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Mark Trail, 4/11/10

Man, for once, I want more educational information out of my Sunday educational Mark Trail! I would like Mark to answer the following questions:

• Is “the drug [hemp] yields” actually at all potent?
• If not, why are filthy hippies always extolling hemp’s industrial purposes like some kind of unshowered white-guy-with-dreadlocks blanket-and-rope PAC? If so, since said dirty hippies no doubt also support marijuana legalization, why don’t they just come out and say that they want to grow hemp to get high?
• Did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson get high together?
• If you rolled up the Declaration of Independence and smoked it, would you get a buzz?
• If growing hemp is illegal, where the hell is the hemp in birdseed coming from? Is that bird in the final panel some kind of tiny, feathered trafficker?
• Do birds get high by eating birdseed?
• Is Mark high right now? Is that what the yellow word balloon indicates?
• Will King Features be held legally liable when the factoid at the bottom right causes particularly dim tokers to attempt to smoke nylon?

Blondie, 4/11/10

Dagwood has never been shown to have any actual friends other than Herb; thus, in order to pad this gag out to Sunday-strip length, we have to watch him hear paltry excuses from two funny-looking characters who have never appeared in the strip before to my knowledge. It would have been depressing but truer to this feature’s established universe if, after being turned down by Herb, Dagwood spent the final three panels weeping alone about his lack of meaningful social relationships.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/11/10 (rotated 90 degrees for your convenience!)

Montoni’s may not be shutting down completely, but at least we now know that the drive to establish Montoni’s New York was all that was keeping Funky off the sauce, so that’s something. Also, we know that Funky’s DT-fueled fever dreams involve getting into knife fights with sexy jungle ladies and baboons, which is frankly more than I wanted to know.

Crock, 4/11/10

Wow, Vern, your standards for desolate and perilous neighborhoods are pretty high if you aren’t impressed by a desert urchin whose only friend is a sinister vulture. Admittedly, the vulture looks less sinister wearing a baseball cap turned backwards at a jaunty angle, but consider the fact that it probably scavenged it off of a bloated corpse it just ate.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 4/11/10

I’m sort of torn about the way the Lockhorns deals with its expanded Sunday real estate, which is to just cram in five disconnected panels, any one of which could run on its own during the week. On the one hand, I do feel that artists ought to make visually interesting use of all that extra room they get in the Sunday papers; on the other hand, I suppose the Lockhorns deserves kudos for essentially producing eleven panels a week when they only really need to do seven. Anyway, this particular panel reveals that Leroy, and the creators of the Lockhorns, are familiar with the concept of a “safe word,” so, you know, HORROR HORROR HORROR.

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Crock, 4/9/10

You have to give a certain amount of credit to a strip that knows its limitations. Crock has repeatedly shown that it is unable to depict supposedly attractive characters as anything other than mangle-faced horrors; thus, to preserve our illusions about Otis’s adorable little girlfriend, it’s best that the strip has chosen to position her so she remains mostly unseen. If only the creators had been wise enough to similarly hide the fact that none of them have a clue what the hell an “iTunes” is.

Shoe, 4/9/10

I know that being one of the birds of Shoe means being cynical and world-weary about everything, but I hope that if I’m ever informed that the spirit of a dead loved one is attempting to communicate with me from beyond the grave, I would respond with something other than a belligerent “So?”

Pluggers, 4/9/10

Pluggers know that “copy editing” is for big city elitists.

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The Comics Curmudgeon Spring 2010 Fundraiser

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Breaking News Update — President Obama reads Pickles; nation mourns.

Political blog Wonkette, for which Josh writes reviews of editorial comics under the title Cartoon Violence, has published a photograph showing a Sunday comic on President Obama’s Oval Office desk. Which comic? Alas, it’s Pickles — which never appears here because it is beneath notice even in its lameness. Original comic here. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

Faithful readers of the Comics Curmudgeon will have long ago figured out my schtick: scan for a theme that links two or three comics, riff on it with a few cross-references to established CC tropes, glissade to some bizarre plot turn in a soap or clumsy foulup in a joke-a-day strip, and so to bed.

Mostly the comics oblige, with a banquet of lunatic plotlines laid out like gleaming slabs of red meat, verbal and graphic faux pas arrayed around them like trays of toothsome hors d’oeuvres. But on nights when those tables are bare I am alone, straining through the muck beneath Quigmans or Cleats for some — any — undigested morsel, my anguished moans for this cup to pass met with stony silence, except for the ticking of the clock toward 1:46 AM and spatter of desperate tears on my keyboard.

It is in those dark hours that I turn to Crock.

Crock, 3/25/10

And what do I get? A technology joke rejected as too lame for Pluggers (“A plugger’s netbook is the Cabela’s catalog.”) or For Better or For Worse (“Is John gambling online in the den?” “Yes, he’s on the netbook … in his bet nook!” “Hahahaha!”). Marred further, if such a thing is even possible, by the redundant “three-day” in panel one.

Thanks, Crock.

Mark Trail, 3/25/10

Ah, Mark — never too busy for the Safety Lecture, are we? Y’know, if Gladys had her wits about her, she’d shoot Mark in panel three and claim he looked just like a purse-snatcher.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/25/10

June is intrigued: ineffective pleading by a nominal male; icy rejection by the bitch in charge — looks like love to her!

Dick Tracy, 3/25/10

After-hours Exposition Dump in Dick Tracy. Public service, really — saves decent citizens the trouble of paying attention.

The Lockhorns, 3/25/10

“Agree with him and I’ll put another dent in that head of yours, Pullman!”

A sincere thank you to everyone who has contributed to the Comics Curmudgeon already this week. If you’re not yet among them, please consider this: lots of factors go into choosing whether to blog or not, but for a freelance writer/editor like Josh the tradeoff between blogging time and income is inescapable. The more we can make the Comics Curmudgeon an economically rational choice, the more time and enthusiasm Josh can devote to our entertainment. And who doesn’t want that?

— Uncle Lumpy