Post Content

Click the banner to contribute by PayPal, or here for other options.

It’s the 2023 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser!

Dustin, 8/8/23

Pardon me, Dustin, but didn’t this cute unattached (no ring, anyway) vaguely bohemian young redhead just express an interest in you? And the best you can muster is some half-assed wisecrack? Maybe you’re daydreaming about all those girls who’re gonna shoot you down at the fern bar tonight? Up your game, buddy, or at least pay attention.

Six Chix, 8/8/23

Did she just put her nose inside that pumpkin’s nose? Only the pumpkin knows for sure, but signs point to “Yes.”

Candorville, 8/8/23

Smoothest line you’re gonna get from a guy in a Kirk shirt.

Gil Thorp, 8/8/23

The question “Where is Milford? (more precisely, “Which Milford?” among the many) has long puzzled the sages. Opinion seemed settled on western Ohio, but today’s “hoagie” makes a strong case for eastern Pennsylvania.

For the modest price of a hoagie, po’ boy, grinder, sub, or Italian sandwich, you could make a generous contribution to the Comics Curmudgeon! Do it today—before lunch!

—Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Six Chix, 7/22/23

One of the fundamental gimmicks of the comics is to provide human-level thought capabilities to animals and plants and even inanimate objects, which is all very good, but the reason that, for instance, yesterday’s piss play Six Chix was so off-putting is that it provided that sort of consciousness to a tree, which normally you don’t even think about when you let your dog piss on it, but now you’ve been given a window to a world where the tree might have opinions about being pissed on, and it’s not a view anyone wanted! Anyway, not to dwell on it, but, Six Chix, what are you doing, why are these animals having conversations in human language about eating poop, I’m begging you to step back from the brink.

Marvin, 7/22/23

And babies! Babies are the same deal! An actual preverbal infant pissing himself: fine, normal, you take it in stride; a Marvin character baby pissing himself and saying “I’m doing this for the attention!”: gross, horrible, why is this happening, how can we make it stop?

Curtis, 7/22/23

OK, in non-piss news, this one is going to require a bit of setup, but: Curtis got a summer job working at a sea turtle rescue org, and there was a sea turtle who had lost a flipper and who was always very depressed but got happy when Curtis was around, and it first they thought it was in love with Curtis, but then it turned out it just loved his trademark green hat, so everyone else who worked there got one too. But then they also figured out that it would be happier if they gave it a prosthetic fin? Which makes you wonder why they didn’t just do that in the first place?? They’re literally an organization that rescues and cares for sea turtles??? And their first thought was hat-based therapy????

Post Content

Six Chix, 7/21/23

When I started this blog [mumblety mumble] years ago, there was still a prevailing ethos that comics strips were, in fact, for kids, even though most of their readers were actually adults, and part of my job, as the Comics Curmudgeon, was to bring to your attention the occasional instance when a comic strip was very obviously not for kids. Anyway, today it’s [mumblety mumble] years later, and that prevailing ethos has largely been cast aside, and not replaced with anything yet because the old world is dying and the new world is struggling to be born, but we’re all gonna sort of keep on going in the meantime, so I’m still going to use this blog to tell you when a newspaper comic strip does a joke about piss stuff. “What’s wrong with me?” wonders a tree sadly, watching all its fellow trees getting pissed on. Not sure if we’re supposed to think the other trees are also sapient or, if they are, whether or not they’re into getting pissed on. Look at all that piss, though! They really just went and … drew it, huh.

Judge Parker, 7/21/23

I’ve definitely criticized post-Woody Wilson Judge Parker of being pretty low stakes, so I have to give the strip credit for really jacking up the stakes in an almost logarithmic progression lately. Oh, did Sam and Abbey’s sex vacation get derailed when someone rammed into their car? Oh, did the person who rammed them abandon a small child? Did the child’s kidnapper show up with a knife? Oh, are all of them going to get mauled to death by a fucking bear???? Tune in tomorrow when all life on Earth is wiped out by a massive asteroid impact, probably!

Dennis the Menace, 7/21/23

Dennis would certainly recognize a picture of the mustachio’d grandfather we see visiting fairly regularly, so I assume that that’s Alice’s dad, and Henry is showing Dennis a photo of his dad, who is dead, which makes this one of the most menacing Dennis responses I think I’ve ever seen.