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Sincere thanks to everyone who supported the Pledge Drive — and if the appeal didn’t fit your schedule, budget, or charitable priorities, thank you for your patience. No more fund-raising ’til fall I promise, although “surprise” contributions are always a welcome treat! The button’s at the left under the Comment of the Week there. Just sayin’.

If you missed any of the Pledge Drive banners, they’re at the bottom of this page.

— Uncle Lumpy

Funky Winkerbean, 4/18/09

Passive-aggressive zombie Lisa Moore deftly sinks the hook, assuring that the condom will stay in Les’s jacket until he needs to replace the elbow-patches again. (No, he does not keep the condom in his wallet: Lisa’s picture is in that wallet! Duh!)

Personal note: Most of the time, making fun of comics is like plinking cans with a .22 — an idle diversion, not too destructive. An especially irritating strip might make me wish for a slightly higher caliber. But when the Dead Chick shows up in Funky Winkerbean, I start wondering how big a thermonuclear device it would take to blow eastern Ohio to rust and splinters. I suspect this is an overreaction on my part, and I’m working on it.

Mark Trail, 4/18/09

In panic, Rusty bends time, space, and perspective as Sassy’s wild glee ends in dismay.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/18, 3/28/09 (details, retouched: originals here and here)

Just as Seinfeld famously expanded the horizons of observational comedy, so Rex Morgan, M.D. opens new vistas for observational drama. Clueless yuppies Rex and June drift along on chitchat and ice cream, vaguely entertained by the epidemics, kidnappings, and murders that backdrop their meaningless lives. Great fortunes are reversed, families ruined, lives lost — none of it touches them.

Until now. In the person of Agnes Dunsmore, June confronts her own gin-soaked, loveless future. Staring through the veil at those fissures and spider-veins as into a mirror, she forms the thought that burns in her eyes, and breathes, “Guido — and now — before it’s too late!”

— Uncle Lumpy

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In most of the Western world, Easter falls on a Sunday this year — and cartoonists are taking full advantage! Let’s see what treats they’ve hidden for us!

Sally Forth, 4/12/09

Oh Sally, Sally. Remember this as you wake on your blood-soaked pillow, deaf to your own screams.

Family Circus, 4/12/09

Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, and Wrath can mean only one thing — Easter with the Keanes! They’ve dialed back the Pride, Envy, and Lust ’cause it’s a family strip.

Slylock Fox, 4/12/09

They’re all the same to the bunny, pal — all the same.

My Cage (panel), Hägar the Horrible (pänel), 4/12/09

Even pagans can join in the Easter fun! Here’s Demeter (Ceres to you Reform Pagans) passing out bread products, while Hägar welcomes Sól’s return.

Rex Morgan MD (panel), Phantom (panel), 4/12/09

And hey, never mind the calendar — June is bustin’ out all over! Mr. and Mrs. Oldfolks McTourist may take a jaundiced view, but young Heloise Walker seems, well, intrigued. So maybe one more Phantom and that’s it? You gotta admit, 22 is a pretty good run — and why do we need a Phantom, anyway? That whole “African piracy” thing — nobody worries about that any more — right?

In case you missed it (I did!) this PBS Mediashift article features Josh, Ces, the AJGLU-3000 and other local favorites! Link courtesy of Ces.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/3/09

HEY EVERYONE JUNE MORGAN IS IN HER BIKINI! HOT! HUBBA HUBBA WOO HOO OK, look. Doubt my credentials as a heterosexual comic-loving man if you must, but I simply cannot get myself worked up over drawings of sexy ladies. I mean, sexy ladies are intriguing to me as a rule, but when it comes to cartoons, it’s hard for me to forget that someone, somewhere, generally a dude, was drawing said sexy lady, and usually thinking, “Hmm, I’ve seen sexy ladies in real life, but with the powers of my artistry, I can add even more sexiness!” Which in practice usually means “I can make her boobs even bigger!”

I don’t pretend to be consistent on this point. For instance, it’s well known that I have certain … feelings for Margo Magee. And Margo is nice enough to look at, but my feelings are primarily driven by the fact that she’s a hilarious, tightly-wound bag of angry crazy, which is the sort of thing I’ve been known to go for in the past. And while Margo’s wonderfully antisocial personality is as much a fictional construct as, say, Abbey Spencer’s ass crack, somehow it’s much harder for me to ignore the artifice involved in the construction of the latter.

And speaking of artifice … I’m not a professional breastologist or anything, but I’m pretty sure that one’s cleavage does not consist of two perfect and slightly separated semi-circles if one’s bosom is the one that God gave you. Having a surgically enhanced cartoon fantasy object strikes me as particularly bizarre and off-putting, to be sure, but what I really want to know is: whose work are we looking at here? Certainly not Rex’s; breast-enhancement surgery can take hours, and that’s much longer than he’d ever want to spend touching a girl’s boobies.

Blondie, 4/3/09

Blondie comments on the current economic crisis: the unemployed masses, their lives destroyed by the decisions of the powerful, weep openly in the street, just outside the fine restaurants where the captains of industry who got us into this mess dine on gourmet foods, served on china plates and fine tablecloths. The workers who are still employed sit by uncomfortably, afraid to protest at the injustice for fear of joining the starving hysterics in the gutter, wracked with shame over their collaboration in their own oppression.

Dennis the Menace, 4/3/09

Hey, Mr. Wilson, it’s the government that publicizes the names and addresses of sex offenders, not the television stations. But I admit that when they ran that picture of your house with the caption “PERVERTS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD” as the lead story on the 6 o’clock news, that was a little much.

Pluggers, 4/3/09

You’re a plugger if you euphemistically refer to an anonymous sex party as “league bowling.” (The rest of us call it “book club.”)