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Hey guys! It’s the first Friday of the month, so don’t forget: If you’re in LA, I strongly urge you to come see me and these other funny people perform, at 8 pm, at the Clubhouse in Los Feliz!

If you are a fan of my humor sensibility from this site, I think you will really like this show — it’s always a good time, it’s in a fun, intimate space, and, shockingly for central LA, parking is free and plentiful. Literally what do you have to lose? Nothing, that’s what! I hope to see you there — here’s the Facebook event, if those are helpful to you!

And now: your comment of the week!

“Actually I laughed at this. But then it gets sad when you realize she’s trying to slowly kill a dog with trans fats.” –Mikey

And your hilarious runners up!

“The plugger bear-man seems to be totally wedged in by furniture. How does he plan to get out of that chair? [reflective pause] Ohhhhhhh. That’s sad.” –Joe Blevins

“Plugger lives are bereft of wonder but full of crippling joint pain.”–Steve S

“The idea that her only point of reference regarding anything is her acid reflux is as amazing as it is pathetic, and I think both of those are what this strip aspires to on a daily basis.” –handsome Harry Backstayge, idol of a million other women

“I like a good gallows joke as much as the next executioner but I’m more intrigued by the guy on the left. He’s got a corncob pipe which means this is at least the 16th century and Vikings like Hagar and Lucky Eddie are five hundred years out of date. Being an anachronism is apparently a capital offense, which is going to make Renaissance fairs a lot more interesting.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

“Life begins at forty — 1940s. That’s when the TVA brought running water and electricity to that village, starting what humanitarian organisations call life, barely.” –Ettorre

“Interesting that this should run on Equal Pay Day, motherhood being the source of women’s greatest unpaid labor. It’s definitely murder those kids want, and on the cheap.” –pastordan

“A true plugger remembers when a ‘Milky Way cake’ was just buying two Twinkies and sticking a Milky Way bar between them before you went to see about that diabetes diagnosis.”–Voshkod

“Billy’s dead, Mommy! You promised us cupcakes, ‘member?” –Ruth McIlhenny Gormé, on Facebook

“Scenes like this remind me why I started drinking to bluff my way through social gatherings.” –Rusty

“Looks like Sarah has as much interest in trying to keep track of the characters in this strip as I do.” –But What Do I Know?

“The accusatory finger that guy is pointing as he says ‘You’re our historian emeritus’ makes me think the next step in this gathering may be the historian emeritus’s ritual death by burning.” –Anonymous

“You know, considering she’s never depicted doing anything but sitting around on the couch and almost getting Sarah killed the one time she attempted to take her to school, June sure seems to need an awful lot of help. Guess those mojitos won’t make themselves!” –Aphthakid

“Which stranger can I dupe into helping out with my airport kidnapping plans? I know! This fit, well-groomed man of action! Sure, he looks like he’s survived numerous boat explosions and knows how to use his fists, but he doesn’t seem too bright.” –Call me Dirty

“They are so ecstatic about the luggage that even ‘Never, dear friend!’ is an anticlimactic punchline today. Oh, Mary Worth doesn’t do punchlines? Have I been reading it wrong all these years?” –Hogenmogen

“‘Vap!’ is possibly the most Dutch-sounding sound effect I’ve ever seen in print. Looking forward to more examples over the course of this storyline, such as ‘Smajk!’ and ‘Plaap!'” –Pozzo

“‘Oh, good, the train is on time!’ ‘All hail Mussolini!'” –Christine Lehman, on Facebook

“See this here? Now do as I say or I’ll shoot my nuts off!” –Tom the Sailor Man

“‘Does Cane ring a bell?’ ‘Yeah! But why that name?’ [whispers] ‘I was the first murderer’” –Dan

“As a person who spends lots of time unconscious I am an expert on how they can help us.” –Liam

Thanks to everyone who became a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter to get an banner-ad-free site, put some scratch in my tip jar, or backed me on Patreon! And as ever, we must give thanks to our advertisers:

• Two Party Opera: A daily comic that features the Presidents of the United States as they live on the stage of history with the day-to-day news of political mudslinging.
• Oh hey, and don’t forget, I wrote a book! You can get it in hardback, paperback, or ebook forms. It’s called The Enthusiast, and it’s about trains, comics, stealth marketing, capitalism, and joy.

