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

As regular readers know, I host fundraisers once or twice a year to support the time, effort, and talent Josh puts into the Comics Curmudgeon. There’s even more to support this time around — behind the scenes, Josh and his IT Department Adam Norwood are upgrading, tuning, and expanding the site to:

  • Redesign it for improved readability and efficiency, especially on mobile devices
  • Accommodate feedback and recommendations from last month’s Reader Survey
  • Review commenting functions and improve them where possible
  • Add unspecified but potentially exciting new features!

Please help out with a generous contribution. Even if you haven’t contributed before, consider sending an amount proportional to the enjoyment Josh’s work brings into your life — I bet it’s a lot! If it turns out to be $25 or more, you’ll receive a stylish and practical Comics Curmudgeon tote bag in addition to Josh’s personal and effusive thanks:

Contribute however you like:

  • By credit card or PayPal — Click the banner at the top of the page and follow the instructions on the secure PayPal site.
  • By mail — Email uncle.lumpy@comcast.net; I’ll reply with an address for your generous check, money order, or in-kind contribution.
  • NEW Patreon sponsorship — If you’d prefer to support all of Josh’s artistic/comedic efforts on a “set it and forget it” recurring basis, visit his new Patreon page for complete details of this new option. A pledge of just $2 per month qualifies you for a CC tote bag.

Full details, terms, and conditions are here.

The banners at the top of the page are selected automatically on a kinda-random basis. If you’d prefer to browse through a directory instead of wearing out your Refresh finger, you can find one here, along with 500+ banners going back to 2008. I’ve wasted hundreds of hours on these — join me!

And thank you, generous readers!

— Uncle Lumpy

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

Well, it’s that time again! Once or twice a year, I host a fundraiser so fans of the Comics Curmudgeon can thank Josh for the time, effort, and talent he puts into it every day.

A bit of history here: In 2004, newspapers moving news and features online discovered they couldn’t necessarily take syndicated comics along. King, Creators, Tribune, and other syndicates were finding their own ways to license, package, and monetize their comics online. But the uncurated, fragmented online experience that resulted just wasn’t the same as sitting down at the breakfast table, snapping open the paper, and snorting in derision at For Better or For Worse, Mutts, or Mary Worth.

Into that breach stepped dyspeptic Baltimore ginger Josh Fruhlinger, who created an authentic comics-mocking experience for the 21st Century. It started modestly and faced many trials, including disruptive, near-fatal behind-the-scenes changes by The Houston Chronicle, Google, WordPress, comics syndicates, and a global army of spammers. But with determination, creativity, and a growing complement of paid outside IT and design services, Josh has prevailed — so far.

Please help him keep that going, with a generous contribution. Even if you haven’t contributed before, consider sending an amount proportional to the enjoyment Josh’s work has given you over the past year — I bet it’s a lot! If it turns out to be $25 or more, you’ll receive a stylish and practical Comics Curmudgeon tote bag in addition to Josh’s personal and effusive thanks:

To contribute by credit card or PayPal, click the banner at the top of the page and follow the instructions on the secure PayPal site. To contribute by check or money order, email uncle.lumpy@comcast.net and I’ll reply with Josh’s brand-new Los Angeles address. Full details here.

If you’d prefer to browse through the directory of banners instead of playing Refresh Roulette, you can find it here, along with more than 500 banners going back all the way to 2008.

Thank you, generous readers!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Greetings, friends! Hope you are enjoying your afternoon and this comment of the week!

Put your glasses on, Daddy, so I can remember who you are! After all, today is the day we descend on you like a pack of feral pugs, and I want to remember you as you were — weak-eyed, weak-chinned, and too weak to lead the pack. It’s Jeffy time now, old man!” –Voshkod

And these hilarious runners up!

