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Mary Worth, 1/5/11

Look at panel two in isolation and you’d think that Mary views father-son bonding as a spectator sport. “Here we go!” she thinks, as she pops something tan and oblong into her mouth. “They’re gonna hella bond! This is going to be great!” But check her out in panel one, looking blissed out as she shoves something or other up between her gum and her upper lip. I’m assuming it’s something hallucinogenic. “Here we go!” she’s saying in panel two. “Oh, the colors!”

Gil Thorp, 1/5/11

Much as I’ve been trying to avoid bringing it up, I feel have to acknowledge that the Gil Thorp basketball season plot seems to have set its two new characters — a Jesus-happy basketball player and an almost-certainly-gay teen as imagined by someone who’s heard of gay people but never actually met one — on a collision course. This certainly won’t be awkward, at all!

Gasoline Alley, 1/5/11

Speaking of piety, Gasoline Alley has continued its attempt to ditch its goody-goody image by dabbling in blasphemy. Today it suggests that the Holy Bible is best used as a weight-loss aid.

Spider-Man, 1/5/11

Spider-Man has lost interest in the middle of his own comic strip and let his mind wander. And who can blame him, really? I only wish he weren’t wearing his spider-mask in panel two, because it would be great to see his slack jaw and the little bit of drool emerging from the side of his mouth.

Luann, 1/5/11

Dear Luann,

Never use “finger” as a verb ever again.

Sincerely,
The Comics Curmudgeon

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Curtis, 1/7/11

Ha ha, yes, this — this — is what we tune into the annual Curtis Kwanzgaasm for. An eight-limbed dinosaur-like beast with spider-like hind-legs and a dolphin-style tail? Oh, and also, it has no eyes on its head, But it does have a freaky secondary face on its chest, with two eyes perched above a vestigial nose and then another terrifying eye where its mouth should be? Yes, yes, and yes. And now to see what this horrible thing — aw, it killed an adorable doggie? God damn it, this is the worst Kwanzaa ever.

Spider-Man, 1/7/11

Remember a few weeks ago, when Aunt May was captured by the Mole Man and whisked off to his underground kingdom? Well, here we go again! I’d actually love it if Spider-Man just kept repeating the same events: Aunt May is kidnapped by some monstrous being who lives closer to the Earth’s center then wherever she happens to be at the moment; although she’s at first terrified, she eventually comes to see the creature’s inner beauty, and agrees to marry it right around the time Spider-Man manages to organize a half-assed rescue attempt. A clergyman is produced, and then, just as the ceremony gets underway, with a mighty rumble a beastly hand or tentacle or claw or something bursts through the floor, snatches her off, and begins the cycle anew. This process continues until eventually the extreme heat and pressure of the Earth’s core kills everyone involved, much to the general relief of the readership.

Marmaduke, 1/7/11

Unable to end Marmaduke’s reign of flesh-eating terror through military means, the government is attempting to cut off his financing.

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Spider-Man, 1/9/11

I have to admit that the current “love underground” Spider-Man storyline is the strip’s most (accidentally?) entertaining in years, probably its best since we met the Shocker in 2007. I’m trying to decide what I like best about today’s installment. Is it the way Spidey nobly leaps into action for once, only to be immediately and crushingly defeated? Is it the fact that the artist managed to shoehorn a completely gratuitous cleavage shot into the final panel? Here’s a more subtle source of potential amusement: the throwaway panels feature the whole Uncle Ben Spider-Man origin story, featuring Ben’s huge, impassive face glowering down at his grieving wife and nephew. Could this hideous green underground monster actually be Ben’s soul, emerging from the Stygian depths to stop his wife from finally moving on and finding love again? If so, the afterlife is apparently nothing at all like the scenarios the major religions have tried to sell us.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/9/11

“I mean, he’s still being a supercilious dick to people who are just doing their jobs, but he doesn’t really seem to be deriving his usual level of smug enjoyment from it, you know?”

Crock, 1/9/11

“And now, to complete this hilarious prank, I’ll throw myself to my death out of an airplane! I sure will be laughing as I look down on my grieving mother, from heaven! Heh heh!”

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Spider-Man, 1/21/10

I was too bored to even mention it at the time, but yesterday Aunt May passed out and our subterranean clergyman pretended to be a doctor and diagnosed her with “Spelunker’s Lung.” Today, the cave-priest admits to not being a doctor after all, but still insists that his diagnosis and prescribed remedy are accurate. He can’t be certain, but he’s certain she’ll die, unless she gets out of this cave! And Mole Man, emoting so very hard that his gloved hands break out of the third panel, will give up his one shot at love, so that his love may live.

Ha ha, “Spelunker’s Lung,” totally a made-up thing, right? Well, a little Googling seems to imply that this is one of several common names for Histoplasmosis. Let’s learn about this affliction from Wikipedia, shall we?

Histoplasmosis … is a disease caused by the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum. Symptoms of this infection vary greatly, but the disease primarily affects the lungs. Occasionally, other organs are affected; this is called disseminated histoplasmosis, and it can be fatal if left untreated.

Yes, that’s right: Spider-man was not able to rescue Aunt May from her underground marriage, so a microscopic fungus had to do it for him. Truly this is his greatest failure in superheroism yet!

Also, if information about this important newspaper Spider-man plot point is not added post-haste to the “Society and Culture” section of that Histoplasmosis Wikipedia article, along with descriptions of references to the disease in episodes of House and Dexter, then everything I think I know about the world is wrong.

Gasoline Alley, 1/21/11

Whoops, it looks like some history-challenged colorist has accidentally dressed Robert E. Lee and his men in Union blue. Hope you enjoy your thousands of angry letters lecturing you about the true history of the War of Northern Aggression, Tribune Media Services!

Family Circus, 1/21/11

From the action and the hairstyles on screen, I’d guess that Mommy has taken Jeffy to a porno, circa 1978. From Mommy’s tiny head and pencil neck sitting atop her impossibly broad shoulders, I’d guess that “Mommy” is some kind of quickly constructed dummy or mannequin, designed to fool Jeffy into thinking that he’s still being cared for long enough for the real Mommy to escape into the night.

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Apartment 3-G, 1/29/11

It’s fun to watch Lu Ann’s high hopes for this relationship rapidly vanish. I imagine that her big dreams for a working-class guy who just up and kissed her the second time they met involved lots of hot sex and not really talking much. Now he’s whining about how he’s finally realizing at age 30 that maybe he shouldn’t live with his parents and that he’s fallen in love with some mouldering shanty in Losertown, N.J.; he also appears to be threatening to drop the L-bomb on Lu Ann, so you can see why she’s decided to fake a heart attack in the hopes that he’ll go away.

Spider-Man, 1/29/11

The Spider-Man arc just now wrapping up has been utterly delightful in its ridiculousness, but the final panel promises something even better. Perhaps, having seen up close what true love can be, Mary Jane will realize what a loser her husband is and finally dump him. How will our superhero deal with heartbreak? Presumably he’ll spend weeks moping around the house, complaining ineffectually and watching TV and … oh, wait.

Wizard of Id, 1/29/11

I once speculated that the Wizard of Id supported legislated health-care reform, but it’s now clear that the strip is taking a much more radical and troubling approach.

Family Circus, 1/29/11

Jeffy only has to ask this two more times, and if Daddy still doesn’t answer he gets to eat him!

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Spider-Man, 2/7/11

Whoah, big surprise in Spider-Man today! No, it’s not the fact that newspaper Spider-Man has finally decided to cash in on Twilight mania; that was more or less inevitable. Nor should we be startled by the title character’s braggadocio over his epic sleeping prowess, since we’re all well aware that the sheer magnitude of his laziness is his only distinguishing feature. No, the shocker is that J. Jonah Jameson has decided to transform the Daily Bugle into a British-style tabloid, as we can see in panel two. Unfortunately, on day one the copy desk already used the only Britishisms they knew — “cheers” and “Yanks” and were forced to just slip a placeholding “something” in as the headline’s final word, hoping to cram in some BBC watching in time for tomorrow morning’s edition.

Shoe, 2/7/11

Speaking of the mass media, I’m pretty sure that this is the first time I’ve ever seen ostensible news-bird Cosmo actually perpetrating journalism in this strip. I’m not really sure why he’s filing his story from the Roz’s diner rather than the newsroom, unless the gruesome crime scene he’s describing is actually just off panel, and the characters’ favorite lunchtime spot has become a scene of unimaginable carnage, with corpses everywhere. Gory as the thought is, the strip at least deserves kudos for actually making its bird-world setting integral to the joke, for once.

Mark Trail, 2/7/11

Barely a year after managing to keep an inarticulate interrogative to himself, Mark Trail has apparently learned how to think exclamations without saying them. Soon he’ll be able to construct a sentence complete with nouns and verbs silently, entirely within his own mind — and then there will be nothing he can’t do.

Lockhorns, 2/7/11

Loretta doesn’t want Leroy passing out like last year, so she hid all the booze! Which is frankly pretty cruel. The only thing worse than a birthday party with no guests except the wife you hate is a sober birthday party with no guests except the wife you hate.

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Mark Trail, 2/24/11

Wow, this is actually a kind of surprising development in Mark Trail! Rather than Mark just punching out the villain and returning home to Lost Forest, he instead got shot and is washing up on on some distant shore at the bottom of that EMPTY boat. Cast your mind back to your classical education: you’ll recall that the Odyssey begins with Odysseus being held captive by the nymph Calypso, who wants the Greek hero as her husband, on her island. Likewise, Mark will soon be in the thrall of this lady, who’s wearing a revealing shirt and freakishly high-waisted jeans, which are the Mark Trail signifiers for “sex goddess.” Will Cherry remain faithful for the 10 years it will take for Mark to return to her and reclaim his kingdom, with Rusty’s help?

Spider-Man, 2/24/11

“Hmm, so you used to be a vampire … and you’re doing the same vampire bat experiments that resulted in your vampirism before … and there’s a vampire loose in the city … and you have visible fangs and strange claw-like fingernails … but you say you’re not a vampire? Sure, whatever, I’ll buy it. So, you got a TV around here?”

Marmaduke, 2/24/11

Of all of Marmaduke’s demonic powers, some find his ability to control human minds to be the most terrifying. But when you think about the awful fate that awaits this child, isn’t it a blessing that he’s living out his last moments in a sort of zombified ecstasy, rather than abject terror?

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Mark Trail, 3/5/11

Like classic James Bond films, each recent Mark Trail episode one-ups its predecessor with a more exotic location, nastier villain, and hotter babe. Lost Forest, deer-kickin’ Frank Johnson, and Cherry gave way to glamorous Sea Breeze Fishing Camp, stylishly sinister Ben Smith, and sultry Kelly Welly, only to be topped by the azure vistas of Balmy Palmy Isle, our mysterious — yet somehow fabulous — paranoid druglord, and Ms. Hotsie Highwaist here.

Where will it end, this relentless upward spiral of scenery, villainy, and babery? I suspect on the Moon, with Mark savagely beating Kim Jong-Il while remaining strangely indifferent to the charms of Olivia Wilde or somebody. Because Mark can best any villain anywhere, but he shrinks from female contact, as shown in panel two.

Mary Worth, 3/5/11

Driven mad by the Internet, Dawn Weston seeks comfort from her only true friend — that pregnant lady from her Dad’s eating-disorders support group who moved to Charterstone after her retirement and divorce last October. Aaack!

Marmaduke, 3/5/11

From the look of the leftovers, Marmaduke has eaten several sports teams, Mary Poppins, a NASCAR pit crew, neighbor Snyder, and the cop sent to investigate.

Spider-Man, 3/5/11

Yes, vampirism — the only possible explanation! Because seriously — it’s 4:45, and why else would Peter miss The View?

See how quickly Mary Jane rejects the obvious “My husband is a worthless layabout!” in favor of the dramatic “My husband has been overcome by the forces of darkness!” Acting has really honed her denial skills.

Hi! I’m sitting in this week while Josh is on vacation. If you have any site or comment trouble, contact me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net. Email sent to bio@jfruh.com will still get to Josh, but he won’t read it, because, you know, vacation.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Don’t be shocked when I reveal that it’s the last day of the Comics Curmudgeon Spring Fundraiser — hurry!

Everybody waits until Friday for the Big Reveal — check it out:

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/11/11

Panel-three Dex is just flabbergasted: “What? Engage a professional to help us minimize risk and tax exposure as we transfer and apportion a large sum of money? I – I never imagined you would try to pull something like this on your own brother, Berna! YOU MONSTER!”

Funky Winkerbean, 3/11/11

So the Pro-Crastinator‘s superpower is — making excuses? I don’t care, he’s still tougher than Spider-Man. Also: prepare yourself for the shocking revelation that Mope’s “new DC Comics supervillain” has something to do with earthquakes (and nothing at all to do with this guy or these guys).

Spider-Man, 3/11/11

Nobody — just nobody — could have seen this coming: it seems the ex-vampire is a current vampire, even though he said he wasn’t! Why, it’s as though criminals somehow can’t be trusted! With all the TV Parker watches, has he never seen an episode of Law and Order? Hey, that’s gotta be some kind of superpower right there!

I can’t shake the impression that the vampire’s name is really Möbius and we’ve gone ’round this strip before.

Mark Trail, 3/11/11

Oh look, the minion is named Juan and the boss is named Otto: it’s an international drug ring! Expect covert meetings with Sven and Ching, and lots of hilarious Teutonic drug and pimp lingo: “Süßen witwe Mutter-Hosen — kommst du hier mit mein knackenpfeife schnell, oder Ich zeige Ihnen mein Zuhälter Hand!” [Tr.]

Rex Morgan, M.D. and Mark Trail, 3/11/11 (panels, retouched)

OK, it’s official — actual people are no longer allowed to say “that’s not going to happen.”

Mein Zuhälter Hand!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Spider-Man, 3/21/11

I know this is a superhero comic, where heroes and villains typically engage in expository banter in mid-battle, and science is routinely ignored when not actively being laughed at. Still, everything about Morbius’s little soliloquy irritates me. I mean, the guy went through some quasi-scientific metamorphosis that made him an actual vampire (a “living vampire,” he calls himself, which, I can’t even deal with that right now) and apparently lightened his bones, but … he can’t fly? I mean, why stop short of flight? Too unrealistic? Or, worse, do the writers think they’re being somehow more accurate to bat anatomy and locomotion? Because, you know, bats really are the only mammals that actually fly. Morbius didn’t get his powers from experiments with flying squirrels, did he? I don’t know why I expect any such attention to detail from a strip that routinely describes spiders as insects, but it still galls me.

Hi and Lois, 3/21/11

Well, Trixie, it’s because your dad’s bowling has less to do with “bowling” and more with “not spending time with his family, because you’re all unbearable.” I’d make some joke about how Hi is having a secret affair, but it’s more likely he just goes to a bar and drinks in blessed silence for most of the evening.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/21/11

Man, that bird looks awfully pleased with itself. “Yeah, I totally crapped on that hillbilly lady’s head! I’m pretty cool.”

Ziggy, 3/21/11

Ziggy’s undereye bags really sell the joke here. Ha ha, Ziggy finds his poverty to be exhausting and emotionally taxing! That’s the joke, right?

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Mark Trail, 4/4/11

Remember a few years ago when Mark’s friend Dan faked his own death by drowning and Mark, thinking he was witnessing a tragedy, begged his friend to “COME ON, DAN. COME TO THE SURFACE!” I’m reminded of that in today’s strip, as Mark orders this plane into the air. Never mind the fact that this particular drug-running aircraft has taken off from exactly this runaway dozens of times; Mark seems to feel that only he can coax it airborne. I was going to say that Mark apparently believes that he can lift things or people with his mind, but then I realized that Mark, who speaks aloud every thought he’s ever had, doesn’t really understand the distinction between an inner self and an outer world well enough to really grasp the concept of a “mind” in the first place. I actually think that Mark believes he can lift things or people by shouting at them.

Spider-Man, 4/4/11

“Well, gee, I thought I was fighting him just moments ago, but if he and the woman who loves him say that I wasn’t, I must be wrong! I mean, what motivation do they have to lie about it?”

Beetle Bailey, 4/4/11

Sarge needs Beetle active and productive, and if that means getting him back on the meth, then so be it.

Apartment 3-G, 4/4/11

She wasn’t quite subtle enough this morning, but one of these days, Margo’s going to trick Tommie into coming out.

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/4/11

Rex Morgan is still very focused on its increasingly uninteresting lottery drama, but that doesn’t mean it can’t liven things up with a mustachioed man cramming an entire hamburger down his throat in one gulp.

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Spider-Man, 4/15/11

You know, I’ve been regarding Morbius’s nicknames with a certain detached amusement. “The living vampire?” Contradictory, but whatever. “The human vampire?” I suppose there might be vampiriform animals, but isn’t the standard-issue vampire an undead human being? But this “urban Dracula” thing I won’t stand for. Damn you, Jameson, the original Dracula may have been of rustic origins, but surely the entire plot of the novel was driven by his desire to acquire property in London, which at the time was the largest city in the world! He was a quintessentially urban fiend, despite your slander.

Pluggers, 4/15/11

Terry Craig of Dallas, Texas has managed to fit both “pluggers are slobs” and “pluggers are fat” into his entry today. I can never keep track, are these things supposed to be insulting or not?

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Crock, 5/2/11

Ha ha, someone thought that underage scat porn used as an instrument of torture was a good theme for a comic strip! Sure, why not?

Crankshaft, 5/2/11

It sure makes Crankshaft’s half-assed attempts to sexually harass hapless customer service personnel seem positively quaint by comparison.

