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So ends the Comics Curmudgeon 2008 Fall Fundraiser. A sincere thank you to all the many contributors for your generous donations, and to all our faithful readers for your patience. Ads and fundraisers help keep CC going, but we know it’s not why you’re here. So here’s an extra-large serving of tasty, tasty comics for your Saturday enjoyment!

Mark Trail, 10/4/08

See? See? This is why Little Miss “Daddy Died and Gave Me His Big Ol’ Company” Sue Butler will never break that glass ceiling into the top echelon of rapacious capitalism. You can see it in panel two, where she’s all “Oh, I am in Mortal Danger” and “Oh, I hope some oddly affectless Man of Action with waxy hair hears my anguished cries!” A true Titan of Industry would be thinking, “Hey, this is great! Now we can say we’re draining the wetlands to save the children from gators!”

Oh, and “Go Blue and Orange!”

Gasoline Alley, 10/4/08

Rover’s got potential, though: “Oh, thank Heaven, my benefactor died before he could discover my fraud!” (Let’s not dwell on the fact that if Sultan P. had in fact been trying to install Rover’s invention on a fuel-injected car, he would have discovered the fraud.) But genius inventor or not, I wonder if Rover really has the smarts for the top job — most folks wipe the side of the face on which they’re actually sweating.

Beetle Bailey, 10/4/08

At last, the Beetle Bailey/Marmaduke crossover. This one goes on the fridge!

The Phantom, 10/4/08

Looks like Ghost-Who-Hemmorrhages has a grim mission for Ol’ Doc Poor-but-Noble here. But inquiring minds want to know, what’s Ol’ Doc reading?

Aha! One imagines that entire panel-one bookcase is stuffed with Phantom-related literature like this, this, and this. Probably some correspondence course he’s taking for when he takes over from Stripey in a couple days. NEXT!

Archie, 10/4/08

OMG TEH KIDZ + TEH TECHNOLOGY ROFLMAO!

Archie archivists will note that the child is Leroy, Veronica’s cousin* and, in the comic books and digests, Archie’s tormentor. Of course, the ALGU-3000 knows none of this beyond:

PROCEDURE CHAR_LOC.
Begin.
DISPLAY "Enter location and character.".
ACCEPT Loc.
ACCEPT Char.
PERFORM UNTIL NOT ValidLoc.
EVALUATE TRUE
WHEN Lodge_Mansion DISPLAY "Location is valid."
WHEN Char_Residence DISPLAY "Character residence is valid."
WHEN OTHER DISPLAY "HA HA HA -- O TEH KIDZ!"
END-EVALUATE
END-PERFORM
STOP RUN.

* Update: Not “brother” as originally posted. Thank you, faithful readers!

Sally Forth, 10/4/08

Hey, Sally’s finally ready for her makeover — Let’s help!

1. Lose the jumper
2. Hairstyle, sweetie. For the love of God.
3. [Reader input!]

Apartment 3-G, 10/4/08

So, they’re investigating drug abuse by a dead guy? What’re they gonna do, put him in Hell Jail?

Blondie, 10/4/08

Poor, desperate Blondie’s sexytalk and coy strapslip lure Dagwood into the kitchen, not out of his pyjamas. His bagel-themed pyjamas. I swear she’d have better luck with frickin’ Sam Driver.

Judge Parker, 10/4/08

Well, speak of the devil! Alas, this is all just boring exposition (ha ha!), but lest anyone forget, Abby Spencer is headed to Scottsdale for some damn plot-device horse show. I’m praying her arrival will coincide with writer Woody Wilson’s departure on a long journey, stopping the plot cold and leaving Abby, Heidi, Dixie, and us-y in the strong but supple and surprisingly tender hands of artist Eduardo Barreto. Masterful hands! Maybe a long and fatal journey?

Hey — it’s Broderick Crawford Day! Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy

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The Comics Curmudgeon 2008 Fall Fundraiser



Click here or above to support the Comics Curmudgeon. Thank you!

— Uncle Lumpy

Ah, love! Makes the world go ’round ‘n’ all, but its course never did run smooth — let’s watch!

