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Mark Trail, 10/15/16

And it’s an invasive wild boar – the very worst kind! What’s more, he’s either a really ROUGH sort, or a real GROUCH – it’s hard to tell from context. Maybe both!

But hey waitaminute: what are wild boars doing on a volcanic atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? I’m guessing they weren’t carried ashore in bundles of firewood like the ants. Maybe the neo-Aztecs who built the mountaintop temple imported boars for sacrifice until the boars figured out the deal and turned the tables?

Most likely it’s all a plot by Abbey Powell’s sinister “U.S. Department of Agriculture.” Alarmed by the invasion of fire ants, they brought in Formosan termites to control them. This turned out to be a terrible mistake. So they shipped in “beneficial” nematodes, which promptly started eating all the coral. The marine iguanas they imported to kill the nematodes quickly overwhelmed the beaches, so they airlifted in packs of boars and here we are. In a desperate attempt, Abbey has conned Mark Trail to come in and punch the boars into submission. I hope it works, because the next step is nuclear weapons.

Dick Tracy, 10/15/16

When someone is killed for persecuting an ethnic group with exactly two members, the police know where to start their investigation. When both of those members are friends or relatives of Dick Tracy, they have a pretty good idea where to stop it, too.

Phantom, 10/15/16

OK, so the Phantom has one of those Lone Ranger-style “see my unmasked face and die” gimmicks going on, and it apparently includes his wife??? Brrr….

Maybe he only goes all shadowy like this when we’re watching, which frankly hurts my feelings a little bit. Dude, we’re your fans. We stuck with you through Hide the Lion. We toughed it out through The College Kid — that’s gotta count for something. How ’bout a little peek at them baby blues?

Judge Parker, 10/15/16

OK, now that Bob Dylan has his Nobel Prize we’d better get used to the fact that Boomer culture is universal culture everywhere and forever.

At 77, ’60’s icon Spencer Davis (Gimme Some Lovin’) is old enough enough to work at Neddy’s factory, but not desperate enough for her starvation wages. From his retreat on California’s Catalina Island, he writes:

♬

Well, the factory’s collapsing, got a hole in the floor
Canes and walkers clacking on their way to the door
Let me through granny, I don’t want to be entombed
And you better hobble quicker, ’cause this place is doomed.

And I sure hope you make it — we olds can’t take it
You’ve got to: gimme some running (gimme, gimme some running)
Gimme some crushing, (gimme, gimme some crushing)
Gimme some shoving everyday.
Hey hey.

Hi there, faithful reader! I’m sitting in through Sunday the 23rd while Josh takes a break. Please let me know if you experience any access or comment-posting problems at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net. Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/14/16

All week long we’ve been enduring tell-don’t-show conversations about “hazing” followed by weak-sauce wordplay, ain’t-it-awful mopery, and one incredibly off “joke” about depriving a sick old man of his oxygen. So I suppose we should be glad that Sunday’s strip finally shows us some actual hazing? And even more glad that hazing is now a thing of the past, having been overcome through unspecified single-handed efforts by our chop-jawed heroine Becky here?

Nope! This is Funky Winkerbean, and that last panel is there to show us that no matter how good things may seem, somebody suffers. Somebody always suffers.

PS. If you really want to suffer, try taking a nap on a Sousaphone some time.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/14/16

After learning that Dolly Pierpont artificially spun up Sarah’s career by buying all her horsey pictures and museum books, Rex spent the week telling her to back the hell off with the chauffeur-driven Mercedes, private-school tuition, art lessons, museum donations, and soirée guest-of-honor slots, and let Sarah earn her own honors. Dude, who are you, and what have you done with the real Rex Morgan?

Now we learn that Dolly was only trying to buy Sarah as a replacement for her dear departed Linda. You know, if she’d come to Rex with that deal in the first place, I’m sure they could’ve worked something out.

Judge Parker, 8/14/16 (panels)

I’ll spare you more “Neddy has a sad” panels. The real action is rolling down from Morristown in the rain, doubtless approaching Chekhov’s Curve off the main road to Alpine Pass. Enjoy A Sip Of vodka, Zeke and Ms. Honey “Does Not Understand Inventory Management” Ballenger – you’re in for a long night!

Well, that’s it for me. Thanks for a fun week — Josh will be back bright and early Monday.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Family Circus, 8/13/16

“Am I practicing flat-out nihilism, or some godless esoteric discipline — ha ha I’m agnostic on the question! Oh, I learned so much at Heresy Camp, Dolly, you have no idea ….”

Judge Parker, 8/13/16

Oh man, that’s some sub-Mary Worth-level advice Abbey is pitching right there, but in fairness, why would she engage seriously the efforts to “find and hold onto a man” of somebody whose 10-year romantic history reads like this:

• Hometown squeeze Bob — he of the front-porch “tongue thing”. Neddy dumped him.
• Julian “Beautiful Shoes Jules” Edgemont, Neddy’s “live-in boyfriend” from Paris. Neddy dumped him.
• “Retcon Mark,” Neddy’s newly-divorced former boyfriend, home from Harvard. Neddy dumped him.
• Mark again, back from Hong Kong and proposing marriage. Neddy dumped him again, and somehow everybody was supposed to feel sorry for her about it.

So maybe the reason you can’t hold onto men, Neddy, is that you keep dumping them? Just spitballin’ here.

Phantom, 8/13/16

Mr. Walker (for Ghost Who Walks don’tcha know) drops his son off at school. I hope this branches the story into three: Heloise and sometimes Diana in New York, mother/daughter bonding and daughter/roomie hijinking under the sinister eye of Eric Sahara (the Nomad!); Kit Jr. learning Phantomry from the monks; and Kit Sr. and sometimes Diana going through the trials of empty-cave syndrome.

But I wouldn’t get too sure about that “You’re a Phantom” thing quite yet – the strip has been dropping hints for a long time:

Phantom, 4/5/06

Since Heloise routinely bests young Kit in athletic contests, maybe some kind of sibling duel-to-the-death scenario is in the offing? I’ll pop some corn.

–Uncle Lumpy