Spider-Man, 5/2/11

This whole “human vampire” business has worked itself out in even sillier fashion than I could have imagined, with Dr. Morbius’s fiancee accidentally becoming a real vampire in order to understand her beloved’s fake vampirism. The only logical hole out of many I’ll point out here: wouldn’t Dr. Morbius, wracked with guilt over his faux-vampirism, have noticed his fiancee’s vampiric tendencies? “Say, sweetie, would you like to go out for dinner? I’ve got 6 o’clock reservations!” “Let’s make it 9, so that I don’t have to leave the apartment when the sun’s still up. Also, they serve blood there, right? You know I subsist entirely on human blood now.”

Also, regarding the last panel’s NEXT box, it probably wouldn’t be so much a race against time if Peter had woken up when MJ first got into trouble, several hours ago.

Panel from Hi and Lois, 5/2/11

Was baby Trixie from Hi and Lois not on your list of characters who filled you with dread? Well, that’s changed forever now, I’ll say.

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Beetle Bailey, 5/4/11

Well, it’s Wednesday, and as all Beetle Bailey trufans know, that means it’s time for Miss Buxley to be sexually humiliated! There have been few visions in this strip more unsettling than General Halftrack and his two lackeys grinning maniacally, sitting two feet away from a computer screen, looking at sexy swimsuit pics of their secretary, who in turn is sitting only about five feet away from them. Notice that only one hand is visible on those gentlemen! I guess we should be thankful that the base’s chaplain at least disapproves, though not to the extent that he’s going to actually say anything non-passive-aggressive about it.

Spider-Man, 5/4/11

Speaking of sexy outfits, when Martine became a vampire, she apparently became a sexy vampire, if by “sexy” you mean “wearing some high-cut leotard-esque thing with a cape.” Sadly, I can’t appreciate the erotic vampire-thigh on display because I’m distracted/horrified by Mary Jane’s looming semi-conscious face at the bottom of the third panel. You have to give the artist credit for really trying nail the perspective right in his attempt to show the viewer what it would look like to be standing on some poor passed out woman’s chin while watching a couple of ludicrously dressed vampires have a domestic squabble a few feet away.

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Spider-Man, 5/5/11

I was about to give this dreary Spider-Man vampire plot credit for its first genuine bit of horror, as Martine and Morbius’s eyes are suddenly and without explanation transformed into awful, toothy mouths, but then I realized that their pupils have just turned into bats — very, very crudely drawn bats — and it’s supposed to be, like, symbolic or whatever.

Apartment 3-G, 5/5/11

Ha, and now that Trey’s softened up the old man, Margo comes in to apply some brutality. “I hope the money’s coming from Herriman and Fowler! Just make that check out to ‘Trey and Margo’s sex vacation fund,’ or my associate here will be forced to do terrible, terrible things to you, and not the fun kind.”

Funky Winkerbean, 5/5/11

Have you been thinking, “Damn it, I wish Les would stop toying with these two women who for unexplainable reasons are attracted to him and just pick one to share his lovemaking stylings with”? Well, I’ll bet you’re sorry now.

Mark Trail, 5/5/11

As Mark squirmed into his cocoon, he thought of the many long-haired and bearded men whom he had defeated via fisticuffs over the years. But little did he know that he would soon be facing his greatest nemesis ever: Jesus Christ.

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Apartment 3-G, 5/8/11

As near as I’ve been able to tell, Trey has big plans to remake the Mills Gallery in a retro-Art Deco style, and has managed to convince his firm to underwrite the project rather than actually be paid by the client who will benefit from the makeover. Now, I’m as bored with both enormous, inhuman sheets of glass and exhaustingly whimsical Gehry-esque postmodernism as the next guy, but I’m not sure the solution is just to gin up some kind of throwback visual language and turn a perfectly nice art gallery into a slightly more upscale Johnny Rockets. And I’m definitely certain that anyone whose big idea for architecture revolves around nostalgia shouldn’t be displaying the sudden and unsettling delusions of grandeur that Trey is throwing off in the last two panels. Only one person in Apartment 3-G is allowed to indulge in that kind of unjustified megalomania, Trey, and you’d better ratchet back if you ever want to sleep with her again.

Spider-Man, 5/8/11

Ha ha, any day where Spider-Man gets bonked in the back of the head with a club-like object is a good one! But Martine shouldn’t be so proud of whatever vampire power she believes defeated our hero’s spider-sense, since the exact same attack has in the past been successfully executed by some random criminal henchman and a snooty butler, neither of which were undead bloodsuckers, as near as anyone could tell.

Family Circus, 5/8/11

Ha ha, Mommy! Your worry-wart fantasy shows that you’re starting from a false premise: You apparently believe that your family is taking you to a nice restaurant for Mother’s Day. There’s no need to dress the kids in nice shirts — or indeed in any shirts at all — if you’re just ordering at the drive-through window!

Panels from Hagar the Horrible, 5/8/11

In other news, Hagar’s wife Helga appears to have completely lost it.

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Mary Worth, 5/11/11

Oh, Dr. Drew, it looks like your lady-dumping technique still needs work! The bored florist may have convinced you that this sad, overpriced mishmosh he threw together quickly is a genuine “Let’s Just Be Friends® Bouquet,” but I think any lady who sees you show up at your door with flowers in your hands is going to find some mixed messages in your breakup speech.

But! Not to worry, folks: Liza is sure that she and Drew are going to do more than talk tonight! Assuming that she doesn’t have an extended game of charades planned, that means that she likes nonmarital nonprocreative sex, like Charley, which in the world of Mary Worth makes her one of history’s greatest monsters, whose feelings need not be taken into account.

Hi and Lois, 5/11/11

This would be just another lame Hi and Lois strip among so, so many if not for Trixie’s gobsmacked expression as she crawls away from her bickering siblings. She’s not commenting wryly on their contentious ways; she’s suffering visibly from the free-floating anger in the house that she encounters whenever she leaves her “safe space” in front of the living room window, where she is generally blessedly ignored.

Spider-Man, 5/11/11

“Their banter … is giving me reason … to live again … so witty … almost like … watching TV…”

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Spider-Man, 5/18/11

Oh, the sight of the hapless Spider-Man’s feet sticking uselessly upwards as Morbius the Human Vampire hauls him to safety warms my shriveled heart! You might think, based on the hideous claw Morbius also has a hold of in that panel, that Spidey has been attacked in mid-air by yet another vampire in this chamber of horrors, but no, that’s just MJ’s hand, drawn very badly.

At any rate, Morbius’s transformation into a Non-Human Vampire is clearly well underway, as rather than referring to MJ as a “woman” as a normal person would, he’s going for the stilted “female” instead. I dearly hope that he and his vampire bride are also speaking in heavy Transylvanian accents for no good reason.

Apartment 3-G, 5/18/11

Don’t get upset, ladies! Paul may have partaken in your lady flower-grabbing game, but he is ALL MAN! He did it for his COACH, who was a MAN, who coached him in a SPORT. A sport for men!

B.C., 5/18/11

This sentient talking turtle has been a beloved B.C. character for years, but, uh, I guess he’s going to be killed and eaten now.

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Momma, 5/26/11

Momma is routinely awful to her children, and all of them are fairly unpleasant to her in return. It’s not clear which was the cause of the other, or if it’s just a sort of continuous feedback loop situation, but today we seem to have reached the inevitable moment when the Hobbes boys move from passive-aggressive comments to outright elder abuse. Still, it’s interesting to note that Thomas has shed his usual preppy garb for zubaz pants, a Charlie Brown-style t-shirt, and — horrors — a baseball cap, worn backwards. It’s almost as if he was unable to become a true monster like Francis unless he dressed the part.

Spider-Man, 5/26/11

Anyone who wants an introduction to the glory and pageantry that is the Spider-Man newspaper strip would do well to review the last couple weeks’ worth of action, which has consisted entirely of people arguing and then almost falling off of the roof before being saved at the last minute. Since Spidey only has enough web to save half of our bickering vampire couple, the fun might end soon. But wait, wasn’t the whole reason Spider-Man needed rescuing in the first place because his web-slinging was on the fritz? And can’t one of these vampire clowns fly, or at least glide? Is it really that hard to keep track of the continuity in this strip?

Mark Trail, 5/26/11

Yes, you can tell this emporium for expensive merchandise is quite popular with the kids. Just look who’s haunting the store: hip young people like the guy who modeled for The Scream (panel one) and the mayor of the Munchkin City (panel two).

Pluggers, 5/26/11

Whole teams of dedicated medical personnel are working around the clock just to keep pluggers alive. And why?

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Mary Worth, 5/28/11

Oh, well, this isn’t terrifying at all. Just Dr. Drew thinking about how he needs to explain to Liza in excruciating detail how “breaking up” works, while, unnoticed, Liza, who has managed to surreptitiously burrow under Drew’s flesh, bursts out triumphantly, like Athena out of Zeus’s brow. Only stalkier!

Spider-Man, 5/28/11

Yes, Spidey wasn’t able to save the one Dr. Morbius loved — you know, Martine? The one who was a real, actual vampire? I’m not vampire expert (nosferatologist?) or anything, but I’m pretty sure that one of the scary things about vampires is that they’re mostly immortal, and can only be killed in a certain limited number of ritualized ways, and none of those ways are “being dropped off a building.”

Lockhorns, 5/28/11

The Lockhorns may fight all the time and hate each other so, so much, but that doesn’t meant that they don’t share some pastimes. For instance, they enjoy going down the park and making snide comments about the way the Kids Today dress, all the while looking very much like they want to kill themselves.

Family Circus, 5/28/11

This would just be run of the mill Keane Kids Saying The Darndest Things if not for the look of genuine embarrassment on Barfy’s face. Ha ha, no resident of the Keane Kompound can escape the omnipresent crushing body shame!

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Spider-Man, 6/9/11

Every once in a while Spider-Man feels like it needs to let us take a breather from its nonstop lazy superhero action and dabble in a little media criticism. As you can tell from the the arc here — “But your photojournalism could hurt feelings!” “Eh, probably not, and anyway, I gotta buy you stuff.” “Oh, OK!” — it’s generally as half-assed as everything else in this comic.

Crankshaft, 6/9/11

I am seething with anger over this comic’s misrepresentation of modern youth. Oh, kids today are in fact Internet-addicted drunks, I’m not denying that; but it’s also well known that children’s bus chants by their very nature scan quite well. The dialog in that first panel simply cannot be chanted in the implied sing-songy fashion, no matter how hard you try.

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Shoe, 6/14/11

I’m sure at some point somebody involved in creating this strip considered writing a punchline that referred to all the words in Roz’s opening dialog, but then everyone concerned realized “Oh, wait, it’s just Shoe,” tasked someone with writing a hot dog joke, and then moved on with their lives.

Spider-Man, 6/14/11

Peter Parker seriously overestimates the amount approbation he receives from New York’s citizens, who mostly just point at him and jeer.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/14/11

Hagar is making a last-ditch effort to stave off situational homosexuality.

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Spider-Man, 6/18/11

Ah, yes, a character who is despised and rejected despite his super-powers shakes his fist and declares with a twisted visage that someday his tormentors will show some respect! It’s pretty much the origin story of every comic-book supervillain ever created. Are the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip people even vaguely aware of the conventions of their own genre?

Apartment 3-G, 6/18/11

Tommie’s touching reunion with her estranged (?) mother has taken place entirely off-panel, between yesterday and today’s strips. Normally I’d complain about this, but really, it’s a blessing. The only thing that could possibly be duller than a strip about Tommie is strip about Tommie and her boring mother.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/18/11

A sexy, sassy, midriff-baring goth teenager … her sexy, pissy, shoulder-baring mom … the two of them appear to be roughly the same age … looks like Rex Morgan, M.D., is on a collision course for sexy wackiness!

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Mark Trail, 6/27/11

When is it time to start paying attention to Mark Trail? When the violence starts, obviously! Young John Thrasher suddenly shows the benefits of his military training and steely nerves by announcing his refusal to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, rapidly covering several feet, and then kicking the sheriff in the solar plexus, all while he has a rifle pointed right at him. He shows the benefits of his good breeding and essentially gentle nature by apologizing for this act of derring-do while he’s still in the process of perpetrating it.

There’s been a slight but noticeable uptick lately of Trailian good guys physically assaulting law enforcement officers. To be sure, it’s all to forward the cause of good in the long run, but can this “ends justify the means” philosophy really co-exist with this feature’s traditional straight-arrow morals? Eventually, the strip’s whole universe might devolve into chaos; fortunately, the strip moves slowly enough that by “eventually” I mean “millions of years hence, long after the Earth’s sun becomes a red giant star, wiping out all human life.”

Gil Thorp, 6/27/11

When is it time to start paying attention to Gil Thorp? It certainly isn’t when Gil has some long, rambling confrontation with a school board member at an open meeting, so let’s continue not paying attention to it.

Momma, 6/27/11

The idea of a man’s mother casually asking him about his infidelities is both grotesque and par for the course in Momma, where Mother Hobbes will go to any length to break up the seemingly happy marriage of her eldest son. Still, we can sympathize with her exasperated expression in the final panel, as Thomas is apparently so lame that he can’t think of any way to stray that doesn’t involve the Internet.

Dennis the Menace, 6/27/11

And so began Alice Mitchell’s tragic addiction to prescription stimulants.

Spider-Man, 6/27/11

Ha ha, jokes on you, mysterious “Big Boss”! You can’t humiliate someone who is incapable of experiencing shame!

Ziggy, 6/27/11

Hey, everybody, are you going to enter the Ziggy 40th anniversary contest? Here’s my caption: OH MY GOD ZIGGY IS EATING A CAKE SHAPED LIKE HIS OWN FACE OH MY GOD

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Mary Worth, 6/29/11

So, this might not be the most outrageous moment in Mary Worth history — nobody died in a fiery car crash, or was lured into a sex den or thrown bodily out of a rehearsal dinner — but it’s delightfully shocking all the same. Mary has decided to help Liza by finding an outlet for her persistent nature! And by “persistent” we means “psychotic.” Liza will be the kind of salesperson who repeatedly calls you to urge you to buy whatever it is she’s peddling, shows up at your work and home unannounced with already filled out paperwork so you can “just finalize that deal we worked out,” and eventually rifle through your trash to find your signature, the better to forge it and close the sale with your consent. She’ll be a millionaire within a year!

Marmaduke, 6/29/11

Speaking of aggressive salespeople, Marmaduke has done pretty well in establishing this magazine shill as threatening with only some sunglasses and a leer. Not that he’ll be trouble for long, as Marmaduke is going to eat him in a minute.

Marvin, 6/29/11

“Oh, and in unrelated news, we dogs have managed to develop bipedalism and opposable digits. Combine that with our powers of telepathic communication and you humans are totally screwed!”

Spider-Man, 6/29/11

“Oh, that’s right, I had to fire everyone at the paper, because of the Internet. Welp, guess I’ll update the blog and call it a night!”

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Spider-Man, 7/14/11

Oh boy, this bespectacled lady wants to capture Spider-Man, in photographic form! This is delicious, because of course taking pictures of Spider-Man is, as far as I can make out, Peter Parker’s sole source of income. One of Newspaper Spider-Man’s least attractive qualities — and lord knows there are lots to choose from — is his continuing macho panic at the idea that his wife makes more money than he does, despite the fact that his wife is a successful actress and he’s a stringer working in the dying newspaper industry (and also a superhero, a role that you’d think would be enough to boost his fragile ego, until of course you see how he goes about filling it). Anyway, my bet is that this woman will humiliate Peter further by displacing him from his pathetic job; I assume that her pictures of Spider-Man will be better than his, both because it’s tricky to stage photos of yourself and because Peter is an incompetent who’s no good at anything.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/14/11

Haw haw, looks like Jughaid’s startin’ to hallucinate! He’s probably sufferin’ from heat stroke, no doubt because he insists on wearing a fur hat in the middle of summer.

Family Circus, 7/14/11

Dolly, nothing in your current life might match up with the sanitized fairy tales in that book, but surely the Brothers Grimm or Russian folklorists have recorded stories of a quartet of terrifying, stunted gnomish things locked away in a compound by their horrified parents.

Hi and Lois, 7/14/11

This is the first Hi and Lois I can remember laughing at. Ha ha, it’s funny because the innocent little baby is learning about disappointment! Oh, I’m a terrible person.

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Mark Trail, 8/3/11

Oh my goodness, is something new and different happening in Mark Trail? Longtime readers know that the only good guy characters in Mark Trail other than Mark and his family are (a) square-jawed lawmen, (b) eccentric but lovable cabin-dwelling rustics, and (c) little children who love animals. The only acceptable bad guys are (a) animal-nappers, (b) smugglers, (c) thieves, (d) nature-hating developers, and (e) corrupt politicians. Nowhere on this grid is there room for a mysterious individual or group who attaches gold bands with bible verses on them to hapless geese. Who is this bizarre goose-centric sect? Are they a band of apocalyptic hermits who believe that these majestic birds with their huge wingspans and trumpeting cries are the angels spoken of in the Book of Revelation? Will their religious certainty resist even Mark’s fists? Will they kidnap Rusty and mold his feeble, pliable mind to match their monomania? I am extremely interested in finding out.

Spider-Man, 8/3/11

Exciting as it is to see a continuity strip do something new, it can be reassuring when one of them keeps on with its usual antics. For instance, Spider-Man is still an incompetent feeb! All’s right with the world.

