back.
RedRonin I think his username was.
(And also Teddy Ruxpin was defending it, for some reason…)
@The Quiet Man: @The Rambling Otter: The “Flash Fridays 346” blog post on Tom Batiuk dot com says: “(there is) a letter from a reader who would one day contact me to get his copy of The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume One signed, and who would continue to do so for each subsequent volume. Such loyalty deserves to be rewarded, so I asked him to send me a pic and later this year he will appear as a character in Crankshaft.”
Over on Son of Stuck Funky, the consensus is that this character is that real person. We’re not 100% certain though.
@The Rambling Otter: Batiuk phases into the Funky-Verse and immediately runs to try and make sweet love to himself in the form of Batton Thomas, only to be arrested for trespassing. As he’s dragged away while yelling “I MADE YOU”, Crankshaft observes the madness and makes a labored pun about gay sex.
@The Rambling Otter: That’s crossed my mind too. Like, dude, if you love superhero comics so much, I get it, I do too, you’re free to write one yourself. You don’t have to constantly imagine yourself as a self-insert writing about them.
More seriously though, I don’t think Batiuk would survive in modern DC Comics, with it’s basic quality control, progressive ideals, and embracing of all comic book history. He’d have fit right in with DC under the tyranny Dan DiDio during the Mid-2000s into the late 2010s, with his arrested developmental obsession with the Silver Age that DiDio and all his sycophants had and liked to push on the company, plus his focus on bleakly sad “poignant” melodrama where horrible things are constantly happening to everyone for no reason but to make them miserable. His chance to write the DC comic of his dreams where Wally West watches Linda Park die of cancer and than writes an award-winning book about the experience has long passed.
Amusingly, though, DC did produce a story about cancer during that time period: the fantastic story 52 – one of DC’s best works from that period – includes a major subplot of detective superhero the Question battling and ultimately succumbing to lung cancer caused by years of smoking. And it’s really good, one of the best parts of an already fantastic comic. Probably because it didn’t amount to an excuse to suck-off Les Moore like Batiuk’s attempt at the subject.
Thanks for the recognition, Baja and Scratchy!
Family Circus:
Mommy’s super angry face made me lol.
Well done, Jeff.
Maybe we could see this more often.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I suppose that makes more sense than Batiuk inserting himself in a random set of dailies. The fact that such a scenario* was totally plausible is still disconcerting.
*Batiuk just *happening* to appear in what must be his favoritest place in the whole wide world just so he can listen to himself pontificate.
@ectojazzmage: I myself got into comics around 2013-14 with the Palmiotti/Conner run on Harley Quinn’s solo book so I technically missed that period. However, I did seek out the 2002-2010 run of Catwoman and suddenly the grindingly violent and miserable ‘War Games’ crossover that took place during that period makes a lot more sense.
@Banana Jr. 6000: He put his wife and child into the strip that ceased to exist, but not himself? There’s something vaguely disquieting about that.
@The Rambling Otter: Just curious, if Batiuk is so obsessed with exciting action-y superhero comics, then why are his own comics dreary slice-of-life?
________________________________
He’d do a bad version of “Greatest American Hero”, with the aliens giving Les a super suit that increases his ability to be even more annoyingly smirky.
Bizarro – It’s the summer of 1979. A crash test dummy who’s been a dedicated Pink Floyd fan since the Syd Barrett days has an awful premonition: A bloated double album of dreary psychodrama, accompanied by an acrimonious split within the band. The people must be warned!
Don Abundio, translated:
“Your blood pressure was a bit high, Don Abundio”
“Is that serious?”
“No. Sometimes it gets slightly elevated in the doctor’s office”
“I see”
“I wonder why that would happen”
@Anonymous: So, to flex my comic nerd powers (and show that I’m superior on that front to Batiuk), yeah, Earth-2 was destroyed alongside the rest of DC’s multiverse in Crisis On Infinite Earths. But DC seemed to get rather cold feet about blowing up said multiverse pretty fast. They would continue publishing elseworlds and other continuities against their “everything is all on Earth-One now” claims. Those would be largely treated the same as the old DC way of “they’re other universes in a multiverse”, while having various stories in the main DC canon that suggested the multiverse was recovering from Crisis (albeit for a time trying to squish it all down into 52 realities, playing off a recurring motif with that number in DC’s works). That all culminated in the recentish Dark Crisis story, which very explicitly and definitively confirmed that, yes, the Anti-Monitor’s destruction of the multiverse in Crisis was completely undone and the multiverse was fully back by now, complete with DC finally properly establishing and fleshing out their system of numbered universes (that largely functions like Marvel’s own similar system, just with some DC quirks to distinguish it).