“If you take the final panel of Mary Worth and remove the context, it looks like someone finally illustrated my favorite work of fanfic: Elderly He-Man Meets Hillary Clinton.” –ratnerstar

“Jerry’s Midtown Eatery looks like the most fun place in midtown to be employed at! Not only did Tommy get to come into work wearing his Silver Age Aquaman costume, Tina is currently seeing how many standard size marshmallows she can cram into her jowls! (‘Five’ is the answer. That’s why she’s holding up five fingers to a suitably impressed Tommy.)” –gelded wilderbeeste

“Veterinarian degrees usually have the name of the school across the top. Fake online ‘VET’ certificates have a picture of a yellow snake, because animals, get it?” –Chareth Cutestory

“Of course, ‘Marvin poops a lot’ and ‘Marvin hates his dad’ are not two separate strains of joke, but are all components of one coherent joke that could be characterized as ‘If Sigmund Freud wrote the comics page, it’d go something like this.'” –Dr. Mabuse

“Iris attempts to take food from Wilbur’s plate. The little girl is a red herring. The next storyline is going to be about the severe bite wounds on Iris’s arm, Tommy’s relapse when he gets into her Vicodin, and, ultimately, serious questions about whether Wilbur’s had his rabies shots.” –Christopher

“We’re all looking forward to Hi’s little monocle popping out and falling into his tiny brandy snifter when it’s revealed that the book club is halfway through Fifty Shades of Gray, followed by Lois telling him exactly how she feels about bondage sex in a room full of strangers.” –Roger

“For Hi, this is the height of the literary look, assuming that the high priest of that look is Mr. Peanut.” –Gary

“I find it interesting that while Dean Young and John Marshall are not willing to risk the patent-lawyer ire of Calvin Klein, they have no such qualms about tempting fate with the legal department of the McIlhenny Company.” –eriqjaffe

“It’s only natural to develop a complicated attitude about your mother once you’ve spent eight months in her pouch.” –BigTed

‘Fellers.’ It’s been about 50 years since anyone has said ‘Fellows,’ let alone one of its stupid bastardizations. Gasoline Alley continues to know its audience.” –Roto13

“Taken totally out of context and with its word balloon removed, the third panel of this comic strip would appear to be a perfect relic of the 1970s: Bella Abzug getting in on the Saturday Night Fever disco craze. Francis’ bell-bottoms only strengthen the illusion.” –Joe Blevins

“Momma isn’t actually pointing at heaven. She appears to be pointing to the second story of the house, which extends over the bench where Francis is sitting. So I guess that means Poppa’s body is hidden in the crawl space.” –Guts Dozier

“No one would mistakenly refer to Momma as the ‘Head of the Family’ if she actually had a torso.” –nescio

“Well, the timing of that Blended tie-in promotion isn’t working out for Mark Trail’s syndicate.” –sporknpork

Mary Worth: “I can show you lots of interesting things, Olive. This place is a carny sideshow. Check out the meth addict over there, straight out of prison. And the fat guy with a combover? Wilbur poses as a woman online to advise idiots who write to him and he’s too lazy to even respond. He has me doing it. And that’s his freak of a daughter with the two tone hair. Been studying at Local U. since Christ was a Corporal. Finally we have what passes for a Charterstone sugar daddy here in the rotund, hirsute form of Ian Cameron. That’s his wife, Toby, who I call Dopey, and she’s obsessed with miniatures if you know what I mean and since you’re from New York, I assume you’re chillingly precocious and do know. Stick with Auntie Mary, kid, and you’ll never be bored again.” –Gabacho

“Silas frowned. It was here, just a minute ago. The counter, his shop, the racks of books … they had just vanished. The two boys still stood there, each clutching a comic book Silas had never seen before, with no title or plot teaser of any kind, just the cold, unfeeling faces of Spider-Man and The Phantom. ‘No problem, we’re jest lookin’ at th’ pitchers!’ The boy chuckled, his face fixed in an awful sneer. ‘Jest like we’re jest lookin’ at ETERNITY, Silas.'” –Tophat

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! If you’d like to buy advertising on the site, you can do so on a CPM basis through BuySellAds. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

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