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Crankshaft, 8/23/11

One aspect of the Funkyverse that is correctly only dwelled upon by a limited number of comics obsessives involves the question of intra-universe chronological continuity: what happened to Crankshaft when Funky Winkerbean jumped forward 10 years? I say “correctly” because really the timelines of all non-Doonesbury non-FBOFW comics, which generally run for years and years and yet the characters never get any older, is totally mucked up, so really, there’s no point in dwelling on it. The fact that the Funkyverse strips are permitted by a morally bankrupt comics industry and a loving God to continue spreading soul-killing gloom via the last few remaining newspapers is a Funkyverse dilemma that is incorrectly only dwelled upon by a limited number of comics obsessives, but that’s neither here nor there.

ANYWAY, for those of you who care, today’s Crankshaft confirms what we’ve all suspected, which is that Crankshaft’s universe never got time-jumped, and so the action in his strip is taking place about a decade before the current mopery in Funky Winkerbean. Here we see future Les romance victim Cayla, still sporting an Afro and still probably capable of experiencing joy. What event in the next decade will reduce her to the straight-haired, Les-proposal-accepting broken shell of a human that she is to become? Will it be because of something terrible Crankshaft is about to say to her this week? Yes, let’s go with that, it seems like a pretty safe assumption.

Spider-Man, 8/23/11

Another thing that’s only of interest to comics obsessives: changes in comics lettering style. More often than not this indicates that one of the dwindling number of holdouts who still hand-letter their strips have finally given up and start using a computer font. You can spend a bit of money and get a font based on your own handwriting that is almost indistinguishable from it, or you can make like Spider-Man and use the font that’s one step up from Comic Sans. Today our cyberletterer clearly was having so much fun playing with italics and bolded italics that they neglected that other great digital advance, the spellchecker, which probably would have helpfully noted that “copsin” is not a word in standard English.

Archie, 8/23/11

I actually completely love the middle two panels of this strip; Archie and Reggie’s mirrored angry faces together make a minor pop art masterpiece. The same could not be said for the hideous shirt that’s the source of the disagreement, which lends the whole dispute a certain air of absurdity.

Gil Thorp, 8/23/11

Guys, if you don’t find Kenny’s “‘Course not, mom. You were bombed!” response to his weeping, emotionally shattered mother hilarious, then I’m not sure if we can be friends anymore.

Marvin, 8/23/11

At last, the strategy behind Marvin’s constantly filthiness is revealed! By establishing an ever-expanding sphere of poop-stench centered on his person, he is marking his personal space.

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Spider-Man, 9/2/11

Since we last met our heroic caped webbed crusader, beloved super-spouse MJ has decided to get in on the petulant whining that appears to be her husband’s main joy in life, taking as her theme the Bugle reporter whose refusal to condemn Spider-Man has led to a rather transparent spider-crush on Peter’s part. However, it appears that Serra (is this how the kids are spelling “Sarah” these days? ugh, I hate the future) has traded in her mild affection towards the superhero for journalistic glory; in panel two, we see that J. Jonah Jameson has given her bylines and photo credits at almost the same font size as the banner headline, and all she had to do was fall in line with the publication’s strident anti-Spider-Man stance.

Panel one is notable in that the artist actually takes seriously the notion that MJ is toddling around the apartment wearing spiked heels and skin-tight capri pants, and took the time contemplate how a person so dressed might bend down to pick something up off the floor. (The answer: very carefully.)

Crankshaft, 9/2/11

So, is … is that other lady all right? The one who got hit in the head, with the ball? Enh, never mind her, let’s all just bask smugly in some important lessons about sportsmanship.

Six Chix, 9/2/11

Ho ho, it appears that this woman’s mafioso lover has murdered each of her six husbands in turn! How delightfully droll! We can all relate to this hilHOLY CRAP THAT HAND ON HER SHOULDER ISN’T ATTACHED TO ANYTHING AHHH AHHH AHHH

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Family Circus, 9/7/11

I have to admit that I’m delighted at the look of unalloyed maniac joy on Dolly’s face in this panel. It’s fun to imagine her methodically pulling these tissues out of the box, one by one, faster and faster, shouting the latest count out at the top of her lungs. This is the sort of behavior normally associated with the abuse of amphetamine-based stimulants, but I’m sure the Keane parents are far too protective to allow anything like that in the house, so we have to assume that something is just terribly wrong with poor Dolly’s brain chemistry.

Mary Worth, 9/7/11

In case you were wondering, Mary has hit the full-on platituding stage of her latest meddle. “Where there is love, there can be no fear! Only crushing, suicidal disappointment when you discover that your childhood love has moved on with someone else. What have you got to lose, except for all of your treasured hopes and dreams?”

Pluggers, 9/7/11

Wait a minute … pluggers would never eat fancy elitist foreign food from un-American places like “Belgium” or “Denver.” FALSE PLUGGERS! UNCLEAN!

Spider-Man, 9/7/11

“Really, I’m kind of out of it … I’m not sure where I am or what I’m doing … but I’m going to be an aggressive dick about it!” THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, EVERYBODY!

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Shoe, 9/14/11

Actually, some newspapers are considering giving tablet computers preloaded with their apps away to their subscribers, as a way to keep a hold of those readers in a digital age! Also, the U.S. Army under Custer had a number of Native American scouts and allies during the Battle of Little Bighorn, and having more of them might have improved Custer’s chance of victory. Oh, wait, no, sorry, iPads are hilarious, ha ha!

Spider-Man, 9/14/11

Noooo, Mary Jane, don’t tell Peter the secrets about the people of the Magic Picture Box! They’re his only friends!

Family Circus, 9/14/11

“Can I sit here and breathe in the sweet, rotten miasma of failure that hangs over you at all times? Can I, daddy? Can I?”

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Shoe, 9/21/11

Here’s the thing about jokes of the form “you put the X in Y,” where X represents one or more syllables in Y: the humor only works if the X makes up a part of Y even though the two words are not related semantically. For instance, if your significant other had travelled into orbit as part of the U.S. space program, it would be funny if, after admiring their attractive backside, you said, “Baby, you put the ‘ass’ in ‘astronaut.'” However, if you were dating an Olympic champion, you shouldn’t say, “Baby, you put the ‘win’ in ‘winner,'” as that would sound very, very stupid. “Crank,” in the sense of an eccentric, obsessive person, is actually derived from “cranky,” so the level of wordplay here is pretty disappointing to say the least.

(OK, I admit that I launched into that etymological and linguistic lecture entirely because I’m particularly proud of the “you put the ‘ass’ in ‘astronaut'” joke I thought up.)

Anyway, I do enjoy the cranky old Biz character in Shoe despite the fact that he’s being linguistically ill-used here. I particularly like the fact that he’s angrily berating Roz for always serving him tasteless tasteless food, and yet he nevertheless comes to Roz’s to eat all the time. Isn’t there some other bird-restaurant where the bird-people of Shoe eat? I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of snooty place where they serve fancy bird-French food. Maybe Biz can’t afford it, on his bird-Social Security.

Spider-Man, 9/21/11

So, just to keep you up to date, Peter Parker is insisting that, because a bunch of sick kids are expecting Spider-Man to visit them at the hospital, he must go to the hospital, even though the police are after him and also know that he’s planning to visit the hospital. Because if there’s one thing those sick kids want to see, it’s their hero getting arrested.

Apartment 3-G, 9/21/11

Ruby has heard you complaining about how her hair is dumb, and has responded by dying it Manic Panic red! That … that’s what you wanted, right?

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Dennis the Menace, 9/22/11

Mrs. Wilson knows she needs to calm her radical anti-establishment husband down if this encounter is to end without violence. “Now, dear, you and I both know that 911 is a joke, but there’s no need to call him a pig to his face. You’ll just get tasered in the neck again, and I don’t think your heart can take it.”

Judge Parker, 9/22/11

Wow, that’s quite a large amount of cash that Sam and Abbey can just pull out of their bank account on a whim. Do you suppose that all subsequent Judge Parker storylines are going to be more and more transparently about the Spencer-Driver clan’s wealth? Will every strip in April of 2012 just consist of the two of them sitting around counting out hundred-dollar bills, pausing only to occasionally blow their noses into them?

Marvin, 9/22/11

Despite my burning and irrational hatred for Marvin, I have to admit I feel a twinge of sympathy for him in the second panel. Look at his growing sense of panic as he learns that, as his life draws to a close decades from now, even the joys of eating will elude him! Quick, someone tell him something reassuring about old age, like that he’ll finally be able to start wearing diapers again.

Spider-Man, 9/22/11

Yesterday’s post implied that Spider-Man would inspire by sick children by going to the hospital and getting arrested. In fact, he’ll inspire them by going to the hospital and telling them that being a superhero is for suckers and quitting in disgust. We regret the error.

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Spider-Man, 10/2/11

I’m pretty sure a thought balloon containing the phrase “I hadn’t thought this through!” ought in the interest of accuracy to be hovering over Spider-Man’s head in each and every installment of the newspaper Spider-Man strip in which he appears. Hope you’re proud of the generation of wheelchair-bound cop-hating scofflaws you’re about to unleash on the world, Spidey!

Pluggers, 10/2/11

God damn it, this mildly racy pun has forced me to hold the concepts of “breasts” and “pluggers” in my mind simultaneously, if only briefly. This has I suppose increased my awareness of cancer, as the resulting emotion is a metaphorical cancer upon my very soul.

Panel from Mary Worth, 10/2/11

Huh, so straight female pro soccer fans are more sexually aggressive than the gay male ones? Mary Worth: always teaching me fun facts!

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Click the banner to contribute and receive a Commemorative Comics Curmudgeon Bible Bird Band! Details here.

The geese are coming home to roost! Today is the last day of the Fall Fundraiser. Bands will still be available for late or mailed donations, but this is the final reminder. If you’ve already contributed, thank you — your band is on its way. And if you haven’t yet, consider what the comics would be like without the unique perspective The Comics Curmudgeon offers every day. Now isn’t that worth a couple bucks? You bet! And seriously, do you really want to spend the rest of your entire life without a Mark Trail-themed Bible Bird Band?

Marmaduke, 10/14/11

Eva, wistful in her drindl, dreams of a second chance for the Thousand-Year Reich.

Crankshaft, 10/14/11

At the risk of horning in on Mary Worth territory, here’s a page from Uncle Lumpy’s Guide for the Young in Love:

Proposals:

• Proposals must be made in person, or by telephone or video chat only if the matter is urgent and a face-to-face meeting is impossible. Billboards, faxes, scoreboards, and above all letters are unacceptable means of soliciting a lifelong commitment — there is simply too much opportunity for error or misunderstanding, and no chance to correct such quickly when they occur.
• The person who makes a proposal is within his or her rights to demand an answer, which must also be made in person as above. “Yes” and “No” are the traditional alternatives, although “I need to think about it”, “Why can’t we just go on like this?”, and “Oh, baby, oh, oh, oh!” are acceptable variants of the latter.
• As a corollary to the above, under no circumstances should “No answer” be accepted by either party as the basis for ending a desired relationship.

Eugene, Lucy — this is not romantic, touching, or poignant. It is stupid, and you two deserve exactly what you got.

Spider-Man, 10/14/11

You know, it occurs to me that I’ve neglected Spider-Man this week. It felt great, and I’m gonna keep it up.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/14/11

Loweezy is disappointed with her copy of Lisa’s Story: the Other Shoe: why hasn’t anybody shot Les yet, and what in tarnation are these “shoe” things, anyway?

Fundraiser update

Bible Bird Bands are now arriving by the gaggle — and that’s a lot! Don’t delay: make a generous donation of any amount, and get your very own. And when you receive it, don’t forget to send Josh a picture at bio@jfruh.com. And to faithful readers throughout South America, Africa, and Asia — time to step up, folks:

GOOSETRAX (full details and Privacy Policy here.)

Comics Curmudgeon Bible Birds are winging their way to faithful readers worldwide!

Mark Trail’s Greatest Hits – a Fall Fundraiser special, part 5

Mark Trail — 5/14, 11/18, 11/21, 12/14, and 12/23/09

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s exciting conclusion of Mark Trail’s Greatest Hits!

— Uncle Lumpy

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In the absence of a pulpit, I am employing comic strips.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/16/11

Everything new is bad. Children are a curse.

Family Circus, 10/16/11

I mean it — a curse.

Mary Worth, 10/16/11

We can never escape the mistakes of our past.

Judge Parker, 10/16/11

So we should enjoy the simple pleasures life offers us.

Spider-Man (panel), 10/16/11

Wherever we find them.

That’s it for me — Josh will be back Sunday with your Comments of the Week, and Monday for more mockin’ on the funnies. Thanks for a fun week, everybody!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Crock, 10/17/11

It may demolish everything you hold dear to hear this, but, when I go on vacation, I often don’t catch up on many of the comics that otherwise make up my daily rotation. I mean, obviously I need to keep up to date on every bizarre moment in Gil Thorp (OMG THERE IS AN ASPERGER’S SYNDROME STORYLINE YOU GUYS FOOTBALL SEASON MAY GET GOOD/HORRIFYINGLY ILL-CONCEIVED YET), but, you know, I usually don’t feel like I really need to check in with all the Crocks I missed just for completeness’s sake. And yet today’s installment left me scrambling through the archives, desperate to figure out if, as the word “still” in the opening word balloon here implies, that there was some sort of ongoing plot involving the two hotbox prisoners finally going insane due to heat and isolation. But no, there’s no explanation, really, except maybe this, which only makes sense if the prisoners in the hotboxes are also vultures. Which seems insane, but, when you think about it, no more insane than the idea that one of the hotbox prisoners is having a psychotic break in which several cultural touchstones from the 1980s and 1990s merge together to form some kind of spectacularly unfunny punchline-like utterance. But focusing on the details here causes us to miss the important big picture, which is: don’t do drugs, kids, for serious.

Spider-Man, 10/17/11

I understand and respect those who simply cannot work up the energy to deal with newspaper Spider-Man on its incredibly inane terms, but really, panel two does remind me why I love it so. I’m trying to parse precisely what kind of dumb Spidey is supposed to be exhibiting here; my guess is that he truly believes that MJ has spontaneously acquired spider-sensing powers, which comes as an enormous shock to him because he knows better than anyone else that his supposed supposed spider-sense doesn’t actually exist.

Slylock Fox, 10/17/11

Fun fact for you: frogs and toads are no longer considered distinct groupings by biologists. The order Anura embraces all frogs and toads; any species of that order that lives most of its life on land is labelled a “toad,” but these species don’t have a single common ancestor distinct from the common ancestor of everything in Anura. I found this out while doing a bit of research to come up with a joke about this strip. Slylock Fox may call itself “Comics for Kids,” but I’m 37 years old and I still learned something from it! So I feel a little churlish pointing out that today’s puzzle’s solution hinges on something of a scientific inaccuracy, and furthermore that said solution focuses on the amphibian life cycle and yet the illustrative comic includes a frog with a belly button.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/20/11

I am 100 percent in favor of Snuffy Smith focusing less on chicken thievery and more on Lureen cutting a sexual swath through the male population of Hootin’ Holler. The nickname she’s chosen for her current beau is rather poignant; due to his ripe old age and her impoverished community’s rudimentary medical system, she probably doesn’t need to worry about this fling lasting very long, if you know what I mean.

Mary Worth, 10/20/11

Oh, good lord, Bobby does still love Gina, and now we’re going to get a week or two of strips dedicated to the two of them mewling rapturously about the glory and majesty of their affection for one another. Our only hope is that we suddenly switch to a different, more interesting plot — one that, say, explains how Inside the Actors Studio’s James Lipton lost it all and ended up working as a maitre d’ at a midscale restaurant in California.

Spider-Man, 10/20/11

“I mean, I’m really not the kind of guy people ‘like’ or ‘want to help in any way.’ What’s in it for her?”

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Ziggy, 11/1/11

Oh, Ziggy, you keep making the mistake of thinking that you and your cold-blooded aquatic friend have any sort of shared values. We already know that he dreams bloodthirstily of the day when the mammals wipe each other out in a genocidal war, leaving the planet to him and his fishy compatriots. Thus it should come as no surprise that he’s pleased by the thought of a great flood rising up and wiping out all land-life, allowing him to happily swim about the rooms he can only dimly perceive from his bowl today. These “underwater homes” might be bad for you, Ziggy, but they’ll be very, very good for him!

Fortunately for us air-breathers, fish are still unable to fully grasp metaphors, which are our main tool for planetary domination.

Marmaduke, 11/1/11

Marmaduke of course dreams of sitting atop a throne of skulls as the demon-king of hell, so there’s actually a bit of pathos in seeing him woof out bluster from some ratty suburban armchair.

Spider-Man, 11/1/11

Whoah, has it been a while since we’ve seen the Amazing Spider-Man failing at something? Well, here you go! Ahh, that’s the stuff.

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Spider-Man, 11/6/11

Oh, man, this is pretty much my favorite kind of Spider-Man strip: one in which he’s insulted and humiliated in a vaguely sexual fashion. Sure, the whole thing about gaining Jameson’s trust with Spidey-hate makes zero sense, since every interaction between JJJ and Serra we’ve seen involves her defending him; still, if we can see Spider-Man cowering in chains at her high-heeled feet while she calls him a “costumed clown,” I’m a happy guy.