If you would like to buy advertising on the Comics Curmudgeon, and get a text shoutout in these posts, get the details on my BuySellAds page.

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Spider-Man, 4/7/17

One of my favorite shows that died too soon was The Grinder, which on paper was about a famous actor (Rob Lowe), whose long-running TV series in which he plays a lawyer (called The Grinder) has ended, and who moves back home to Boise to live with his brother (Fred Savage) and father, who are actually lawyers; he then decides to help with the family law firm, despite lacking any actual legal training other than starring in The Grinder (the show within the show). This is a cutesy premise that becomes dizzyingly self-referential as Lowe’s character approaches all real-life legal problems as he would on the show-within-the-show, which almost always seems to work albeit in unexpected ways, because applying the logic of the show-within-in-the-show fits right in with the characters’ reality, which is of course also a TV show; Savage’s character becomes increasingly agitated over the course of the show’s single season as the universe seems to come unmoored around him. Anyway, one of Lowe’s character’s trademark moves, both in the show and in the show-within-the-show, was to reply to someone who told him that something was impossible by dramatically saying “but what if … it wasn’t?”, followed by a swelling music sting. Again, within the skewed world of the show, things usually work out so he turns out to be right; but what I’ve always appreciated about Newspaper Spider-Man is its gritty realism. Spider-Man can’t do the impossible, even within the context of his heightened powers, because he’s just some chump making it up as he goes along, and even when he wins, it’s mostly by accident. Spidey isn’t saying “or maybe he can!” with any of Rob Lowe’s preternatural self-confidence. He hasn’t figured out anything at all. He’s just stalling for time.

Mark Trail, 4/7/17

I was going to make some joke about these dudes trying to armed-kidnap Mark in the middle of a crowded airport in these security-crazed times, but then I remembered that time I flew into Great Falls Airport in Montana, which had more mounted animal heads than TSA agents and didn’t even have bathrooms available once you passed security, so I’m guessing maybe you could pull this off in Rapid City? Guess we’ll find out, and also find out if this bald dude is capable of cracking a smile!

Gil Thorp, 4/7/17

“But they don’t call me that anymore. Because if there’s one thing we know about volcanoes, it’s that once they stop erupting, they never erupt again and anyone who treats them as an ordinary mountain and builds a home nearby is never in any danger whatsoever! Say, what do you suppose this spring storyline’s going to be about!”

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Gil Thorp, 4/6/17

I guess the Gil Thorp baseball season non-FOIA storyline is going to be about the mysterious history between Ryan Van Auken and Pete De Windt, but for my money it’d be a lot more fun if they just decided to create a marketing blitz around their shared Dutch heritage. You know, posing for pictures wearing wooden shoes and sticking their fingers into holes in the local water-control infrastructure, that sort of thing. Think of the nicknames! The “Dutch Connection!” The “Erasmuslijn!” The “Flemish Block!” [Gil calls a press conference] “Look, guys, these are kids, and I’m not sure how we were supposed to know that was the name of a far-right Flemish nationalist party in the ’80s and ’90s.” [Gil calls another press conference after a Marty Moon investigation finds extensive posts from mudlark_van_auk3n and petedeWIN on neo-nazi and Dutch supremacist message boards] “Look, guys…” [Gil closes his eyes and holds the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger for a long time without saying anything]

Mark Trail, 4/6/17

Wouldn’t it be great if Mark walked away from this kidnapper’s attempt to rope Mark into his crimes and we just never heard from him or his victim ever again? “What a strange man I met at the airport, Johnny!” [They spend the next eight to twelve weeks taking a census of black-footed ferrets]

Mary Worth, 4/6/17

Look how incredibly jazzed Mary and Toby are about the cruise ship crew not immediately losing their luggage within hours of their coming aboard! Their expectations are set extremely low, and which is always the best way to approach a vacation experience. They’ll almost certainly be pleasantly surprised when a norovirus fails to kill them!