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So ends the Fall 2013 Comics Curmudgeon fundraiser. Don’t forget the “Donate” button over there on the left, for late contributions or whenever the spirit moves you. Sincere thanks to everyone!

Spider-Man, 10/18/13

“Astella! She — is dead!”

“Yes, and tastefully off-panel, with wisps of smoke wafting from the charred remains of her once-lovely face. Beautiful she was, Astella, and cunning! But in the end, neither quality could save her, because she lacked the experience and common sense to realize that her gun had become …. Hey waitaminute, T — why are we here, again?”

“Free Rosa and capture El Cóndor.”

“Oops. Sorry, my bad.”

Dick Tracy, 10/18/13

And it’s starting to rain!

Hey doofus, in what sense do you “know how to pilot” the Space Coupe if you can’t make it go where you want, or at the very minimum make it not go where you don’t want? Mmmmm?

Gil Thorp, 10/18/13

But that won’t stop Milford running back Chip Visci and linebackers Omari Troy and Troy Costello — touchdown!

I sincerely and unironically admire this strip’s fidelity to its team rosters. Players come in as freshmen, move up the ranks, sometimes transfer in and out, graduate, and sometimes come back. Some but not all play multiple sports. Seasons start in approximately real time, and the first weeks of each arc [football, basketball, baseball] present the roster so readers can follow along at home. That is some serious attention to craft, right there. We saw something similar in Funky Winkerbean a while back, when a character showed up to correct a minor continuity lapse revealed by publication of a 1970’s compilation.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/18/13

June is intrigued by this talk of mariticide: “Say, why don’t I stop by and ask the wife to tell me exactly how she did it? More moss, dear?”

Apartment 3-G, 10/18/13

Bad Girl Tori doesn’t just defy authority – she defies gravity. And mocks fashion with her signature reverse combover.

Program note: just a reminder that Comments of the Week are delayed until Josh’s return on Sunday, or maybe Monday, whatevs.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Heathcliff, 10/14/13, 10/15/13

What goes on by night in Heathcliff’s neighborhood just got a lot more disturbing. Heathcliff has quintupled his garbage consumption in just a few short months, and now requires armored strikes by Garbage Ape just to keep him in slop. I fear he is building his strength for an apocalyptic conflict with Marmaduke for absolute domination of the comics page, and I’m not sure which one to back. In this business, you don’t want to be wrong about something like that.

One Big Happy, 10/14/13, 10/15/13

Meanwhile, Ruthie’s got a raven to sleep in her princess doll bed, hide in her closet, and share her breakfast. The raven tells her secrets. Terrible, terrible secrets that all ravens know but little girls must not.

Stupid raven, leave her alone — she’s just a little girl! I don’t care how much you like Trix!

Gil Thorp, 10/14/13

First I wrote, “Gil Thorp is getting a little annoying”, but the sentence just laughed at me so I put these other words around it. John Pascoe is a skilled football player who can talk but doesn’t. Nobody else can seem to shut up about this. Including, now, me. Crap.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Herb and Jamaal, 9/13/13

OK, everybody, here’s the thing: when multiple negatives are strung together in a sentence the way that our faceless gumbo aficionado has strung them together in panel one, with the intent to intensify the negative sentiment rather than to have the negatives cancel each other out, that’s called negative concord. While this isn’t an accepted feature of high-status standard English today, it was common in old and middle English (and was extensively used by Chaucer), and is a feature of the high-status literary varieties of a number of other languages, including Portugese, Russian, Persian, and ancient Greek.

Now, arbitrary distinctions between dialects are made in every language ever spoken, so I’m not going on some quixotic quest to get negative concord back into standard English or anything, but I do have a gripe with people who pretend that dialectical uses of it are difficult or impossible to parse. People love to smugly point out that “I don’t got no money” logically means “I do have some money” — according to formal mathematical logic, which is very different from the logic that defines the grammar of naturally occurring spoken languages. But I would be very, very surprised if any competent native English speaker ever heared someone say “I don’t got no money” and genuinely believed that the speaker was claiming to have some money.

But (and here is my point) if you are going to go down this pedantic, narrow-minded, wrong-headed road, at least get your pedantry right. A double negative resolves to a positive. A triple negative resolves to a negative. You’re making yourself look dumb, Herb.

Gil Thorp, 9/13/13

Considering that some years the Milford bonfire is restricted to single glorious panel, I’m pretty excited about this fall’s installment being spread over multiple days! Even better is that this extra strip time gives us an opportunity to hear some Milford High students wax rhapsodically about the delightful smell of burning human flesh.

Blondie, 9/13/13

I’d give Dagwood a free sandwich if he showed up in that mask, wouldn’t you? I’d give him whatever he wanted. That thing is fucking terrifying.