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You almost certainly have noticed that King Features has washed its comics in pink today in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month! How has our favorite art form managed to acknowledge this important issue in the context of its usual light-hearted fare? Let’s take a look!

Rhymes With Orange and My Cage, 10/10/10

Rhymes With Orange is, as near as I can tell, the only strip with the guts to do an actual joke about breast cancer. My Cage at least attempts a Breast Cancer Awareness meta-joke.

Marvin and Curtis, 10/10/10

Some strips did a half-hearted job of trying to explain why they were all pinkish without acknowledging the “you or your loved ones might get terrible cancer” subtext. For instance, Marvin’s parents are apparently giving him psychoactive drugs, and Curtis is attempting to up his enjoyment of ladies’ church hats by literally viewing them through rose-colored glasses.

Apartment 3-G, 10/10/10

Mostly, though, the creators just churned the strips through a Breast Cancer Awareness Photoshop filter, shoehorned a pink ribbon in wherever it would fit, and went about their business. This sometimes had awkward results. Here, the ribbon of female solidarity silently shames Lu Ann and Margo, who are engaged in petty intragender squabbling.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/10/10

Breast Cancer Awareness Month had the bad form this year to fall smack in the middle of Rex Morgan’s attempt to raise awareness of prostate cancer. At least the pink ribbon had the good sense to not float right next to June’s word balloon in panel one, stealing its awareness-raising thunder. Still, the noble ribbon is oddly juxtaposed with the mayor’s final-panel threat to decapitate whoever is raising awareness about his own personal tumor-ridden prostate gland.

Blondie, 10/10/10

Blondie deserves kudos for not simply slathering Pepto-Bismol all over everything but rather integrating pink relatively tastefully into the color scheme of the Sunday strip.

Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, 10/10/10

Shockingly, the Winkerverse strips are mostly pink-free, though Funky Winkerbean did pair up the boilerplate “Cartoonists Care” ribbon with a hand-drawn “Lisa’s Legacy” ribbon, as if to say “We don’t need to do this crap because we own this issue. We are aware of cancer and suffering and pain 365 days a year, to the exclusion of all else.”

Spider-Man, 10/10/10

And, of course, Spider-Man ignored the campaign completely, the better to reflect Peter Parker’s longstanding tradition of just stone cold not giving a shit.

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It’s the final day of the Fall 2010 Fundraiser — if you enjoy the Comics Curmudgeon, please take a few minutes to make a donation of any amount to support Josh and his fine work. You’ll feel great about it, and so will Josh — thank you!

Gasoline Alley, 9/24/10

Even beyond the bus plunge trope beloved of generations of lead-type print journalists, the current Gasoline Alley plot is chock full of old-timey goodness:

• Sound effects in dialect — “Kee-rash”, y’all! “Smootch”!

• Regionalisms — “Let’s don’t”, like Louisiana’s “might could”, Josh’s beloved upstate N.Y. “pop”, and the “bubbler” (water fountain) of my own Milwaukee roots.

• Agricultural sexuality — Rural kids don’t have much patience for courtly love. But Rover won’t fall for Miss Chris’s comely charms either, considering what’s waiting at home.

• Picaresque plotlines — A forgotten lunch, excess cell-phone use, failed brakes, missing spare, sudden infatuation: what us know-it-all city-folk call “incoherent.”

Blondie, 9/24/10

OK, cartoonists, listen up. It’s wonderful that you’ve got friends and neighbors, and peachy that they give to charity and get married and whatnot, but won’t you please, please stop sticking them in your comics? Your audience doesn’t give a rip about these people, and they always look creepy and out of place. This is not how to treat friends and neighbors in print.

Sally Forth, 9/23/10

This is how to treat friends and neighbors in print.

Dick Tracy, 9/24/10

Chief Liz is right. In fact, Dick will eventually fool himself, arrest himself for vagrancy, and then die a grisly and mysterious death at his own hands while in self-custody. His last words will be a lame wisecrack about how he died. At the funeral, friends will say, “He would have wanted it this way”, and they’ll be right, too.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Click above to contribute by credit card or PayPal, here to contribute by check, or here for more details — Thanks!

Thanks for your generous contributions to the Comics Curmudgeon Fall 2010 Fundraiser! Haven’t given yet? Hurry! Thank you!

Blondie, 9/23/10

Blondie launches an unprovoked, totally unjustified attack on the Comics Curmudgeon Fall 2010 Fundraiser! Boy, you’ve got some nerve, Blondie! Just wait ’til Josh gets back from vacation — just you wait!

Judge Parker, 9/23/10

Oooh, this is promising: L’il Judge Randy’s packin’ heat! OK listen up, Judge Parker — Chekov’s gun is now officially on the table, and we expect either a) incompetent mayhem by a public official with collateral damage to innocent victims, or b) sexy target practice with CIApril Bowers involving sexual innuendo, leg silhouettes, hair-shaking, and nuzzling. Nuzzling, dammit! Deal? OK, now deliver!

Hi and Lois, 9/23/10

Atop the Salmon Throne of Ranch House Doom in the deepest suburbs of Mordor Meadows, the Dark Lady summons her thrall: “Hi, honey! Oh, nothing much, just thinking of you! Ash nazg durbatulûk, sweetie, bye for now!”

Mark Trail, 9/23/10

Mark submits articles to Woods and Wildlife but is apparently not a subscriber. Time to call Woods and Wildlife Editor Bill Ellis: “Say, Bill, I have a question about those stories I keep sending you! Do you ever publish any of them?”

He’ll be heartbroken to learn that his “Nature Journalist” job is just a fiction his occupational therapist Cherry cooked up to get him outdoors and keep his mind off his massive head injury and memory impairment. No matter: he’ll call Bill again tomorrow, just like always.

Give generously to the Comics Curmudgeon! Hey, c’mon, I figure nothing ventured, nothing gained! Am I wrong?

— Uncle Lumpy