Post Content

I’m just sitting in while Josh is away — no Comments of the Week on my watch. Good news for faithful reader SF_Reader, who can revel in a few extra days of pretend glory!

But I do want to heap praise on our faithful advertisers, without whom this blog would resort to transparent gimmicks like inserting high-value search terms in titles and posts. If you’re actually looking for information on cancer, you’ll want to check out Funky Winkerbean. But if you came here for cosmetic surgery bankruptcy mortgage refinance mobile phone june morgan naked low apr, you’ll just have to look elsewhere — we have standards, you know!

This week’s Ad Love goes out to Devil’s Garden, the new mystery novel from Ace Atkins. Based on the real-life trial of actor Fatty Arbuckle, Devil’s Garden features Roaring-20’s licentiousness, yellow journalism, systemic corruption, and world-weary cynicism: everything, in short, that makes life worth living.

Wait — something else makes life worth living: the generous contributions of faithful readers like you! So a heartfelt thank you to everybody who hit Josh’s Tip Jar this week.

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

“What!” you’re exclaiming. “You’re going on vacation again?” Yes, I am. I’ll be back on Monday, 4/20. Until then, Uncle Lumpy is in charge, so be nice!

If you’re mad at me, just imagine I’m Coach Thorp in this hypnotic animated GIF from faithful reader One-eyed Wolfdog:

Or this hypnotic YouTube video from faithful reader Scott. (Great minds think alike!)

And now, to spare Uncle Lumpy the pain of picking out the best of the best, your comment of the abbreviated week!

“Has anyone ever actually seen a person clean while wearing an apron and a head schmatta? I’m 49 years old, have four immigrant grandparents, grew up in a blue collar world where some people I knew earned a living by cleaning, and yet I’ve never seen anyone dress up like that. This must the artist’s way of letting us know that the character is cleaning and not watching TV or masturbating.” –SF_Reader

And the runners-up! Very funny!

“If all goes well, the saga of Ted and Adrian will end with everybody in the Corey family having to apologize for thinking Ted’s a conman, but only just before Ted is horsewhipped in Charterstone’s public square for allowing his identity to be stolen. FYI, if Ted is put in the Charterstone pool and yet floats, the punishment will be far, far worse.” –Frank Parsnip

“I was gonna send something to Josh about Garfield self-plagiarizing, but I didn’t have time to scan every Garfield strip ever published.” –Chupper

“Gil will, of course, regress to being a six year old and talk in an adorable lisp. The scenes where he calls Mimi ‘mom’ should be amusingly uncomfortable.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“[The Pluggers chicken-lady] appears to be of the same zoological family as the birds in Shoe. They seem to have evolved fleshy lumps where their beaks should be. And hands, of course. It’s all a natural progression, leading ultimately to a Ziggy.” –un malpaso

“So, does Rusty go back to school soon, assuming a public school system exists near Lost Forest? Or is the realm like a reverse-Narnia, always summer but never fun?” –cj

“Sunday’s Mark Trail, in a rare instance of continuity, will feature the rare Orange-Bellied Punchy-Con. ‘Modern technology seems destined to doom this good-natured cash-flinger … but some woodsmen know to set out its favorite treat, Monstrouschild’s Cameras, to encourage this reclusive omnivore to dig a home in a sheltered habitat!’ Then the director of NOAA will inexplicably show up to give Mark an award in the last panel.” –Dragon of Life

“I’m not sure if Rusty’s death-mask grin in the last panel is supposed to indicate one of those ‘Sure, Dad!’ fake smiles (while he’s really calculating how quickly he can reach the border of the Lost Forest and be free) or if it means the muscle-contracting poison in Cherry’s cookies is starting to set in.” –Eldaglass

“Looking at the background of Mark Trail gives me a headache. ‘You shouldn’t be going too far from Lost Forst alone … but feel free to teleport between this room made of rough-hewn logs in panel 1, a featureless beige nothingness in panel 2, and outdoors in panel 3!’ Then again, Mark is himself a sort of featureless beige nothingness.” –Nomstrosity

“Uh-oh: Gil’s going to lose his ‘coachy sense’!” –Gal Friday

“Today’s Pluggers is a goddamn lie; pluggers do not send letters because pluggers are illiterate. At least, that’s the only valid explanation for why they didn’t lynch Gary Brookins years ago.” –Captain Thunder

“That’s sort of the tagline for Momma, isn’t it? ‘Momma: Eventually your soul will scab over.'” –One-eyed Wolfdog

