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Hey, it’s the Comics Curmudgeon Fall Fundraiser — help keep this site strong and independent!

Click the banner above to contribute any amount — and receive your “What Would Margo Do?” bracelet with our thanks! Full details here.

9/23 Fundraiser update: Bracelets are now on the way for Day 2 contributions — FIRST CLASS, just like our generous readers! Thank you!

A plea: If you receive your bracelet today or tomorrow, would you please email a photo of it on your wrist to uncle.lumpy@comcast.net? If I get enough for a collage, I’ll post it Friday — as, I dunno, the “Wrists of Just Us” or something. Thanks!

Crock, 9/23/09

OK, I know this is two Crocks in a week and honestly I’m really sorry but Gaaah! this is the grimmest panel I’ve ever seen, and I read Cathy. The punchline here seems to be “Ha ha you are a slave”, or at best “Ha ha you are a slave so work harder.” It doesn’t look like the soldier is actually confused about his servitude, and if he is, it’s due no doubt to hallucinations from the sunstroke and heat exhaustion that will soon kill him.

Crock’s use of the doomed soldier’s name before his complete objectification and annihilation just twists the knife.

Archie, 9/23/09

I like Archie: it’s kinda sweet and old-timey. Plus, there’s visual madness in the reaction shots from the photograph and the giant Kool-Aid not-quite-emoticon on the CRT. The artists also deliver gratuitous Cammie cheesecake from time to time, and you can almost always tell they’re still trying. But not today, alas — c’mon, if the school paper were already in fact digital, then students couldn’t read it on their phones and you’d have a joke. As it is, you have, well, a perfectly sensible but unfunny editorial. And Doonesbury‘s pretty much got that niche locked up.

Curtis, 9/23/09

Technically speaking, there is a joke in today’s Curtis (“bigger dummy than the dummy”), but let’s watch poor Curtis labor mightily to set it up. Start with panel 1’s Herb and Jamaally intro, already reeking of flop sweat. Then: can’t say “toilet” in a family strip? OK, “down the plumbing!” Need a reference to sexual indiscretion, but it has to be G-rated? OK, how about trying to pick up a mannequin. Obligatory tech reference? YouTube! (What, Twitter’s busy?) Finally, exhausted, Curtis wrestles this steaming gelatinous mass to the finish, and Barry delivers the featherweight punchline. Same time tomorrow, Sisyphus.

Gil Thorp, 9/23/09

OK, this is Duncan Daley, capable but non-flashy Milford tackle (and counterpoint to Jamarr Gaddis, fast but tiny self-promoting wide receiver used to decoy defenders from stolid running back Robb Larue). Formerly a party animal with ready access to his lookalike brother’s ID, Duncan has matured into a focused, R.C.-sipping young adult, no doubt because of what his brother said.

So you don’t have to, faithful reader — so you don’t have to!

Operation H-Town update: Mary Worth, 9/23/09

Well, Officer Colleague has certainly learned a valuable lesson today, hasn’t he? Kids, don’t go calling people “under arrest” until they can no longer shoot at you.

OK OK OK! Detective Scott Hewlett lives to live another day! Check out his prospects at the fabulous Scott’s Drug Bust Pool spreadsheet, created by faithful reader 8th Man Fan. Want a piece of the action? Use the awesome Scott’s Drug Bust Pool Form. Contribute your winnings to the Comics Curmudgeon Fall Fundraiser! And thank you, faithful reader 8th Man Fan!

Margo Moments — a Fall Fundraiser special, part 3

Apartment 3-G (panels) — 12/21/2006, 1/11, 2/27, 4/17, 4/19, 4/26, 7/2, 7/3, 8/3/2007

What would Margo do? The streets of New York are littered with the bones of those who thought they knew! Contribute to The Comics Curmudgeon today, and avoid their fate! When you do, we’ll rush your “What Would Margo Do?” bracelet to you, so you can project the power of Margo — from your wrist, to your hand, to their throats!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Oddly coincident with my stewardship here at The Comics Curmudgeon, the Sunday comics are rolling out their B-Teams. Let’s take a look.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/20/09

OK, Rex Morgan, M.D. usually disappoints by dishing out endless observational chit-chat between Rex and June followed by a lot of talking on phones, and then, once everyone has lost interest, annihilating some minor character in a hail of gunfire or whatnot. Josh cites this as one factor in The Rex Morgan Problem, and I will not say him nay. But here’s a new and disturbing development — after weeks of observational chit-chat between secondary character Becka and assorted walk-ons, one of them (wildlife writer Tim Howard, and there’s fifteen minutes of my life I won’t get back) flies into an incandescent rage over a minor procedural issue in the organization of search parties. By the time we reach the final panel, we envy poor, wet, demented Pearl and Henry (oh God why me), feeling that the story that’s tormented us since June is fresh and new.

Also: “A@#SS“!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/20/09

Passing by the fact that Snuffy is himself a replacement for long-departed Barney Google, what’s with poor Micah? This is the first we hear of him — yet, as the only gainfully-employed resident of Hootin’ Holler, he must’ve been the centerpiece of the Gazette‘s business section for years. I mean, it’s not like violence and murder are going to crowd him out of the paper — the Gazette puts the Police Blotter, casualty list, and obits in agate type behind the classifieds.

Apartment 3-G, 9/20/09

Oh, and here’s Aristotle Papagoras, newly emblondened and ready for his closeup. This charlatan pusher absent-mindedly bilks disease-addled Dr. “Skully” Bryant out of his lucrative Upper East Side psychiatric practice, while thought-babbling obsessively about his junkie skank “patient.” This better end in murder, and I don’t much care who.

Crock, 9/20/09

Yes, for quite a few years now, as a matter of fact!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Crock, 9/5/09

It’s not often that I’m thankful about anything that Crock does, but I have to admit that I’m grateful that this strip makes a joke about a little blue bird that includes the word “tweet” and doesn’t end in a terrible ham-handed punchline about Twitter. I have no actual idea what the punchline is supposed to be about, but the mere absence of a lame Twitter joke still improved my day. Is the sad Legionnaire talking about his penis? Probably. Still better than Twitter.

Mary Worth, 9/5/09

Having educated its audience about the dangers of phishing, Mary Worth is moving a rung or two up the criminal ladder to heroin dealing. I certainly hope the strip maintains the lavish inattention to detail in depicting in-person crime that it demonstrated in its expose of the criminal Internet underworld.