Post Content

Click the banner to contribute to the Comics Curmudgeon. Details here.

Kick off your Fourth with an independent contribution to the Comics Curmudgeon!

Dick Tracy, 7/4/18

Citizen! Share your Fourth of July with this steel-jawed law enforcer, literal red-headed stepchild, and alien halfbreed, arrayed before a monochrome American flag! Comply!

Crankshaft, 7/4/18

All week long, Ralph has been flirting with both myocardial infarction and Sandy here, to the dulcet strains of jazz classic I Can’t Get Started — doubly ironic because even if he does, there remains the matter of finishing.

P.S. In California we have fires, and our air really does look like that. I don’t know Ohio’s excuse.

Mary Worth, 7/4/18

Tommy and Brandy emerge from some kind of hostage drama, and the foreshadowing is thick: Tommy will demand sex on threat of murder, and Brandy will gladly opt for death: “Humanity, schumanity — a girl’s got to have standards!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/4/18

Every year around this time I become insufferable on the subject of fireworks. Growing up, we had the good, real kind — the ones that fly, flash, and most of all explode. I once got arrested for pitching an M-80 into the lagoon at a public park, and I can’t say I regret it.

But now the runup to every Fourth of July brings a week of TV-news moralizing about how awful fireworks are and police BS about how THIS TIME the department will be REALLY SERIOUS about enforcement. The spokespeople are hilarious: “Yes of course we will totally send our officers charging into drunken parties in private backyards, risking their lives to keep lawbreakers from injuring themselves. It’s our top priority. Youuuuuu betcha.”

But the highlight is the late news on the Fourth itself, when every station stops their tut-tutting and backdrops the news desk with a live feed of the Oakland skyline — a lacework of smoke trails silhouetted against a sky lit bright as day. AMERICA, dammit!

Still and all, I wouldn’t put explosives in the hands of Hootin’ Holler’s most belligerent drunk.

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/17/18

Aww, isn’t that sweet? Jughaid is honoring his Uncle Snuffy on Fathers Day, even grouping him in with the “paws,” and saying nothing of his own biological father. What terrible circumstance has led him to being raised by his second-order kin rather than his parents? Did his father die in an ongoing feud with another clan — perhaps die shamefully, so his name is never spoken? Or was the boy himself captured as an infant in a raid for chickens and other movable goods in a neighboring holler, with “uncle” just a convenient term for non-parent guardian applied to the family that took him in? This is surely one of the more intriguing instances of nephewism in the daily comics.

Marvin, 6/17/18

This right here is probably Marvin: Origins. I’m not talking about the origin of Marvin the character; that happened when Jeff and Jenny managed to briefly overcome their mutual resentment and irritation and have sex with one another. No, I’m talking about the origin of the strip itself, which probably came about when someone was waiting in line for the bathroom and thought “Wouldn’t it be great if I could just shit my pants? And if that was somebody else’s problem? Ugh, God, babies have it so easy!”

Post Content

Mark Trail, 6/16/18

“It’s hard to describe, Mark! It just gives me an uneasy feeling … as if it were consecrated to some long-dormant winged serpent god, whose very avatar is following us now and watching us intently with Its inhuman eyes, ready to rise from Its century-long slumber when enough living men have gathered unknowingly in the sacred forecourt before the temple’s altar, ready to drink men’s blood once again to regain Its power and reign on earth for ten thousand awful years! You’ll see!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/16/18

Sheriff Tait sure is havin’ a good laugh at the idea of of having a cam’ra! Flatlander law enforcement officers are often fitted with body cameras to provide a record of their activities, because they’re responsible to elected officials and ultimately to the people they serve and can be held accountable for violations of the law. None of those things even vaguely apply to Sheriff Tait, who never faces either voters or any sort of county administration, so no, he won’t be recording the process as he violates Snuffy and Lukey’s civil rights, thank you very much.

Pluggers, 6/16/18

Do … do pluggers have $14K to drop on a kitchen remodel

Do pluggers live in a town where the median income is almost $90,000

IS EVERYTHING I THOUGHT I KNEW ABOUT PLUGGERS WRONG