Judge Parker, 11/6/11

Since the Parker-Driver clan has basically unlimited wealth at its disposal, much of the drama of the strip revolves around how they can emotionally navigate their way through a life of obscene abundance. Sam manages through emotional deadness and a refusal to make genuine connections to his fellow human beings, a lesson he’s trying hard to pass on to Sophie before it’s too late. “Sure, I dropped a ludicrous amount of money on this stupid RV, but when I get bored with it, I can always sell it, or, worst case, set it on fire and then collect the insurance money. Do you plan to do the same with Derek? Let me know now if you do, because the lawyers we’d need for that are spendy, and I might have to move some money around to make that happen.”

Panel from Mary Worth, 11/6/11

Desperate to show that she still has some street cred after years as Ian’s trophy wife, Toby goes for the most awkward and ill-timed fist-bump in history as the waiter looks on in horror. “Yes, Mary, it’s time to get in touch with local law enforcement agencies! Come on, give me some daps.”

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Luann, 11/10/11

GOD DAMN IT DO I REALLY HAVE TO TALK ABOUT LUANN? FINE. So, here’s a thing I noticed about Luann: Check out how broad-shouldered and grim-faced and bad-ass Brad is looking in panel one there. Does it remind you of anything? Like, maybe the strip from last week where Toni strode off in triumph from WeenieWorld, after having physically threatened Brad’s boss?

Even the jacket is more or less the same! This probably means that “Brad” and “Toni” are actually two different aspects of the same individual’s personality. The question is, who’s the real one and who’s the delusion? I’m certainly hoping Toni is the projection, because really, who would want to make up Brad, even in their subconscious, gross.

Seeing that panel from last week in isolation also makes me realize that Anne is moonlighting at the mall as one of Santa’s elves, which means that her erratic behavior may be a result of stress brought on by overwork.

Hi and Lois, 11/10/11

Not wanting to know about the contents of your hot dog is actually a pretty good policy. Don’t worry, kids, there’s not much nutritive difference between “cow anus” and “turkey cloaca.” And turkey dogs are still chock-full of the delicious nitrates you love!

Apartment 3-G, 11/10/11

Ha ha, Lu Ann, Paul has already seen the wedding dress, since it was worn by his mother and all his sisters and sisters-in-law for every Linsky Compound wedding ever! It is probably all moldy and disgusting, like this one, but wearing it is an inviolable Tradition, just like the ceremonial head-shaving/lobotomy during the reception.

Spider-Man, 11/10/11

“Yup, I knew! But I still passed out and let myself be chained up anyway. Actually succeeding at something … it just didn’t feel like me, you know?”

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Spider-Man, 11/20/11

“What’s shakin’, Jolly Jonah? Hope you recognize my voice through my mask.” “Parker, is that you? Why the hell are you wearing a mask?” “No, it’s Spid … uh, I, uh … [CLICK]”

I certainly hope that the “All the news that’s fit — to print…?” narration box, despite its baffling punctuation, heralds a move away from this boring “Big Boss” storyline and instead presages Jonah and Robbie arguing about how the Bugle can move into the 21st century and become a Web-centric media outlet, or at least figure out how to cut down on the costs of producing a legacy print product. “Hey, Jonah, look at these huge gutters between the panels on the comics page! We could probably fit in some more ads if we got rid of those.”

This is probably as good a time as any to let you know that J. Jonah Jameson has a Twitter (in ALL CAPS, obviously).

Mary Worth, 11/20/11

It’s really sad to see how deeply this minor-league purse snatching has shaken Mary, as asking Toby to lead you anywhere is generally a sign that you’ve lost your will to live. In panel three, though, we can see that Toby’s scarf is swiveling to always point the same direction as her head when her neck turns, which may indicate that we’re dealing with an advanced and competent robotic Toby replacement.

Dick Tracy, 11/20/11

Were you hoping that the revamped Dick Tracy would come across less like a classic gangster flick from the ’40s and more like a modern episode of Cops, full of drunken domestic disputes? Well, here you go!

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Crankshaft, 11/30/11

Once upon a time, the Funkyverse strips were actually whimsical and funny and not at all depressing, and you can find evidence of this embedded in some of the strips’ running gags, which now seem deeply horrible wrenched out of their original context. Remember how teenage hall monitor Les used to guard his station with a machine gun? In the old days that was just cheery absurdism, but now it would probably set up a story about a Columbine-style massacre — or, no, that’s too flashy, it’d probably actually be about how the gun went off accidentally and hit an innocent student-athlete in the leg, ending the Scapegoats’ chance for a championship and the poor kid’s promising career, leading to a downward spiral into alcoholism, suicide, etc.

Anyhoo, Crankshaft constantly destroying mailboxes out of some combination of incompetence and spite and Lena’s inedible and possibly poisonous brownies both had a similar sort of innocence about them back in the day, but in the modern Funkyverse we get to see the emotional devastation that they cause. Ha ha, that man is legitimately furious because Crankshaft ran over his mailbox, and neither Crankshaft nor the bureaucrats who employ him care, which just makes him madder! The best part of today’s strip is the expressions of genuine horror on the ’Shaft’s fellow drivers’ faces, as if somehow they’re only now realizing what a colossal dick he is.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/30/11

Speaking of the Funkyverse, today’s second panel could pretty much be its mission statement.

Six Chix, 11/30/11

It probably says something about me that this is a cartoon featuring the evil queen from Snow White talking about freezing her eggs and the thing that most baffles me about it is the setting. Is she on a date? Isn’t this talk a little heavy for a date? Or has she replaced her magic mirror with a nebbishy personal assistant, and this is the two of them unwinding after work?

Spider-Man, 11/30/11

“Yes! I finally got a staff job in the lucrative, growing print media business! And all I had to do was give my tyrannical boss a picture of my superhero identity consorting with a known criminal! I’m a genius!”

Archie, 11/30/11

Archie’s I Love The ’90s week continues! Today’s flashback memory: Remember when they started giving talk shows to ethnic people?

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Six Chix, 12/4/11

I feel that our current long economic slump has yet to meet its potential for packaging economic desperation as sport. Sure, we’ve seen the occasional hobo party, but what about the dance marathons of old, where people boogied to exhaustion for cash prizes? That’s why I’m pleased to see how much our job fair attendees are really getting into this game of musical chairs. They’re not just walking sullenly in a circle waiting for the music to stop; they’re shaking their money makers, in the hopes that they might someday soon be given a chance to make money, via gainful employment. Dance, proles! Dance for your jobs, and for the amusement of your betters!

Hagar the Horrible, 12/4/11

Just to review, Hagar makes his living by leading bands of bloodthirsty warriors from Scandinavia down to Western Europe, stealing whatever movable goods he can find, murdering all who resist, and raping and enslaving the rest. Probably the nice people of France stopped being trusting and started being suspicious and fearful right around the time the first Viking horde came up the river and burned their villages to the ground! But it’s true, Hagar, you don’t have to lock your door, because you’ve bought the loyalty of a group of retainers, with plunder, so they’ll fight off your enemies for you. Unless your raids have been less than successful lately, in which case one of the more ambitious young men among them will probably kill you and take control of your warrior band!

Judge Parker, 12/4/11

Earlier this week Sam and Randy made a date to go to the firing range, where Sam’s going to give Randy some tips! But obviously Randy doesn’t need advice on how to turn down repeated offers of sex from beautiful women, as he’s already a master at that.

Spider-Man, 12/4/11

Last month my wife got a promotion, and now she makes more than me! I responded by mumbling something insincere and then stalking off to sulk. (Ha ha, just kidding, I congratulated her effusively and then we went and had a nice dinner, because I’m not a complete jackass.)

Panels from Mary Worth, 12/4/11

“I enjoy my cooking and thought that your opinion of it might be as high as mine! People who don’t like the things I like are trash and I don’t associate with them.”

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Spider-Man, 12/7/11

I’ve been staring at MJ’s hair for a long time now trying to figure out what exactly is so wrong with it. Is the back of her skull now disproportionately bulbous? Is her ponytail just sort of sticking out of a huge, matted mass that’s starting to border on white-girl dreadlocks? Whatever it is, Peter can now get over the fact that he’s been emasculated by his wife’s high salary. “Ha, Mary Jane may be the main breadwinner in this family, but at least my hair doesn’t look like that.”

Actually, MJ may soon be the family’s sole breadwinner, seeing as Peter has overslept on his first day of work.

Family Circus, 12/7/11

There are so many delicious reasons for Daddy to look depressed here that I can’t settle on my favorite! Is he sad because he wanted to play the hero and deliver on Billy’s extravagant gift desires, only to have the kid go over his head to his mother? Is he sad because Billy has figured out that there is no Santa Claus, and more to the point that his parents are cheap bastards who would never be able to fulfill his Christmas wishes? Is he sad because work is his refuge from his family, but today’s he’s going to have to spend precious moments scanning and emailing Billy’s gift list, time could be spent more pleasantly on spreadsheets and such? Is he sad because in all likelihood this is a recycled panel from the ’80s in which Billy originally wanted him to fax the list to grandma, and he realizes that he’s doomed to repeat the same dumb gags forever with only the technology updated every decade or so?

Crankshaft, 12/7/11

Crankshaft, meanwhile, is sad because he has to pay for medical services! I can’t wait to see how sad he’ll be when he finds out he has prostate cancer.

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Apartment 3-G, 12/11/11

As usual, Sunday’s A3G just rehashes the plot from the previous week, but it’s still worth lingering over, not least because it showcases the disturbing truth about this storyline: that Lu Ann has, through at least two engagements, still been legally married. I mean, surely she’d written Gary off as dead in her head for years, but unless she or the military moved to have him declared legally dead … then she’s still married, right? Even One-Armed Becky in Funky Winkerbean waited until her missing husband was (incorrectly) declared dead before moving on. The fun potential upshot of this is that maybe Paul’s creepy dad was right to freak out about Lu Ann’s marriage certificate, if there was no legal indication that her marriage was over.

Even better than all that, of course, is the fact that Margo is “blah, blah, blah”ing her way through the letter from the Air Force about Lu Ann’s dead husband. Hey, doesn’t the military usually send someone in person to tell you your loved one has been killed? It would have been fun if two uniformed airmen had come to the apartment and Margo had been there as they launched into their spiel and said “Yadda yadda yadda, boys, get to the point, we don’t have all day.”

Spider Man, 12/11/11

Just another Sunday of non-heroics, from … the Amazing Spider-Man!!!! When law enforcement can’t keep the streets safe, he will! But law enforcement actually does a pretty good job, most of the time, so he’ll just continue to enjoy a pleasant Sunday with his wife and aunt, thanks.

Panel from Dick Tracy, 12/11/11

If you’ve ever said to yourself, “Enh, I’m not going to give the new revamped Dick Tracy a chance until it inexplicably includes a panel featuring a villain quoting from Men Without Hats’ 1982 smash hit ‘Safety Dance,'” then you are officially out of excuses, my friend.

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Gil Thorp, 12/12/11

Oh, man, is this winter’s Gil Thorp plot really going to be about vaguely shady tattoo artists who give tattoos to minors, which may or may not be illegal, depending on what state Milford is supposed to be in? Actually, more than the applicable laws and tattoo parlor licensure guidelines, I’m more concerned about our tattooists’ terribly ill-conceived marketing strategy. In my experience, the last people who want to emulate teen fashion are twentysomethings, since they were teenagers themselves relatively recently and are quite busy fashioning themselves as cool adults and have zero interest in being mistaken for some dumb kid in high school. No, you really have to be well into your forties before it seems like a good idea to recapture your youth by getting a tattoo at a place recommended by your 16-year-old nephew.

On the bright side, when Soul Patch and Facial Tattoo are engaging in evil plotting, they’re taking panel time away from Gil and Kaz blathering on about how they need more depth at guard or whatever.

Spider-Man, 12/12/11

I’ve always assumed the one of the main purposes of the newspaper Spider-Man comic strip is to remind newspaper readers that Spider-Man and other Marvel properties exist, and have adventures in various media formats, and that you can enjoy those adventures if you pay Marvel and its distribution partners money. But, considering the Thor movie came out in May and the DVD came out in September and we’re just now getting a Thor plot, it appears that the newspaper Spider-Man strip is just as incompetent at its job as its hero as it his.

Dick Tracy, 12/12/11

Flattop (or Putty Puss made up as Flattop, or whatever the hell is going on here) has moved from new wave ’80s hits back to the ’70s, as he now sings “Disco Inferno” while attempting to fill our hero with hot lead. I’m reassured that Dick is completely unfamiliar with the lyrics to these extremely popular song; it’s a well known fact that the music industry is dominated by communists and degenerates, and it’s best to avoid the radio altogether as a result.

Six Chix, 12/12/11

I’m all in favor of composting and everything, but I do think this strip has hilariously captured the facial expression and body posture you’d expect from someone who just accidentally stuck her hand into a jar full of rotting garbage.

Slylock Fox, 12/12/11

Not gonna lie to you: My first guess was that the this mystery would hinge on some obscure fact about the urinary habits of alligators, and I was pretty disappointed when it didn’t.

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Apartment 3-G, 12/21/11

Aww, Lu Ann as earned herself a little post-engagement-breaking-off aimless wandering/thought ballooning. Naturally, I’m EXTREMELY hesitant to argue with any sentence that starts with “Maybe Margo was right all along,” but … maybe the adjective you’re thinking of isn’t “happy” so much as “creepy, controlling, and cult-like”? OK, that’s three adjectives, but you know. Of course, if Lu Ann did fall in love with the entire Linski compound, that’s a sure sign of insanity on her part, so Margo could still be right in that the Lu Ann’s misplaced affections are a sign of her severe emotional problems.

Spider-Man, 12/21/11

“I mean, will this new apartment have a ‘door,’ or one of those fancy new ‘windows’ everyone’s talking about? I know you got a big raise, but this is New York, and real estate is spendy if you want those kinds of amenities.”

Family Circus, 12/21/11

“And I’m not sweet at all! Everyone who’s met me thinks I’m basically intolerable!”

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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:

• Audible.com: Download a free sci-fi audiobook today!
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Marvin, 1/13/11

In this shocking panel, Marvin has taken two thousand years of theology and turned it on its head. In a direct riposte to Calvin, who started from the premise of an omniscient, omnipotent God and declared that our ends were predestined before we were created, leaving any seeming room to maneuver an illusion, Marvin instead preaches the existence of a smug, all-knowing narc, who gave us the power to shape our own destiny just to revel in the certain knowledge that we’ll screw it up and condemn ourselves to damnation. Whether or not you agree with him, you have to admit it’s a welcome change of pace from the constant poop jokes.

Spider-Man, 1/13/11

It strikes me as a pretty short trip from “I’ve no way to follow them” to “So why should I even try?” and from there to “I wonder what’s on TV!”

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Six Chix, 1/24/12

I’m totally in love with this drunken lump’s extreme level of dishevelment! I especially like the incredibly awkward position he’s passed out in, and the fact that he’s still clutching his precious, precious tallboy, even in unconsciousness. Also, that slice of pizza, just sitting on the couch with no plate or anything and almost certainly permanently grease-staining the cushion, is charming to me in its disgustingness.

But still, ladies! Do not fear that any man you meet on the Internet will be gross! My wife found me online, and I have rarely left any kind of mark on the upholstery in her house in the eight years or so since I moved into it.

Mary Worth, 1/24/12

Well, if against all odds and good taste Mary’s victory lap is going to be extended for another week, I guess having Emily and her family do the worshipping is marginally OK, considering. “It’s good to see you too Ms. Worth! We are so very grateful! And we thought to ourselves, what gift could possibly be adequate to show our gratitude to the God-woman who rescued our daughter? So we now present you the dismembered torso of Emily’s kidnapper, wrapped in a plastic bag for your convenience. A blood sacrifice for you, O divine being!”

Archie, 1/24/12

If you need proof that the current run of Archie strips are repeats from a pre-Internet era, consider this: can you imagine any news event so horrible that would reduce a seasoned TV anchor, cynical to the core and used to smiling his way through whatever words the teleprompter spit out at him, to tears, that you wouldn’t learn about until the six o’clock news? Anything worth ol’ Dan Brenon’s anxiety here — nuclear holocaust, one or more coastal states falling into the sea, a mass outbreak of zombie plague, what have you — would surely have been chatted up on Twitter or something hours ago.

Spider-Man, 1/24/12

Having realized that he’s far too incompetent to defeat or even find Thor, Spidey has decided to seek help from the Avengers, just in time to be four months ahead of the Avengers movie! Anyway, they’ll probably rescue MJ for him, but they’re gonna smack him around a bit first, just for fun.

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Garfield, 2/7/12

So, here’s an absolutely true thing: for years now, every time my wife manages to one-up me on something, I say “It’s not a contest” and she dramatically replies “Says the loser!” The first time we did it was spontaneous, and now it’s just one of the catchphrases in the long-running sitcom that our marriage (like, I assume, most long-term relationships) has become. So you can understand why we found this strip both hilarious and unsettling. Still, it’s extremely unnerving to see someone you love say “Obviously Jim Davis is spying on us” with a completely straight face.

Hi and Lois, 2/7/12

Let’s ignore for the moment the whole “who-moved-my-cookie” office-hijinks har-har. For me, the thing that really captures the banality of white-collar life is the poster hanging up in the second panel. I’m assuming that “FF” stands for “Foofram,” the name of Hi and Thirsty’s employer, which I’ve kind of come to love. Remember, nothing boosts workplace morale like printing your corporate logo and “QUALITY” onto an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of paper and scotch-taping it to the wall of the break room.

Mary Worth, 2/7/12

Not to brag or anything, but it turns out I was 100% correct about Nola’s techniques for turning aside Mary’s meddling. Having volunteered with no prying whatsoever her penchant for nonconsensual nonmonogamy, she can now lean back and simply watch Mary’s head explode.

