Post Content

Here’s today’s COTW, which is short and sweet and made me laugh like a hyena:

“Dr. Hweb Blog” –Jarin Udom, on Facebook

And the very hilarious runners up!

“Happy Mother’s Day from all of us at Mark Trail! Unless you’re an elephant! Then you’re stuck with an oversized brain that leaves mother elephants like you with an enhanced capacity to despair and grieve for your dead children! You even have the guilt to bury them yourself and the memory to endure the pain for years! Happy Mother’s Day!” –jroggs

“THIS WAS NOT ON THE INSIDE THE ACTOR’S STUDIO SYLLABUS, JAMES LIPTON” –pastordan

“This is a surprisingly complicated joke. In reality, the term ‘tree hugging‘ doesn’t mean ’embracing trees as though they were human.’ It means ‘going to extraordinary lengths to protect trees from being cut down.’ So does the talking, sentient tree in this strip want to die, having grown tired of its solitary, stationary existence? Or is the tree willing to sacrifice its own life to further the cause of capitalism? ‘Get away, you fool! They’re going to build a Lens Crafters on this spot!’” –Joe Blevins

“He looks like a tree hugger … and a tree kisser to me if you know what I mean and I think you do. But if you don’t, what I mean is smoking marijuana.” –that guy

“As usual, Daisy is the most entertaining aspect of this strip. I just love how she wakes up, smiles as she realizes what’s about to happen, and then sets herself up for a front-row seat in the kitchen to enjoy the ensuing mayhem. Daisy knows what that’s all about, and she’s LOVING it.” –pugfuggly

“Alice’s hair is protruding out of the panel, as the first step in escaping the patriarchal nature of the 50s-era comic strip.” -Pozzo

“I don’t know about you guys, but the idea of Mark pounding the living shit out of an argumentative modal realist gives me ten times the anticipatory pleasure of any number of poachers, bank robbers, crooked senators, or confused sheriffs. I want the blows to land just as he uses the term ‘indexical,’ turning his nose and teeth into a reducible set of body parts and fluids. ‘Keep talking and you’ll need more than a reliance on counterpart theory,’ Mark says, tossing a copy of Kripke’s response onto the sand where the blood was pooling.” –James Dowd, on Facebook

“Are … are Mark’s nipples erect? I mean I knew he liked dishing out nature facts but, geez, this is supposed to be a family strip. Someone cover Rusty’s eyes.” –Truckosaurus

“So I guess it’s the strongly matriarchal society of Hootin’ Holler, in which only women are allowed high-caloric luxuries like dessert, that’s caused the menfolk to shrink into physically stunted grotesques. But the good news is that we can finally stop blaming the moonshine.” –BigTed

“All I can think of looking at today’s Mark Trail is the horrific sunburn awaiting these pasty people.” –Naked Bunny with a Whip

“I love the attitude of the Mark Trail colorist. Let’s see: Polka dots vs. Tiger stripes? New hair style? Could this be a completely different character? Aw, screw it, I am NOT scrolling up to that color bar again.” –Col Havoc.

“Wow. Everybody involved with this whale is aggressively and unaccountably furious. How DARE this whale strand itself at our exclusive beach resort. We paid good money and this ecolodge can’t even keep the beach free of filthy cetaceans.” –Escape Zeppelin

“Well, you pretty much have already given up your privacy when you go to Doctor Blog. He’s posting about Leroy’s ED while he’s still sitting there! ‘Flaccid has two c’s,’ Loretta helpfully adds.” –Aphthakid

“After all he’s been through, Wilbur still doesn’t know how to hold a goddamn phone.” –Tom the Sailor Man

“What? No, this is your therapist. I said your problems are whack.” –Rob Carlson

“Look before you ‘lease’! And you know what I mean by ‘lease’! Wink wink. I … literally mean lease. Nudge nudge.” –Bootis

Thanks to everyone who became a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter to get an banner-ad-free site, put some scratch in my tip jar, or backed me on Patreon! If you’d like to advertise on the Comics Curmudgeon, and get your very own shoutout in this space, head on over to my BuySellAds page!

Post Content

What’s that comin’ round the bend? Why, it’s your COTW!

“Even for this strip, the LEGACY TRILOGY logo written in Lisa’s blood is a little too on-brand, no?” –pastordan

And right behind it? Why, it’s a whole posse of runners up!

