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It’s the 2022 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser!

When Josh launched The Comics Curmudgeon in 2004, blogs supported themselves with advertising and the occasional contribution. Since that time, he and others have developed an assortment of ways to support the quality daily comics mockery we all know and love. Surely one of them fits your requirements and preferences exactly!

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A short note on the banners: in previous fundraiser posts, banners were selected randomly with every page refresh. For a variety of technical and security reasons, WordPress no longer accepts the script that made this possible, so now it’s one banner per post. But click here for an index of links to an absurd number of Comics Curmudgeon fundraising banners stretching all the way back to 2008. And thank you, generous reader!

–Uncle Lumpy

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Gil Thorp, 8/29/22

Seems its new author is transforming Gil Thorp from one of newspaper comics’ few remaining sports strips into a full-blown soaper, and at breakneck speed.

In just five weeks, we’ve seen Gil ambiguously flirt with Barkeep Bethany and mysterious blonde “Ms. Holmes,” and Coach Ms. Coach Thorp disappear with the kids on the one weekend Gil would be in town, explaining (?) that “I need Coach Gil to be more at home sometimes.” Luke Martinez, new coach at Valley Tech, is a thoroughgoing jackass who drunkenly insults Gil in a bar, libels him in a Marty Moon podcast, compulsively brags about his own athletic, coaching, and intellectual prowess, and here humiliates his teenage son (“Haha! Dad! Haha! You asshole!”). His wife Francesca humblebrags about being “just a heart surgeon” and subtly negs Mimi about being a “stay-at-home mom.” All the ingredients of an explosive melodrama!

Hey, maybe instead of the Homecoming celebration we’ll get an emotional bonfire this fall!

Crankshaft, 8/29/22

Let me save you a couple brain cells looking for a joke here: searching “kids play servers” will get you mostly family-friendly Minecraft sites, and “restaurants where the waitstaff also babysits” are very rare, imagine that.

My real interest here is Max and Hannah’s car. I get a strong “1996 Hyundai Accent” vibe, which fits their “failed movie theater entrepreneurs living with his parents” demographic. The odd thing is, everybody in Centerville and Westview seems to drive the exact same car. Check out Crankshaft himself, Ralph Meckler, and the Winkerbeans:

Crankshaft, 7/10/22 and 7/9/18; Funky Winkerbean, 8/24/22 (panels)

Did they get some sort of group discount? Was it part of Hyundai’s Rust-Belt marketing strategy? Do they pass cars back and forth between the strips? Does the Ohio UAW’s “Buy American” office know about this? Maybe they all just share one car? That last one wouldn’t surprise me; I mean none of them is going anywhere.

Curtis, 8/29/22

Free availability of an essential good mitigates absolute poverty but ruins local suppliers and distorts unrelated markets as families reallocate spending. Next up: “Ma, the rent is too damn high for no good reason,” brought to you by Ray Billingsley and Thomas Sowell.

9 Chickweed Lane, 8/29/22

When these two aren’t talking about sex, they’re talking about nothing. It’s an improvement!

–Uncle Lumpy

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Judge Parker, 8/28/22

It’s excruciating watching poor Marie’s unspoken pleading as Abbey looks past and through her, slamming back those screwdrivers. “B-but this is my home, too, isn’t it? And you’re all my friends—my f-family, right?” At least Abbey has the grace to condescend to Marie’s “want it or think it” Junior Therapist schtick before checking out “Westin Resort Caribbean” on her phone while Marie fetches another screwdriver.

And final panel aside, Abbey won’t really scream: it would interfere with her talking, and this is Judge Parker.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/28/22

Welcome back to “Buck and Truck talk on the phone,” a continuing series.

Hey, isn’t “went off the grid and was presumed dead but came back” Truck‘s backstory? What if Mud Mountain Murphy—and every other Roots Country act—is actually just Truck Tyler through an Instagram filter, squishing up his mouth to sound a little different? It would explain Truck’s last-panel frustration at having to maintain the fiction in a live show! And it would reveal Buck as the masterm…. OK, I can’t finish.

Gotta say they missed an opportunity naming “Mud Mountain” Murphy: “Buck, Truck, and Muck” was right there.

Slylock Fox (panel), 8/28/22

“Why does Slylock Fox suspect Cassandra may be lying?” Because she’s Cassandra Cat, for crying out loud! She lies as she breathes, as Reeky Rat burgles, Shady Shrew pilfers, and Slick Smitty cons. And blue hair or no, she looks great doing it! Play your cards right and I bet she even springs for Meg’s Flea Dip special, you lucky fox!

–Uncle Lumpy