Post Content

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

Post Content

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*

Post Content

Herb and Jamaal, 9/20/08

Pity poor Herb, who’s been reduced to making a series of “funny” reaction facial expressions in his own comic strip while his doctor dishes out the “jokes.” Sure, the strip could have been recast with almost no effort at all so that it consisted of actual dialog being exchanged, by why bother when you have the option of non-stop hilarity in its purest form: a lecture from a doctor with comical hair. At least Herb got to contribute something, rather than just silently picking something up while a stranger contemplates adoption like Jamaal did earlier this week.

Ziggy, 9/20/08

Sassy mice claiming rights beyond their station might appear in any number of second-tier long-running comic strips (see for instance Garfield, 9/8-11/08). But that crooked-mouthed expression of pure humiliation and helplessness on our hero’s face? That’s the special soul-blighting value-add you only get from Ziggy.

Mark Trail, 9/20/08

“He’s a filthy animal that we let live in our house because we’re insane! He’s covered with fleas, and he steals things, and he has rabies!”

Apartment 3-G, 9/20/08

Wow, this took a turn for the depressing real fast. Uh, don’t do drugs, kids, OK?