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Comics Curmudgeon readers are continuing to gather in public and interact with each other outside the context of the Internet! I received the following fab note and pic from faithful reader Gold-Digging Nanny:

Non Compost Mentos and my boyfriend and I met up at Moxie Java a couple week ago for the first ever Boise Mudge Meet. We just now pulled the picture off the camera. Mentos is on the left, I’m in the middle and my boyfriend is on the right. We talked about the origins of Mary Worth, finger-quotin’ Margo, and Dysfunctional Family Circus until a homeless man kicked us out.

If you’d like to be a brave soul and wander away from your keyboard like Non Compost Mentos and Gold-Digging Nanny, check out the meetups forum!

You’ll note that Gold-Digging Nanny is sporting her awesome Bob Weber Jr.-designed Cassandra Cat shirt. Faithful reader KT took his shirt on the road — to Midwest Furfest, where it was a big hit, obviously. Here’s a couple of pics from the journey there — next to the St. Louis Arch and the Cloud Gate (informally known as “the Bean”) in Chicago’s Millennium Park:

Make like Gold-Digging Nanny and KT and buy your shirt today!

Oh, and one more thing: while you were stuffing your face on Thanksgiving day, faithful reader CCJunkie was reveling in yet another TDIET victory, since she’s K. Schroeder of Arlington, Va.!

I’ll let her tell the tale:

It seemed like an odd choice for Thanksgiving, since it was work related — it would have been better on Monday after the holiday weekend when more people would be in that situation. It was inspired by my friends, co-workers, and myself. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve brought work home with excellent intentions and never gotten around to doing it. Now I don’t make as big a production of it as Gaspayne did. Also, I’m a single woman, so no one is nagging me to finish it. Also, my home is not infested with spiders that can spin vast arrays of webs over a briefcase in just two days.

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Judge Parker, 11/26/07

All hopes that a Judge Parker comic might contain something interesting happening — like, say, a deranged Biff Dickens believing that he’s buzzing the trenches on the Western Front and strafing Sam and Abbey — will of course be dashed. What I’m kind of sad about is that Abbey has been too busy freaking out about her daughter’s burgeoning sexuality to notice that an airstrip was being built right next door to the farm where all her precious pretty ponies frolic. Just think of the exciting action that could have transpired if she had gone to the county meetings to try to block Biff’s permit! The whole thing would have ended up in court, of course, with Abbey represented by Sam, and the newly elected Judge Parker Jr. presiding and handing the case to his ex-partner and campaign manager with a wink. Sadly, whatever plot is actually going to arise is going to be even less interesting than that.

Spider-Man, 11/26/07

Far be it for me to suggest that Peter Parker use his mutant spider-strength (do they say that?) and other superpowers to go on a killing spree (great power, great responsibility, blah blah blah) … but say just for sake of argument that Spidey did take the Persuader apart like a cheap watch, which I assume means, I don’t know, that his outside would be cracked open and enough of his insides would fall out that he wouldn’t work anymore. Since the only person to see him open the proportional can of whoop-ass of a spider would now be dead and dismembered, wouldn’t Peter Parker’s secret identity still be safe? Unless, of course, this blatant act of Persuasion is not taking place in an empty alleyway as the first panel implies, but rather before a crowd of indifferent witnesses. “Say, Phyllis, look over there at that hulking ruffian attempting to stake a claim over that wimp’s wife by force. Darwin in action, ya know? Kid should try that Charles Atlas program!”

Slylock Fox, 11/26/07

Is Harry Ape the same guy as the maroon-suited gorilla-pimp we saw Slylock lasso a couple of weeks ago? If so, he’s fallen a long way, stealing a vanity (possibly the least butch piece of furniture possible) from Foo Foo Cat for his mommy. Actually, with the original owner having a name like “Foo Foo Cat,” purple is probably a much more macho color for the vanity than whatever it was before he painted it. I’m assuming that the squat, besotted thing clutching Harry’s gut is the aforementioned mommy, though I didn’t think that apes demonstrated such striking sexual dimorphism.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 11/26/07

You might recall from previous TDIET appearances that “Kimberly A. Coe” is faithful Comics Curmudgeon reader Trotzenbonnie. She shares with us the tale of her latest triumph:

