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The Comics Curmudgeon 2008 Fall Fundraiser



Well, Josh’s plan to hit the jackpot at Jeopardy didn’t quite pan out as planned. And those Lehman Brothers and AIG investments have been underperforming, too. So here’s another Comics Curmudgeon fundraiser — a twice-a-year event to help Josh maintain the naive delusion that he can actually make a living doing this.

Site stats show that most CC readers cruise by for a quick chuckle during the workday, while a determined few dig deep in the comments, wrangling out issues from Foob revisionism and Mary Worth‘s fashion sense to Middle English grammar. Either way, the Comics Curmudgeon delivers the comics we grew up with — in some cases, the comics Moses grew up with — in a way that works for this century. Isn’t that worth a couple bucks? I thought so!

Click the panel up top to visit the special fundraiser page and help keep the Comics Curmudgeon strong and independent. Thank you!

— Uncle Lumpy

Curtis, 9/30/08

OK, the “evil coach” is an oldie, but credit Curtis for thinking it through — sure, the Eastern-European stereotype is overdone, but the hairy tongue (!) and Santa suit give it a fresh look. But really, “dandelions”? “Dandelions”?

Six Chix, 9/30/08

Margaret Shulock — one-sixth of the ‘Chix’ as well as the writer of Apartment 3G — serves up a double dose of death this week. But this Death be not proud — he’s just a gangly, socially awkward, self-conscious fella who needs fashion advice, and probably a hug. I bet he’s the one who claimed Alan’s soul. And I bet Alan was kinda pleased by that.

The Phantom, 9/30/08

Ah, now here’s a villian of the old school! We last saw Wambesi terrorist and Phantom-nemesis Chatu (a.k.a. “The Python”) in August 2006, leaving a crippled helicopter for ol’ Stripey to ride to firey death. Didn’t happen. Surviving now sans minions in greatly reduced circumstances, Chatu worked out a mad scheme to spread Ebola virus using fruit bats — but Ebolified himself in the process. The Ghost-who-Cares will track the virus to infected gym mats in somebody’s hut, as the villagers cry, ambiguously, “How are you going to kill it?”

Luann, 9/30/08

Remember how Tiffany used to be the schemer in this strip? Look how far our heroine has come. Without mussing a hair or even fully opening her eyes, Luann excises Tiff’s last shred of self-respect, then sends her spinning into the competitive cesspool of underage porn. Um, that’s a left leg, isn’t it?

Herb and Jamaal, 9/30/08

Not necessarily evil-related, but a milestone nonetheless: the comic strip Herb and Jamaal became self-aware at 1:09 Eastern time, September 30th, 2008. In a stunning irony, the strip was instantly sued by the copyright holders of the words “Crunchy” and “Powdered.”

— Uncle Lumpy

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Family Circus, 6/10/08

Congratulations to the Family Circus for providing the most stomach-turning visual image of the day. Usually I think the limited palate used to colorize the King Features strips detracts from their visual impact, but there’s no question in my mind that that’s exactly the right shade of brown to use to instill total revulsion into the hearts of right-thinking people everywhere. With the lint on the side, it actually looks like Jeffy has a shrunken head on a stick. The little droplet of extra brown coming off the side in particular will be featuring into my nightmares.

Apartment 3-G, 6/10/08

Like so many artists before him, Alan is proving to be a remarkably inept businessman. I love his look of shock and disgust in the second panel as he contemplates the arrival of people who actually want to buy what he’s selling. Hey, Alan, who did you think was going to buy your “rock,” hedge fund managers and mid-level British aristocracy? He’s about to learn a hard lesson, which is that when you deal crack, you end up having to deal with crackheads.

Gil Thorp, 6/10/08

It’s painfully obvious that Elmer and his “BFF” Branden have run off together to get married so as to fix the former’s immigration situation, so I won’t dwell on that (except to note that, based on the experiences of friends and family who have wed Canadians, it does not work like that anymore [if it ever did] so please don’t try this at home). Instead, I feel a need to focus on Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp’s clothes. More specifically, what the hell is going on with her clothes? She seems to be wearing some kind of belted one-piece collared-dress-coullotte number, which, I feel, would be a bad fashion choice if such a thing actually existed, which I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/10/08

I’d like to say that “What makes you think I know anything about them?” is one of the most reasonable possible answers to “I need to know what happened to the old wrestling mats at Hamilton Middle School!” We also would have accepted “Wrestling mats? What the hell are you talking about?” But panel three shows why our be-soul-patched miscreant was so quick to flee the man he thought was a cop: he’s obviously incapable of standing up to even the gentlest level of interrogation. “Hey … is this about the kid that was smothered to death by those wrestling mats and then his body was thrown in the river? Wait, MRSA? What’s that? Oh, un, then never mind about the first thing.”

Mark Trail, 6/10/08

Ha ha, Cherry, it’s all well and good that you want to stand on your own, but I’m not sure that you’ve noticed that you have a vagina. The fact that Kelly Welly is similarly endowed and yet manages to function without a male guardian is the main reason why Mark and Doc find her so unsettling. But, you, my dear, are no Kelly Welly. In fact, I think you’re about to accidentally stick your hand into that pot of boiling water.

Six Chix, 6/10/08

Hey, everybody, here’s today’s Six Chix! It’s about chickens fucking.

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Apartment 3G, 3/4/08

Today, sullen wastrel Alan interrupts his power-dive at Jones’s Crank ‘n’ Skank to reconnect with his Muse. The bottle in panel one is a nice touch. Oh, yeah, and there’s another Margo clone. Wait, could this actually be three different women, or one woman with three different heads? Who counts? Who cares?

A3G is the collaboration of two cartooning talents: Margaret Shulock writes the strip; Frank Bolle illustrates it. Both have other gigs, Shulock as one of the Six Chix, Bolle as the new illustrator for Gil Thorp, inheritor of the Mantle of McLaughlin. So: can we deconstruct Apartment 3G into elements found in Six Chix and Gil Thorp? Let’s see!

Six Chix, 3/4/08

Well, sometimes life just hands you a gimme, don’t it?

Gil Thorp, 3/4/08

Wow; characters you can tell apart, limbs connected to bodies at reasonable angles, Newtonian sports action: not what we expect from Gil Thorp! Still needs work on drawing people between 9 and 35, but we’re on our way! Frankly, though, it doesn’t look much like A3G: it’s already better. Nice work, but maybe it’s time to pay some more attention to the core franchise?

– Uncle Lumpy