“[Mary] keeps a cool head, even as she watches Wilbur drunkenly enter a shoving match with the alpha male of one of Santa Royale’s famous sea lion colonies.” –Alex DeSteve Allen Inventor Of The Porg, on Twitter

“Konga was released in 1961. Did the animapocalypse take place and I missed it? (I haven’t been keeping up on the news lately.)” –Pozzo

“‘I know Milton was as much a friend as a boss and you got on well with Heather to the extent she basically gave you this house, so I need to ask how his death’s affecting you?’ ‘You mean, will I still have this house?’ ‘Obviously. What else would I mean?’” –Horace Boon

“I like how MJ’s first step in her disguise is make herself cross-eyed. ‘Ha, they’ll never recognize me now!’ she says as she crashes into the pier.” –pugfuggly

“No one has ever been as pissed off about having to get a cab as Mark Trail is right there. ‘I wanted to rent a car but Big Government says I can’t have a license anymore because I’ve made too many vehicles explode. Many of those weren’t even my fault!’” –Aphthakid

“Get out of here with that ridiculous-looking dance craze from the 1970s — I’m busy with my ridiculous-looking exercise craze from the 1990s!” –BigTed

“It’s not a heart, it’s a Cardioid, because math broke my heart. It was a stormy day in Bletchly Park and the Jerry U-boats were decimating our convoys. Poor old Alan Turing was working on the Enigma cipher by day, and trying to unlock his love for me at night … [Two hours pass] … so I punched him, right there in Stockholm, in front of the Queen and King. ‘Feynman, you son of a bitch,’ I snarled, ‘you can play loose with me and my girl, but you cannot take quantum electrodynamics from me.’ That bastard stood up, straightened his tie, kissed my wife, and said ‘I already did, Louis.’ [Three hours pass] But I hung up my slide rule in ’86, when those swine at IMU gave the Fields Medal to Freedman for his work on four-manifolds while ignoring my breakthrough on Yang-Mills. I knew Freedman was sleeping with half the panel. Anyway, then I bought this place and started making chili for idiots like you. That answer your question?” –Voshkod

“You FORGOT that Green Hornet had a gas gun? That’s his whole shtick. That’s like forgetting that Batman has Bat-themed gadgetry or that Superman can fly or that Dick Tracy’s grotesque rogues with literal nicknames usually have gruesome, violent deaths.” –Frank B. Chavez III, on Facebook

“No matter how hard I try, I can’t see those grawlices as representing anything but voluminous farting. The air is thick with them!” –Peanut Gallery

“I’m going to assume shirtless white guys with tattered pants don’t stand out in Florida.” –Kevin Keeney, on Facebook

“‘You’re a failure, I am a failure! Let’s pool our efforts together.’ This is perfectly in the spirit of the Amazing Spider-Man.” –Ettore

“Two shirtless men, a woman fixing her Sharon Stone hair, and an underdecorated, indistinct set? I realize Spider-Man: Homecoming left itself open to some pretty obvious porn parodies but this is egregious.” –Bunivasal

“Scheduling disappointments are, based on my last visit to the urologist, the most realistic medical crisis shown in Rex Morgan, M.D., to date.” –Where’s Rocky

“I forget what the Snuffy Smith baby‘s name is? Here goes:

• Porkpie
• Honker Junior
• Tipsy
• Lil’ Feedbag
• Lil’ Snuff Stuff
• Hambone
• Pickle Truckle
• Cornpone
• Bumble Gump
• Underbreeches Jones
• Ol’ Baby
• Chuggs”

–Jack Pickert, on Twitter

“No, Mary! You’re pulling the ripcord on your murder-disguised-as-suicide-plan too soon! Wilbur isn’t quite drunk enough to think the cliff side is your car! You need to pick up his unfinished bottle of liquor and goad him into downing it all first. Maybe make a comment about how you hope he hasn’t given up on this the way everyone in his life has given up on him. Look, you’re a creative woman full of platitudes. I’m sure you can do this.” –Lionheart

“This might be cute if they were referring to the puzzle being too challenging for a baby, but no. The Holler never stopped grading meat using numbers (‘grade A beef’ was a flatlander invention to incorporate post-Upton Sinclair improvements to the food industry). Loweezy knows that cerebral activity is a leisure that fattens no frame, thus wasting the valuable bulking period between now and when Tater is presented at table, presumably with taters.” –Hopester

Thanks to everyone who became a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter to get an banner-ad-free site, put some scratch in my tip jar, or backed me on Patreon! If you’d like to advertise on the Comics Curmudgeon, and get your very own shoutout in this space, head on over to my BuySellAds page!

