Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 9/4/13

I was going to say something snide here about how if you hear the phrase “3-D printing” on the news you can’t just panic and throw it into a comic at random, you have to do a few minutes of research about what 3-D printing actually is, but then I thought: what if Gizmo has one of those 3-D printers that can create living tissue and has decided to make another version of General Halftrack, piece by piece? If nothing else, this horrible 3-D-printed abomination of science will allow us to do some good nature vs. nurture studies about terrible, crippling alcoholism.

Mark Trail, 9/4/13

Now that Mark Trail’s gotten all the punching out of the way early, the strip is free to draw out the rest of this storyline as one long, dull anticlimax. “Thanks for the tip, Dusty … it turns out it was surveyors who had been damaging our fence! They had been leaning their equipment up against it. I explained to them why they shouldn’t do that, and they apologized and said they wouldn’t do it again. Anyway, good luck catching those poachers! I’m going to go get some pancakes.”

Apartment 3-G, 9/4/13

Oh my goodness, which character from Apartment 3-G will suddenly find themselves appointed the new Lieutenant Governor of New York? Probably Tommie, right? Lieutenant Governor is about the most boring political office America has to offer, Tommie’d be perfect.

B.C., 9/4/13

Wait, none of the ant-adults in B.C. have jobs? All the stories about their work ethic are just lies!

Post Content

B.C., 8/13/13

Prehistoric or not, it’s time to catch up when Prince Valiant beats you to a technology joke by two years.

Crankshaft, 8/13/13

“And by ‘great practice’ we mean ‘pointless and expensive truck rolls that put us at risk, endanger the public safety, and have had no effect on the frequency or recklessness of your life-threatening behavior.'”

“As part of your award, your family and the Montgomery County Court have arranged a special honorary bunk for you at, um, ‘Firehouse Manor’, where you’ll be on special honorary permanent assignment under the “Honorary Heroes” program, Ohio Revised Code (ORC) 5122.01(B). Your new Captain will give you additional orders on your arrival. Be sure to take all the vitamins she gives you so you can perform all your special honorary duties! Been great knowing you, gramps!”

Dick Tracy, 8/13/13

Dick Tracy‘s new creative team has been referencing, recapping, and extending old characters and plots all the way from the strip’s 1930’s origins through the Moon Madness of the 1970’s. Today’s second panel recaps the final episode before the team took over from Dick Locher in 2011: in it, Mordred tries to kill Dick Tracy in an abandoned granary but is eaten alive by rats before he can seal the deal.

So what happens now? Does the strip move forward from the present moment, with new villains to overcome and crimes to solve? Or does it start recapping the recaps themselves in an ever-tightening spiral until Dick Tracy shrinks to a single image, of a solitary rat nibbling on the last morsel of a villain, every day forever?

Heathcliff, 8/13/13

Heathcliff Moves On, Part XLIV: By car, scooter, balloon, elephant, and now by cannon, a cat’s gotta travel.

BOOM, I’m outta here — apparently, I’ve been selected for some sort of honorary program, and I don’t want to be late for my initiation! Josh returns Wednesday morning with more of the rich, savory comic goodness you’ve come to expect from the Comics Curmudgeon. Thanks!

–Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 6/12/13

There are so many things I [love/am horrified by] (this is a single emotion that I trust is familiar to anyone reading this blog) about today’s Apartment 3-G that I can hardly stand it. Let’s start with the idea that Lu Ann lacks the rudimentary linguistic-cultural competencies necessary to parse the concept of a “famous stylist,” which would be pretty embarrassing even if she hadn’t fairly recently been on a reality TV show in the course of which she got a makeover from a famous stylist. Then add in the fact that what had on Monday been an ignorable peach-orange shirt has today suddenly become a peach-orange shirt insanely paired with an all white suit jacket, which, when combined with Lu Ann’s weirdly rubbery-seeming fish-lipped visage, makes her look like a villain from the Adam West Batman. Look, the governor is affectionally patting her mask-face! Haha, this is a [nightmare/delight].

Funky Winkerbean, 6/12/13

Man, Funky Winkerbean is really going there, if by “there” we mean “dragging one of the sad sack characters from Crankshaft ten years through a time-wormhole into the Funkypresent.” Things we’ve learned today: Jeff looks even more beaten down by life and depressed than he does in the Crankpresent; and, Crankshaft still lives, but has been banished to a nursing home, and thus presumably no longer endangers children by driving a bus. What about Jeff’s terrible mother? Has she finally shaken off this mortal coil? I’m legitimately on tenterhooks!

Crankshaft, 6/12/13

Meanwhile, back in the Crankpresent, my shriveled black heart twitched in delight at Crankshaft’s look of genuine panic in the second panel. Is this the moment when the school district decides to let him go from the job that lets him preserve a modicum of independence and dignity? Let’s hope!

Mark Trail, 6/12/13

Oh, man, I’ve been totally neglectful in keeping you up to date with the new storyline in Mark Trail, which involve otter poaching and otter traps and rescuing injured otters, and have been bubbling along on just this side of hilarity. But I think it’s safe to say that the sentence “How are the otters today, Rusty?” crosses that line at a pretty fast clip.

B.C., 6/12/13

The B.C. creative team apparently has only a vague idea of what the “internet” is or how one interacts with it.