Post Content

Click the banner to contribute by PayPal, or here for other options.

It’s the Summer Fundraiser for the Comics Curmudgeon, now in its third decade of providing quality comics-themed entertainment to faithful readers everywhere!

Support the Comics Curmudgeon in the way that best suits your preferences and lifestyle:

• Commenters can enjoy an ad-free online experience, a WYSIWYG comment editor, and enough time to reconsider and retract that ill-advised remark. You only think you don’t need it! Become a Website Subscriber to The Comics Curmudgeon at the link.
• Busy professionals don’t always have time to browse the website, but crave their daily professional-grade newspaper comics mockery. Get The Comics Curmudgeon delivered ad-free to your inbox every day, beneath the radar of content filters and nosy IT staff, under the pretense of checking your email. Sign on as a Newsletter Subscriber, and lighten up your workday.
• Patrons of the arts will enjoy the opportunity to support all of Josh’s comedic efforts, including The Comics Curmudgeon, by supporting Josh’s Patreon page.
• Traditionalists give the old-fashioned way—PayPal! Click the banner upstairs to make a one-time contribution from your PayPal or credit-card account.
Now with AI!
• Pluggers don’t much cotton to all this seamless, virtual, new-fangled nonsense. They send cash money in the mail, and we better by-gum like it! We do! Just request Josh’s address, where you can send cash, checks, crypto, objets d’art, and more. Short on funds? Hock your TV!
• Kids today embrace incomprehensible instant-payment applications like Venmo, which turn speckled squares into hard cash money for Josh Fruhlinger. Sound sketchy? Try it and see!
• Drive-by readers can help boost advertising revenues by turning off their ad-blockers selectively for this site, and occasionally clicking an ad that looks interesting. Every little bit helps!

Contributions in any form are always completely confidential and deeply appreciated.

Click here for an index of links to legacy Comics Curmudgeon fundraising banners stretching into the dim misty past of 2008. And thank you, generous reader!

–Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Dick Tracy, 8/11/25

Sam, Lizz, and Lee are searching the apartment of loan shark Sphyrna, murdered by tech whiz Theresa Lakoyle with her glowing gun. Yesterday, Sam bet Lee a week of sandwiches that he would find key evidence in two minutes, and here he does. In the toilet. It makes him so damn happy; just look at that grin. Please don’t anybody tell him why he always gets toilet duty.

Alice, 8/11/25

Lady, you took your brain out of your head and handed it to Boyfriend there. Little analysis is required.

Mary Worth, 8/11/25

“Olive, you’re leaning hard into this ‘I am so unusual’ bit; maybe give it a rest for a while and see how that works out?” said Mary Worth, never.

Judge Parker, 8/11/25

“Everyone to the couch. Now. The psychiatrist‘s couch, because you people are nuts.”

—Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Phantom, 8/10/25

One of Phantom‘s many charms is its meticulous attention to aviation history. That doomed B-17F Flying Fortress is the Miss Nonalee II, captured and looted by the Luftwaffe at at the end of 1943, then repainted with German markings for clandestine operations. Phantom’s raceplane is F-ANPY, one of two de Havilland DH.88 Comets sold to the French and last seen in poor condition at Étampes, France, on 16 June 1940, the day the Germans invaded. So these particular aircraft could plausibly have wound up in this Phantom timeline.

But I’m worried about the Walkers’ marriage. Look at the guy, fully suited up at breakfast, pecking at his miserable egg and millet with his mind clearly on work, no eye contact (no eyes!), cryptic communications, keeping secrets until there’s no turning back yikes. And “Remove the …? !!–the canopy!?” sounds to me like Phantom will indeed be flying with Diana tonight, but she’ll be landing all alone.

Next: New Adventure—Savarna Comforts the Ghost-Who-Grieves

Crankshaft, 8/10/25

Plenty of local detail here to justify a sweet tax deduction for the author’s “research” trip to Winnipeg: mascot Boomer there, Coach O’Shea’s beard, and #86 wide receiver Kennans Clercius. The embedded joke is that this is an actual stunt play that could work to shake off tight coverage: the slot back moves before the snap to misdirect defenders; QB hands the ball off to the slot back, who hands to Clercius, who flips to the running back, who throws to the QB. The curl “sluggo” (slant-and-go) route is a misdirect by the split end to open a seam for the QB to run through after the catch. It works in Canadian football because pre-snap motion (the “waggle”) is permitted and the field is wider, so there’s time and space to spread out the defenders.

But the funny part is seeing the Crankshaft frog-marched off to prison, just like the author will be once the IRS learns that Boomer’s #00 jersey is gold, not blue. Hey, it would work in Slylock Fox and Dick Tracy, why not here?

Luann, 8/10/25

Ha, ha, the DA pushed for “intent to defraud” and Brad didn’t plead out. Saved seventy-eight cents; got five years. So I ask: is a year of Brad’s life really worth sixteen cents? Let’s have a reader poll!

Dustin, 8/10/25

“Paparazzi, Fitch? What about that guy in the corner with the sketch pad and colored pencils? He thinks I don’t see him, but I do … always. My life is not my own. You think it’s the camera that makes paparazzi intrusive?”

—Uncle Lumpy