The thing about Earth-2 in particular, though, is that since it was introduced through one of DC’s seminal stories and played such a big role for so long, there were a number of abortive attempts to reintroduce the idea before the stuff I mentioned above. This resulted in what I joked about in an earlier comment, where there’s now something like three different Earth-Twos in DC’s canon multiverse, they’re all based around the same basic concept of being “a slightly different world inhabited primarily by DC’s Golden Age characters” and yet they’re also all distinct and incompatible. Making matters worse, one of the major changes to the central Earth-1 canon by the reboot was that those same Golden Age characters were now all part of that main DC Universe, and they played incredibly major roles as a prior generation of superheroes who fought in World War II and influenced the modern ones… which was basically the whole gimmick of Earth-2 to begin with, making most attempts at a “new” Earth-2 redundant.
Perhaps predictably, DC nowadays doesn’t mention or use Earth-2 as a concept much, if at all, aside from periodic mentions that there is an Earth-2 in the multiverse. The last and thus most current word on the subject I can recall is that Earth-2 is the New 52 one, which was the only truly unqiue take on the idea (a world where the relationship between Golden Age heroes like the JSA and the “modern” heroes like the Justice League was inverted, with the latter coming first and inspiring the former).
Comic continuity is fun! Not even joking, I love my hilariously convoluted comic book canons.
@The Quiet Man: “War Games” is considered by DC fans these days to be one of the defining examples of what the DiDio Reign could get like at it’s worst: cruel, bleak, and in questionable taste, yet paradoxically fixated on wallowing in Silver Age nostalgia and trying to drag everything back to an inaccurate vision of said Silver Age under the claim that everything was better back then.
It’s not fun, and you can feel the writers being like “I really don’t want to do this” wafting off each page. When people tell you that DiDio’s rule as editor-in-chief was a dark time for DC, they’re not joking. The renaissance that DC is in nowadays was directly caused by DiDio finally pissing off corporate badly enough that they did a sweep of the comic offices and fired him and his inner circle of buddies (some of whom were known to be abusers and only had their jobs because of him protecting them).
@Banana Jr. 6000: The “Flash Fridays 346” blog post on Tom Batiuk dot com says: “(there is) a letter from a reader who would one day contact me to get his copy of The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume One signed,
_____________________________________________
Did the reader indicate who they wanted to sign it?
@ectojazzmage: Batiuk wouldn’t have survived in any job other than the one he has. He’s an insufferable know-nothing-know-it-all who won’t do anything that doesn’t fit his very narrow definition of “correct.”
There was an entry on his old blog to the effect of “I thought DC* would immediately make me head writer of Spider-Man because of how good a writer I was.” Even if that were in any way true, you don’t walk off the street into a role like that. Considering how Atomik Komix works, I’m sure he lacks a realistic view of what the work is actually like.
Batiuk applied for DC and Marvel in 70s, and was passed over. And he’s never once wondered why. He had the writing and art skills, but it’s easy to imagine they found him difficult to work with. His relationships with comic strip artists over the years do not disprove that theory.
* – or Marvel, whichever it is. I refuse to learn which character belongs to which company, and you can’t make me.
Bizarro2: All and all you’re just another dick in the wall……
@GarrisonSkunk: FUN FACT: Unsigned Funky Winkerbean books are actually more valuable than signed ones.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
And you can buy two of them for much less than one. Buy ten and they’re free!
FC: Billy’s pissed off because Thel dragged him to see some rom-com chick flick rather than the Marvel Universe action pic showing on one of the other screens.
@ectojazzmage: Crock is ostensibly meant to be a riff on the 1924 adventure novel Beau Geste, thus the Lawrence of Arabia aesthetic.
Thank you, Baja and Scratchy!
Crank: Kid in White Ballcap: “Scuse me, Mister Skunkhead, sir, but you should know that the bald old man with the little beard just shoved a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man number 121 down the back of his pants.”
Crankshaft: I have never read a Gardner Fox comic I didn’t hate.
The Phantom: I had the same reaction. I knew the Python. Never surrendered with him. You, sir, are no Python.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Luann is “fundamentalist Christian propaganda”?
If you think that, if you ever run into ACTUAL fundamentalist Christian propaganda you’re going to have an apoplectic fit.
Uncle Lumpy, you have a day or two left but please k ow how much we appreciate the time, thought, intelligence, good humor you put into being the subhost.
PHANTOM: By letting Nomad watch, Freaky inadvertently teaches Nomad that he can be bested not be force but by cutting power sources or reprogramming software.