I sent several ideas to Mr. Scaduto way back in February and he used two but rejected the third. I have a feeling that he just didn’t get it. Well, a few weeks ago I received a copy of the cartoon he worked up for the rejected idea with the attached note: “Hi, Kimberly — A situation similar to your cartoon idea happened to my wife and myself — Our grandson told us to be careful — wipe feet etc. entering his dorm … which was a close second to a hurricane-hit shack in appearance — Thank you for your idea — and Best Ever — Al Scaduto.”
Can you believe that? How the man managed to remember that I sent the idea to him months ago was marvel enough in itself. But he also gave me credit for the cartoon which was totally unnecessary since he decided to work it up based on his own experience. The man is a true prince among men — at least out of all of the men who draw cartoons for a living.

Not to ruin any surprises or anything, but I’ve gotten advance notice from enough readers to know that our dominance of TDIET is going to be particularly strong over the next couple of months. I consider the introduction and endearment this feature to my readers to frankly be one of my greatest achievements.

Blondie, 11/26/07

Dagwood is going to get his carpool high.

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Zits, 11/15/07

So it appears that Funky Winkerbean has jumped ten years forward from the present to … the present. And you know what? It really doesn’t bother me that much. It’s just an extreme manifestation of the comics chronology problem that only For Better Or For Worse has avoided — everybody stays the same age, but the strip goes on for decades and the cultural references remain more or less current. Funky Winkerbean’s original cast was in high school for something like twenty years, which at least as much a violation of laws of time and space as the current age jump.

For whatever reason I’ve been kind of fixated on the problems that arrested chronology is causing in Zits lately. It’s definitely been discussed that Jeremy’s dad Walt, at least, is an ex-hippie, and I think they’ve gone as far as to mention that he actually went to Woodstock. My parents are part of the first wave of baby boomers (mom born in ’46, dad in ’48) and were both at Woodstock (separately, before they knew each other); at 23 and 21, I have to imagine that they’d have been among the younger people there. So, even if Walt had managed to sneak up there at 16 or 17, that’d make him at minimum 55 today, and probably more like 60 — starting to push it just a bit for someone with a 15-year-old son. This was a non-issue when the strip was launched 10 years ago, but it’s only going to get more unlikely as time goes on. Retconning the ages can have its own jarring effects. When I first began reading Sally Forth, I was the same age as Hillary, and so naturally assumed Ted and Sally were the same ages as my parents, an assumption that went unchallenged in my mind despite obvious evidence until a flashback-to-college storyline a few years ago that featured Sally (or was it Ted, I forget now) wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt.

While I think this series of Zits strips have been cute, I also have to say that I find it a little unlikely that even a contemporary teenager interested in rock music to the extent that he plays in a garage band is only now discovering the Beatles. There was a funny story in the paper here a couple of years ago about the high-school aged rockers of today and their ongoing love of dinosaur acts (and honestly, who doesn’t like to get the Led out? I ask you).

None of this monkeying around with time in any way justifies the concept of Walt and Jeremy “hav[ing]” Connie “in common.”

Slylock Fox, 11/15/07

Oh, brave Max! Noble Max! Stupid, stupid Max! I know you’re desperate to do something useful for once in your life, but trying to catch an enormous red-suited gorilla-pimp who probably weighs 20,000 times as much as you do is not the answer.

I love that the gorilla-pimp is carrying his money around is the classic burlap sacks with dollar signs on the side. Do you think he carries the sacks around and makes the ladies in his employ dump his cut of their earnings into them? Does it make him feel like a big man?

Mary Worth, 11/15/07

…aaaand here’s the moment where absolute power officially corrupts Mary absolutely. “I’d hate to make it obvious that I am the unquestioned dictator of this joint, and that rules don’t apply to me! It might make it more difficult to force everyone else to obey the arbitrary laws I’ve laid down if they saw that I can just have them changed on a whim. Who’s a good dog? Yes, you’re a good dog!”

B.C., 11/15/07

Ho ho, there’s nothing zanier than ecological disaster! See, it’s funny because he dumped viscous oil on those seals to shut them up. Soon they will be dead! Mercy.