Mark Trail, 2/7/12

Hey, remember when Tommy told us like six times that he would just leave his jacket lying around in the middle of the woods and Butch the blind dog would stay near it, when for no readily apparent reason Tommy would leave Butch the blind dog out in the woods by himself, and you were all like, “Well, that doesn’t make any sense.” Jokes on you, suckers! This particular Chekhovian gun has fired nicely! I mean, you have to admit that Jeff the bank robber seems like the kind of dude who would just put on some gross old jacket he found lying around in the forest without really thinking about it that much.

Spider-Man, 2/7/12

Meanwhile, Spider-Man has decided to try out this whole “super-heroics” thing, with predictable results.

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Apartment 3-G, 2/23/12

Since Nina has agreed to be her husband’s smoke-filled incubator and nothing more, he’s left with the responsibilities of tricking out the future kid’s nursery, and as someone with external genitalia is obviously totally unfit for the task. Look at the little lost lamb, wandering around Manhattan with a giant stuffed bear, mewling for help! If you didn’t know anything about these characters, you might imagine that this is the start of some sort of sexy sex affair between Scott and Margo, but since this is Margo we’re talking about she’ll probably just end up berating him again like she did in 2006:

Haha, how much do I love that panel? A lot, is how much!

Archie, 2/23/12

Ha ha, yes, it’s funny that hockey goalies wear masks that make it difficult to tell who they are, despite the existence of other cues such as height and build, but I think we’re all missing the important point here, which is that Coach Kleats thinks that saying “Now I really want you to block that goal” imparts useful information about goaltending. I mean, I know what with the budget cuts he’s got a lot on his plate, but sure he could do a little online research and come up with some slightly higher-level jargon?

Mary Worth, 2/23/12

Oh, man, can we count all the amazing things in today’s Mary Worth? Let’s start with the classic word-sequences-that-would-never-be-uttered-by-humans “middle-management sales” and “I still can’t believe the events that led to Nola’s promotion!” Then there’s our male gossip’s hilariously exaggerated gestures and facial expressions; he appears to be auditioning for a nonexistent vaudeville revival circuit, in his mind. And of course there’s also his female counterpart’s bright blue hair, framing her sad, worn-down face. Probably she dyed her hair blue six years ago when she got this corporate job, as a last act of defiance to reaffirm her identity as someone vaguely cool; and yet here she is, having kept that color more out of habit than anything else, carping pettily about the new vice president of sales, without a hint of irony. These people deserve Nola, is what I’m saying.

Spider-Man, 2/23/12

Man, I wish I could get people to start referring to my naps as “the fabled Josh-sleep.” None would dare wake me then!

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Spider-Man, 3/10/12

A typical superhero comic trope is the ironic yet true thing said unknowingly about a superhero’s secret identity, right? I’m assuming that’s what the all-too-true “’Tis useless to call for her husband!” is all about. Not that Thor’s next sentence is any less hilarious. Honestly, if someone says “None but Spider-Man can save her now” about you, you should probably start making your peace with death.

Hi and Lois, 3/10/12

I suppose if you’re on DJ duty at a retro-disco party you have to entertain yourself the best you can, but I think it’s needlessly cruel to use the spotlight to focus everyone’s attention on the first middle-aged person of the evening to injure himself dancing.

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Dennis the Menace, 3/13/12

Hmm, Dennis boasts about being completely uninterested in loving, magical bonding moments with his father, and also convinces the presumably illiterate Joey that books are a load of dull crap? +5 menacing points! (This total would be higher if I knew for sure that his dad was within earshot, weeping.)

Six Chix, 3/13/12

Does anyone else remember the episode of Facts of Life where Tootie almost decides to lose her virginity in the backseat of a car with some dude, but then changes her mind at the last minute? And she gets into the car wearing a trenchcoat over some ostensibly sexy but actually off-putting frill-and-bow covered ’80s lingerie-harness? Anyway, I certainly hope that this far-too-media-savvy child eventually encounters this episode on YouTube and learns a thing or two.

Spider-Man, 3/13/12

So, the past few — days? it seems like so much longer — of the Thor portion of the current Spider-Man storyline can now be summed up like this:

Thor: Forsooth, Heimdall, this faire lady is dying, and to save her I must prithee ask thee in bullshit fake-o historically/geographically/culturally inappropriate Old Timey English to let me pass!

Heimdall: Nay, my brother, Odin hast charged me with preventing you from re-entering Asgard.

Thor: But the lady! Let me pass!

Heimdall: Nay!

[repeat this way too many times]

Thor: No, but seriously dude, let me in.

Heimdall: Enh, fine, whatever.

ACTION! ADVENTURE! EXCITEMENT!!!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/22/12

See, it’s just like the 1914 Flanders Christmas Truce, but with colorful accents, obesity, and th’ diabetuss.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/22/12

Bull, dear, you were scouted by the St. Louis Cardinals, not “the then” St. Louis Cardinals. Believe it or not, they were called “the St. Louis Cardinals” only during their years in St. Louis (1960 – 1987), so there’s no risk of confusion with any “before” or “after” St. Louis Cardinals. If you need to rule out the baseball team, just add “NFL” or “football.” But otherwise, please — it’s a language; people use it to communicate. Show some care with it.

Now if Les were a real friend, he’d help Bull relive his glory days by pointing out his error at great length — with helpful examples, a diagram or two, and maybe a condescending little smirk. Then Bull could pound his ass like back in the day, go home, bang Linda, and enjoy his best night’s sleep in twenty-five years.

Spider-Man, 3/22/12

Utterly ineffective against Loki and now immobilized, Spider-Man’s gonna spectate the hell out of this battle. It’s like a dream come true!

Marvin, 3/22/12

If he’s sitting on the comics page, I dread tomorrow’s strip.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/23/12

Some jokes never get old. This isn’t one of them.

Crock, 3/23/12

But all jokes are improved by adding “pants” to the punchline. Try it yourself: replace “grenades” with “pants”, and see what happens!

Dinette Set, 3/23/12

If you like a punchline a lot, follow the lead of professional comedian Jay Leno and say it again! The same rule applies to setups, right?

Family Circus, 3/23/12

Dolly reads the fairy tales so her siblings won’t have to, and adds hilarious commentary of her own! You’ll be hearing from our lawyers, Dolly.

Judge Parker, 3/23/12

Sam Driver descends on the scene like a WASP Archangel, enwhitening all who gaze upon him. Check it out:

Judge Parker (panels, edited), 3/11, 3/18, 3/23/12

Next: Monique Zatari — albino assassain!

Spider-Man, 3/23/12

It’s good to see Tinky-Winky’s still got work, but Thor’s gonna regret waking up that other guy. “Occupy Asgard — gods are the 1%!”

Just a reminder that there are no Comments of the Week on my watch — look for them when Josh gets back Monday.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Mary Worth, 4/10/12

Considering that Nola has finally experienced the change of heart that Mary’s been hoping for through the entire course of this storyline, she sure looks pretty gobsmacked in panel two. Maybe that’s because Mary Worth-style repentance doesn’t involve anything drastic like actually inconveniencing yourself professionally or financially. “Dear, doesn’t that seem a bit … dramatic? Surely you could have just donated a small portion of the raise you received with your ill-gotten promotion to charity. That would have alleviated my conscience if I were in your shoes! But this … well, it’s going to be difficult for me to preach personal improvement if personal improvement involves substantive and unpleasant changes in one’s life. That’s not the sort of thing most people go for.”

Spider-Man, 4/10/12

Poor Spider-Man! Over the course of this storyline, he really hasn’t had much success in defeating toughs or finding MJ or convincing the Avengers to help him find MJ or defeating Thor or getting into Asgard under his own power or defeating Loki or getting back to Earth from Asgard under his own power. But can he berate an underpaid nurse’s aide and jump to the head of the triage line at the emergency room? Yes! He can berate the hell out of that guy and jump the hell to the head of that line! The Amazing Spider-Man!

Hi and Lois, 4/10/12

“So if you want to benefit from our nation’s grinding economic malaise, shut the fuck up, get in there, frown a lot, and let me lowball this guy, because he’s desperate to sell, and when I say ‘desperate,’ it’s not an exaggeration for effect, I’m talking actual, palpable desperation. Nobody said real estate was pretty, bud.”

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B.C., 4/13/12

Hey, let’s talk about jokes, shall we? Let’s say you want to write a joke about about a rabbit who likes hip-hop music. I know, pretty funny, right? Because rabbits hop about? I mean, you know, the Preakness, a legitimate million-dollar horse race with a storied history, couldn’t resist making a rapping pirate Easter Bunny one of their mascots, so really, how could we expect B.C. to resist?

BUT HERE’S THE THING ABOUT JOKES, which is that you need some kind of set up, right? Like, here your set up is “all the animals are telling their favorite kind of music, and we want to the interrogator to be irritated by the cute puns by the time he gets to the hip-hop liking rabbit.” Except! The snake likes grunge music and the turtle likes easy listening, which, unless I am woefully out of the loop about animal stereotypes, have nothing to do with their species. They’re just … arbitrary musical genres. Here’s what the bird-thing should say in the final panel: “Oh, please, say hip-hop! I want the world to make some sort of sense, if only for a moment!”

Baldo, 4/13/12

Aw, Baldo is having a hard time working up the nerve to talk to a girl he likes, so his friend Cruz has brought him a Halloween prop to practice with! I don’t really talk about Baldo very much here, but I do read it every day, and when important things happen, like the title character being encouraged to hump a sex doll dressed as a witch, I feel obliged to bring them to your attention.

Spider-Man, 4/13/12

Well, Spidey, it looks like MJ just woke up without any help from you! “She’s just … someone I rescued — that’s all,” he says. “Yeah, rescued, that’s it.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/17/12

So this perky underclassman nerd is attempting to woo jock senior Summer by means of anonymous text messages, which sounds like something that most girls would find spectacularly creepy and would probably earn him a punch in the face, but in the Funkyverse there’s a 50-50 chance this will result in true love. It did make me wonder (a) if anonymous text messages are even something you can send from your phone, (b) if so how a reply could get back to you, and (c) assuming such things exist, if anyone really calls them “restricted texts” as our amorous dweeb has been doing. Then I realized that I had just a little too much self respect to put the energy into researching the answers to these questions, so I didn’t! Aren’t you proud of me?

Mark Trail, 4/17/12

By “updating an aerial survey of his area,” Doc of course means “masturbating.” He knows that Mark will go in search of Tom, and hopes that, in stumbling upon him in the act of onanism, Mark will finally be forced to confront the reality of human sexuality. Decades of marriage to Doc’s daughter hasn’t done the trick, so this may be his last chance.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/17/12

So far, this plot’s central mystery has revolved around the dead Foster’s true character. Was he a lovable old rogue who perhaps drank a bit more than he should? Or was he a hateful alcoholic dick? The fact that he left for his daughter a book (one that everyone keeps emphasizing “reads like a screenplay”) that’s full of traumatizingly hot sex scenes involving her mother seems to tip things towards the latter possibility.

Spider-Man, 4/17/12

The last bit of dramatic tension in this storyline has been resolved without any help whatsoever from our ostensible protagonist, so now he can finally celebrate Spidey-style! Spidey-style celebration apparently consists of a little jig that’s frankly embarrassing to watch, because dancing is one of the many, many things Spider-Man sucks at.

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Spider-Man, 4/27/12

Here is me getting you up to speed on the current Spider-Man plot: Peter went with MJ to a cast meeting for her play, and her co-star showed up on crutches, and said he had a freak accident in which he fell down the stairs (“almost felt like someone pushed me!”). I half-expected Peter to be enlisted to replace him, but then the stuff you see above happened, which makes almost as little sense. Don’t Broadway productions as a rule have understudies for the major roles? Can anyone just wander in off the street and secure a part in a stage play if they’re desperate enough? Is MJ’s play actually a comedy? Would anyone with even a slight sense of what might make someone a bankable comedic actor use the name “Hardy Laurel”? Are we expected to be surprised when it turns out that Hardy Laurel is the guy who pushed MJ’s co-star down the stairs, using some kind of boring superpower, and that Spider-Man will have to defeat him in a half-assed fashion?

Mark Trail, 4/27/12

Honestly, you can’t blame those “drug guys” for their violent anger at Ranger Tom. I mean, if you had spent a hot afternoon harvesting marijuana with a pirate cutlass and some fat-cat government bureaucrat who had been sitting on his ass all day started whining about being thirsty, you’d want him to shut up too.

Mary Worth, 4/27/12

I’m sure as a cabbie you get inured to the inane conversational stylings of your passengers, but I do find Mary’s choices here kind of puzzling. This “special announcement” is frankly the most interesting thing you’ve got in this anecdote, Mary! Why are you holding it in thought-balloon reserve?

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Hagar the Horrible, 5/1/12

You know, I’ve been reading Hagar the Horrible for most of my literate life, and like most people, I had always assumed that the recurring strips where Hagar and Lucky Eddie crack wise on a tiny desert island just served as a place for desert-island gags rejected by the New Yorker. It’s only at this moment — as Hagar wistfully thinks about his wife, who’s thousands of miles away, who has no idea where he is, who he’ll probably never see again — that it occurred to me to try to fit these scenes into the larger narrative of the strip. Now that this conceptual shift has taken place, here’s my first question: what happened to the rest of the crew? Did Hagar and Eddie eat them?

Six Chix, 5/1/12

When I first scanned this strip I thought it was some miracle of life nonsense, but seeing the exhausted expression on momma bird and the frankly terrified look on papa bird, my guess is the real point is that spring made these birds horny and so they had some bird-sex and forgot to use birth control. Or should that be … BIRDTH CONTROL?? Because they’re birds, you see! Ha ha! Anyway, long story short, they have a bunch of children they don’t want now.

Spider-Man, 5/1/12

Oh, man, I don’t know why I’m surprised, but MJ’s supposedly funny play is terrible. Unless maybe the quote marks around all the dialogue indicate that the cast is in on the joke about how terrible the play is, and are playing the entire thing for meta-comedic laughs at the meta-awfulness of it all? That sounds like something that would play in Brooklyn rather than on Broadway, and anyway it’s been repeatedly demonstrated that nobody in the Spider-Man newspaper strip is even a tiny bit self-aware, because if they were they would immediately stalk away in disgust.

Mark Trail, 5/1/12

Just wanted to keep you up to date with the Mark Trail action. Today’s action: a bad guy lets loose with a WHAT TH’, which is always awesome. Also, apparently Andy’s kill switch is hard to turn off! Man, look at that slavering maw in panel two! He’s got a taste for human flesh now!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/12

“He used to joke about it, but it’s not a joke anymore. It’s completely true! My father can’t feel any human emotion or grasp ordinary, everyday experience unless it’s mediated through a recording device of some kind. In this way, he has become the archetype of a 21st century human being.”

Beetle Bailey, 5/1/12

Hey, remember back in the ’90s when Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC made a big deal about sending General Halftrack to sensitivity training, because of his constant, actionable sexual harassment of his secretary? Well, it didn’t take

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/12/12

Oh, hey, what’s going on in Rex Morgan, looks like it’s just Iris still sadly reading her dad’s memoir and AAAH AAAH AAAH AAAH AAAH AAH! In panel one, it seems that Iris’ face has been removed altogether, only to have a weeping grinning one-eyed horror glommed onto the front of her head in panel two. Has there ever been a comic-book supervillain whose origin story involved whisky and grief? Mabel better watch out at that funeral, is all I’m saying.

Gil Thorp, 5/12/12

Gil Thorp’s horror is subtler but still unsettling. I guess that our single parent pitcher has hit or grazed or come close to grazing the batter with the ball, as a response to anti-single-parent bullying? That’s pretty impressive, considering that in panel two the batter was digging in approximately 12 feet away from the empty patch of dirt where home plate is supposed to be. It still doesn’t explain the awful tangle of limbs emerging at impossible angles from the Goshen gal’s looming crotch in panel three.

Spider-Man, 5/12/12

The second best thing about the current Spider-Man storyline is that all the scripted lines in MJ’s play appear to be exactly the same level of corny and awful as Hardy Laurel’s ad-libs, despite the fact that everyone is acting like he’s desecrating Shakespeare. The best thing about the current Spider-Man storyline is how hilariously petulant Peter looks in today’s final panel. I dearly hope this drawing of him is used for all of his non-masked appearances in the strip from now on.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/19/12

Uh-oh, in her sad and futile attempt to finally get ahead of Rex in their ongoing dickishness contest, June has gone a little off-script when it comes to her more immediate task, namely keeping Iris off the sauce. “Hey, Iris, you sure look pretty in that funeral dress! Good thing, too, since you need to wear it all the time, seeing as everyone you ever loved keeps dying. It doesn’t show off your rack to the same advantage that mine does, of course, but then what would, right?”

Spider-Man, 5/19/12

Thanks, Newspaper Spider-Man, for neatly encapsulating your narrative philosophy for new readers. “I don’t need any amazing, exciting powers beyond those of ordinary humans to dislike that creep! Sullen, baseless jealousy will be the engine of this plot, not a superheroic battle to save mankind!”

Pluggers, 5/19/12

An archaic, failing bureaucracy is pretty much the only thing tethering pluggers to the mainstream of human society, and once that tether snaps, things are gonna get real depressing real quick.

Mary Worth, 5/19/12

The sad thing about the awkward, violent gesture in panel one is that Wilbur thinks it’s a hug.

