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Funky Winkerbean, 12/4/18

Ha ha, this story has gotten more off-putting more quickly than even I could’ve predicted. It’s only day two and we’re learning that Funky’s dad definitely fucks. The expressions in the final panel are a real journey: Funky’s is the face of a man thinking “Holy shit, my dad fucks?” and the receptionist’s is the smirk of a woman thinking “Heh heh, this guy’s unpleasant old dad fucks … and I’m telling everybody.”

Kevin and Kell, 12/4/18

Oh, hey, by the way: the furries of Kevin and Kell? They don’t just kill and eat one another; they also fuck. They also talk to … a … tree, via some kind of … intercom system? But don’t let that distract you from the important thing, which is that they fuck.

Mary Worth, 12/4/18

You might think that this whole cat allergy business is just one more indignity Mary Worth the person and Mary Worth the comic strip has dumped on our poor Dr. Jeff. But remember, Mary once cruised a guy at his mother’s funeral and then contrived a fight with Jeff so she could dump him, only to deign to return when she realized that only Jeff was willing to subsidize her seafood habit. She enjoyed an extended Manhattan flirtation with handsome Broadwaysman Ken Kensington and only broke it off when she realized New York City’s traffic was dangerous to a small-town California girl like herself, accustomed to just stepping off the curb into the street willy-nilly. And so sure, maybe Mary’s foster cat sent Jeff fleeing from her apartment for his life, but in fact Libby has achieved the seemingly impossible: gotten Mary to refer to Jeff as her “boyfriend”! It’s too bad Jeff is miles away, doped up on Benadryl, and can’t hear it.

Judge Parker, 12/4/18

Meanwhile, in Judge Parker, Neddy has fled in failure and disgrace to the family compound, but is tired of hearing from everyone in her family about how she really needs to stop fleeing in failure and disgrace to the family compound, and so needs to go to the maid for emotional reassurance. Why should she even need Marie’s number? Isn’t the whole point of a maid that they’re always close enough that you can summon them by ringing a bell or clapping loudly and order them to bring you soup or tell you that you’re pretty and smart?

Mark Trail, 12/4/18

Looks like Cool Motorcycle Guy (or, to use his “government name,” Raul) is about to fall to his death. It seems somebody’s getting his just desserts for violating the number one rule of jungle karma: never insult a toucan.

Dennis the Menace, 12/4/18

Mr. Wilson had hated Dennis’s constant intrusions into his life for years, of course. But he finds his presence strangely comforting these days, now that Martha finally left him.

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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.

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So ends the 2018 Fall Comics Curmudgeon Fundraiser. So exciting! Thank you, generous readers!

Sherman’s Lagoon, 12/1/18

In Slylock Fox, the judge is invariably an owl. That won’t work under water of course, but why an octopus? It’s the long arm of the law, not the many arms. Some Hawaiian people believe the octopus is the sole survivor of a previous creation, but that still seems like Slylock Fox territory. All hands on deck? Many hands make light work?

It would be funnier with eight gavels.

Crankshaft, 12/1/18

In the final days of Apartment 3-G, the characters swapped identities and chanted incoherently as they swirled about the frame. At last, we have a successor.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/1/18

So all week long it’s been “Funky is a jerk at the gym,” alternating between his passive-aggressive whining and jumping on some lady’s treadmill to “draft” her haha. Now he’s inevitably stumbled off the machine, but instead of being greviously injured out of simple justice, he’s been thrown onto the leg press machine for his last exercise of the day.

Why finish up with the leg press? Because it’ll give him a big number so he’ll come back tomorrow. Despite his pathetic cardiovascular conditioning and will-o’-the-wisp upper-body strength, Funky has quads of iron from keeping all that mass upright all day. With his leg muscles isolated and the 45° rails carrying half the weight, he can probably press a quarter ton. See you again tomorrow, Samson.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/1/18

After two weeks of nonstop kidney disease, we pause in the final panel to confront the tragedy of color blindness. I hope the grub in Jordan’s Generic House of Food is better than the décor.

— Uncle Lumpy