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Happy 2016, everyone! As is my tradition, I begin the new year by catching everyone up on the week’s worth of comics that I skipped while travelling, because I am nothing if not servicey. It’s good to have traditions this time of year!

Gil Thorp, 12/25/15

The Thorps have this tradition where they pose for a Christmas card, and try very strenuously to pretend that they never had hideous children, no sir, it’s always just been the two of them, those ugly little twerps certainly aren’t buried under the backyard shed right now, why would you even think that.

Mark Trail, 12/25/15

People have all sorts of holiday traditions! A cab driver told me yesterday his family always buys new green underwear to wear on New Years for good luck! Other people like to gently pick bats off of cave walls on Christmas morning! Life is a rich tapestry!

Gasoline Alley, 12/26/15

At least this holiday season settled an age-old question: is there a loving God? Clearly not, because if there were, He would not allow this endless, insanely tedious scrapbooking storyline to continue.

Curtis, 12/26/15

BUT WAIT! A KWANZAA STORYLINE IN CURTIS! Except … it doesn’t take place in some mythical African setting but instead stars an ordinary teen with fairly standard aspirations in the contemporary United States? This offers very little opportunity for, say, bat-winged bears or giant telepathic otters, so, nope, life is still terrible.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/29/15

Sarah’s plan to skip the first grade by marching into her new school, waving her horsey drawings around over her head and shouting “I’m an artist, damn it! An artist! I know how to feed myself!” should be extremely hilarious to watch.

Gasoline Alley, 12/30/15

Nnngghhnnggghghgh, this is still happening??? Here’s some sad news, Boog: forget a hundred years from now, we stopped caring about you weeks ago.

Curtis, 12/30/15

GOD DAMN IT, KWANZAA IS ABOUT WEIRD GIANT MONSTERS, IT ISN’T ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA AND VIRAL VIDEOS, THIS IS EVEN WORSE THAN NO KWANZAA STORY AT ALL

Gil Thorp, 12/31/15

On the other hand, I do like Gil Thorp plots that revolve around social media and viral videos! Remember when Gil got hit on the head with a baseball and YouTube went nuts for it? Remember when the kids read about sexting in Time and Newsweek and decided they wanted in? Anyway, this year it seems that Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp was about to cut a gal from the basketball team but then saw that she had written something vaguely team spirit-y on her Facebook, so now she’s in! This will no doubt lead to an escalating war of all the kids posting inspirational memes and such in an attempt to keep in their coach’s good graces.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/31/15

In case you’re wondering, New Years Eve in the Funkyverse combines the gloom of the Funkyverse with the gloom of New Years Eve in real life!

Mark Trail, 12/31/15

What better way to end 2015 than with some hot Trailian beefcake?

Mary Worth, 1/2/16

And what better way to start 2016 than with some hot Worthian sanctimony? Remember, it’s not mandatory that you make New Year’s Resolutions, but if you do, why not resolve to be more like Mary? EVERYONE SHOULD BE MORE LIKE MARY.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/3/16

Haha, remember the terrible joke in this strip? Did you want another version of it? Well, too bad, here it is! 2016 is going to be great!

Anyway, I’m back to regular daily blogging tomorrow. But now is the time to vote in the annual Worthy Awards, the hilarious best-of-the-year awards from Wanders and the Mary Worth And Me blog. Will Terry Bryson win Best Costume Design for her Mod Squad outfit? Will Mary’s Pretty Big Computer-Like Thing win for Best Set Decoration? Democracy only works if you vote!

And, finally, remember, you can buy my novel, now and forever. I’m enthusiastic about 2016! (See what I did there?)

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My novel, The Enthusiast, is available for purchase! Check out the first chapter, then buy:

• The hardcover or softcover edition for $25 or $15
• The ebook edition for $8, which includes files for all devices
• And if the mood strikes, you can put some money in my tip jar

If you like this blog, I’m pretty sure you’re gonna like this book.

Gil Thorp, 12/19/15

The Gil Thorp football season plot has been a disappointment in a number of ways, and one of the disappointments has been that we were seemingly promised some Marty Moon action but he’s barely appeared at all. Still, I like the fact that the storyline both began and ended with him drinking alone and talking ruefully to nobody, because it helps me imagine that he’s doing that pretty much any time we don’t see him on-panel.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/19/15

Parson Tuttle may not know the bible very well, but he sure knows all the verses that would get him out of giving anybody any money.

Post Content

My novel, The Enthusiast, is available for purchase! Check out the first chapter, then buy:

• The hardcover or softcover edition for $25 or $15
• The ebook edition for $8, which includes files for all devices
• And if the mood strikes, you can put some money in my tip jar

Order soon to get yours in time for Christmas. Thank you very much!

Gil Thorp, 12/17/15

Oh man, the ending of this Gil Thorp storyline is probably one of the most disappointing in recent memory, and that’s saying something! Basically Gil yelled at Holly for making the kids feel bad and Holly closed down the production and sent all the reality show people home. It was both anticlimactic and unrealistic, in that whatever line Holly crossed didn’t seem that much worse than all the other lines she crossed, and and also in that Holly seemed to think that she would be able to work in her industry again after essentially shutting down an entire TV show — which, let’s not forget, was already being broadcast and so probably had several more episodes paid for, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But anyway, actresses, a bunch of liars, amiright? That’s what the TV executives scrambling to fill the hole Welcome Back Carter left in their schedules are thinking, anyway.

Shoe, 12/17/15

The Patented Shoe Heavy Eyelids of Ennui have never been more heartbreaking than they are here. This comic just consists of a television set delivering a joke that people have been telling each other and not laughing at for years, and the Perfesser wants no part of it. He refuses entirely to participate in it. You can see that between panels one and two his wings have slipped off the chair’s armrests and he’s slouched even further down into the cushions. “This is what it’s come to?” he asks us, silently. “No. No more. I want to die.”

B.C., 12/17/15

Hey, kids! Remember Rage Comics, which were popular on 4chan and Reddit around, like, 2009-ish? Well, one of the Rage Comics characters is in a newspaper comic strip! This certainly means, uh, something about something, that’s for sure.