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Blondie, 5/22/12

We here at the Comics Curmudgeon spend a lot of time ragging on long-running legacy strips, which decades ago ceased to be the work of an artist/visionary and are instead staffed by hired guns in the employ of the intellectual property owners. But we don’t say enough about the advantages of this kind of working environment! Let’s say that, back in the summer of 2006, you come up with a funny joke — ha ha, did you know that the youth of today will pay good money for pants that are already torn up? mercy! — only to discover that lots and lots and lots and lots of your fellow cartoonists had the same idea! So you’d probably chuck it and try to come up with something else, if you were just working on your own. But if you were a cog in some legacy comic’s great machine, you’d have an advantage over your lone wolf competitors because you’d have access to what sociologists call “institutional memory.” You’d just file the joke idea away in the company Outlook calendar, and set an alarm for when everyone’s long forgotten about haha-torn-jeans jokes. Five years should do it, right? Let’s call it a shade short of six, just to be safe. Come 2012, whoever’s got your job (lord knows it won’t be you) will see the alert pop up and have the day’s strip already half written.

Six Chix, 5/22/12

Huh, against all expectations the puzzling tale of the two young birds that had sex and then had baby birds is continuing, and continuing to be puzzling! “I like the cute young guys, but this time I went to far, in that I had sex with a cute young guy and then had children, ugh.”

Dennis the Menace, 5/22/12

“Mostly I’ve just been in here watching TV, so I guess there really aren’t that many details to fill in. Hey, since you’re up, would mind wiping up the drool-puddle I’m leaving on the ottoman?”

Spider-Man, 5/22/12

Don’t worry, comic-book action fans, the current Spider-Man plot isn’t just going to be about how Peter Parker feels sexually threatened when his wife talks to handsome men! It’s also about how he feels inadequate when he talks to other superheroes.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/26/12

Oh my goodness, has anything in the comics ever been as delightful as Rex and June’s facial expressions in panel one of this strip? June at least looks concerned, if comically so; Rex, on the other hand, is heaving what must be the loudest, most dickish sigh of all time. “Can’t we please,” he seems to be asking, “have just one funeral in this town that doesn’t devolve into a trans-generational drunken catfight? Please?”

I love Rex and June’s facial expressions SO MUCH that that I’ve decided to revive an ancient (yes, five years ago is “ancient,” on the Internet) Comics Curmudgeon tradition: a comics panel lookalike contest! You might recall the finger-quotin’ Margo and self-clubbing Tyler lookalike contests; now it’s time for a Hilariously Overwrought Rex and June Facial Expression Lookalike contest! Here, here’s a close-up of the panel:

Take a photo of you and a friend imitating Rex and June here (no need to include Iris and Mabel, but feel free if you think its important for your take on the tableau) and send éem to me at bio@jfruh.com. The top entry will be arbitrarily chosen by me and whatever friends or family members I rope into helping me pick, and wins … eternal glory? Sure, let’s say that. Eternal glory PLUS your choice of one item from the Comics Curmudgeon merch store, which yes, still exists, even though I haven’t updated it in a long time. Go forth and look like that panel, everybody! Points for style, execution, amusing variations, etc.! I am not legally responsible if you sprain your face trying to match Rex and June’s expressions.

Blondie, 5/26/12

How much more out of touch from today’s cultural zeitgeist can these legacy comics gets. Everyone knows today’s younger adults are way too marketing-savvy to be interested in some flashy redesigned cereal box. Instead, they go gaga for retro cereal box design, like the recent throwback Captain Crunch boxes with the original character design by Rocky & Bullwinkle creator Jay Ward and oh my God I want that cereal I want it I WANT IT.

Spider-Man, 5/26/12

“Mammon Theater,” you say? Now the true nature of this storyline is clear. Picture Perfect represents the kind of safe, commercial, money-making Broadway hit that’s brushing aside live theater’s unique ability to challenge the audience and foment social change, instead turning the stage into just another entertainment venue. Hardy Laurel’s attempts to expand theatergoers’ minds with his absurdist, Dada-esque improvisations have been brushed aside in the quest for profits; now he’ll wreak a terrible revenge … for art’s sake.

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Dennis the Menace, 5/27/12

At first glance, this cartoon might seem to take place in a post apocalyptic lull. What has wiped out all the other humans in Dennis’s neck of the woods? Plague? Zombies? Do the living dead wander the streets of Dennis’s hometown, feasting on the flesh of the living, with Dennis staying alive due only to his own cunning and menace, and keeping Joey safe to have someone to talk to? But Dennis’s statement in the final panel paints an even more chilling scenario, and explains his incessant mishcief-making. Dennis exists in an empty world that only responds to his misbehavior, summoning up shadowy figures to scold him. It is only through menace that he can provoke a response from the universe. It is only through menace that he can be saved from terrible, endless loneliness.

Mary Worth, 5/27/12

“Dawn, don’t dwell on it … if you miss this bus, you’ll catch another! You see, each young man in your life is like a bus. They’re long and hard, and they come by on a fairly regular schedule, and whenever one arrives, you can ride it for a while, though you have to respect the fact that sometimes it reaches the end of its route before you’ve reached your destination, and sometimes other people want to ride the bus too. But they’re all pretty much alike, and you need to ride as many as you can if you want to get anywhere. Wait, where are you going? Is this metaphor making you uncomfortable? I’m just talking about riding young men as if they’re buses!”

Panel from Spider-Man, 5/27/12

Would you like to see Spider-Man almost slam crotch-first into a gargoyle? Here, here’s Spider-Man almost slamming crotch-first into a gargoyle.

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Spider-Man, 5/31/12

So I’ve done some extensive research (i.e., 90 seconds or so of cursory Googling) and I can’t find any evidence of “Clown-9” appearing in any iteration of the Spider-Man mythos before this! I’m sure that I’m about to be severely corrected by angry comic book nerds mere seconds from now, but for the moment I’m going to choose to believe that Newspaper Spider-Man has finally risen high enough in Marvel’s pecking order that it’s being allowed to introduce its own super-villains. Naturally its first attempt is Clown-9, an unfunny man with no particular superpowers dressed in an ugly clown outfit, choosing a villain-name based on a feeble stab at wordplay, determined to exact revenge on those who thwarted his attempt at Broadway stardom. Panel one, in which we see this pathetic figure in his underwear as he changes pants, is presumably this feature’s attempt at the “gritty realism” it’s heard so much about.

Gasoline Alley, 5/31/12

Are you looking for a metaphor that’s supposed to indicate something good and yet will fill anyone who hears it with revulsion and disgust? How about “happy as a kitty with a mouth full of mouse meat”? Mmm mmm, mouse meat! Mouse meat in your mouth. So much mouse meat in your mouth that your mouth is full … full of mouse meat. Enjoy!

Marmaduke, 5/31/12

Marmaduke’s owners believe that, if only they violate all human laws to help him satisfy his foul sexual appetites, he will spare them when the Day of Wrath comes. How wrong they are!

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Mary Worth, 6/1/12

Sorry I have not been properly keeping you up to date on the Great Dawn Weston Mope-Fest of 2012, which has consisted entirely of her lying on her couch, clinging to a pillow, obsessively rewatching Game of Thrones, and mumbling things like “Life is brutal.” This has gone on for days! I know, it doesn’t sound that exciting when I describe it, but she does it with a certain verve. Anyway, Wilbur’s had about as many of these thrills as he can handle, so he’s off to his sealed Wilburtorium to make a call … a long distance call, if you know what we mean! I actually don’t know what he means, though I do know that, since Mary lives in the same condo complex, he isn’t calling her, which means he hasn’t stumbled onto the real solution to everyone’s problems yet, i.e., calling Mary Worth.

I do kind of hope that his phone call has absolutely nothing to do with his miserable daughter, who he’ll just leave on the couch whining for the foreseeable future until she decides to buck up. “Yeah, Dawn’s still not over what’s-his-face yet. ‘Life is brutal,’ blah blah blah. So, what are you wearing?”

Funky Winkerbean, 6/1/12

Wow, two primary characters in Funky Winkerbean are really excited about something happening in the lives! How do we get from here to abject misery in the fewest possible moves? Hmm, let’s say … former rivals, now best friends and stepsisters to be, suddenly find themselves competing for the lone spot on the team, with no other options and their futures on the line? Yes, that’ll do nicely.

Apartment 3-G, 6/1/12

I’m sure “We shouldn’t be having this conversation, Margo” is meant to denote that Tommie is on Team Nina, or even that she has entirely false views of the legal implications of midwife-patient confidentiality, but I kind of hope that it means something more along the lines of “We shouldn’t be having this conversation, Margo, because it is completely insane. You can’t just appoint yourself someone’s publicist against their will! And you’re not even a publicist! You’re certainly not a good publicist! I’m going to leave the room and come in again, and when I do I want to hear noises out of your mouth that are not 100% bonkers.”

Spider-Man, 6/1/12

Newspaper Spider-Man’s villains almost always become less threatening as their storyline works itself out. I was pretty worried that we’d never be able to get less menacing than yesterday’s reveal, but this is actually a pretty good start! Haha, that car has a duck on it!

Beetle Bailey, 6/1/12

You know, if Beetle Bailey decided it wanted to focus entirely on the theater of erotic bafflement from here on out, I wouldn’t object at all. It’d sure be preferable to whatever the hell it is that it’s been doing for the past 60 years or so.

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The Lockhorns, 6/4/12

I guess the “surprise” is supposed to be whatever the brownish glop on Leroy’s plate is, but since every Lockhorns meal involves earth-tone glop of some sort, and since Loretta hasn’t served herself anything, maybe something more momentous has happened. After all, despite endless decades of marital combat and mutual loathing, what could be more surprising than one partner in this hell-union finally announcing that he or she was leaving? It’s always seemed that they can’t imagine a life beyond their endless, claustrophobic war, and so if Loretta really is about to grab her bag and walk out forever, it would explain why Leroy is looking even more slumped over and crumple-faced that usual. After all these years, what will he do? Will he have the capacity to do anything other than stare at the brown glop for hours, as it congeals?

Spider-Man, 6/4/12

My experience with Broadway theaters is fairly limited, but they’re mostly older buildings and often surprisingly small and cramped. So, kudos to the owners of this theater for retrofitting it so well for handicap accessibility that Clown-9 can drive his duckhead-car (which isn’t exactly large but is still significantly bigger than, say, a Rascal mobility scooter) off the street, through the doors, and right up the aisle! Meanwhile, anti-kudos go to the artist of this strip, who apparently realized that they forgot to make Peter visible in panel two and decided “Enh, we’ll just put his face in a weird little circle thought-bubbling out of nowhere.”

Mark Trail, 6/4/12

You better watch yourself there, mister, because littering in America’s majestic wilderness and murder aren’t that far apart in Mark’s moral code! Note in panel one that Mark has a firm grip on his belt — it’s the only way he can stop himself from punching this guy a time or three right now.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/4/12

Looks like Herb’s mother-in-law has been spending some time with her favorite book, Incredibly Bland Aphorisms From History’s Insanest Philosophers.

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Judge Parker, 6/5/12

That’s quite the sly and sinister expression Sam’s sporting in the final panel there … almost as if he’s thinking “With the contract signed and the money on its way to Alan’s bank account, I can take these saps up to the Old Cherry Creek Lodge at Payton Crossing, where I dispose of the dismembered bodies of all of my victims! Abbey, please make a note of their names on my ceremonial Clipboard of the Doomed.”

Actually, “The Old Cherry Creek Lodge at Payton Crossing” sounds like a ghastly faux-rustic luxury condo building in a meticulously landscaped and completely soulless exurban development, which, if you think about it, is exactly the sort of place where Sam would stash corpse parts if he were a serial killer.

Spider-Man, 6/5/12

Meanwhile, I love the expression of pure joy on the face of … whoever that is with the microphone in panel two. The broad shoulders and brush-cut imply that he’s a sportscaster who’s been assigned to cover theater as some kind of punishment, and over the course of the first act he was horrified to learn that you’re not expected to or even allowed to offer a stream of loud running patter about a play the way you do at football games. But now something interesting is happening! Something you’re allowed to talk, or at least, whisper, about!

Mary Worth, 6/5/12

Wilbur’s editor is maintaining a poker face, but you know that it was really difficult for him to not dissolve into giggles while saying “Did you fall in love with someone new?” I mean, he’s probably been on the verge of hysterics from the minute Wilbur walked in wearing that suit.

Six Chix, 6/5/12

Ho ho! Turns out Larry’s bad at sex!

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Judge Parker, 6/13/12

There hasn’t been a lot of plot development or anything over the last few days in Judge Parker, but I did want to give you a good look at Sam and Avery’s hideous fishing outfits, if only to assure you that massive, unearned fortunes can’t buy taste.

Pluggers, 6/13/12

Pluggers are sneaky cheapskates who invoke their grandchildren in transparent attempts to get out of paying for things.

Spider-Man, 6/13/12

Sadly, hilariously, Clown-9’s statement in panel two is 100% accurate.

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Spider-Man, 6/17/12

You get to a point with these Newspaper Spider-Man villains where you just give up on them ever being actually fearsome and embrace their camp value. Thus I was genuinely delighted to see that Clown-9, in addition to being a goofy dope who drives a duck car and thinks a high-powered squirt gun is threatening and has no higher ambitions of evil than disrupting a Broadway play, also thinks “not” jokes are funny.

Still, the final panel worries me, delightful as it is to see “SPIDEY: 0” written out explicitly. Is Clown-9 suddenly transforming from a lovable weirdo into something truly terrifying? Is he gaining super-strength, Hulk-style? Is he unveiling some kind of super-weapon? Is he renouncing “not” jokes, which Spidey loves almost as much as he does?

Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/17/12

Whoops, sorry about the permanent injury you suffered from being dragged around by the ears, wholly innocent rabbit! I guess the lesson here is that you shouldn’t act twitchy around cops in Slylock’s thuggish police state.

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Funky Winkerbean, 6/21/12

Based on all the mean things I say about it, you might think that I don’t really look forward to reading Funky Winkerbean every day. Nothing could be further from the truth! For instance, for the next several months, I’ll be eagerly anticipating the strip in which Les lies gasping and semi-conscious on the rocky ground about a third of the way up Kilimanjaro, and Bull, shaking his head, slowly peels off his friend’s sweat- and blood-stained socks, says “I guess you never deserved these,” and begins to walk, receipt in hand, towards a distant Nairobi Wal-Mart.

Spider-Man, 6/21/12

It’s really quite sad that the audience got bored with this little tussle and left before it ended with Spider-Man humiliated and his enemy strolling off in triumph. I guess most people don’t derive the same joy at watching Spidey getting defeated by obvious losers that I do?

Ziggy, 6/21/12

As a hairless gnome-thing, Ziggy is sick and tired of the way that society caters to people with hair instead of focusing on the real victims: hairless gnome-things.

Six Chix, 6/21/12

Today’s Six Chix was only published after several rounds of editorial revisions, which softened its original pro-heroin message considerably.

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Spider-Man, 6/22/12

I know trying to question the logic of funnybook superheroes is just asking for a trip down a rabbithole of crazy but: since Peter Parker is not in-universe famous, wouldn’t unmasking Spider-Man be incredibly anti-climactic? I mean, it’s not like he’s internationally famous playboy Tony Stark or billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne or even well-known journalist Clark Kent. I’m guessing it would go something like “OH MY GOD SPIDER-MAN IS … uh … that guy? I guess?”

Actually, I guess that, since Newspaper Spider-Man MJ is supposed to be a famous actress, Newspaper Spider-Man Peter Parker might be mildly famous as “that guy who’s always lurking in the background, glaring sullenly at the camera in the paparazzi shots of Mary Jane Parker in People and In Touch.” Since this storyline was briefly about MJ’s co-star Jericho Brand attempting to sex her up before that was pushed aside for Clown-9’s marginally more interesting antics, one assumes that he, at least, knows who Peter is, since the master seducer always studies his prey before he makes his move. Though Jericho apparently hadn’t counted on MJ’s power of super-bumping-into-people, which she has on call to protect her feeble hubby.

Six Chix, 6/22/12

Haha, here is a strip I do not understand at all! I will eat pretty much any kind of fried meat and/or corn garbage America’s calorie merchants will churn out and put in a garishly colored package, so I am not really a “foodie” per se, but the one kind of food snob I am is a bread snob, in the sense that I much prefer buying whole loaves of good bread that you slice pieces off of with a knife, rather than mushy awful pre-sliced bread in a bag. And yes, these whole loaves can contain the occasional air bubble. Which may be what this lady is talking about! Except usually these holes are only visible once you slice into the bread? And she seems to be gesturing to some weird little loaflets that have dents (holes?) on the outside? And, yes, this is the point where I have officially spent too much time thinking about this Six Chix comic and/or bread-holes. The lady does kinda look like the one from this comic, who could never vote to convict an attractive man whose greatest crime was being so darn pretty, so maybe she’s just a deranged old woman, wandering around the Chixiverse, complaining about non-existent bread-holes and sexually harassing criminals.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/22/12

“Haw haw, that’s a good ’un, Snuffy! Now c’mon, let’s go burn down th’ newspaper for printin’ this Darwinist filth.”

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Momma, 7/5/12

Momma owns a bottle of some kind of incredibly fast-acting and powerful pesticide, which is no doubt highly toxic to all living things that come in contact with it (e.g., Francis, Momma).

Wizard of Id, 7/5/12

This lady is “keeping her husband on his toes” by threatening to have immolated alive.

Hi and Lois, 7/5/12

Ditto can control the weather, or perhaps the very flow of time itself, with his mind, but isn’t really very good at it.