LUANN: Depends on whom the house is for.
– if for Broni, keep the live-in babysitter and cook, tell Josh he needs to find new baby sitter.
– if for TJ, add a new room so he can continue to go m the in to this family. Remember– he likes Shannon and Shannon him
– If for Shannon, take baby back to hospital and let them keep it
Great! Uncle Lumpy, you have a day or two left but please know how much we appreciate the time, thought, intelligence, good humor you put into being the subhost. You obviously have spent months preparing.
PHANTOM: By letting Nomad watch, Freaky inadvertently teaches Nomad that he can be bested not be force but by cutting power sources or reprogramming software.
LUANN: Depends on whom the house is for.
– if for Broni, keep the live-in babysitter and cook, tell Josh he needs to find new baby sitter.
– if for TJ, add a new room so he can continue to glom in to this family. Remember– he likes Shannon and Shannon him
– If for Shannon, take baby back to hospital and let them keep it
@Tom: LUANN: I mean, it DOES push a paternalistic worldview pretty hard. Remember when the strip hinted that Frank needed to drive out and rescue three grown-ass women from the rain despite the fact that they had a working vehicle of their own?
Though still, actual fundie propaganda would blow this out of the water. Mostly because Greg and Karen Evans are too cowardly to make any of the characters explicitly religious. They have all the fundamentalist hangups without any of the underlying beliefs.
#92, 93. My apologies for double posting. Skip #92. They’re the same.
Congrats to the shadowfloaters and my fellow scratchies! Broon Croons to Victor Von, Banana Jr. 6000, GarrisonSkunk, TheDiva, Bob Tice and CanukDownSouth!
(Oh, that’s right, I said I was skipping Crankshaft this week. And boy, do I wish I’d stuck to that.)
Crock: Sure, the Lost Patrol can get e-mails from the fort on sheets of paper, and react to them like it’s an unexpected last-shot message from a dying carrier pigeon. Why the heck not, were you expecting something in Crock to make sense?
OTF: Sorry, but the idea Dethany gets by in the corporate world by speaking “without judgement” is even funnier than the idea that “accentuating positive elements” is being neutral. What she means is “I’m incredibly critical of everything Ms Trellis does, but I always do it backhandedly, in a way that might be considered hypocritical if someone other than me was doing it!”
Phantom: Oh, come on! He had better be biding his time until he has a chance to beat Musk up and steals his lunch money!
The problem with this storyline is that Elian Vinmollusk was firmly established in his original appearance to be an idiot whose Mars mission failed, and his robot only even began to be a threat to Stripey because the Ghost Who Doesn’t Get AI had so much trouble even understanding what he was dealing with. Having him wanting to set up a Phantom Revenge Squad makes sense*. Having him succesfully bring Stripey’s actual archenemies in line doesn’t make him look like a greater villain than we thought, it just makes them look less impressive!
* I mean, not sense sense, since all Stripey did was prevent a confused Mars lander from causing too much of an international incident. But billionaire sense, in that the whole debacle must have been soneone’s fault and that person can’t possibly have been Mollusk.
Pluggers: …and then forgetting again.
S4th: “Laura’s … happy now? Damn, you almost had me, but you had to push it too far!”
@Banana Jr. 6000: I see. Thank you for providing an answer to my question. I hope this guy runs out the door without paying for that comic book he’s holding. Anything to move the action along, and leave Earth 2 to the comic writers and artists who actually created it.
@Tom: I’ve spent the last 40 years getting over things that happened to me (and other children) at a fundamentalist Christian school. I do not desire your assistance or opinion in this matter.
Congratulations to this week’s COTW!
Mutt & Jeff – And don’t get her started on the whole incest thing.
Congrats to I Speak Jive, thanks to Uncle Lumpy and Baja, claps for all named, and I appreciate the scrote from Scratchy..
Pluggers: Whoops! Grandpa’s wandered off again. Time for another silver alert.
@Activist:
Sincere thanks for the kind words but omigosh no. Josh usually tells me his travel plans a month or so in advance, and I start catching up on the core strips about a week ahead, using the King Features site and the archives here. Four or five days out I’ll start using the special [transmission interrupted], prepare the posts three or four days ahead, and stage them in Patreon and Josh’s email distribution tool. A post takes between one hour and four depending on what the comics give me—some days are easy; some are a real grind. I edit far more than Josh does, so I’m quite a bit slower.
FG: For such a warrior race the Hawkmen sure caved in easy to Frigia’s invasion and are as subservient to Queen Hatchetnose as the Bandar are to Stripeybutt.
@Guillermo el chiclero: 87- He wanted to see the Lorna Starr film fest.
