Post Content

Click the banner to contribute to the Comics Curmudgeon. Details here.

It’s the Comics Curmudgeon 2019 Summer Fundraiser! Thank you, generous reader!

Six Chix, 8/21/19

1. “And ostriches run fast, so I’m hoping to best you in this competition!”
2. “So perhaps I have my head in the sand about my athletic abilities.”
3. “The better to kick the crap out of you, my dear!”
4. “That’s why this punchline laid an egg!”

Dustin, 8/21/19

All week these folks have been getting bummed out by the news. A word of advice, Dustin people — stay away from the comics!

Funky Winkerbean, 8/21/19

“Well, of course you’re the only colorist they have. Until you get replaced by some Bangladeshi outsourcer! Or some discount freelancer on Fiverr! But hey: I hear you’re engaged to be married to Mopey Pete! God, your life sucks! I’m so grateful to be old and near death.”

Hi and Lois, 8/21/19

“Nature, red in tooth and claw” seems a little off-brand for Hi and Lois.

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Six Chix, 8/13/19

For some reason I’ve always had it in my head that birds and other animals with cloacae can’t actually control their bowel movements, and that poop or pee or what have you just kind of slides out whenever. A little research, though, taught me that birds can in fct be potty trained, although small ones like budgies have to go every few minutes and they can really hurt themselves if they hold it for too long! I’m telling you this because want all of you to appreciate the disgusting research I do so I don’t convey inaccurate information when I make my dumb poop jokes about a comic strip nobody likes. Anyway, I guess the point is that that bird probably could’ve avoided pooping on that kid if he had wanted to, but, like his friend says, it’s cool. Kids love it when animals shit on them, at parties!

Funky Winkerbean, 8/13/19

I would be going on at great length about how weird it is that this strip concludes with Mindy shooting bedroom eyes at Mopey Pete implying “Sexual delights await you if you, a noted non-jock, are able to score a victory at a carnival game of the sort that’s notoriously rigged, just like my grandfather, a well-known-asshole, was able to do,” except I’m thoroughly distracted by the fact that that’s clearly not her hand holding the baseball. It’s not, right? It’s too big and it’s at the wrong angle. “Easy, Pete, Easy,” poor Mopey Pete is thinking to himself. “Wait till she’s distracted, and then run.”

The Lockhorns, 8/13/19

Ahh, Loretta has finally made a friend, or at least a social acquaintance, and so Leroy knows what to do as soon she arrives, before she’s even had a chance to set down her purse: performatively pour himself a very large glass of brown liquor, knowing that Loretta will inevitably make some wisecrack, with whole scene ensuring this lady will never come back. The Lockhorns really delivered on its core schtick today, and I for one appreciate it.

Post Content

Marvin, 7/31/19

I guess i’s a step forward that today’s Marvin absolutely infuriated me for entirely non-poop related reasons. No, I’m just furious about how badly this punchline is botched! There are actually two perfectly good ways this basic joke could be done:

JOKE STRUCTURE #1 (kinda basic, but still very effective)

PANEL ONE:
BERNIE: Remember that old TV show Cheers, where everybody at the bar knows your name?
ROY: Yeah

PANEL TWO:
BERNIE: Well, it’s like that when I go to the medical building

PANEL THREE:
THERE IS NO PANEL THREE BECAUSE THE FIRST TWO PANELS ACTUALLY CONVEY EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW! THE MEDICAL BUILDING IS WHERE EVERYONE KNOWS BERNIE’S NAME, BECAUSE HE’S OLD AND SICK A LOT! JOKE OVER!

JOKE STRUCTURE #2 (maybe a little daring for a comic strip, but I think it would work)

PANEL ONE:
BERNIE: Remember that old TV show Cheers, where everybody at the bar knows your name?
ROY: Yeah

PANEL TWO:
BERNIE: Well, it’s like that when I go to the medical building

PANEL THREE:
BERNIE: Everyone there is a drunk!

But no, instead, we just get a third panel that doesn’t add any more twists to the punchline, but rather just explains what the punchline was. It doesn’t work! It doesn’t work at all! I almost wish Marvin had shit his pants, to distract us!

Dick Tracy, 7/31/19

Don’t worry yourself, Vitamin: I’m sure that the theater, which you literally own, felt absolutely free to make a decision as to whether to cast you in the role you so transparently and desperately want based entirely on artistic criteria. If you don’t believe me, believe the adoring, much younger woman you knocked up!

Six Chix, 7/31/19

I’ve been staring at this for a long time and trying to figure out why all the action is a circle in the middle of the panel surrounded by blackness. I guess it’s supposed to be like we’re looking at the scene through a camera, with the implication being “Sure, we live in a society where in order to afford the most basic necessities we might need to leverage our ability to inspire pity on social media, but at least we’re also under continuous surveillance”?

Dennis the Menace, 7/31/19

I accept that Dennis’s menacing levels have waxed and waned over the years, but I have to draw the line at this sort of wide-eyed sub-Family Circus-ism delivered while cradling a teddy bear. The only way this is at all appropriate if it’s part of a larger plan to send Joey spiraling down a dark path experimenting with hallucinogens too young and too often.