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Hey, it’s the Comics Curmudgeon Spring Fundraiser — thanks for your generous support!

The comics celebrate Carnivale with a tedious procession of same-old same-old — so let’s dig in!

9 Chickweed Lane, 3/8/11

9 Chickweed Lane tries to balance weeks of yak yak gayification of Uncle Roger with weeks of dance dance straightification of Seth. It doesn’t work, but at least nobody’s talking.

Ziggy, 3/8/11

Everyone in Ziggy enjoys his suffering as much as the universe does.

Mary Worth, 3/8/11

Warning: Frolic ahead! Escape, Dawn — only TV Tropes can save you now!

Crankshaft, 3/8/11

See? Nothing really changes except your car is cheesier, your mood surlier, the weather’s worse, you can’t afford as many flowers, and your beloved is long dead. Happy Lent, everybody!

Stave off the gloom with a generous donation to the Comics Curmudgeon! Just click here if you’d prefer to send your contribution by mail. Thank you!

— Uncle Lumpy

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9 Chickweed Lane and B.C., 8/22/10

So it turns out that both humans and insects become disgusted and/or terrified when informed of the circumstances of their conception. But is their disgust and/or horror itself amusing enough to serve as the punchline of a syndicated comic strip? Based on these examples, I am going to go ahead and say “no.”

Shoe, 8/22/10

On the other hand, neither 9 Chickweed Lane nor B.C. tried to get a laugh out of bird anuses.

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Mark Trail, 4/13/10

I can’t remember what task it was that Mark assigned to Ranger Miller while he took on the more dangerous and exciting job of tracking the Parker Brothers to their sinister poaching lair, but I’m reasonably sure that it wasn’t romancing bathing beauty Jan Harris. (As you can see from that previous strip, whatever sort of encounter the two had was so shocking that it turned the good ranger’s hair white.) And we can tell from Miller’s besotted blather that Jan is in turn just using her nubile body to influence the politically powerful ranger corps and keep the lake open for float-planing business. And then Mark has the nerve to suggest “a solution that will make everyone happy!” These people all disgust me, and they make the Parker Brothers, who just want everyone to be able to enjoy a delicious moose steak without Big Government getting in the way, look like heroes.

Apartment 3-G, 4/13/10

Wow, this is some serious anti-climax right here; even as he gently eases the gun from her hand, Martin can’t believe that he’s going to survive only because his estranged pill-crazed wife has been briefly distracted by a cell phone call from her boyfriend. This is extremely weak, and, just as many U.S. state legislatures are making it illegal to talk on a handheld cell phone while driving, so too should deranged would-be murderers everywhere make a pact to set their own mobile phones to vibrate, lest they lose their focus on writing a tale of vengeance using the blood of their enemies as ink.

Panels from 9 Chickweed Lane, 4/12/10, and Spider-Man, 4/13/10

There was a certain buzz in yesterday’s comments on the gape-mouth toothy horror in yesterday’s 9 Chickweed Lane, but for my money the looming, gnashy teeth of J. Jonah Jameson are much, much more terrifying. Maybe it’s a contest among comics artists? Whose teeth are you keen on not seeing? June Morgan’s? Les Moore’s? TJ’s? OH OH GOD TJ’S TEETH OH GOD OH GOD