Post Content

Click the banner to contribute and receive a Commemorative Comics Curmudgeon Bible Bird Band! Details here.

Birds of a feather flock together! Contribute to The Comics Curmudgeon and join them — sporting your stylish one-of-a-kind Comics Curmudgeon Commemorative Bible Bird Band!

The Wizard of Id, 10/13/11

B.C. creator and Wizard of Id collaborator Johnny Hart famously used his comics as a platform for his religious beliefs. Hart is no longer with us, but the tradition lives on, I guess, kinda? Here, the eponymous Wizard summons the Cacodaemon (κακος — “bad”, δαιμων — “demon”: way to go, creative team) for a little light housekeeping. Do you suppose he gets conflicted about clearing out the spider webs? Scrubs toilets as well as Knute? Works on Sundays? Theology is hard!

Funky Winkerbean, 10/13/11

Failed Book Guy gamely rings up his final sale, to the smug bore who drove away every last one of his other customers.

Judge Parker, 10/13/11

Ripped from the headlines: Fresh from a foiled attempt on his life, Saudi diplomat Bubu Chibale* tails Randy Parker. He must act soon — a few more of their “lucky breaks” and the infidel Parker-Driver-Spencer alliance will surpass his own Kingdom in wealth and power.

* Fun fact: “Bubu” and “Chibale” are in fact both Middle-Eastern male given names, but they’re Egyptian, not Arabic — and from the very first page of the baby-namer. Research, Judge Parker people!

Curtis, 10/13/11

Ha, Curtis sure looks annoyed about this flashback. Understandable, really — in his strip, “flashback” means yet another iron cycle of “embarrassed shopping for school clothes”, “resisting the first day of school”, “bullied by Derrick and ‘Onion'”, “Flyspeck Island hijinx”, “spurned by Michelle”, “stalked by Chutney”, on and on until at last Kwanzaa brings the sweet relief of madness, if only for a week.

Fundraiser update

Bible Bird Bands are starting to arrive in contributors’ mailboxes — and there’s still time to make a generous donation and get yours! When you do, don’t forget to send Josh a picture at bio@jfruh.com. Put yourself on the (updated) map:

GOOSETRAX (full details and Privacy Policy here.)

Just like the fabled Passenger Pigeons, Comics Curmudgeon Bible Geese blot out the sun!

Mark Trail’s Greatest Hits – a Fall Fundraiser special, part 4

Mark Trail — 5/22, 11/14 – 15, 12/27/08, 3/30/09

That Mark Trail is one persuasive fellow.

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Click the banner to contribute and receive a Commemorative Comics Curmudgeon Bible Bird Band! Details here.

Ruin your little valley with a stampede of tourists! All it takes is a Bible Bird Band — yours with any contribution to The Comics Curmudgeon!

By the time comics — with their six-week lead times and Eisenhower-era worldviews — get around to acknowledging hard times, it’s hard times. Let’s see how they’re taking it:

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/11/11

The recession forced little Sarah Morgan to grow up fast — looks like she’s about thirty in panel three there. Rex sees it as his chance to regress, and turns his cap around like one of the Cool Teens. Pssst, Rex! Not Coors — Pabst!

Funky Winkerbean, 10/11/11

Ha, it’s funny because books are antiques. And the store owner got steamrolled by technology. And looks like Funky. Sucks to be you, Book Guy.

Shoe, 10/11/11

In hard times, it’s human nature to point the finger at something like the stock market — even when you lack human nature, or fingers.

La Cucaracha, 10/11/11

Big Peanut seems an unlikely villain, but OK. One quibble, though: for young and old, rich or poor, Spam® alone is Spam, absolute and irreducible.

Judge Parker, 10/11/11

And I think we know who’s really to blame.

Mark Trail’s Greatest Hits – a Fall Fundraiser special, part 2

Mark Trail — 1/21, 2/13, 8/5, 10/3, 11/21/06

Sincere thanks to everyone who’s contributed so far — y’all are great! All contributions received by 5:00 EDT Tuesday will ship Wednesday A.M., and appear on the GOOSETRAX map with Wednesday’s post.

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Mark Trail, 9/27/11

Is it possible for a character in Mark Trail to behave in a fashion so detached from the realities of human motivation that he will shock even Mark into self-awareness? To recap: Mountie McQueen is afraid that people will find out that he and his mother are engaged in the odd but (to the best of my knowledge) wholly innocent and legal pastime of putting bands printed with bible verses on the legs of geese. This bible-banding operation was stumbled upon by Andy, a dog who can neither understand what he saw at Mother McQueen’s cabin nor describe it to anyone else. Nevertheless, the risk of exposure is too great, and now Andy must be taken prisoner based on a completely fabricated rabies scare.

Mark’s befuddled “What?” shows that this is one insane thing too much even for a man who deals with insane things without comment every day of his life. If nothing else, one must assume that Andy’s rabies shots are all up to date, seeing as Mark’s live-in father-in-law is a vet. (You’d also think that Andy would have been fixed, too, though the way he scampered off after Princess might imply otherwise.)

Funky Winkerbean, 9/27/11

Oh look, it’s the time of year where Les worries frantically that his Lisa’s Legacy Walk will somehow go awry and fail to keep up its streak of not curing cancer. This year everyone will be pelted by a cold rain, which, if we’re lucky, will mean that after the strip’s next time jump Summer will be running the Les’s Legacy Walk to cure pneumonia.

Gil Thorp, 9/27/11

Was that sports action in panel one too thrilling for you? Don’t worry: in panel two, you only have to hear about a fumble being run back for a touchdown, and can relax by just looking at a guy handing a football to a ref. In panel three, just enjoy a soothing Marty Moon closeup rather than looking at something anxiety-inducing like a successful two-point conversion.

Momma, 9/27/11

Aren’t Momma’s memories of her long-dead husband usually quite worshipful? This strip implies that she held him in as much passive-aggressive contempt as she does her children. Actually, from the dubious way that picture is looking at her, it seems that she’s had his soul preserved in photographic form via dark magic, the better to torment him throughout eternity.