Spider-Man, 7/5/12

Something about the crazed madman who sent a theaterful of people running in terror and incapacitated her super-powered husband frightens Mary Jane.

Shoe, 7/5/12

Shoe is really kind of a dick.

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Slylock Fox, 7/9/12

Because my brain doesn’t work the way one might want it to, I have a terrible time remembering my family’s birthdays without programming them into my phone’s calendar, but upon reading this strip I instantly remembered that it was the not the first Slylock Fox whose solution revolved around anteater toothlessness. At least this one’s an actual anteater! In a world of anthropomorphic animals, many of which are carnivores, I expect Slylock needs to resolve exactly this kind of dispute relatively frequently. “Waah, the birds ate my pet worms! Waaah, Cassandra Cat ate my sidekick!” This is what comes of overthrowing humanity, animal-rabble! Not the eating of other animals of course, but the ultimately unfulfillable sense that there ought to be some kind of justice to how it happens.

Shoe, 7/9/12

Shoe generally has its characters wildly overreact to punchlines with goggle eyes of horror, which makes the Perfesser’s numb, heavy-lidded stare in the second panel here all the sadder. “Yeah, I guess I should have expected that my attempt at serious emotional intimacy with a good friend — and my attempt to understand how other people find fulfillment in romantic relationships, something I’ve tried and failed at all my life — would be deflected with a dumb joke about HAW HAW AGING STRIKES TERROR INTO WOMEN’S HEARTS. Welp, back to silently dying inside!”

Spider-Man, 7/9/12

Speaking of facial expressions, it should have been obvious to everyone that Clown-9 is a crazed maniac bent on revenge against everyone who’s ever wronged him. Thus, I’m assuming that MJ’s look of shock in panel three is not a reaction to Peter’s suggestion that she might be on the target list, but is rather justified horror at the image in panel two of Peter making a sullen, hideous kissyface and jabbing a chunk of blackened meat at his lower lip.

Apartment 3-G, 7/9/12

I feel like I’ve been spending too much time dwelling on the weirdly off material in this storyline about attitudes towards and medical knowledge about childbirth, and not enough time discussing the fact that Tommie, Scott, and Nina are all wearing identical white shirts. So, Tommie, Scott, and Nina are wearing identical white shirts, everybody! Are they in a cult? Probably yes — specifically, a cult that practices human sacrifice via botched home births.

Crankshaft, 7/9/12

“Used to be you could make a gal cry by showing her your wang whenever you felt like it! Now you’ve gotta have one of them telephones you carry around with you, I guess.”

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Thanks to all who have sponsored my novel so far! If you haven’t already, do check out that sample chapter to see if you’d be interested!

Spider-Man, 7/12/12

There are several reasons why I’m boycotting the new Amazing Spider-Man movie. (Remember kids, when you’re an Important Public Figure like me, “don’t feel like seeing” becomes “boycotting.”) For one thing, the first installment of the Sam Raimi-directed series came out when I was a gainfully employed adult, which means that it couldn’t have been long ago enough for a reboot, because what, do I look old to you? Do I?? But, more importantly, the new movie is, for incomprehensible reasons, completely J. Jonah Jameson-free. Maybe it’s because the filmmakers decided that nobody could top J.K. Simmons’ interpretation of the character, or maybe it’s because they’re morons, because J. Jonah Jameson is the best thing about the Spideyverse and even his ill-drawn newspaper version is hilarious. Is he “raising the roof” to signify his grudging concession of a living wage to his freelancers in panel two? Haha, JJJ FOREVER. If you miss him in the movies, you can follow him on Twitter.

Dennis the Menace, 7/12/12

Whoa, let’s not be hasty, Dennis. How do you know he’s not both? Are you saying that vampires lack the sense of impartiality and fair play necessary to be good umpires? Prejudice is the real menace in today’s society, Dennis.

Apartment 3-G, 7/12/12

That weird white quarter-circle at the bottom of panel two — that’s … that’s supposed to be Nina’s ass, isn’t it? You know, if you find yourself troubled by unwanted erotic thoughts about extremely pregnant women and would like to put a stop to them using aversion therapy, today’s Apartment 3-G would be a great place to start.

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Spider-Man, 7/14/12

Peter Parker is constantly consumed by jealousy of his wife’s success and delights in any opportunity he has to restrict her autonomy, so an actual legitimate threat against her that requires her to lay low must be a source of true joy for him. Still, you’d think that a true superhero would also be worrying about, you know, other potential victims who Clown 9 might have a grudge against, like every single other person working on the play with Mary Jane. But whatever, let’s just watch TV at home with MJ and let those other losers take their chances!

Pluggers, 7/14/12

It’s funny because pluggers aren’t qualified for any job important enough to require a background check! Also, they are covered with ticks. Rule of thumb: if your Pluggers strip reminds the reader too forcefully that its main characters are hirsute, vermin-ridden beast-men, it has gone off the rails a bit.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/16/12

This … but … I … what? We have been cheated of our dramatic and hilarious birthing scene! I mean, I didn’t expect to see the baby crowning or anything, but I was hoping at least for some “Push! Here it comes!” action or whatever. It all happened so quickly that it appears Tommie didn’t even need to unfold that towel sitting on the radiators. Is that a bar of blue soap sitting on the table? Did Tommie at least wash that baby off before sticking her into what I’m sure is Nina’s very expensive towel, or is it all covered with birth-goo? Damn it, I need closure on a lot of things!

Mary Worth, 7/16/12

Mary Worth, on the other hand, I fully trust to give us every single detail of the slow but hilarious sinking of Dawn and Wilbur’s dream cruise. Will the baffled passengers come up with improbable explanations for their plight? Will they all touch their faces in terror? Yes and yes! Let’s hope it goes on for weeks and never ends!

Spider-Man, 7/16/12

Every once in a while Newspaper Spider-Man remembers that it’s in a real live New York City and tries to give us a little bit of genuine local flavor. These guys in panel two, for instance, are no doubt supposed to be deeply ironic hipsters from Williamsburg, who are dressing like 1980s punks and and talking like 1950s beatniks as part of some kind of inscrutable guerrilla performance art project. They are also implying that Spider-Man is good at superheroism, because they are extremely sarcastic.

Six Chix, 7/16/12

“I’m talking about my eyes here. I’m pretty sure I’m going blind!”

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Just another quick thanks to everyone who’s sponsored my novel via Kickstarter so far! And if you haven’t, there’s still time! Why not check out the sample chapter to see if you want to pre-order?

Mark Trail, 7/17/12

Between this sinister aerial bighorn-poacher and Mark’s plane-flying murderous protagonists from the last storyline, we’re finally learning who the true villains in the Trailiverse are: people who have mastered the power of flight. Sure, Mark can fly a plane, but he’s morally incorruptible. The rest of humanity will get too close to the sun, go mad with delusions of godhood, and just start stone cold shooting everybody. Have you people even read the myth of Icarus? Stay on the ground, if you want to save your soul!

Spider-Man, 7/17/12

Peter Parker’s spider-sense might not be much good for saving him from being hit in the back of the head by non-superpowered villains or inanimate objects, but if you are talking shit about him within 20 feet, he will know about it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/17/12

“Don’t worry, Jamey — that jest means she ain’t decided yet whether or not to bake you into a pie!”

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Archie, 7/21/12

Whenever a pretty girl walks by, Archie is so consumed by lust that he can’t even feel, say, a weed-whacker cable tearing into the flesh of his shin.

Spider-Man, 7/21/12

Haha, Spider-Man is super-worried that Clown-9 is bent on revenge against MJ’s dumb unwatchable play, when really he just wants to steal money and get drunk like a normal person.

Ziggy, 7/21/12

Ziggy’s plan to shame-binge on fun meals has been foiled.

Apartment 3-G, 7/21/12

“Gasp!! They know my real name! I’m going to have to kill all of them!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/21/12

Oh, the Morgans have more than $10,000 in “bug-out money” just lying around the house, by the way.

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Mark Trail, 7/25/12

Rusty and his suddenly piercing blue eyes seem to have gone through some kind of handsomification (or at least de-hideousification) process, but don’t worry, he’s still alone in his room muttering furiously about “sheep killers” and “dead animals.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/25/12

I’ve always assumed that Hootin’ Holler was a socially conservative enclave, but it appears to actually be a polyamorous commune.

Hagar the Horrible, 7/25/12

Hagar the Horrible, the protagonist of a beloved nationally syndicated comic strip, is a thug who always takes what he wants with violence and threats of violence.

Pluggers, 7/25/12

Even before the Internet, pluggers could only make “friends” with people who lived far, far away from them.

Spider-Man, 7/25/12

“Let’s stare at them as he casually saunters away!”

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B.C., 7/31/12

Hey, everyone, have you heard about the Olympics, which are in England, which is foggy, sometimes? Anyway, this is hilarious because if the rowing events were taking place on the Thames (which they aren’t) it would be foggy and there would be antics anOH MY GOD SHERLOCK HOLMES’ CORPSE IS FLOATING IN THE THAMES OH MY GOD HE’S REALLY DEAD YOU MONSTERS

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/31/12

So, quick poll: What’s creepier, addressing your spouse (while the two of you are alone together) as “[Honorific] [Your last name]” or as “[Nickname by which one of your descendants would address him or her]”?

Gil Thorp, 7/31/12

“It’s not that you have one arm too few, it’s that you have one arm too many! I’m a pointing top, you see. I’m the only one in a relationship who’s allowed to point at things, like so! No, don’t try to imitate me, you’ll just enrage me further.”

Mary Worth, 7/31/12

Wilbur may be about to tumble to his death, but at least he’s going out as he would have wanted: with his bulbous crotch looming at us menacingly.

Spider-Man, 7/31/12

Meanwhile, in Spider-Man, everyone is literally just sitting around killing time until the title character decides to show up.

Wizard of Id, 7/31/12

And in the Wizard of Id, a witch is puking into a bag.

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Beetle Bailey, 8/4/12

I was going to go into this whole thing about how “Halftrack Dysfunctional Marriage Saturdays” are always the most depressing day in the comics all week, and that Mrs. Halftrack is doing a great job of gleefully pushing her husband further down his little shame spiral rather than trying to free him from it, but then I noticed that the General’s trademark neck-wattle is visible from the side and I got distracted.

Spider-Man, 8/4/12

Sorry, everybody, we’re going to have to start speaking some other language now! English hit its pinnacle with “Never suspected I booby-trapped my clown nose!” and it’s all going to be pretty much downhill from here, so let’s get out while the getting’s good.

Garfield, 8/4/12

AHH AHHH AHHH GARFIELD TURNED JON INTO A HEAD OF CABBAGE WITH FELINE DEMON MAGIC AHHHHHH

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Judge Parker, 8/5/12

The first time I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, it was at the tail end of a big Hitchock binge, and so one of the things I found most striking about it was that it was about half of a typical Hitchcock movie. Which is to say: As in most of his movies, we get a cast of quirky character trading snappy dialogue, and start to get a sense of dysfunction underlying their interpersonal dynamics. Usually, the story’s excitement would emerge from these relationships fairly early in the movie; but in The Birds, whatever plot you think is brewing is suddenly and violently pushed aside by an incomprehensible apocalypse, as (uh, spoilers, I guess) every bird in the world suddenly goes insane and starts attacking humanity. It’s well and truly shocking in particular if you’re a Hitchcock fan, because you watch one of his meticulously constructed universes suddenly shatter under assault from an external force that is never explained.

This is a long way of me saying that, if the current round of enjoyable but predictable Judge Parker antics were abruptly interrupted by a terrifying and bloody raccoon revolution, I for one would be fully in favor of such a development.

Mary Worth, 8/5/12

Guys, sorry I left you hanging on the Mary Worth boat-plot — metaphorically, I mean, not literally hanging off the side of a listing cruise boat, like these guys. Anyway, Wilbur didn’t fall to his death and it looks like our gang will be rescued by a helicopter instead? Which, call me a swimming-snob if you must, but is it really easier to pluck half a dozen terrified passengers from the tilted deck of a rapidly sinking ship than it is for those passengers to, say, swim the length of two swimming pools through warm coastal non-oceanic water to safety? Tell me I’m crazy! Am I crazy?

Rex Morgan, 8/5/12

I’ll probably get sick of “Rex Morgan smiles to himself while taking flack from sassy old people” plotlines at some point, but for now, I say bring ’em on! “Tell me something I don’t know!” Rex says to Melissa, trying to figure out how to get into the space suddenly left open in her will by her ungrateful niece.

Spider-Man, 8/5/12

As if you couldn’t tell from the entire run of Newspaper Spider-Man to this point, spider-sense can not predict or protect against public humiliation.

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Momma, 8/17/12

If you’re wondering why Francis would scurry away from the beach in terror after just looking at a nagging sign his mother made, despite the fact that she isn’t even present to enforce her insane edict … take a look at the handwriting on the sign, which Francis easily identifies as his mother’s. Now take a look at the handwriting in his thought balloon. Does it look … familiar? Can you imagine the horror of having Momma’s voice in your head, every time you think? Leaving you always wondering whether your thoughts are even yours at all? This whole beach situation is quite frankly the least of Francis’s problems right now.

Spider-Man, 8/17/12

Just to briefly catch you up on the exciting newspaper Spider-Man action: Spidey was trying to figure out where he could find Clown-9 so they could have a showdown, then he saw an ad in the paper for a circus, and he said, basically, “A circus! Clowns love circuses! He’ll be there!” This seemed like not the most air-tight sequence of reasoning, which even Spider-Man has figured out, because now he’s just going on TV to tell Clown-9 when and where to show up so the two of them can engage in violent, deadly combat. Some might think that he could have chosen any arbitrary spot as the site for their battle. “I’ve a message for Clown-9! I challenge you to a showdown tomorrow night at the old abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town!” But no, best to do it a the circus, where hundreds of innocent people, including many children, will be gathered to watch. Good planning, super-hero!

Six Chix, 8/17/12

Hey, at least bug-eyed crawling-on-the-floor lady admits that something’s wrong with her, horribly-stooped-over seriously-are-you-a-hunchback lady!

Judge Parker, 8/17/12

As we’ve seen, Avery’s negotiating strategy involves agreeing to everyone’s demands immediately and giving them as much money as possible, so yes, I’m willing to believe that people rarely say no to him.

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Mary Worth, 8/28/12

You know, there’s nothing like leaving town and not reading the comics for a week and then coming home and reading the comics to really put into focus how little happens in the average week of, say, Mary Worth. As I left, Wilbur and Dawn where being heli-lifted to safety from their terrible cruise wreck ordeal, and in the interim … Ian angrily watched a news report about the crisis, and Wilbur and Dawn re-enacted it with hand puppetry over dinner with Mary, and that was it!

But now I have come to believe that Mary Worth was holding off on its big guns just for me, waiting until I came home to serve up this, because yes, when we talk about Mary Worth and “big guns” obviously we are talking about Wilbur making jazz hands and burbling merrily about how he is a living, breathing refutation of Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest. “Life is brutal,” Wilbur will tell those residents of the Santa Royale micropolitan area who get their news from the dying print media, “and yet I, Wilbur Weston, still breathe air and eat mayonnaise, while so many stronger and smarter and less sweaty souls drowned in terror in the balmy, calm Mediterranean waters. I stand before you as proof that there is no justice in the universe, alive through no virtue of my own. You cannot kill the ultimate mediocrity, my friends! I am unstoppable.”

Apartment 3-G, 8/28/12

Meanwhile, in Apartment 3-G, Margo the publicist has managed to land a client who literally refuses to tell her what he’s doing that she might publicize. It’s OK, though, because he’s a hot piece of ass (or at least we assume that a shapely bum lurks forever just below the bottom of the panel) who is also conceited and arrogant. What would be the fastest way to convince him that Margo would be a suitable sex partner? Would seeing her imperiously dress down a subordinate do the trick? Done and done! Added bonus: this episode also serves as part of Margo and Evan’s dom-sub play. Girlfriend is nothing if not efficient!

Blondie, 8/28/12

All right, let’s ignore Alexander’s woefully sexist views of how polyamory should work and instead focus on the real important story here — namely, the insane layout of the furniture in the Bumstead living room. I’ve commented on it before, but it’s only now occurred to me that it can be explained fairly easily as just Dagwood’s attempt to keep any of his family members from trying to interact with him while he watches TV. Usually, as we saw just yesterday, there’s a sofa turned away from Dag’s sittin’ chair, so that he can maintain the illusion of spending quality time with his loved ones without actually having to look at their stupid faces. But as we saw, even then people expect to talk to him and have him respond to their word-noises, and so now he’s gotten rid of the couch altogether, leaving Alexander nothing to sit on but the ottoman. His icy silence as his son blabs about his relationship problems says volumes.

Spider-Man, 8/28/12

“It’s almost as if he wanted to gather a large group of people together so that he could threaten them with violence and rob them, as he’s done in the past! Anyway, this should be quite a spectacle, I’m glad we came.”

Momma, 8/28/12

Momma may have come down some in the world, but she certainly isn’t about to engage in any tawdry sex-for-lamp-discounts schemes.

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Slylock Fox, 9/6/12

I’m always much more interested in the stories lurking in the Slylock Fox Six Differences games than I am in actually tracking down the six differences, and the story I want to hear is about the kid at lower left. Why is he so obviously sad? Is he the nervous one in his group of friends, anxious that their parents will find out they’ve snuck into a horror movie? Is he alone sensitive enough to see the true tragedy in the Frankenstein story — that the Monster needs love from the world but turns violent because it meets only fear and disgust? Does he already know that, thanks to his decision to buy an enormous drink, his need to urinate will become unbearable right around the time the movie reaches its climax?

