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So ends the Comics Curmudgeon 2008 Fall Fundraiser. A sincere thank you to all the many contributors for your generous donations, and to all our faithful readers for your patience. Ads and fundraisers help keep CC going, but we know it’s not why you’re here. So here’s an extra-large serving of tasty, tasty comics for your Saturday enjoyment!

Mark Trail, 10/4/08

See? See? This is why Little Miss “Daddy Died and Gave Me His Big Ol’ Company” Sue Butler will never break that glass ceiling into the top echelon of rapacious capitalism. You can see it in panel two, where she’s all “Oh, I am in Mortal Danger” and “Oh, I hope some oddly affectless Man of Action with waxy hair hears my anguished cries!” A true Titan of Industry would be thinking, “Hey, this is great! Now we can say we’re draining the wetlands to save the children from gators!”

Oh, and “Go Blue and Orange!”

Gasoline Alley, 10/4/08

Rover’s got potential, though: “Oh, thank Heaven, my benefactor died before he could discover my fraud!” (Let’s not dwell on the fact that if Sultan P. had in fact been trying to install Rover’s invention on a fuel-injected car, he would have discovered the fraud.) But genius inventor or not, I wonder if Rover really has the smarts for the top job — most folks wipe the side of the face on which they’re actually sweating.

Beetle Bailey, 10/4/08

At last, the Beetle Bailey/Marmaduke crossover. This one goes on the fridge!

The Phantom, 10/4/08

Looks like Ghost-Who-Hemmorrhages has a grim mission for Ol’ Doc Poor-but-Noble here. But inquiring minds want to know, what’s Ol’ Doc reading?

Aha! One imagines that entire panel-one bookcase is stuffed with Phantom-related literature like this, this, and this. Probably some correspondence course he’s taking for when he takes over from Stripey in a couple days. NEXT!

Archie, 10/4/08

OMG TEH KIDZ + TEH TECHNOLOGY ROFLMAO!

Archie archivists will note that the child is Leroy, Veronica’s cousin* and, in the comic books and digests, Archie’s tormentor. Of course, the ALGU-3000 knows none of this beyond:

PROCEDURE CHAR_LOC.
Begin.
DISPLAY "Enter location and character.".
ACCEPT Loc.
ACCEPT Char.
PERFORM UNTIL NOT ValidLoc.
EVALUATE TRUE
WHEN Lodge_Mansion DISPLAY "Location is valid."
WHEN Char_Residence DISPLAY "Character residence is valid."
WHEN OTHER DISPLAY "HA HA HA -- O TEH KIDZ!"
END-EVALUATE
END-PERFORM
STOP RUN.

* Update: Not “brother” as originally posted. Thank you, faithful readers!

Sally Forth, 10/4/08

Hey, Sally’s finally ready for her makeover — Let’s help!

1. Lose the jumper
2. Hairstyle, sweetie. For the love of God.
3. [Reader input!]

Apartment 3-G, 10/4/08

So, they’re investigating drug abuse by a dead guy? What’re they gonna do, put him in Hell Jail?

Blondie, 10/4/08

Poor, desperate Blondie’s sexytalk and coy strapslip lure Dagwood into the kitchen, not out of his pyjamas. His bagel-themed pyjamas. I swear she’d have better luck with frickin’ Sam Driver.

Judge Parker, 10/4/08

Well, speak of the devil! Alas, this is all just boring exposition (ha ha!), but lest anyone forget, Abby Spencer is headed to Scottsdale for some damn plot-device horse show. I’m praying her arrival will coincide with writer Woody Wilson’s departure on a long journey, stopping the plot cold and leaving Abby, Heidi, Dixie, and us-y in the strong but supple and surprisingly tender hands of artist Eduardo Barreto. Masterful hands! Maybe a long and fatal journey?

Hey — it’s Broderick Crawford Day! Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Beetle Bailey, Ziggy, The Better Half, 9/29/08

Cartoonists have always known that technology is funny all by itself, so there’s no need for frills like an actual joke — perfect for a lazy Monday! I’m sure that when the inscriptions at Lascaux are finally translated from the proto-Gallic, at least one will read, “OMG — TEH FIREZ! TEH SPEARZ! ROFLMAO”!

Apartment 3G, 9/29/08

Hey, it’s really Alan, and he’s not only merely dead, he’s really most sincerely dead! That means something actually happened in slow-as-molasses Apartment 3G — mere weeks after Dewey Cheatham bought the farm in that Sultan of Stasis, Judge Parker. Maybe the authors finally gave up trying to spin their characters’ endless chattering into some kind of plot and rose up like Gary Larson’s vulture to proclaim, “I’m tired of waiting — let’s kill something!” We can only hope.

Mary Worth, 9/29/08

No such risk here! After endless weeks of first the bank’s and then victim-turned-consultant Terry Bryson’s attempts to calm Toby down after her non-crisis, Mary now asks for a (doubtless week-long) recap of the non-events. You can tell Toby’s learned her lesson, though. From the steely glint in her eye and the firm set of her chin, you know she’s headed right back to enormoushop.com to download that “Safety Cats” security screensaver before this nightmare can happen again!

I’m sitting in for Josh this week — you can reach me for site-related issues like server problems or comments caught in the spam filter at bio@jfruh.com, which forwards to me for the duration. If you need to reach Josh personally, use jfruh@jfruh.com, but expect delays.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Apartment 3-G, 9/19/08

I suppose that eventually the Apartment 3-G Terrible Downward Spiral Of Clean-Cut Middle-Class People Into Addiction storyline will cease to be transcendently awesome — presumably, right around the time that Ray’s squirrelly histrionics cause Alan to take a hard look at his life and straighten up and fly right and earn the love of a good woman and blah blah blah — but let’s enjoy the ride to its fullest while we can, OK? It’s actually sort of like drug abuse in that way: deep down, you know that you can’t sit in your room giggling over phrases like “Please! I hurt so bad!!” forever, but that doesn’t stop you from being taken up by the highs in the here and now. Perhaps even better than Ray’s sincere yet laughable description of the pangs of withdrawal in panel two is his expression in panel three: he seems to be thinking, “Hey! I know! I could reduce Alan to a powdered form and then smoke and/or snort him! All my problems would be solved!”

Hi and Lois, 9/19/08

The idea that innocent baby Trixie might look out the window and learn about the emotional pain and verbal abuse that lurks behind her suburb’s cheery facade is actually rather poignant; her look of wide-eyed horror in the final panel says volumes about what it’s like to discover that people who love each other can wound one another far more deeply than any strangers could. But bringing in the brother-sister metaphor just makes the whole thing creepy and weird. I like my domestic degradation without the unsettling incest overtones, thank you very much.

Sally Forth, 9/19/08

Watch out, Sally! She can quote the Last Starfighter, and she rests her fingers delicately on her collarbone, Ted-style! Also, it may be an optical illusion, but it appears that she might kind of have breasts? HOW CAN YOU COMPETE WITH THAT?

Beetle Bailey, 9/19/08

Oh, Freud would have a field day with this.