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It’s the 2022 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser!

When Josh launched The Comics Curmudgeon in 2004, blogs supported themselves with advertising and the occasional contribution. Since that time, he and others have developed an assortment of ways to support the quality daily comics mockery we all know and love. Surely one of them fits your requirements and preferences exactly!

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• Patrons of the arts will enjoy the opportunity to support all of Josh’s comedic efforts— The Comics Curmudgeon, The Internet Read Aloud, and more, with support through Josh’s Patreon page. It’s like you’re Lorenzo de’ Medici (Il Magnifico!) or something, without all the murders!
• Traditionalists give the old-fashioned way—PayPal! Click the banner upstairs to make a one-time contribution from your PayPal or credit-card account.
Load-balanced blockchain visibility upgrades!
• Pluggers don’t much cotton to all this seamless, virtual, new-fangled nonsense. They send cash money in the mail, and we better by-gum like it! We do indeed— just request Josh’s address, where you can send cash, checks, conflict diamonds, banned pharmaceuticals, live ruminants, and more. Short on funds? Hock your TV!
• Kids today embrace incomprehensible instant-payment applications like Venmo, which turn photos of speckled squares into financial support for cultural icon Josh Fruhlinger. Sounds sketchy— try it!
• Drive-by readers can help boost advertising revenues by turning off their ad-blockers selectively for this site, and occasionally clicking an ad that looks interesting. Every little bit helps!

Contributions in any form are completely confidential and always deeply appreciated.

A short note on the banners: in previous fundraiser posts, banners were selected randomly with every page refresh. For a variety of technical and security reasons, WordPress no longer accepts the script that made this possible, so now it’s one banner per post. But click here for an index of links to an absurd number of Comics Curmudgeon fundraising banners stretching all the way back to 2008. And thank you, generous reader!

–Uncle Lumpy

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FOLKS! You’re getting an early COTW because I, your friend the Comics Curmudgeon, am going on a li’l vacation! I’ll be back on September 10th but until then your favorite Uncle Lumpy will, once again, be in the driver’s seat, so be as nice to him as possible — significantly nicer than you are to me. He loves each and every one one of you too much to take sides and choose a comment of the week, but I have no such compunctions and offer you this, the slightly truncated week’s top comment!

“There’s something perversely impressive about the lengths that Marvin goes to in contriving setups for its scatological punchlines. An inquisitive reader might be tempted to question why the titular brat has been placed in time-out in his family’s backyard, of all places, but that would be missing the point. It’s like porn, but for poop jokes.” –Urlance Woolsbane

And your runners up are, of course, hilarious!

“I like the idea that between strips Slylock is constantly going before the police budget committee to fund another piece if machinery to keep up with Count Weirdly. ‘No, see it can’t just be a regular open-cockpit jet, we have to customize it to look like me! I don’t have the entire estimate yet but why don’t we just tack on another 500 thousand and call it a day, okay?’” –pugfuggly

“News that Prohibition ended has finally reached Hootin’ Holler, and Snuffy’s repurposed his moonshine distillery to produce green bio-fuels.” –Schroduck

“Dawn realizes that if she can keep Jared on the phone long enough, the approaching California wildfire will envelop his apartment. ‘Tell me,’ she says soothingly, ‘about Star Wars episodes one to three.’” –Little Blue Bicycle

“Maybe my knowledge of online auction platforms is lacking, but it doesn’t seem like a task that requires active supervision. My guess is that Mindy has discovered the digital age equivalent of going out for cigarettes and never coming back.” –Francisco Arrowroot

“Thank you for creepily emerging from the shadows just when I was at my most emotionally frail state.” –Cass

“I mean, I like bronze. I sometimes spend time sitting down and thinking about how well made bronze can be more molecularly stable than pure gold. And what it means that while it may outlast stars and galaxies and fucking proton decay, bronze is made up by people rather than the naturally occurring, pure elemental gold. The point here is that Jared’s mere existence is an insult to bronze.” —
Amelie Wikström

“I wonder if The Big Chill is playing at the movie theater that specifically caters to us.” –taig

“Holly talks a good game of needless despair, but her words lack the weight of confident action behind them. Meanwhile, Funky has already quietly unbuckled his safety belt and is patiently waiting for a tractor-trailer in the oncoming lane.” –jroggs

“So I’m thinking of getting a smaller mattress, maybe even a twin.” –made of wince

“Shoe and Mary Worth collectively agreed on the exact lighting choice to communicate ‘no sex tonight.’ And you know what, not a bad job.” –Dan

“For hurting the feelings of Saintly Jared, Dawn will be punished by having to spend time with Saintly Jared.” –Ettorre

“Maybe they want to die in a fire, Crankshaft, ever thought of that? Maybe living in your proximity is the inferior option, have you ever considered that possibility?” –Applemask

Remember: If you want an ad-free version of this site sent to you every day via email, for $3 a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon newsletter subscriber! And if you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for the same low price you can become a Comics Curmudgeon website subscriber! And if you just want to give me money directly, you can put some scratch in my tip jar, or back me on Patreon! Thanks to all for your support and readership!

