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Longtime readers know that I am very strict about my commenting-on-one-comic-from-each-day policy. Except, you know, when I’m not. But Sunday’s pickings were pretty slim (except for the appalling Family Circus that was well covered in the previous post’s comments section), and there were two comics on Monday that screamed out for attention, so here they are.

Curtis, 3/7/05

In its continuing efforts to offer a positive image for today’s black teens, Curtis has taken some interesting steps. First it portrayed its tweenage hero as a leering, bug-eyed misogynist (I still can’t get the phrase “nothing more to him than a sexual playtoy” out of my head). Today, we see that he’s so hypersexualized that even his relationship with his bed is layered with lust. Now I have as hard a time getting out of a warm bed as the next guy, but the blandishments (which we can only hope are happening inside Curtis’ cap-adorned noggin) used here are way too smooth-jazz-style flirty for my taste. For reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, I find the term “hunny-pot” particularly vile.

The ass-scratching in panel two is a nice touch as well.

So that’s what’s going on in Harlem. Meanwhile, down in Midtown:

Apartment 3-G, 3/7/05

Why don’t you relax and enjoy your “Cereal”-brand cereal, Margo? Every night that Mim spends in some sex-crazed 19-year-old’s filthy Bed-Stuy walk-up is a night that she doesn’t sleep on your couch, which as of two weeks ago was your primary concern in life. For her part, Tommie here shows us that, thanks to her roommates’ longstanding policy of ignoring her, she’s quite good at holding conversations with herself. She’s her own best friend!

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When I first started this blog, I wasn’t sure if anyone other than my friends would read it, let alone comment on it. As the 100+ comment post below demonstrates, today the Comics Curmudgeon has a large and chatty readership. Though I rarely respond to the comments, I love reading all of them — they provide the ego-stroking that powers this blog, and are frequently funnier than anything I have to say.

This last does give rise to one side-effect, though: frequently, if I don’t get around to doing a comic for a day or two, someone will post something to the effect of “I sure hope Josh does Tuesday’s Wizard of Id” (or whatever) and then goes on to describe that strip’s horror in vivid detail. Generally speaking, if I don’t do that comic, it’s not because I’m ignoring you: it’s because you did such a good job commenting on it that I don’t have anything to add.

Take this past Sunday, for instance: I had originally planned to do Curtis, but then a dare in the comments section of an earlier post led faithful reader Saint Chree to record this dramatic reading, upon which nothing I can say could possibly improve. If your media player won’t play this audio file (it’s in Ogg Vorbis format), you can download Audacity for free for all major platforms. It’s sooooo worth it.

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Curtis, 1/15/05

If you weren’t convinced by Barry’s reckless use of the word chutzpah, here’s more evidence for you that Curtis is actually written by an elderly Jewish man. In fact, I’m not even sure that actual elderly Jewish men exclaim “Oy!” repeatedly in response to lower back pain these days.

This strip summoned up from somewhere deep in my primal pop-culture consciousness memories of novelty rap group 2 Live Jews and their hit single “Oy, It’s So Humid.” In retrospect, it’s kind of amusing to think that there was a time when the group that 2LJ (as I’m sure their fans called them) spoofed, 2 Live Crew, was not considered a novelty group. Remember when the most dire threat offered against Western civilization was a song called “Me So Horny”? Good times!