In the baseball snark community, one of the lines is that the most valuable piece of memorabilia is a picture of Bob Feller that he didn’t sign.
@Bob Tice:
Or Hill Bros. Coffee!
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
As an Indians fan, booooo. Can’t argue, though.
That’s a joke about Stan Musial, too. Guy would sign your bar napkin, your lost racetrack ticket. Nicest guy anybody ever met that day, they say, but his autograph is beyond worthless money-wise. Everybody who asked for it has it.
Side note: autographs are stupid.
@Horace Broon: re: Phantom: ….Elian Vinmollusk….
Damn if you’re not right. Our antagonist du jour DOES look like a fresh raw oyster on the half shell.
Now I’m all hungry.
@A Grave Mind: Musial is amazing. I suppose he might have cut somebody off in traffic one time, but no one has come forward to say it. Great ball player, great guy, and a financial wizard too.
Late Thread Cuisine: Did someone say “oysters”?
@Rube:
Guy lived a dream, and knew he was doing it. Married his high school sweetheart. Best LF ever? Who beats him, Ted Williams? Knew two guys who met him, dude sounds cool as Hell. Would’ve loved to meet him, and I hate the Cardinals.
@ValdVin:
On a few occasions, I ate at a little hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant that was recommended to me by some friends who ate there frequently. Later, they mentioned to me that several times they had seen exotic & super-pricey cars in the parking lot, such as Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Maseratis. Their conclusion was that something besides Vietnamese food was being bought & sold there.
This restaurant’s signature dish was some sort of bowl of noodles, with maybe half a dozen ingredients that could be added it to it, such as shrimp, pork, spring rolls, etc. The menu listed all the possible combinations of one or more of these ingredients, with each combination assigned a number.
Bizarro: Someone went all out on making a crash test dummy with a bird’s nest beard and patchy hair on its scalp, because you never know when that might make a difference in an auto collision.
C-Shaft: There’s choosing to live in a fantasy world and then there’s planning to retire to a fantasy world that might just get written out in the next company wide crisis event.
Phantom: Chatu gives in because he instinctively knows that if he boards this plane, he’ll see a truly hilarious supervillain outfit.
@Baja Gaijin: Oyster bake! But oyster no bake good!
@Baja Gaijin: My mother used to make something called “baked oyster crisp”. Also known as scalloped oysters, it is a traditional, creamy comfort food made with layers of fresh oysters, crushed saltine crackers, and melted butter.
I used to love the stuff in a casserole, but it was so rich that my eyes water just thinking about it today.
JP: Why are these family gravestones surrounded only by what looks like green sludge??! This cemetery is part of a family-owned ranch/farm/rent-a-horsie/occasional-crime-scene/whatever. So it seems like at some point in the past several years, someone would have gotten around to planting a few flowers.
And apparently this cemetery gets few visits. Too bad old Ezra didn’t opt for being cremated and scattered in the woods. He would be getting more company and entertainment, what with horses being ridden around by paying customers, young big-bosomed women arguing with each other, and trespassing foreigners being bashed on the head and dragged away.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I think I’ve said this to you before, but it bears repeating… as a self-described Christian fundamentalist, I’m sorry you were surrounded by such @#$%^&* growing up. That’s not what my family and I believe in at all.
@Baja Gaijin: As I sadly recall, Weight Watchers could make any mix of ingredients look depressing. It was a gift.
DT: They really are going to have to talk to every single Roxx Chair purchaser before they get to the guy with the terrible mullet.
Dustin: I mean, I see no indication she’ll actually go anywhere with him to see whether he has a Ferrari or not.
GT: Everyone understands “Just Married” but onlookers on the ground will be baffled by the “Chapter Eight” part. Is this some kind of bankruptcy they’ve never heard about?
H&J: What’s the name of Rev. Croom’s church? Our Blessed Lady of Missing the Point?
JP: “So far in my life I’ve only been kidnapped once. I feel like I’m falling behind.”
Luann: There was a time when dating-then-marrying Toni appeared to be the most wish fulfilment-y part of Brad’s life.
RMMD: It’s understandable that there might be an epidemic of employee indifference, especially in the retail sector, and I can see no reason why a pair of identical twins bearing what they think are all purpose corporate inspector credentials would succeed in yet another scam.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Sympathies, truly.
@Poteet: Kudos on remembering “occasional crime scene.” It’s an important function for people in the Spencer-Drivers’ crowd.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: I go to a sort of hippie-ish 150-people rural potluck held in a big old barn every fall, and I sure wouldn’t mind seeing a big dish of baked oyster crisp show up on one of the tables. Though it would likely be gone before I got any:-).
