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So ends the Comics Curmudgeon Fall 2012 fundraiser. Thank you, generous readers!

Gasoline Alley, 11/16/12

Any hopes of social acceptance for coal-eyed monster Boog — from the cruel attentions of bullies to his prospects of a future mate — hang on the slender thread of his mother’s ability to keep his school — nay, the entire town — stuffed and brain-addled from her carbohydrate-laden snacks. Bake, Hoogie, bake! Bake like you’ve never baked before!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/16/12

Rex Morgan, M.D. plots are notorious for starting from an intriguing premise — Rex and June investigate a brothel — and then larding in so many trivial digressions that readers lose track, and eventually interest. And so we have Honey’s plumbing emergency, Ginger’s stockkeeping crisis, Edna’s heart attack and Herb’s gratitude, June’s free clam lunch (with extra free crab cakes — come back again for more free!), Dolores’s battle with cancer, Nurse Amber Thomas coaxing Rex into a TV spot for CPR training and his consequent public acclaim, Ginger’s Rex-poaching plans and backstory conflicts with the Marine-pilot wife of an former paramour and scheming clamshack waitress Rose. The shame in all this is that when the whole rickety edifice finally collapses in a hail of gunfire or ceremonial award of yet another boat, no one will much notice, let alone care.

Gil Thorp, 11/16/12

Talented and yet somehow Irish footballer Terry Gallagher has let his largely-fictional triumphs on the American gridiron go to his head! Here, the Cool Girls conspire in some vague iPhone-related plot to take him down a peg, because if the stars of the NFL have shown us anything, it’s that a deep and abiding humility is the key to football success.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/16/12

OK so Big Walnut Tech is obviously a Designated Villain in Funky Winkerbean: they routinely crush the Westview Scapegoats in football, and it was team star Frankie who got Dead Lisa pregnant (she was not yet dead at the time), so that Les could heroically give her a lift to the hospital and the Fairviews could get Darrin to adopt. And today Big Walnut Tech bests the Westview High crowd yet again, this time by remote control.

Sounds like a pretty interesting place, doesn’t it, this Big Walnut Tech? I’d like to know more about how their coach managed to maintain a consistently successful football program over so many years, and how they built an academic environment that develops clearly marketable skills in fields like robotics. And what about Frankie? Did he build on his high-school social and athletic successes to become a man of consequence? Were his dreams bigger than Westview?

I like to think of Frankie taking his final box of trophies out to the curb and drawing a last deep breath of Westview air, with its faint smell of bad pizza and flop sweat — then firing up his trusty old van, scene of so many conquests, and driving it down the sad main street out of town forever without a single glance in the rearview.

Judge Parker, 11/16/12

All along, Avery was just looking for a place to hang his hat and park his trout. He would see it clear enough if he took off those ridiculous glasses.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Mary Worth, 10/31/12

“So, wait, Mary, you’re asking me if I’m ‘OK’ that my new crush is physically attracted to me because I look uncannily like his dead sister, who is dead, and also was his sister? YES OBVIOUSLY I AM OK WITH THAT!!! You know the thing that I dread more than anything in the world is being dumped, and if Jim loves me because I look like his beloved dead sister, why, he couldn’t ever stand to lose her again, could he? Come on, Mary, help me find pictures of her online so I can start dressing more like her.”

(Also, follow that link above to discover that the Great Dumpening that started this whole storyline happened in mid-May, which means that this joyride of Dawn-misery has gone on for more than six months. And not that it hasn’t been great, but … what do you think Toby and Ian are up to, you think?)

Judge Parker, 10/31/12

“What am I going to do with a chainsaw, boss?” asks the thuggish hillbilly minion. “You’re going to use it for its intended purpose,” replied his boss, a violent drug lord whose empire was under risk of exposure, “which is to say that you’re going to cut up a fallen tree so as to prevent damage to our friend and future business partner’s expensive and impractical automobile!” RIP CHAINSAW DISMEMBERMENT STORYLINE, YOU WERE TOO BEAUTIFUL TO BE REAL

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Apartment 3-G, 10/24/12

Haha, Greg, good job throwing off Margo’s suspicions there. The correct answer to “Why would you BUY A NEW YORK APARTMENT when you’re SHOOTING A MOVIE IN LONDON” is something like “Gee, maybe because I live in New York and most movies only shoot over a few weeks or months?” rather than “WHAAAH MY OWN PUBLICIST DOESN’T BELIEVE ME WHAAAH IT’S LIKE SHE THINKS I’M STALKING HER OR MAYBE HER ROOMMATES OR SOMETHING WAAAAH.” Also, you know, maybe a good publicist would think “Hmm, my client has just plopped down some cash for an apartment in a glamorous building in Manhattan, maybe this could be seeded on Page Six” rather than “WHY ARE YOU HERE AND NOT THERE???”

By the way, I’m actually a little surprised that Margo isn’t on her building’s co-op board, considering her well-known love of being in charge of things and deciding who lives and who dies. The building’s conversion to a co-op apparently happened just a bit before I started writing this blog, and I’m forever saddened to have missed out on what I’m sure were a dramatic series of legal filings.

Mary Worth, 10/24/12

Oooh, Dawn’s relationship with Jim really is on an express train to crazytown! The lesson Dawn is apparently going to learn here is that the depressed and the disabled are dangerous, so you should shun them. Also, maybe the Mary Worth team has wildly misunderstood what “hydrophobia” means and soon Jim will become rabies-crazed? Can’t wait!

Judge Parker, 10/24/12

“So look, I’ll pay off whatever small amount of money Bea owes you, but in return you’ll have to shut down the vast, lucrative criminal enterprise that allows you to purchase Picassos and live comfortably in your underground lair. Do we have a deal, my violent, chainsaw-wielding, felonious friend?”