“Sometimes I think that Apartment 3-G is really an advertisement form Ikea. ‘To the left of the unimaginably boring woman, you can see our new Blue Curtains #3898 which complement any generic apartment of up-and-coming middle-classers.’ That’s our Tommie, making uninteresting objects interesting by mere comparison.” –Jeremiah

“That guy in today’s Momma apparently has a spare organ that allows him to poop a chair out of his butt when needed, and retract it when he doesn’t.” –Patrick

“Clearly the ‘organs’ to which the man is referring can only be two things: 1) He is a pipe organ salesman, or 2) He is aware of her need to devour human organs.” –Sarah

“They’ve already got stimulus money creating jobs in Judge Parker? Mark this day — it is the only time we’ll ever see anything in Judge Parker work faster than in real life.” –rhymes with puck

“Poor Ruby, seeking a cup of Margo’s urine but she isn’t home. Maybe a bottle of Tommie’s tears will do the trick.” –Dingo

“If I had a potato gun and access to a third-story window, I would shoot baseballs at Gil Thorp, too.” –survivor

“Billy’s winsomely ignorant remark was met with a slurred but fairly enthusiastic ‘you got that right, kid’ from the drunken derelict relieving himself in a nearby corner of the bus station in which his parents had abandoned him. The saddest part though, really, is that he’s not even reading Spider-Man.” –Violet

“Tommorow’s Spider-Man should have Spidey reading the comics and commenting: ‘Well it’s a good thing Billy’s parents weren’t afraid of cantaloupes!’ Although it’s probably just a pipe dream, as not only does Spidey lack the wit but I’m pretty sure he’s also illiterate.” –It’s time to pay the price

“The reason Peter Parker’s biological parents did not raise him is that there was something they wanted to watch on TV at the time.” –Nekrotzar

See you in a week or so! Don’t trash the place!

Post Content

Well, if it’s Monday, it must be time reveal another shameful instance of a legacy comic dipping into its own archives. Below is the B.C. from 8/15/05:

Followed, of course, by a comic from the B.C. collection Dip In Road, first published in 1969:

These come from faithful reader Suzii, who notes:

It stuck with me because I first read it when I was a little enough kid to have no idea what “berserk” meant. Now I’m all grown up and a professional word person, and I still have no idea what’s funny about this — let alone what’s so funny as to be worth a second shot at it.

Also! By now you are well acquainted with my narcissistic tendency to acknowledge comics that mention me by name. Well, I suppose I must now extend this to novels! The Tea Master, a novel currently competing for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, mentions me and several other bloggers in the course of its adventures! It also features a “notorious” unicorn crap passage. Check it out!

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the comment of the week!

“That facial expression — it’s like he’s asking himself, ‘Where did my penis go?’ It’s OK, buddy, it’s just a towel.” –Donald the Anarchist

And the runners up! Very funny!

“All babies are evil. It’s only the comics page that has the guts to print this. The rest of the paper is intimidated by the power of Big Baby.” –Mac

“ENGAGE DISPLAY(EMOTIONAL): TEARS. ERROR! ERROR! #227: TEAR DUCT JAM. CLEAR TEAR DUCT MANUALLY. (A)BORT, (R)ETRY, (I)GNORE?” –Dragon of Life

“Hmm, that makes me wonder, do pluggers have tails? Have we ever seen one? I can’t decide if it’s more unnerving if they do or if they don’t, and that worries me.” –Zaq

“Oh, Ziggy. All hat, no pants.” –Poppinjay

“Is Ziggy a plugger? Let’s examine the evidence. Evidence for Ziggy being a plugger: He is poor; he is a hideous mutant human thing; his life is an endless string of disappointments and depression; he is constantly being reminded of his depressing life by members of the service industry. Evidence against: He appears interested in traveling outside the United States, unlike pluggers, whose international experience consists of yelling drunken racial slurs at Travel Channel ads.” –Ms.X

“Has Tommie become so jaded from living with Margo that one drunken woman swearing is something to smile about? ‘Wow, she only used one of the f words on me.'” –Rainbird

“Has anyone considered that maybe Ziggy doesn’t need pants?” –Sequitur

“Does it strike anyone else that Ziggy frequently visits his travel agent, yet is never actually depicted traveling anywhere? I have a feeling this is yet another one of Z’s touchingly pitiful strategies to get women to talk to him. The travel agent — for some reason wearing a nurse’s uniform — is well aware of this situation. Ziggy comes in three, four times a week. Sometimes he just takes a handful of pamphlets, mumbles something inaudible, and shuffles out the door, red-faced. You can see how embarrassed they both are. They’re not even coming close to making eye contact. The travel agent, however, is bound by professional duty to at least pretend to be cheerful, but Ziggy’s solemn expression speaks volumes about the grim reality of this incident.” –Joe Blevins