Sally Forth, 10/2/08

Well, everyone feels good for Ted, of course, but let’s not neglect the opportunity this represents for Alice. She hasn’t.

Mary Worth, 10/2/08

This only seems to be a test of Toby’s trust and Ian’s forgiveness. Toby’s issues center on her own impulse control and Ian’s attentiveness: when she blurts out her secret during the first five seconds of their reunion, will he listen to a word she says? Mary’s issues, as ever, concern tactics, survival, and opportunities for fraud as executrix.

Luann, 10/2/08

Luann and TJ badgered Perpetual Tool Brad into overbidding for some skeezy pay-for-play calendar scheme. Today’s strip mocks itself, so I don’t have to.

Mark Trail, 10/2/08, 8/23/06

In Mark Trail, love rarely gets beyond, “More pancakes, please!” Could this time be different? Wetland-drainin’ cityfolk Sue and Charlie apparently have romantic history. But while Sue can still touch her cheek (or perhaps her ear), it appears she’s lost touch with her heart. Poor Charlie avenges the dual humiliations of sexual rejection and a dead-end career in a family-owned business on that innocent hallway Pothos. In the end, though, it won’t matter. It’s a hardy plant.

Hey, does Charlie look familiar? He should! Here’s Hoyt, the Chicken-kickin’ Beekeeper from the awesome Molly epic of 2006:

Hoyt is a kind of secular saint among Trailfans — he helped set in motion a complex narrative involving bears both pet and arrow-assed, Kelly Welly, mobs of bloodthirsty but ultimately lazy upright rural folk (an apparent Pluggers crossover), one-upsmanship on the Rain of Frogs from the Book of Exodus, and many other delights. For this, and after a meek apology, he was allowed to keep his hair.

We’ll see if Charlie fares as well.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/24/08

When I first read this comic, I missed the joke, reading the dialog of the last two panels like this:

“Really? Your dad’s a traveling salesman?”

“No, just kidding! He’s just the regular kind of dad you’d find in this blighted hillbilly shantytown: a toothless, semi-literate chicken thief with no visible means of support and a terrible gambling problem! He’s never home because he’s usually in jail, or at a whorehouse!”

I did get my head around the punchline in short order, obviously, but then, because I’m a fancy east coast urban elitist (if that wasn’t obvious from my initial interpretation), I became resentful about being befuddled by a strip about rustic morons. Damn you, you clever mountain folk!

Gil Thorp, 9/24/08

You know, if Cully Vale had been caught looming menacingly over the shattered form of one of his hapless backyard wrestling victims like monstrously large defensive back (or something?) Jeff Ponczak is doing in panel two here, he’d have been put away for life. But because Jeff’s assault took place in the context of a school-sanctioned athletic competition, he gets the cheers of thousands, and everything is A-OK! Instead, it’s the third panel of today’s Gil Thorp that’s really disturbing. Let’s count the ways!

• Jeff is gazing rapturously heavenward with the sun (or possibly the stadium lights) beaming down on his face, as if he were in a propaganda poster urging the workers and peasants to redouble their efforts to meet the goals of Stalin’s latest Five-Year Plan.
• Some sort of terrifying bandage-wrapped hand is resting on Jeff’s shoulder, as if he were being accosted by a leper or a mummy or, worse, Spider-Man.
• Jeff is being showered with approbation in the form of a series of epithets that reference his quarterback-tackling prowess, all of which will unfortunately force you to contemplate Jeff’s scrotum.

Mark Trail, 9/24/08

And with the arrival of a mustache, we now have this storyline’s sinister villain, in the form of the random white dude attached to the aforementioned mustache. I can’t wait until we find out that the “right people on our side” are the lawyers who have meticulously worked with state and local governments and environmental groups to get the permits necessary to drain the grassland and build something nice on the land legally owned by Mr. Mustache and Mr. Guy He’s Talking On The Phone To Who Probably Also Has A Mustache. “But, Mr. Trail, I think you’ll find that all our paperwork is in order…” “Paperwork does not impress me! You drained a friend of mine’s land’s neighboring wetlands!” *PUNCH*