@Artist formerly known as Ben: Your JP comment deserves a ride on a nice float.
Thanks to Baja and Scratchy for the mentions. Tips of the beret to TheDiva, Horace Broon, Ukulele Ike, Tabby Lavalamp, A Grave Mind, Poteet, and UncleJeff.
@Poteet: Merci, ma Poteet.
@Banana Jr. 6000: On Luann.
That is horrible
I recall one story, where a Schizophrenic wanted to get closer to God, so he joined the Church.
(not certain which one)
The Church told him that he didn’t need his medication, because God will keep him healed and normal.
So he went off his meds, and ended up… well… I won’t say what crime he committed but…
I never forgave the Church for that (among other instances)
As a schizophrenic myself, who is still straddling between my hatred of the Church but also my own personal faith in God. I’ve been in “Crisis of Faith Limbo” ever since.
Between Ripley’s and Two Party Opera, we got us a double dose of the 12th U.S. President, Major General Zachary Taylor of Kaintucky, in the funny papers this morning.
Did NOT see that coming. It isn’t even his birthday, fer chrissake.
@The Rambling Otter: The Church told him that he didn’t need his medication, because God will keep him healed and normal. God, I hate that. As a person who suffers from bipolar disorder, I’ve heard that crap a bunch as well. That isn’t “the Church”, or even “a church”. That’s just a collection of misguided, perverted, BS.
@Ukulele Ike: @Ukulele Ike: I’ve always liked “Two Party Opera” but I don’t know what’s going on with its author.
He puts out one, like, every other month.
@A Grave Mind: It’s Stan Musial Fun Facts time!
At the time of his retirement, Musial led the National League with 3630 career hits.
1815 at home. 1815 in road games.
Musial was named general manager of the Cardinals in 1967. They won the World Series and Musial retired.
In 1960, Musial campaigned for John F. Kennedy.
At their first meeting, JFK joked that people said he was too young to be President and Musial was too old to be playing baseball.
JFK was 4 years older than Musial.
@UncleJeff: I know. For the first few years Carroll pounded one out daily, and then it disappeared for long stretches. I see today’s entry is #1011.
I’m always happy to see it when it shows up.
Congrats to the mentionees and thank you, Baja and Scratchy!
According to the artificially intelligent brain living in my IPad, Two Party Opera now appears sporadically because “Brian Carroll does what he FUCKING WANTS, got it fanboy?”
@Baja Gaijin: Crock: Today’s strip is almost 30 years old. Just sayin’.
______________________________________________________
“Don’t trust any Crock over 30”- Many,many Hippies and Beatniks.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: Thank you, I appreciate that. I do not hold grudges against everyone who identifies as Christian, or even fundamentalist. I’m not even anti-religion.
@The Rambling Otter: There should be severe jail sentences for that kind of thing. “Religious freedom” does not extend to overriding doctor’s orders, based on nothing but one’s own unqualified opinions,
@Banana Jr. 6000: There should, because it was all their fault. Although, I have heard of some churches coming under fire for crimes.
There was some sort of mega-church in… Mexico? (Not certain where it was)
The leader of that Church was a pedophile, grooming children, brainwashing the kids’ parents into consenting saying that it was what God wanted.
The leader of the Church and a bunch of his cohorts, were put on trial and convicted.
I thought it was Mexico, but he was tried in the states, so I don’t know exactly where this happened.
Edit: (Maybe Columbia)
@The Rambling Otter: Before sentencing, the Judge did a massive “Shame on you” speech not only to the pastor, but to the kids’ parents for allowing it to happen.
It was shown on the reality show “Court Cam” which shows scenes from real-life court trials.
I can’t find the clip on Youtube.
But there was another video that popped up when I searched, about a Mega-Church Pastor convicted for peeping into teenagers’ bedrooms. (Who looked a little like the guy from the other case, if I recall)
I didn’t watch the other video (I didn’t want to) but… really.
I’m glad that SOMEONE is doing something about these people.
Thanks for the mention, Scratchy!
@Doc Wonmug: as someone who broke a tiny bone in her dominant hand at recess and then (as an extremely introverted elementary schooler) tried to write with the other hand until being caught out by my mom at lunch and dragged off to the doctor, actually the lines aren’t nearly shaky enough. It’s a terrible drawing, but it’s not even got the excuse of an emergency hand-switch
@Banana Jr. 6000: My condolences regarding what happened to you.
Your past experience, however, has no bearing on whether your evaluation of a creative work is correct. And in this case, it is not.
Scratchy, thankee!