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So ends the Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser. For more than 20 years, through economic crises, the collapse of print journalism, a global pandemic, and Crock, the generosity of Comics Curmudgeon readers has kept this valuable cultural property alive and thriving. Thank you!

[On the off chance that you missed the fundraiser, you can click here to sneak in a last-minute contribution. I won’t tell anybody!]

Arctic Circle, 8/16/25

The Wild West! Memories came flooding back of endless summer afternoons spent fighting off backyard rustlers with his precious Nichols cap gun, trying and failing again to lasso the dog, plinking cans with his beloved Daisy, then sleeping under the stars, content with his posse and a belly full of Mom’s baked beans. Sure, accountancy had given him, Viv, and the kids a good, secure life. But the dream had never died. It took only a wisp of smoke from the grill or distant wail of a train to remind him he had become a settler—that he had settled. And it hurt.

A cowboy! Was it even possible after all this time, dressed in neoprene not buckskin, corralling manganese nodules instead of dogies, foregoing security for the risk and freedom of a new frontier? Gold shone from those hydrothermal vents for a man bold enough to brave the tube worms and claim it. No one would stop him, but did he dare? Instinctively he ran the numbers: mortgage balance, 401(k), the kids’ 529s. No, it wasn’t money he lacked, but courage. And now he could feel it, unfamiliar but welcome, welling up inside him.

Viv wouldn’t understand at first—he had never shared his childhood dream. But she would see the glow in his eyes, feel the newfound strength in his arms, and accept this part of the man she loved. He left his beer half finished and walked into the sun, grinning. He had waited too long. He would live this dream, and no fucking rabbit would tell him it was a sin.

Dick Tracy, 8/16/25

Lakoyle Labs is down at #44 on Tracy’s “Person of Interest” list, but this guy just up and phones the murderer direct. They’d hire him to head the Major Crimes Unit, if he had the chin for it.

Flash Gordon, 8/16/25

Hmm, “footage.” I understand that we’ve not yet figured out terse, digital-specific terms to replace hoary analog coinages like “film” (as a verb), “cut,” “splice,” and “reel.” And it takes a while: consider the evolution of “radio phone” → “car phone” → “mobile phone” → “cell phone” → “mobile” → “smart phone” → “mobile device” → “phone.” But you’d think they’d have it figured out by the time the flying cars showed up.

Well, that’s it for me this time around—guest host tomorrow, and Josh is back on Monday tanned, rested, and ready. I had a wonderful time, thanks! And special thanks to all the generous contributors who keep this site going, year after year.

—Uncle Lumpy

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Arctic Circle, 9/18/24

This strip has been fixated on environmental catastrophe so long it’s jarring to see it suddenly switch gears. Or has it? After all, Oscar, Ed, and Gordo are still standing on their metaphorical corner of the Internet wearing sandwich boards announcing “The End Is Near.” Climate, AI: Tomato, Tomahto. It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure where every path leads to extinction.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/18/24

Hey, Parson, them thar antydepressicant pharmysooticals shore will make the news go down easier!

Mark Trail, 9/18/24

Mark is searching for “Vampire in Malibu” director Wesley Wingit, reputedly holed up in this house full of lions. Very talented lions. They can open a chest freezer; unwrap, thaw, and microwave their meals; and presumably use the litter box, most likely a repurposed swimming pool. If Wesley doesn’t show up, they can probably also direct his next movie, produced by MGM of course.

Judge Parker, 9/18/24

Pity poor Ronnie. To escape her wretched marriage to self-absorbed twit Kat who looks exactly like Neddy, she submits to a doomed roadtrip with self-absorbed twit Neddy who looks exactly like Neddy because she is actually Neddy. In her troubled dreams, Ronnie careers through a mirrored funhouse with infinite Neddies screeching tornadoes of empty yak at her from every side, only to awake soaked in sweat to find yet another goddamn Neddy shaking her shoulder saying, “Hey, I’ve got an idea ….”

Beetle Bailey, 9/18/24

Pity Amos Halftrack. This is as intimate as he will ever be with a woman; this moment will define his life.

—Uncle Lumpy

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Daddy Daze, 5/13/24

One of the most fascinating and bonkers “big ideas” books of the ’70s was The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which posited that before about 800 BC, human beings weren’t “conscious” in the way that we now understand it and were not capable of introspection, but instead perceived decisions formed in one part of their mind as hearing “commands” from a “god” telling them what to do. While I do not actually believe this theory as an explanation for human consciousness and the beginning of civilization as we know it, I do think it explains what’s going on in Daddy Daze, as the Daddy Daze daddy engages in an endless series of unhinged philosophical discussions with his “infant son” (actually the other hemisphere of his bicameral mind, which rather than guiding him instead torments him with a series of playfully deranged falsehoods).

Alice, 5/13/24

Ruh-oh! Looks like those aliens have successfully kidnapped Alice and trapped her in a featureless, silent void. Realizing that their captive needs some sensory stimulation, they’ve decided to let loose with a little “swing”! (“Swing Music”: A musical style that was popular from the late 1920s – 1940s, big thanks to the King Features editorial intervention that explains the least confusing thing about this entire comic.)

Arctic Circle, 5/13/24

That sky is bright blue and it’s clear the sun is out. That poor vampire you woke up is going to vaporize in mere seconds! You monsters!

Mary Worth, 5/13/24

Guess we need to rephrase this: time to eat Stellan and Willa!