“Oh, so Borneo isn’t good enough for you, Ziggy? So it’s little more than a punchline for a lame joke? As somebody whose family hails from and is based in that region, I have to say that I am deeply — wait a minute, have I just been offended by a goddamn Ziggy strip? Jesus Christ.” –Muddtallica

“So … enraged … about … children … can’t … actually … hold … phone … close … to … face!” –Smokehouse

“As a midget with a freakishly large nose, Ziggy likely wears no pants in order to force the world to acknowledge him as a sexual being.” –ThaGeeGee

“You know, the more everyone keeps mentioning it, the clearer it becomes: this is a kidnapping storyline in A3G, which is fantastic, because kidnapping storylines in A3G can only end in discounted zipper-bound merchandise! I’ll get my credit card.” –Black Drazon

“Tommie seems to have developed a serious case of happyfaceitis in her ear in panel 2. Eventually it will become its own head, and Margo will teach it to belittle Tommie when she’s too busy to bother.” –kt

“Adrift in the wake of his father’s abandonment, young Gunther found solace in the sturdy regularity of the Cartesian coordinate system. Eventually, he swore, his whole body would be covered in comforting grid lines that could never ever leave him.” –One-eyed Wolfdog

“Mark Trail: Our clothes are from 1962 but our technology is from 1998.” –emilochka

“We need a dotted-line path showing Thel’s route of cleaning every room, disposing of Barfy-poo, scrambling through the laundry to find something presentable to wear, spraying air freshener throughout the house and on her unshowered body, etc., all culminating at the doorstep, so that her humiliation would be complete. Then next week’s strip showing the path of that neighborhood kid as he meanders around the back yard, avoiding the four unmarked graves, would be more deeply meaningful.” –seismic-2

“Doesn’t Beetle Bailey’s mention of Iraq and Afghanistan violate the Billingsley-Bentley ‘Vagueness in Comics’ Act of 1982?” –Captain Thunder

“Beetle Bailey has achieved some sort of high-water mark for topical relevance this week. In addition to finally acknowledging the fuller geo-political implications of U.S. military service, they also note that it’s April. And it actually is April!” –Lorne

“FC Mom is not cleaning up — she’s trashing the place. She’s not taking any chances that today might be the day Children’s Family Services comes to visit and takes the little monsters away.” –Rachel211

“I find myself concerned for ‘the girls in Hawaii’ — given that the point of military training exercises is to learn how to kill other people without being killed yourself, in challenging terrain. Notice, too, that Plato is dressed like one of those hula dancers — clearly he’s envisioning a covert ops type mission, wherein he infiltrates the local hula school before blasting everything in sight.” –Rana

“Killer with his bongos is anticipating an invitation to join the Buena Vista Social Club once he gets to Cuba. Which, given that he’s in his 70s by now, would be just the gig for him.” –Beatrice

“When the plot of Mary Worth begins to remind you of a David Mamet script (House of Games), it’s time to up the drinking.” –Dingo

“Look at Ted Confey. That’s the way you do it. He gets his money for nothing and his chicks for free.” –Chicago Bob

“MW Haiku: Ted’s facial shadow/ Confounds the laws of physics:/ Where the sun don’t shine.” –Charterstoned

Those who put money in my tip jar are more beautiful and pure than the noblest unicorns! And our advertisers are not too shabby themselves:

• Keeper of Light and Dust: Are you a healer, warrior, or thief? Play — if you dare — to win bookstore gift vouchers, pink or black boxing gloves and signed copies of Keeper of Light and Dust. Inspired by the legends of battle-scarred men who are protected — or cursed — by powerful women. PLAY NOW! “Brilliantly compelling and original,” says Robert Twigger, author of Angry White Pyjamas.
• Tijuana Bibles: Lust and lechery in eight pages: From the 1920s to the 1950s, the first form of mass-produced pornography for thousands of Americans came in the form of crudely-printed comic books called “Tijuana bibles” or “eight-pagers.” Chris Hall explores the story of Tijuana Bibles on CarnalNation.
• Devil’s Garden: “Fatty” Arbuckle is throwing a wild party at the St. Francis Hotel: girls, jazz, bootleg hooch … and a dead actress. What really happened? Only one man can discover the truth, a detective named Dashiell Hammett.

To find out more about advertising on this site, click here.