Post Content

Six Chix, 4/30/16

Sure, “Kids Today” and “Technology Bad” are two of the classic themes, but if you want to go full plugger, Mom, you gotta grow the tail.

Archie, 4/30/16

Even the folks at Team Archie know this joke would be unpublishable with the roles reversed. Hey panel-2 Veronica: his eyes are down there!

Curtis, 4/30/16

Oh man, I was all set to go off on newish tertiary character “Heart-throb” for what I thought was a transparently false boast about an obviously impossible YouTube video. But then I checked and learned that kids all over the world post School Fight videos faster than Google can knock ’em down, and of course some of the fights are staged specifically for the videos.

What I’m saying is kids today are terrible, and technology makes everything worse.

(Checks behind for tail; still OK whew)

Judge Parker, 4/30/16

Hey, remember when Derek tried to go to a party with his real girlfriend Honey Ballenger and it made Sophie want to get all trained up at military school and flat-out murder everybody? But then Honey got grounded so Sophie dropped the idea and resumed her campaign to stalk/purchase Derek?

Well, those slick brochures from the military school kept coming, and they’re like porn to poor Marie here. Look at her caress that embossed coat of arms, dreaming of the sweet barracks pleasures she’d enjoy if only she could escape her hated employer/tormentors.

“Did you know they have a separate school for aerospace studies?” she coos. It’s her ultimate fantasy, to slip the surly bonds of Spencer Farms and fly, alone and free, into a brand-new life. Well, maybe one little strafing run first.

Hello there, faithful reader! I’m sitting in for Josh through Sunday, May 8 while he wraps up his book tour and recovers from same. Drop me a line at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if you need any admin help, for example if one of your comments gets hoovered up by the site’s new and voracious spam filter.

– Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Archie, 4/26/16

I normally only mention the anonymous toilers who add color to the daily strips when they egregiously screw up, so let’s give big props to whoever had the job of dealing with today’s Archie. Not only did they notice the severed foot laying casually atop the debris that Jughead has layered on his floor to block his parents’ access to his room/slaughter chamber, but they chose the perfect off-pink color to represent human flesh that’s just begun to putrefy.

Shoe, 4/26/16

The city of Treetops consists of habitations scattered across the tops of trees, as the name and also just about every Shoe strip published in the last 39 years demonstrate. Rubber comes from trees, and Treetops is inhabited entirely by bird-people. Thus, this is a news item about a rapacious corporation that is going to stop destroying the townsfolk’s homes and will now move on to literally extracting profits from their bodies.

Mark Trail, 4/26/16

Mark and his fellow cave-captives have spent the last week wandering around this cavern marveling at the miracles of nature that created these gorgeous, enormous crystals. Today they figure they should get a mining corporation in here and make a quick buck. Everybody needs sheetrock!

Pluggers, 4/26/16

OH MY GOD

PLUGGER LINGERE IS ADULT DIAPERS

BECAUSE PLUGGERS DON’T DRESS SEXILY, AND ALSO ARE INCONTINENT

IF I HAD TRIED TO COME UP WITH A VICIOUSLY CRUEL PARODY OF PLUGGERS, I NEVER WOULD HAVE COME CLOSE TO THIS

Post Content

Archie, 4/18/16

Who says you can’t learn valuable historical and cultural data from Archie reruns from the early ’90s? Take today’s strip, for example. Archie and Jughead spend so much time together that they’ve exhausted just about every possible topic of conversation, leading Archie with nothing to ask Jughead about except dietary supplements, and this awkward conversational gambit reminds us that there was at one point a craze for shark cartilage pills as a cancer cure. This quackery was promoted by Sharks Don’t Get Cancer, a 1992 book whose Wikipedia page hilariously notes that “despite its title, the book does not claim that sharks never get cancer.” Anyway, shark cartilage does not in fact cure cancer, but the idea that it might is frankly more believable than the conceit that it might make you extra bitey.

Mary Worth, 4/18/16

If we ever needed proof that Dawn is Wilbur’s daughter, we wouldn’t have to get some fancy paternity test; we can just watch her rub her hands together in deranged anticipation of shoving that sandwich in front of her into her eager gullet, just like her dear old dad would. I’d find it a little dubious that Dawn is now openly eating lunch with her professorial crush object in front of her classmates, but clearly the only erotic stirrings she’s feeling at the moment are for what’s on the tray in front of her. “I, uh, think lunch is pretty awesome too!” says Harlan Jones, suddenly realizing Dawn will never look at him the way she looks at a cafeteria BLT.

Beetle Bailey, 4/18/16

I had a vague memory that Beetle Bailey’s resident psychologist had a hilariously shticky name, and I was right: It’s “Dr. Bonkus”! And I assume that, like all joke psychologist characters dreamed up in the 1950s, he’s a strict Freudian, which means he probably would have some pretty interesting things to say about Sarge’s subconscious life.