Post Content

Hello all! I am back, rested, and ready from my trip! First off, a huge thanks for everyone who donated to the Fall Fundraiser — I’ll be thanking you all individually soon! And a huge thanks to Uncle Lumpy for entertaining us all while I was travelling, and bringing his buddy Turtle Carl with him!

And, prompted by some gentle suggestions from Uncle Lumpy and a few others, I’ve decided to put a New Year’s resolution into effect a whole month early and add a bunch of new comics into my reading rotation, for my (and hopefully your) comics-mocking amusement! Let’s take a look at how some of these newcomers to my reading list grapple with the big philosophical questions, shall we?

Baby Blues, 12/3/18

Inhabitants of Western civilization are heirs to both the monotheistic Abrahamic religions with their divinely ordained moral codes and the Enlightenment tradition of reasoned, universal ethics. But when push comes to shove, many of us still hew to a much more ancient rule, articulated by Plato as “justice is benefiting one’s friends and harming one’s enemies,” which has an obvious corollary: “stop snitching.” Today’s Baby Blues shows how these varying ethical frameworks intersect, as seen through the lens of discourse about the last universally accepted omniscient being in our secular world (Santa).

Sam and Silo, 12/3/18

The significantly less sophisticated Sam and Silo is just going to try to pretend to have invented Pascal’s Wager.

Dustin, 12/3/18

But at least Sam and Silo is trying to tackle some big ideas! Dustin, meanwhile, is still convinced that “traditional thing + technology term” is comedy gold. Ha ha, it’s funny because Santa determines who’s naughty and who’s nice via … Bluetooth? Like, do his earbuds fail to pair with his computer at random roughly one out of every four attempts and that’s how he monitors our behavior or what, help me out here.

The Pajama Diaries, 12/3/18

Meanwhile, The Pajama Diaries are coming at you with some Hanukkah jokes! It also appears to be compressing a full panoply of Hanukkah gift-giving into a single night. One evening is all the time we can spare for Hanukkah; The Pajama Diaries will be back tomorrow with wholesome gentile content.

Kevin and Kell, 12/3/18

I aslo started reading Kevin and Kell, which appears to be about, uh, furries? Furries who eat each other’s flesh?

Pluggers, 12/3/18

But rest assured, just because I’m reading about hip young cannibal furries, that doesn’t mean I’m casting aside the old favorites, like cranky old lower-middle-class exurban furries. In today’s Pluggers, someone told a plugger he needs to work on developing an inner life, and it’s not going great.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/3/18

Meanwhile, in Funky Winkerbean, Funky’s addled old father is horny! More on this important and no doubt extremely unpleasant story as it develops.

Post Content

Click the banner to contribute to the Comics Curmudgeon. Details here.

It’s the 2018 Comics Curmudgeon Fall Fundraiser! Please contribute however you like!

Six Chix, 11/27/18

Mama Bear finds proof her husband dallied with an elegant bejewelled she-bear in her own bed. Not the right time for a visit, Goldilocks.

Dustin, 11/27/18

Sometimes it’s fun to figure out how cartoonists arrive at the language that winds up on the page. Like maybe they started with “The past is prologue” but realized a prologue just sets the stage for what follows without determining it? And didn’t realize that “The past is predicate” means essentially the same thing, but in a logical rather than a narrative context? Or think “predicate” means “predictive”?

Sometimes it’s no fun at all.

Mark Trail, 11/27/18

“What’s that you say? Education? Book-learning? I’LL BEAT THOSE BRAINS RIGHT OUT OF HIM!”

Mary Worth, 11/27/18

Am I really going to chronicle every petty indignity visited on Mary by her one-eyed demon cat?

Oh, you bet I am!

Bizarro, 11/27/18

Hey lady, if you want to offload one of those cats, I know where there’s a vacancy coming up real soon.

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Click the banner to contribute to the Comics Curmudgeon. Details here.

It’s the Comics Curmudgeon Summer 2018 Fundraiser! Go nuts! Send cash!

Gil Thorp, 7/3/18

In the annals of phoning it in, Gil Thorp stands as a colossus. And it’s contagious — unless Gil has taken to asking himself questions, the artist was supposed to draw Kaz in the first panel (“Wait a minute … did I just? … Aah, screw it!”).

Anyway, at Gil’s urging, beloved straight-shooting State Coach Colvin has promised no-hoper Kevin Pelwecki a big, steaming sack o’ nothing — walk-on tryout, no aid, thanks for stopping by, see ya kid. My advice? Take it, Kevin — it’s a damn sight better than anything you’ve got now. Especially the coaching!

Funky Winkerbean, 7/3/18

As his hermetic working relationship with Uber pal Pete grows more intense, Darin has gradually distanced himself from wife and family — fobbing off son “Sky” on his exhausted Mom, “forgetting” that wife Jessica lives three time zones away, and then using that as an excuse not to call her. Now, the image of his beloved Pete standing naked and dripping wet throws him into panic: “Must run from feeeeeeelings … !”

Tell me again who’s on the cosmic treadmill here?

9 Chickweed Lane, 7/3/18

The archives of the Comics Curmudgeon are littered with the bones of abandoned one-gag comics: Marmaduke is a big dog, Herb and Jamaal never say anything straight out, Heathcliff is nuts. If it weren’t for the occasional breath of “Everybody hates Grandpa” fresh air, Marvin would join them on the discard pile.

And so it is with 9 Chickweed Lane, with its now decade-long “Oh, the sexy, sexy music!” theme. Lately it’s just been a rotating cast of interchangeable partners rutting to unheard compositions. Is it wrong to want the Nazis back?.

Dustin, 7/3/18

Dude, have you ever read this comic?

— Uncle Lumpy