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Hello all! I am back, rested, and ready from my trip! First off, a huge thanks for everyone who donated to the Fall Fundraiser — I’ll be thanking you all individually soon! And a huge thanks to Uncle Lumpy for entertaining us all while I was travelling, and bringing his buddy Turtle Carl with him!

And, prompted by some gentle suggestions from Uncle Lumpy and a few others, I’ve decided to put a New Year’s resolution into effect a whole month early and add a bunch of new comics into my reading rotation, for my (and hopefully your) comics-mocking amusement! Let’s take a look at how some of these newcomers to my reading list grapple with the big philosophical questions, shall we?

Baby Blues, 12/3/18

Inhabitants of Western civilization are heirs to both the monotheistic Abrahamic religions with their divinely ordained moral codes and the Enlightenment tradition of reasoned, universal ethics. But when push comes to shove, many of us still hew to a much more ancient rule, articulated by Plato as “justice is benefiting one’s friends and harming one’s enemies,” which has an obvious corollary: “stop snitching.” Today’s Baby Blues shows how these varying ethical frameworks intersect, as seen through the lens of discourse about the last universally accepted omniscient being in our secular world (Santa).

Sam and Silo, 12/3/18

The significantly less sophisticated Sam and Silo is just going to try to pretend to have invented Pascal’s Wager.

Dustin, 12/3/18

But at least Sam and Silo is trying to tackle some big ideas! Dustin, meanwhile, is still convinced that “traditional thing + technology term” is comedy gold. Ha ha, it’s funny because Santa determines who’s naughty and who’s nice via … Bluetooth? Like, do his earbuds fail to pair with his computer at random roughly one out of every four attempts and that’s how he monitors our behavior or what, help me out here.

The Pajama Diaries, 12/3/18

Meanwhile, The Pajama Diaries are coming at you with some Hanukkah jokes! It also appears to be compressing a full panoply of Hanukkah gift-giving into a single night. One evening is all the time we can spare for Hanukkah; The Pajama Diaries will be back tomorrow with wholesome gentile content.

Kevin and Kell, 12/3/18

I aslo started reading Kevin and Kell, which appears to be about, uh, furries? Furries who eat each other’s flesh?

Pluggers, 12/3/18

But rest assured, just because I’m reading about hip young cannibal furries, that doesn’t mean I’m casting aside the old favorites, like cranky old lower-middle-class exurban furries. In today’s Pluggers, someone told a plugger he needs to work on developing an inner life, and it’s not going great.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/3/18

Meanwhile, in Funky Winkerbean, Funky’s addled old father is horny! More on this important and no doubt extremely unpleasant story as it develops.

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Hello all! I am taking a break for some extended family time, so your favorite Uncle Lumpy will be taking the guest-blogging reins until December 3. He can’t bear to choose from amongst all you lovely commenters, so here is your comment of the next several weeks:

“It looks as if Mary, not wanting Saul to revert to grumpiness, had the old man and his dog bronzed and placed in the park as tribute to her wisdom.” –Maltmash3r

Your runners up are also very funny!

“I don’t know why that woman needs to see paintings when she could be admiring the perspective-defying staircase that somehow begins two feet from a wall, yet rises away to infinity.” –Naked Bunny with a Whip

“The guard sighed. Once again a philistine had missed the entire point of the ground floor gallery, On the Commercialization of Art, a conceptual and interactive installation art piece, purchased at great expense from a private collector in Prague. ‘The traditional art is upstairs,’ he sneered, omitted even the courtesy of a ‘ma’am.’ Some people just weren’t worth the trouble.” –Voshkod

“I’d like to think that Mary Worth’s ring tone actually consists of the words ‘RING! RING!‘, because you know that the phone is actually whispering to itself ‘bo-RING! bo-RING!’ based on years of experience in listening to her conversations.” –seismic-2

“Either the pregnancy test just came back positive, or the rabies test did.” –lumaca morente

“How Mary relaxes at home? Well, she answered the phone with her left hand.” –Ettore

“Yarrr … ’tis the very toucan that gave me this scar!” –Harold

“Good question! Maybe when your mom and ‘Uncle Troy’ finish up in there and she unlocks the door, we can go look that up.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, idol of a million other women

“Thanks to Mark Trail for depicting what having a monkey on your back must look like if what you’re addicted to is sugary breakfast cereal. Truly, a Reefer Madness for our times.” –Damian

“Because at night the sun must do battle with the serpent god Apophis in order to prevent the world from plunging into chaos. What are they teaching kids in school these days?” –TheDiva

“Maybe Thel shouldn’t have made a pot of coffee for the kids.” –nescio

“It’s hard to believe that technology in Hootin’ Holler has advanced to the point that firearms have rifling.” –Flonatin of Bologna

“Nice that the Keanes managed to find another family nearby with a brood of similar, yet slightly uglier, children. Must be good for the whole family’s self esteem!” –pugfuggly

“My grandmother used to have a phone just like that on the wall in her kitchen — except of course it was a rotary dial. A nice memory, just in time for Thanksgiving. The bad news is, it might be 30 more years before the people my age are all dead and there’s finally no more reason for the syndicate to keep carrying Family Circus.” –Peanut Gallery

“No, no, cat — when I say ‘me,’ you say ‘ow.’ Now let’s try it again!” –Pozzo

“Mary knows that cats steal babies breath when they sleep, so she is seriously considering getting one.” –Rusty

“I dunno, Henry’s checkered jacket suggests he’s getting ready for an evening at a casino or the track. That may not be Dennis’ idea of a good time, but at least he’s getting some experience with the kind of joint he’ll be wanting to case when he reaches his full potential as an adult criminal.” –BigTed

“Of all the objections I could make to this cartoon, I’ll limit myself to the fact that Beetle can somehow wear his own hat, complete with brim, under the General Halftrack mask, which has a brimmed hat of its own. No, Greg Walker, no. That is the point past which I can no longer suspend my disbelief.” –Joe Blevins

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Beetle Bailey, 11/23/18

I think the key to this whole very strange Beetle Bailey is the use of the past tense in panel one. Beetle was a great guy, but now that his General Halftrack disguise has been perfected, Beetle no longer exists. One wonders how the world will work with two General Halftracks in it — but then, maybe the General is in the past tense too. Maybe that shockingly realistic mask is less Mission Impossible and more Silence of the Lambs, if you know what I mean. (I mean that Beetle has hollowed out Halftrack’s head and is wearing it like a helmet.)

Mary Worth, 11/23/18

No…nobody says that? Nobody says “Open a new window, open a new door”, Mary. Are you thinking of the saying “When God closes a door, he opens a window”? Because the implications of that are very different from whatever it is you just said. If this thing ends with Libby fleeing from Mary’s apartment into an uncaring world through all the doors and windows she left open, I’m gonna be pissed.

Dennis the Menace, 11/23/18

Man, I find the Mitchells’ little smiles honestly chilling. “Oh, you just now figured out that you don’t get to do fun stuff all the time? Get ready to spend the rest of your life eating shit to make other people happy, kid.”