Post Content

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

No Star Wars puns from me this May the Fourth — isn’t that worth a couple bucks? I thought so!

Pluggers, 5/4/17

Not sure what they’re going for here: “Pluggers want all of technology’s benefits with none of the intellectual investment?” “Pluggers parade their ignorance as a point of pride?” “Pluggers are lazy hypocrites?” “Pluggers’ wives are somehow not pluggers?”

Wait, they’re at a bookstore? Ha, ha what a couple of pluggers!

Blondie, 5/4/17

Ha, ha tech and teh olds LMAO.

Beetle Bailey, 5/4/17

Ha, ha tech and teh olds LMAO.

Six Chix, 5/4/17

Six Chix rotates through a roster of six woman author/artists on weekdays, and separately on Sundays — sort of like girls’ softball in Gil Thorp. Here’s the current lineup, highlighting a couple of recent changes:

The rotation gimmick is really clever: at its best, it lets each Chik contribute fresh work without the pressure of daily deadlines. But at its worst, it lets the strip become an afterthought, with dashed-off artwork supporting a weak concept. A lot of recent strips boil down to “look at this thing I don’t like!”, punctuated by a knowing glance between the characters or at the audience.

Maybe before publishing one of these, the Chix should apply a variant of the Bechdel Test: if two woman characters are talking, and it’s not about men, is it about anything else?

Hm, I seem to be posting a lot of Pluggers this week. It can’t possibly mean anything, though.

–Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Panels from Hagar the Horrible, 4/23/17

Hagar and his clan may have recently converted to Christianity, but that doesn’t meant they don’t occasionally dabble in a little paganistic future-scrying now and then.

Panels from Beetle Bailey, 4/23/17

File today’s Beetle Bailey dialogue under “phrases that no human being has ever actually said aloud and yet will haunt me for days.”

Panels from Blondie, 4/23/17

If there’s a sadder commentary on what passes for pleasure in this modern age, I don’t know what it is!

Post Content

Mary Worth, 4/12/17

Panel one of today’s Mary Worth is a great illustration of why I love Mary Worth and soap opera strips in general, which I realize makes me sound insane but isn’t it nice that we’ve all found each other, friends? Anyway, what makes it great is that it offers a deep dive into the midset of someone who’s deciding to sit down. “Hmm, I’ve been holding my body vertically and using my legs to move from place to place for some time … but what if I were to lower myself onto one of these pieces of furniture, which seem to have been explicitly designed for that purpose? Why, it seems obvious that I’d expend less energy that way, albeit at the price of remaining stationary for a limited period of time! What do I have to lose?”

Beetle Bailey, 4/12/17

The art in Beetle Bailey has always been, uh, let’s say deliberately simplistic. This means that Miss Buxley’s standard-issue Little Black Dress is actually just an excuse to draw an hourglass figure and then fill in most of it from neck to thighs with the paintcan tool in Photoshop. But for today’s joke (“joke”) to work (“work”), she needed to looks stunning. More stunning than usual. And so, in dedication to their craft (“craft”), the employees of Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC have taught themselves to draw cleavage. Heroic efforts all around here!

Dick Tracy, 4/12/17

Meanwhile, over in Dick Tracy, there are, uh, two ladies named Margie, with ironic nicknames, and … the programs for the convention are here???? I will bring you more reports as this fraught situation develops.

Gil Thorp, 4/12/17

Oh God … her hand … with each high five it has absorbed the life force of the hands it strikes against … growing more powerful … larger … already it’s big enough to reach from her forehead to her sternum … and nothing can stop it … nothing … oh God it’s already too late