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—Uncle Lumpy

Mary Worth, 10/3/08

Toby’s phishing nightmare is water under the bridge, but after throwing good money after bad, she may have bitten off more than she can chew. The unvarnished truth is that being honest with Ian just doesn’t float her boat, so she avoids it like the plague. Mary has an axe to grind, but may be blowing things up out of proportion — it’s an open secret big as life that putting a relationship on the rocks is crossing a line in front of a bottomless pit. But it’s good to see these two addressing it proactively: after all, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, nothing is cut and dried, a stitch in time saves nine, and failure is not an option.

Seriously, is Mary losing it? Ever since Aldo killed himself and Ella Byrd pwned her advising skills, she’s been reduced to adopting stray dogs and half-heartedly humiliating poor Doc Jeff. Now she’s outsourced her advice operation to Mistress Terry Bryson, trying to keep her hand in with this meandering recap—a sad state of affairs for one of history’s greatest monsters! And to think we lost Kim Jong-Il about the same time.

Hey . . . we’ve never actually seen them together, have we?

Family Circus, 10/3/08

Family Circus Partial Nudity Week:

Gasoline Alley, 10/3/08

OK, boy-man Rover here sold his gas-saving gadget to Sultan Abu bin Stereotype without disclosing that it won’t work on fuel-injected cars. While we wait to discover the wily Sultan’s plans to keep the invention off the market, Rover distracts himself from his supposed legal predicament by feeding some ducks — ironically exposing himself to simultaneous copyright-infringement lawsuits from Mark Trail and Mallard Fillmore.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/3/08

In panel 2 we learn that Rex’s mobile has an obscene ringtone, which the artist has graciously censored for us. I would have sworn he kept it on vibrate—and not in his pocket.

— Uncle Lumpy

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— 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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Beetle Bailey, Ziggy, The Better Half, 9/29/08

Cartoonists have always known that technology is funny all by itself, so there’s no need for frills like an actual joke — perfect for a lazy Monday! I’m sure that when the inscriptions at Lascaux are finally translated from the proto-Gallic, at least one will read, “OMG — TEH FIREZ! TEH SPEARZ! ROFLMAO”!

Apartment 3G, 9/29/08

Hey, it’s really Alan, and he’s not only merely dead, he’s really most sincerely dead! That means something actually happened in slow-as-molasses Apartment 3G — mere weeks after Dewey Cheatham bought the farm in that Sultan of Stasis, Judge Parker. Maybe the authors finally gave up trying to spin their characters’ endless chattering into some kind of plot and rose up like Gary Larson’s vulture to proclaim, “I’m tired of waiting — let’s kill something!” We can only hope.

Mary Worth, 9/29/08

No such risk here! After endless weeks of first the bank’s and then victim-turned-consultant Terry Bryson’s attempts to calm Toby down after her non-crisis, Mary now asks for a (doubtless week-long) recap of the non-events. You can tell Toby’s learned her lesson, though. From the steely glint in her eye and the firm set of her chin, you know she’s headed right back to enormoushop.com to download that “Safety Cats” security screensaver before this nightmare can happen again!

I’m sitting in for Josh this week — you can reach me for site-related issues like server problems or comments caught in the spam filter at bio@jfruh.com, which forwards to me for the duration. If you need to reach Josh personally, use jfruh@jfruh.com, but expect delays.

— Uncle Lumpy