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Blondie, 12/12/18

I believe that Dagwood is a true food fetishist, in the sense that he doesn’t just enjoy the act of consuming food in and of itself, but has so centered it in his personality that he’s developed various paraphilias around it. So yeah, he’s gonna want some elaborate role play with his Christmastime pizza delivery, but here’s the thing: sex workers generally charge more as their clients’ tastes get more exotic, and this scenario is no different. You want someone to come down your chimney with pizza (not a euphemism, this is literally what Dagwood wants, this is what he’s been thinking about all day, ever since he spotted the pizza delivery guy in his Santa suit last night and wrote down the number on his car), you’ve gotta pay come-down-your-chimney-with-pizza money.

Crankshaft, 12/12/18

Speaking of people who won’t be coming down your chimney, the “joke” of the current Crankshaft arc is that Crankshaft was running late and didn’t have time to change out of the costume from his mall Santa gig before arriving at his bowling night, which, fine, but … the beard? Surely he could just take off the beard? I was thinking maybe he had affixed it to his face with spirit gum but that seems like far more commitment than Crankshaft has ever put into anything that wasn’t spiting his fellow man.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/12/18

Now, I’m not an artist or a scientist but I was kind of curious about what was going on from an anatomical perspective in that stall and this is what I came up with:

So you heard it here first, kids: pencils shit standing up!

Funky Winkerbean, 12/12/18

Ahhh, I love Holly’s mom’s expression of slowly dawning disappointment! That’s the face of a woman who just minutes ago thought, incorrectly, that she was about to get laid.

Pluggers, 12/12/18

You’re a plugger if there’s absolutely no way you’ll be able to complete your list of menial tasks before you drop dead.

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Mary Worth, 12/2/18

Just about every time I sit in for Josh on the Comics Curmudgeon, something amazing seems to happen in Mary Worth: a shootout, say, or a beloved character’s return from the dead, a dramatic drowning rescue, or a smoky tropical seduction. This time, Mary adopted a cat!

But what a cat! Libby is a scrappy, female Snake Plissken of a feline with biohazard dander and a “don’t shed on me” attitude. Watch her drive Dr. Jeff, starved and weeping, from his paramour’s apartment! Thrill as she snacks on the roast her “mistress” offers boxed to go! Gasp as she dares to live by her own code — in the immortal words of Wayne Dyer, “Whatever has to be done, it’s always my choice!” MEOW, bitches!

Crankshaft, 12/2/18

See this just plain doesn’t make any sense right here. We expect digestive ructions, elementary reading ability, and hours spent hogging the john from a selfish old creep like Crankshaft himself, not dainty, beleagured Pam. Just change the final speech balloon to “This’ll cover me through …” and show the Sunday Crankshaft draped neatly over that towel bar where it belongs.

Judge Parker, 12/2/18

OK, work with me a little here. Judge Parker is the side-hustle of Sally Forth author Francesco Marciuliano and Phantom daily artist Mike Manley, and um … it kinda shows? So why not make things easy for everybody by dropping the zany, well-etched characters of Sally Forth into those gorgeous Phantom backdrops of Bangalla, New York, and Tibet, and just calling the result Judge Parker? Easy peasy!

Here, Hilary returns to the Skull Cave to confront Sally about Ted’s capture during his failed rescue of Faye from terrorist Ralph’s Bronx warehouse lair. Sally tries to distract her with loot from the Treasure Room, but Hilary has already sent faithful Duncan to steal her father’s jet, pick up Nona in Lhasa, and join her to save the day!

See, it’s working already! Bonus: Alan, Randy, and Sam are recast as Ted’s ineffective, rarely-seen brothers.

Oh my gosh has this been a fun week. Special thanks to team Mary Worth, Carl the Turtle, Libby the Hell-Cat, and you, faithful reader! Josh will be back Monday to kick off the glorious “Mary dumps her cat and/or boyfriend” arc, and I’ll see you next time around.

— Uncle Lumpy

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So ends the 2018 Fall Comics Curmudgeon Fundraiser. So exciting! Thank you, generous readers!

Sherman’s Lagoon, 12/1/18

In Slylock Fox, the judge is invariably an owl. That won’t work under water of course, but why an octopus? It’s the long arm of the law, not the many arms. Some Hawaiian people believe the octopus is the sole survivor of a previous creation, but that still seems like Slylock Fox territory. All hands on deck? Many hands make light work?

It would be funnier with eight gavels.

Crankshaft, 12/1/18

In the final days of Apartment 3-G, the characters swapped identities and chanted incoherently as they swirled about the frame. At last, we have a successor.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/1/18

So all week long it’s been “Funky is a jerk at the gym,” alternating between his passive-aggressive whining and jumping on some lady’s treadmill to “draft” her haha. Now he’s inevitably stumbled off the machine, but instead of being greviously injured out of simple justice, he’s been thrown onto the leg press machine for his last exercise of the day.

Why finish up with the leg press? Because it’ll give him a big number so he’ll come back tomorrow. Despite his pathetic cardiovascular conditioning and will-o’-the-wisp upper-body strength, Funky has quads of iron from keeping all that mass upright all day. With his leg muscles isolated and the 45° rails carrying half the weight, he can probably press a quarter ton. See you again tomorrow, Samson.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/1/18

After two weeks of nonstop kidney disease, we pause in the final panel to confront the tragedy of color blindness. I hope the grub in Jordan’s Generic House of Food is better than the décor.

— Uncle Lumpy