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Get ready to enjoy the heck out of this week’s top comment:

“Meanwhile, Jeffy’s holding that pennant and thinks the Mets are a country.” –But What Do I Know?

And the runners up? Enjoy those as well.

“‘Dad, I had a terrible nightmare! I turned into you and I woke up screaming!’ ‘I also dream about turning into me and wake up screaming. But there’s no real escape from the nightmare for me!”” –Ettorre

“For a brief, shimmering moment, as she contemplated the monastic tonsure, Dawn had hope that life was more than just brutal, that it had purpose and meaning and direction. All too quickly, though, her subconscious reminded her of the curse of the Westons: to wander the earth as giant bald babies, screaming Godzilla-like in the loveless night. In the morning, she arose and purchased the Complete Idiot’s Guide To Negging. She had her fate, and she embraced it.” –pastordan

“Come down to Gooney Gas for the freshest gas made from gooney birds. Our gooney gathers travel to exotic locations around the world — from French Polynesia to French Frigate Shoals! — and select only the finest, plumpist gooneys to be rendered into gasoline through our patented (pending) process of extreme heat and pressure! Then we crack the gooney juice into various hydrocarbons, from tar (buy it at Gooney Paving!), natural gas (on sale at Gaseous Gooneys), ethylene (Gooney Chemicals, LLC), and, of course, good old fashioned gasoline! Put a Gooney in your tank and your car will soar!” –Voshkod

“Dagwood is simply stabbing the nozzle straight into the side and filling up the trunk with gasoline.” –Professor Well Actually

“‘We’ve not checked in with the Harwoods, Senior and Junior, in a while.’ Well, whose fault is that, Narration Box? There is no ‘we’. Leave me out of this.” –made of wince

“Glad to see you, Dawn! Now I have an excuse to drink a Gin Fizz at 8am.” –Hibbleton

“We’ve seen Wilbur do so many insane, awful things, but what’s the worst thing we’ve seen Dawn do? Not in the same league. Also she’s attractive, I think (?) and although in all these years I’ve never seen her exhibit a personality per se, I’d argue that no personality is infinitely preferable to a Wilburesque personality.” –Violet

“[Clearing throat, hastily shoving notes on Toby’s current crisis under the muffin plate] Yes I knew this was happening but felt it wasn’t yet time to say anything.” –Dan

“[10 minutes after Harwood Jr leaves] Well, my shoes are tied up nice and good. Now how do I make dinner?… FUCK” –pugfuggly

“There is a fascinating documentary on YouTube called ‘How this font became the face of Chinese food in America’ about the typography of Chinese restaurants through the years that’s just under 20 minutes long that seems like it goes by faster than spending 5 seconds reading a decades old Family Circus. The only advantages to the comic are Billy angrily pointing an accusatory finger because he’s not gonna have a sweet and sour nothing, damn it, a gormless Jeffy waving the pendant he will lose before the day is done, and Papa Keene reading the menu to make sure it’s as inauthentic as possible.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“See I’m just staring at the row of flags trying to figure out the geopolitical implications of the Family Circus universe — for example, is that both an independent England and a United Kingdom? Or maybe Italian unification didn’t happen and that’s Genoa?”” –nicole 2: the squeakquel, on Twitter

“Thel’s heavy-lidded, self-medicated look of appraisal at her husband and children is chilling. ‘It’s not like I thought I was marrying a genius or anything,’ she muses idly. ‘But this … this is wrong, isn’t it? This is very, very wrong. I’m … I’m trapped, aren’t I? Is there anywhere around here a woman can get a drink at 8:45 in the morning?’” –Doctor Moreau

“Keep a video record of my dying wife, so when her infant daughter grows up she’ll know how her mom looked, moved, spoke? Get the fuck out of here, that’s ridiculous. Why would I want to do that? oh, wait … did you say Hari Seldon?” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Presumably the ‘Frozen Dante’ stand in the background symbolizes that Crankshaft is destined for the Ninth Circle of Hell (the frozen lake Cocytus). He’ll probably run into famous inmate Judas Iscariot and make an awful pun on his name.” –Peanut Gallery

Remember: If you want an ad-free version of this site sent to you every day via email, for $3 a month you can become a Comics Curmudgeon newsletter subscriber! And if you never want to see banner ads on this site, and want to get cool comment-editing features to boot, for the same low price you can become a Comics Curmudgeon website subscriber! And if you just want to give me money directly, you can put some scratch in my tip jar, or back me on Patreon! Thanks to all for your support and readership!