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You know the look.

You’re standing in the kitchen with a wad of newsprint in your fist, screaming fluent, brutal invective at Mary’s advice, Dolly’s wordplay or Liz’s life choices. Suddenly in the doorway is your spouse, your child, your lover — hell, your pet — wearing that look.

No one at The Comics Curmudgeon will ever give you that look. Not the guy who spurns Lynn Johnston’s affections, not the barkeep ruined by a coke-addled cat, nor the reanimator with all the links — not the woman who built a neo-Freudian parallel FOOB, nor the one who counts the squid. None of the songwriters, dancers, poets, aphorists, lurkers, vulgarians or saints here will ever give you that look. You’re among people who know that comics matter, and care enough to mock the bad ones.

Now isn’t that worth a couple bucks? You know it is. We’re holding a fund-raiser for the support of this site while its host takes a vacation. Contribute any way you choose: PayPal, plastic, cash or check — it only takes a minute or two, and you’ll feel great about it. Click the banner below to help make this your site; we’ll be here when you get back. And we understand.

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And speaking of that look, this look is all wrong:

For Better or For Worse, 9/4/07

Throughout this entire ramshackle dénouement, we were led to expect charming vignettes from the early days of the strip. Assurances were made! We were led to expect this:

For Better or For Worse, 12/6/79

This is why people are so passionate about this strip after 28 years — look at Elly’s breezy, self-confident sexuality, and her comfort with both her options and her choice of a new husband, who is clearly boggled by his good fortune. We see none of this in today’s “reimagined” strip — remanufacturing young love as something like a maritime docking maneuver.

But that’s not even my biggest problem. No — this is my biggest problem:

For Better or For Worse, 9/4/07, 8/7/07 (flipped)

Having failed utterly to gin up support for Liz’s pasty milquetoast intended, the author is raising the stakes — “see, he’s just like John was! How can you hate him now?”

You’ll see.

— Uncle Lumpy

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I closed my eyes.

There was a sound like that of the gentle closing of a portal as big as the sky, the great door of heaven being closed softly.
It was a grand AH-WHOOM.

I opened my eyes—and all the sea was ice-nine.

The moist green earth was a blue-white pearl.

Cat’s Cradle © 1963 by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

For Better or For Worse 9/3/07

Today is Fööberdämmerung — launch of the new, frozen phase of For Better or For Worse.

Well, so they say. In fact, the strip road-tested its “Mike ‘n’ Meredith” photo-reminiscence gimmick back in July — so nothing really begins today. And the current storylines, including the one with Canada’s Favourite Couple, won’t treacle out until early next year — so nothing ends, either. In fact, despite the announcements and interviews, there is no actual event here — it’s like Canadian Grandparents’ Day or something.

Whatever the timeline, I’m conflicted about the conversion of FOOB into a zombie/rerun hybrid:

 Gee!

But!

And Yikes!

Despite all the buildup, the FOOBocalypse turns out to be precisely nothing — perfectly congruent with the way the strip manages characters and events, and oddly satisfying.

AH-WHOOM

— Uncle Lumpy

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Blondie, 8/29/07

Long-time Blondie readers have always marvelled at the uncanny resemblance between Dagwood’s neighbor/golf buddy/source of free tools Herb Woodley and mailman Mr. Beasley. The same face, the same bulging forehead, the same mustache. Could they be long-lost relatives? Was Herb actually the neighborhood mailman, assuming a new name and identity as he walked his route for inscrutable reasons of his own? Today, though, as his long-firmly-attached hat goes flying, we learn that, unlike Herb, Mr. Beasley in fact completely bald. It is a testament to the power of the comics and the long-running features within that this has completely blown my fucking mind. Cynic that I am, I can’t stop looking at his bare head.

For Better Or For Worse, 8/29/07

ha ha ha foolish girl no patterson is ever free

Mark Trail, 8/29/07

I’m beginning to suspect that Shirley the Duck has special powers, and I don’t just mean her stunning plumage, which has won her drag king competitions all over Lost Forest. No, first she somehow convinced the construction foreman to halt work on this extremely important mall, and now she’s working her sinister magic on the son of the big boss himself! As more and more people come within range of her mind-control rays, her army will grow larger and larger, until that mall finds itself transformed into a Shirleytarium, dedicated to her care, feeding, and worship. There will be bread crumbs. Many, many bread crumbs.

Slylock Fox, 8/29/07

Wow, that lion is pissed — and, really, can you blame him? Most doctors don’t even take their patients’ pulse themselves, and here some nosey freelance detective is getting Panthera Leo, M.D., to put his hard-earned medical skills to use to bust someone for stealing magazines from the waiting room. I think someone’s going to have some angry words with the managers of Medical Plaza. Presumably the only way to calm him down will be to allow him to eat Slick Smitty, whether he’s guilty or not.