Post Content

Hey all! TONIGHT, the Internet Read Aloud, my free monthly comedy show in Los Angeles, returns to the stage in Los Angeles and is free! We’ve got a great lineup, and, I’m just going gently whisper, “a special robot guest star.” Here’s the Facebook event!

AND, as a certified Internet expert, I’ve officially determined that this whole “Facebook” business is “here to stay,” so I made a standalone Facebook page for not just this month’s show but the show as, like, an abstract concept. Please “like,” “share,” and “enjoy” if you want updates on future shows and random Internet-themed jokes over the course of the month!

And now, with that out of the way: it’s time for the comment of the week, y’all:

“If this storyline doesn’t wind up with Wilbur shooting a stranger on a beach, that Camus quote will have been wasted.” –Truckosaurus

The runners up are similarly hilarious!

“And my shower radio doesn’t work! Now the soundtrack to my showers, and my life, is the sound of my own heaving sobs!” –Roto13

“Seeing that everyone is in their underwear, at least it’s a fair fight.” –Rusty

“Noooo! If I don’t take my pills I turn into a decent human being!” –Peanut Gallery

“What I love about Ed Crankshaft is his stubborn refusal to learn from his mistakes. It’s not his fault that his whip-the-open-pill-bottle-towards-your-flat-palm method results on so much spilled medication. It’s the useless doctors never giving him enough extra to cover his losses and the darned interior decorator that put the refrigerator too close to his pill-taking spot.” –jroggs

“The Flagstons’ attempt to become one of the happy Italian-ish families in an Olive Garden commercial has only made them more miserable. Maybe it’s because Dad is ‘home from work’ (i.e., probably fired) at 4 p.m.” –BigTed

“All I can think about is how large and spacious those aircraft seats look. Forget First Class; nature magazine writers fly Zeroth Class!” –JJ48

“Dennis would prefer to hunt live prey, sink his fangs into the living, wriggling bodies, hearing their spines snap against the force of his jaws, and taste their still-warm, spilling blood… or he can just finish his plate of chocolate chip cookies that he’s having for dinner.” –Hogenmogen

“Marvin’s production of The Lion King was not well received. Reviews ranged from ‘A tepid interpretation’ to ‘unspeakably offensive.’ All audiences agreed, the increased scatological content was a serious misstep.” –Dan

“Oh, Dennis, you need to focus on the true existential horror: that all of us are a collective of billions upon billions of small animal lives and any sense of self you have is an illusion that evolved to ensure their survival and reproduction. Amateur.” –Dread

“Aside from the hairstyle the girl Rusty is speaking to looks exactly like his mother, which, aside from the Oedipal overtones, makes sense since she’s the only person in Rusty’s life who actually spends any time with him.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

“Dear Pete: You’re being a little ambiguous. I suggest that sentence should read: ‘Comic shop owner Rusty Staples was working late in his comic shop, when a wall of water smashed into the comic shop that he owned, where he was working late, with comics.’ You’re welcome.” –Tom the Sailor Man

“Mopey Pete hasn’t come up with an origin story for a character, this is just how his friend Rusty died. He looks excited when telling the story because he’s the only person Pete knew who didn’t die from cancer.” –Rosstifer

“Hagar isn’t the least bit curious about why his wife is talking to Lucky Eddie about ‘the way to a man’s heart’? I’d be curious.” –Joe Blevins

“‘Where’s Wilbur?’: a question nobody else has ever asked or wanted the answer to.” –Ekudamram

“They say that comic strips are always years late to topical events, but this Mary Worth storyline is perfectly on time for ‘sympathy for incels week’ among serious journalists.” –Ettore Costa, on Twitter

Thanks to everyone who became a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter to get an banner-ad-free site, put some scratch in my tip jar, or backed me on Patreon! If you’d like to advertise on the Comics Curmudgeon, and get your very own shoutout in this space, head on over to my BuySellAds page!