Beetle Bailey, 9/6/12

Beetle Bailey is littered with characters that were added to “keep up with the times” in some long-ago decade, so it’s interesting to revisit them once in a while as a little time capsule of our nation’s past. I had always assumed that Rocky, who has a vague greaser vibe, was added in the ’50s because the kids loved James Dean and the rock and roll music. Today’s strip is a nice reminder that, while old-timey teens in leather jackets seem quaint today (who could be less threatening than Henry Winkler?), at the time mainstream American was completely terrified of their mostly imagined propensity for brutal violence. I’m pretty sure the nunchucks are a modern addition to Rocky’s arsenal, though.

Archie, 9/6/12

Oh, man, globalization, amiright everybody? This tale of American failure is made all the more pointed by the fact that Archie’s dad looks like a balder version of Thomas Dewey. “Look, you all voted for that bastard Truman, don’t blame me for this sorry state of affairs.”

Spider-Man, 9/6/12

“I mean, I already foiled one of his schemes — why won’t he just surrender now? Man, this job would be a lot easier if all my enemies were as lazy as I am.”

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Spider-Man, 10/1/12

So Spider-Man finally had to resort to some extremely mild superheroics in order to defeat Clown-9, and I think we can all be grateful that that’s over. Because now the strip can get back to its core competency: Spider-Man’s irritating personal and domestic situation, or, in his absence (obviously he’s earned a few days of semi-conscious TV time), that of his wife. I sure hope you want to see petty bickering behind the scenes of Broadway’s most terrible comedy sensation, because it seems that’s going to be the theme of our week!

Today Jericho demonstrates that he’s too dumb to recognize when he’s been insulted, which is probably a good quality to have if you’re both thin-skinned and the sort of person that people want to insult. But he also demonstrates the natural-born actor’s native eloquence: “Spider-Man’s victory over a deranged clown” is surely one of the most pleasing turns of phrase we’re likely to see in this strip all year.

Apartment 3-G, 10/1/12

Margo, you’re slipping, girl! The best way to maintain your dignity is to act as if everything you do is dignified and ignore the opinions of other, lesser people on the subject. “Greg, my paid manservant Evan was just tending to my physical needs and you interrupted his process! This is very inconvenient for me. I demand that you apologize to him for the imposition. I believe he’s weeping quietly to himself in a corner somewhere, I’m sure you can find him, just follow the sobbing.”

B.C., 10/1/12

Today’s B.C. features vicious carnivores using dismembered corpse parts as currency, in a scene that would fit in perfectly either in the most depraved of shock-horror films or in the beloved, family-friendly confines of the comics page! The pool of blood spreading out from beneath the quivering heap of viscera is a nice touch.

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Mark Trail, 10/5/12

Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on Mark Trail, in which a heavily armed Cherry resolved the whole Rusty-napping situation without Mark ever needing to show up! Given the level of real danger that was involved with Rusty being kidnapped by criminals and threatened with death, I’m a bit puzzled as to what “exaggeration” she thinks Rusty will resort to in recounting the story to Mark. “Mark, I saw these men killing sheep from a plane, and then they kidnapped me, and they were going to turn me into a sheep and then shoot me from a plane, so they taught me sheep language, but I summoned all the other sheep, who ate the men! Plus there were aliens!”

Family Circus, 10/5/12

The Billy (age 7) Family Circuses are usually mostly interesting to me because of the layers of family-narrative artifice involved (Jeff Keane continuing his father’s tradition of pretending to draw as his brother), but today’s family psychodrama is much more straightforward: remember, if you don’t like your mother, your kids will notice.

Spider-Man, 10/5/12

Looks like all’s well that’s ended will in Spider-Man! And now you get to contemplate whether you’d rather make sex to a snake or a spider, yuck.

Shoe, 10/5/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Shoe is emotionally dead, unable to feel either joy or pain!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/5/12

Meanwhile, in Rex Morgan, the thingy came off and there’s water everywhere and June is pissed.

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Spider-Man, 10/8/12

I know there are like thirty-seven wildly differing versions of the Spider-Man mythos occurring across various forms of media at any particular moment, but in the newspaper strip (surely the iteration that’s earning the least for Marvel Entertainment, LLC, and its corporate parent, The Walt Disney Corporation), this is the deal with Spidey and MJ’s living situation: they have an apartment in New York, probably Manhattan, which is implied to be small and crappy even though of course as drawn it’s significantly larger than any New York City apartment not owned by a hedge fund manager. I’ve assumed that this is all they can afford because MJ’s mid-range movie/Broadway star money and whatever spare change Peter earns as a freelance newspaper photographer pretty much cancel each other out.

But! Apparently I’ve been wrong and MJ’s painfully unfunny play made her tons of money and they’re leaving the overcrowded hellhole of New York behind them for some ghastly neo-neo-Georgian mansion just off the LIE, where Peter can wander around the corridors in his tatty bathrobe, complaining not just about how much less he makes than his wife but also about how long it takes for him to commute into the city to get yelled at by J. Jonah Jameson. Really, getting eaten by a tiger would probably be a blessing for both of them at this point.

Hi and Lois, 10/8/12

“We can get totally blotto in front of the kids and they’ll be none the wiser! I mean, I’m high all the time and you don’t ever notice, so it should be easy to fool them. Wait, did I say that last part out loud?”

Funky Winkerbean, 10/8/12

Oh, were you worried that, what with his impending remarriage, Les was no longer haunted by the spectre of his dead wife? Don’t worry, he is super duper extra haunted by the spectre of his dead wife.

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Spider-Man, 10/11/12

OH MY GOD YES YOU GUYS KRAVEN THE HUNTER!!! Kraven was the villain in the very first Spider-Man plot I covered in this blog. Back then I was charmed by his outfit but eventually enraged by the plotline’s stunning lack of superheroics, which caused me to vent thusly:

When I did my first Spider-Man comic, almost a month ago now, I said, “Presumably the ass-kicking will begin in due time.” Oh, how naive I was! How, bitterly, bitterly wrong I have been proved to be! In that time we’ve had marital spats, a little aimless Web slinging, a press conference to announce the opening of new theme restaurant, and the firing of an incompetent waiter.

Haha, little did I know at the time that this represented more or less the most excitement the Spider-Man strip would ever offer. Now that I’m more in tune with the true nature of this strip, I’m really looking forward to Kraven’s wacky, camptastic antics.

Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, 10/11/12

Never let it be said that the Funkyverse strips can’t cut loose and have some fun now and then! My only complaint about today’s Funky Winkerbean is that the colorists have once again failed to pick up on obvious textual cues, because I’d really like to see Les go chalk white in terror — proof that, despite the smug facade he presents as a defense against relentless tragedy, life still has the capacity to scare him to death. Crankshaft, meanwhile, is confronting the most depressing notion that modern science can muster — that the universe will end not with a bang or a cataclysm, but rather with a slow fading out to emptiness, with no life and no light. It’s almost a relief that Crankshaft greets this prospect with the exact same attitude of semi-informed grievance that he has about everything else.

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Hagar the Horrible, 10/15/12

“Maybe I shouldn’t have spent the night before I led my men into a brutal, hand-to-hand combat, during which they must either kill or be killed, filling their heads with tales of damned souls, wandering the earth as dim spectres, mere shadows of their former selves. Which thought do you think is more likely to jump into their heads unbidden it the midst of this violent melee: that they themselves will be felled in battle and their shade will live on, with the wounds and terror they feel now continuing for eternity? Or that, for the rest of their lives, every time they feel a prickling on the back of their neck or an unseasonably icy wind across their face, they’ll suspect that it’s the vengeful spirit of a man they cut down, haunting them until they succumb to madness and terror?”

Hi and Lois, 10/15/12

Ha, and if Hi’s face is any indication, he sure has earned the right to use the word “boring”! If Hi’s face is any indication, today was the day when his capacity to feel joy or pain or anything at all really was finally snuffed out by the intense ennui of mindless, soulless corporate dronery. Get used to that face, kids, it’s the only one he can make now!

Slylock Fox, 10/15/12

In order for the Slylockian world anthropomorphic animals to exist, there must be some kind of apocalyptic event in our future and their past, during which the lower beasts achieved sentience and most of the human population was wiped out, presumably violently. Normally I don’t take this personally, but something about today’s strip, in which we learn that these horror-monsters are riding our subway to our Brooklyn, makes me angry. You didn’t build that, hippo-thing! Neither did you, shirt-wearing cat! The thought of the Museum of Natural History, presumably now retooled and dedicated to the animals’ triumph over the now exterminated human race, particularly sickens me.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/15/12

Oh my goodness, I sure hope that “the party business” is the euphemism for prostitution that the writer of Rex Morgan and King Features Syndicate agreed on after several tortuous weeks of negotiations! Junior knows, and so does that cheery looking couple sitting on the bench. “That Junior, he runs the best brothel in San Diego County, doesn’t he, Martha?” “You can say that again, dear!”

B.C., 10/15/12

Hey! I just flew Southwest yesterday, and as usual the flight and service were excellent, and not once did anyone attempt to feed me something that they barfed and/or shat out (sorry, I’ve already grossed myself out enough just thinking about this, not going to look up how gizzards actually work, I’m afraid there’ll be pictures).

Spider-Man, 10/15/12

You know, the modern, Internet-savvy newsroom is a high-pressure, 24/7 operation, so it’s nice to see that J. Jonah Jameson still takes time to humiliate his employees with elaborate, improvised, and extremely sarcastic little skits.

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Spider-Man, 10/18/12

So Kraven the Hunter has been out of prison long enough to get his own Vegas show, but the Daily Bugle is only now getting wind of it? Maybe they aren’t the hard-charging journalistic enterprise I’d always imagined. I guess it’s telling that Robbie is reading this information from a dispatch still hot from the fax machine.

What do you suppose is going on with everyone’s relative head sizes in the second panel, by the way? Is this just a cinematic way to show that Peter is dwelling on this conversation hours later, hearing JJJ say “they pardoned him?” in his head, over and over, as he smacks his forehead in exasperation at America’s failing justice system? (No, actually, the correct answer is “clip art.”)

Dick Tracy, 10/18/12

Famous model Sparkle Plenty is the daughter of B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie, which means that she’s the full sister of whatever horrifying baby-creature sent these medicos fleeing in terror. Got all the good genes, I guess! Anyway, this diseased ne’er-do-well she just met appears to be attempting to sell her drugs. Is this how famous people obtain drugs? I don’t think this is how famous people obtain drugs.

Momma, 10/18/12

So, is Momma a terrible hypochondriac, or is she a desperate pill-head who will say anything to get a fix? Which possibility is funnier? Which is sadder? Is your answer to both questions the same? Discuss.

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Mary Worth, 10/22/12

You know what, you guys, this Mary Worth plot, in which Jim and Dawn are helping each other through their trauma and have the beginnings of romantic feelings for each other, is really quite sweet, and I thAHHH AHHH AHHH DAWN LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE JIM’S SISTER WHO WAS KILLED IN THE FERRY ACCIDENT IN WHICH HE LOST IS ARM AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

There are a lot of possibilities here (reincarnation? long-lost twin? Dawn really is Jim’s sister and survived the wreck and has amnesia and/or a whole set of false memories?) but I think we all know what the best one is: that Jim’s “sister” never existed, that this is a Photoshop job, and that if Dawn doesn’t accede to his demands that she move into the sisterly love chamber he’s prepared for her in his basement, she’ll find that picture with her eyes scratched out taped to every tree in her neighborhood.

Mark Trail, 10/22/12

Ah, the eternal dilemma of modern governance! Sure, we’d all like for our little village to run itself, with the main island keeping its politics out of things — but with main island politics come main island money! Do you want those fat cats on the main island calling the shots on how your village does things, or do you want to have to resort to yachtjacking to fund your local schools? Hopefully Mark can come up with a settlement between the village and the main island that respects local autonomy while sharing fiscal burdens. If negotiations fail, he may need to impose it with his fists.

Spider-Man, 10/22/12

So I looked it up, and last-minute bus tickets from New York to Las Vegas are only about $100 cheaper round trip than last-minute plane tickets … and the bus ride involves changing buses four times over 3 days. J. Jonah Jameson’s dedication to humiliating his employees is intense.

The Lockhorns, 10/22/12

“Also, Leroy’s been dead for three days! I figured I’d call someone to take him away when I got sick of looking at him, but, you know, it hasn’t happened yet.”

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Mark Trail, 10/25/12

How hard has everyone instantly fallen in love with Ol’ Pop, the kindly patriarch of this nest of heavily armed thugs? Very hard, I’m guessing! I’m looking forward to the fun as he and Mark get to know each other. “How long have you been in this guerrilla band, Pop?” “We’re not a band of anything, son! Certainly not anything political like ‘guerrillas,’ which implies some sort of political or ideological goals. We’re just poor peasants trying to get rich by seizing Americans at gunpoint if they happen to sail too close to our village and then holding them for ransom! Now shut up and don’t touch anything in my hut or I’ll slit your throat.”

Momma, 10/25/12

“Man, I sure wish Momma would cut it out with the gross Oedipal schtick and find another direction for its sexuality-themed jokes,” said all readers of the strip until they read today’s installment and then collapsed in gibbering horror.

Family Circus, 10/25/12

“I’m leaning towards angel, because to be a saint you have to be really, really good, but to be an angel you only have to be regular-level good and also dead.”

Spider-Man, 10/25/12

I may poke fun at the journalistic bona fides of J. Jonah Jameson, Peter Parker, and the Daily Bugle here, but you have to admit that they’re doing better than the people over at the Las Vegas Vista. “Holy crap, chief,” said the top political reporter, “There’s going to be a presidential election in just a few weeks! Let’s get a news story on today’s front page! I’ll do some research and have a feature on who exactly the candidates are for Sunday.”

Apartment 3-G, 10/25/12

“And I prefer to call it 180 pounds of confidence! Are you the one behind all those ‘Is Greg Cooper packing on the pounds’ items in Walter Scott’s Personality Parade? What the hell kind of publicist are you?”

Crankshaft, 10/25/12

Jeff’s mom has met a courtly gigolo, in what is probably the single most cheerful Funkyverse development in recent memory.

Marmaduke, 10/25/12

Do you know who else was a failed artist?

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Gil Thorp, 10/26/12

Oh, hey, sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on what’s been going on in Gil Thorp, but trust me when I say that what’s been going on Gil Thorp is exactly the same thing that was going on when we last checked in with Gil Thorp — some Milford kids whose names I am not bothering to commit to memory are trying to make Irish Terry Gallagher into a star, for some reason — and it hasn’t gotten more interesting since. Today’s strip is mostly of note because the plot requires that characters find out information from a newspaper but somebody at some point in the creative process said, “Wait, kids don’t read the newspaper anymore, do they? iPads, kids love iPads, have them looking at iPads.”

Pluggers, 10/26/12

I love the bear-man’s facial expression and body posture of cringing terror here, as he becomes increasingly alarmed that he’s been lured to a non-plugger dining establishment, perhaps as some kind of trap. In fact, the bear-man’s wife is looking pretty smug, and it’s already been established that she’s not of plugger origins, so maybe it is a trap, or at least a deliberate attempt to drag him out of his comfort zone for the dual purpose of eating some non-deep-fried food for once and also seeing him squirm a little.

(Side note: I’m vaguely embarrassed to even know this, but Mrs. Bear-Man is actually supposed to be a kangaroo; I think the colorists have misinterpreted the ears and guessed that she’s a rabbit, thus the white coloring. Either that or the years of hated she-plugger existence have turned her normally brown pelt prematurely grey.)

Spider-Man, 10/26/12

Hmm, how to distract readers from the fact that Peter’s logic — “Kraven will steal that diamond tiara! Except, wait, that doesn’t seem like the sort of thing Kraven would do at all? Looks like I’m going to have to figure out why he’s going to do the totally out-of-character thing I’ve just arbitrarily decided he’s going to do!” — is completely insane? Hey, why not have Peter take off his teal suit jacket, hang it up on a weird, ill-drawn blob on the side of a building, and put on an electric blue suit jacket? Perfect! That makes even less sense!

Shoe, 10/26/12

“And I don’t care how much of the world has to be destroyed to lower those gas prices, as long as I don’t have to see it!”

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Herb and Jamaal, 11/14/12

Jamaal mangles the ancient punchline, “… twelve people too stupid to get out of jury duty”, and outs himself as an idiot.

Pluggers, 11/14/12

… b-but the joke is that Spaniel-man is spending exactly the same time looking for his glasses and wearing them. Right? Am I missing some subtlety here? Oh, wait — it’s Pluggers.

Phantom, 11/14/12

It’s time for Hide the Lion — and anybody can play! Hot Queen is ticked, and the mighty Llongo warriors look all mopey. Everything is proceeding as Pissy Elder has forseen.

Heathcliff, 11/14/12

Garfield is disgusting. Oh, wait, this is Heathcliff. Well, Garfield is disgusting too, but this is Heathcliff.

Apartment 3-G, 11/14/12

Hey, it’s Six Differences time again! Can you spot the changes Greg has made to Mrs. Bloom’s apartment? Moving the invisible piano doesn’t count. (Hint: he locked the Taser® up with the sex toys. Margo’s in for one hell of a night.)

Spider-Man, 11/14/12

Yes, Peter — Sherry would have dug Genghis Khan, and you would have dug out the yak wallow behind his yurt.

— Uncle Lumpy