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I admit to having been slack over the past few days, forcing you to hit Refresh on your browser over and over again, hoping to see a new post here and being mocked by an ad for Comics Curmudgeon tchotchkes. (An offer almost nobody has taken up, incidentally. Come on, don’t you know that everyone will worship you like a new god if you wear a “More zippers, mule!” t-shirt?) To make it up to you, I offer you not one, not two, but three fresh comics for today.

B.C., 2/1/05

I don’t think Jesus likes that punchline very much, Johnny. Also, I don’t really get the grandpa angle of the joke, nor the being-hip angle. If you’re going to set up this joke — and, I need to emphasize, I really don’t think you should — then you could probably find a better way to go about doing it.

Luann, 2/1/05

To my mind, this is the funniest Luann in weeks. It’s also evidence that a strip doesn’t need to have a punchline per se to be funny. Things I like about it: Brad casually saying “Whatev.” (complete with period) while raising one eyebrow, in panel one; T.J. solemnly offering a box of Oreos to Brad’s grave; the poem on Brad’s imaginary tombstone (you probably can’t read it in this graphic, but it reads “Brad DeGroot/ Ran out of luck/ Fell in love/ Forgot to duck); and the fact that T.J. hasn’t felt the need to dress up for his visit to the graveyard.

T.J. appears to have an earing, something I never noticed before. You’ll also notice that he’s entirely mum on the subject of dealing with sexual pressure.

Mark Trail, 2/1/05

Never mind the thrashing around, Mark; maybe you should STOP SHOUTING! I swear, if I were a shark, I’d eat him just to shut him up.

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B.C., 1/8/05

I know, it’s been literally weeks since I last tore into B.C. So, at the risk of making a mockery of my be-nicer New Year’s resolution, I offer this strip up for you consideration. I’m not even going to bother dwelling on the ostensible joke of this strip, which (1) isn’t funny, (2) doesn’t really make sense, and (3) is about three years late, assuming it’s a stab at “topical humor.” Rather, I’d like to point out the prevalence of B.C. running gags that the call for the same art time after time. The “you know” jokes are a good example, though they have the slightly amusing conceit of some sort of stone-age, pedal-driven mechanical system for dispensing witticisms from a hemispherical stone. “The book of phrases,” meanwhile, just involves a book on top of a rock. Strangely, despite the fact that the humor in this strip would work just as well if the image of Peter looking at the book were cut and paste from the first panel to the second, if you look closely you can tell that this bland scene was in fact drawn twice. I suppose I should respect Johnny Hart’s old-school dedication to the fine art of manual art-creation, but, really, if it’s in the service of lame-ass Enron jokes, I must withhold my approbation.

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B.C., 12/20/04

Given his track record, this is kind of a strange thing to say, but do you think Johnny Hart is trying not to offend someone? That’s the only explanation I can come up with for about the last six months of his political cartoons, which are so convoluted as to be incomprehensible. If there’s more of a punchline to this one than “The guy on the left is a Democrat,” I don’t see it — but, really, there has to be more to it. Doesn’t there? I’m thinking it’s all some sort of B.C. insider code, which ignorant leftists like myself gloss over unknowingly, while those in the know chortle uproariously as our caveman heroes once again stick it to the secularists/liberals/Jews/whoevers.