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Mary Worth, 10/26/10

I have to admit that the current Mary Worth plotline, in which Jill is cartoonishly cruel to Adrian and Adrian laughs it off and Mary seethes, hasn’t really done a lot for me. The only thing of real interest is the intensity of the aforementioned Mary-seething. The face she makes today is particularly delightful!

I assume that today will begin the story’s turn, on the logic that the self-loathing Adrian will absorb any amount of abuse without complaint, but you can’t criticize her sainted bullet-ridden fiance. Watch out, Jill! Adrian’s feeble, ineffectual rage will soon be turned against you!

Gasoline Alley, 10/26/10

I haven’t really been paying attention to this Gasoline Alley comical-misunderstandings-leading-to-accusations-of-adultery plot and neither have you, but here, enjoy the denouement, in which Hoogy’s attempts to be poetic and sweet are met with only a grunt of dull-eyed incomprehension.

Family Circus, 10/26/10

Jeffy knows it’s important to determine which animals are patriotic Americans and which are filthy foreigners.

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It’s the final day of the Fall 2010 Fundraiser — if you enjoy the Comics Curmudgeon, please take a few minutes to make a donation of any amount to support Josh and his fine work. You’ll feel great about it, and so will Josh — thank you!

Gasoline Alley, 9/24/10

Even beyond the bus plunge trope beloved of generations of lead-type print journalists, the current Gasoline Alley plot is chock full of old-timey goodness:

• Sound effects in dialect — “Kee-rash”, y’all! “Smootch”!

• Regionalisms — “Let’s don’t”, like Louisiana’s “might could”, Josh’s beloved upstate N.Y. “pop”, and the “bubbler” (water fountain) of my own Milwaukee roots.

• Agricultural sexuality — Rural kids don’t have much patience for courtly love. But Rover won’t fall for Miss Chris’s comely charms either, considering what’s waiting at home.

• Picaresque plotlines — A forgotten lunch, excess cell-phone use, failed brakes, missing spare, sudden infatuation: what us know-it-all city-folk call “incoherent.”

Blondie, 9/24/10

OK, cartoonists, listen up. It’s wonderful that you’ve got friends and neighbors, and peachy that they give to charity and get married and whatnot, but won’t you please, please stop sticking them in your comics? Your audience doesn’t give a rip about these people, and they always look creepy and out of place. This is not how to treat friends and neighbors in print.

Sally Forth, 9/23/10

This is how to treat friends and neighbors in print.

Dick Tracy, 9/24/10

Chief Liz is right. In fact, Dick will eventually fool himself, arrest himself for vagrancy, and then die a grisly and mysterious death at his own hands while in self-custody. His last words will be a lame wisecrack about how he died. At the funeral, friends will say, “He would have wanted it this way”, and they’ll be right, too.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Crock, 8/30/10

Many comic strips set theoretically in some specific time and place often end up wandering afield from that time and place, either for humorous effect or just out of sheer forgetfulness. Thus, while the action in Crock once was meant to be understood as taking place in North Africa under French colonial rule, today the strip might be happening somewhere where the IRS has authority, or really any time and any place at all. Today’s dialogue, for instance, implies that the action of the strip takes place during the time period described in one of the earlier sections of the book of Genesis, just before the Deluge. This is good news for everyone — including, I assume, all of you — who wants to see every single Crock character killed by an angry God in a world-destroying flood.

Gil Thorp, 8/30/10

Our phoned-in summer golf storyline has finally, mercifully, ended; let the phoned-in fall football storyline begin! It’s just day one and already the characters are starting to ask why we’re even bothering to have a fall football storyline. “Man, what’s the point?” asks a nameless Mudlark. “I mean, my face is melting due to some horrible space alien virus, and you all are just standing around with arms stretched out looking bored! Hello? Melting face? Over here?”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/30/10

There are few things simultaneously sadder and more hilarious than watching Les deliberate over whether to have his book launch party in his home town’s only functioning non-Toxic Taco restaurant with more anxiety and indecision than Hamlet trying to figure out whether he should kill his stepfather. But one of those even sadder and more hilarious things is watching two otherwise attractive and normal-seeming women compete to see who can debase themselves further to win Les’s mopey, self-absorbed affections.

Apartment 3-G, 8/30/10

Holy cats, is Apartment 3-G’s aged core audience about to be introduced to the great advances in hair extension technology that have taken place over the past few decades? Or does Tabitha simply plan to knock Margo out with some kind of sleeping potion, only for her to wake up 20 years later with her hair grown to ludicrous lengths, Rip van Winkle-style?

Slylock Fox, 8/30/10

Ha ha, it’s a trick question! There’s no such thing as “valuable” Kansas City Royals memorabilia.

Gasoline Alley, 8/30/10

I know I haven’t discussed the light-hearted Gasoline Alley strip lately, but in case you’re wondering what’s going on over there, here you go: a group of adorable schoolchildren is about to die in a terrible bus accident.