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9 Chickweed Lane, 8/10/16

Sooner or later, courtship plots need to resolve. That’s no problem if you’re writing a book or play – just get your couple to their Big Moment before the final chapter or curtain. But when your TV serial or comic strip is built on romantic or sexual tension and lasts more than a couple years, you’ve got a problem. Recap Dick and Jane playing footsie for the fortieth time and your audience will start to get restless. But resolve the issue in the customary way and your good thing could end faster than you can say “Season 5 of Northern Exposure.”

After fifteen years of footsie, 9 Chickweed Lane finally got protagonists Edda and Amos in bed – technically “on piano” – during an interminable cello competition in 2008. Since then, the strip has dithered around with minor characters, flashbacks, and fantasy sequences, trying to get what it apparently thinks is its groove back.

The solution on offer is to clone the main characters and do the whole damn thing over. So now we’ve got Piano Amos (shaving in the john there) and Chinese Edda, with exactly the same personalities and hang-ups as the originals, going through the same tired will-they-or-won’t-they scenarios. Genius, really – how many instruments are there to rotate through? How many ethnicities to pair them with? How long before Gamelan Amos melts at the sight of Paiute Edda? Tam-tam Amos grovels before Igbo Edda? Bassoon Amos babbles incoherently when a wisp of Pole Edda’s hair brushes his face? It could go on forever!

And every so often they can sneak in a beaver joke.

Luann, 8/10/16

Luann’s solution to their Brad and Toni problem is to re-create beloved ’80’s sitcom Three’s Company, with TJ in the Suzanne Somers role and Frank DeGroot as the nosy neighbor. Hijinx ahead!

The Crush — Brad and TJ angrily blame Toni for sending them to a nonexistent party, never dreaming that it is the DeGroots’ teenage houseguest who wants them out of the way so he can have Toni all to himself!

The Love Diary — TJ is hired to type up the diary of a mystery person, which contains several steamy entries. Mr. DeGroot sees the diary and becomes convinced that TJ is enamored of him!

The Bake-Off — Brad accidentally eats the pie that TJ was entering in a statewide baking competition, then tries to substitute a ringer from the bakery!

Since Three’s Company did in fact go on forever – the shame of my generation – there are lots of premium plots like these to choose from. And Brad and Toni can freeze their relationship right where it is, to the relief of everybody.

Pluggers and Family Circus, 8/10/16

Coincidence? I think not!

–Uncle Lumpy

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Six Chix, 8/9/16

Freed from the demands of writing Apartment 3-G, Margaret Shulock tries out for that sweet Funky Winkerbean gig.

Love the art, btw: I haven’t done a rebus in years.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/9/16

Apparently we’re just talking about hazing this week? With no actual hazing in evidence, is that it? Or maybe Forehead Girl and Horn Boy are just stone-cold hazing the crap out of one another right this instant, except they’re bonded so tightly from Stockholm Syndrome that it feels to them like the giddy throes of First Love? Sure, makes as much sense as anything.

Gil Thorp, 8/9/16

Welp, Barry “Darth” Bader, ditched at last by the teammates he’s dissed all season, has his final little locker-room sad, then it’s onward to “Somebody’s Mom is Sick.” After all the operatic hard-drinking, drive-drunking, hang-judging, Boo-murdering, funeral-going action this summer I was expecting a bigger close, but hey — there’s only a month left ’til football, and that time’s not gonna waste itself!

Judge Parker, 8/9/16

Sam and Abbey have grown so emotionally and sexually anesthetized toward one another that the only flashes of feeling they experience come from spying on and meddling in their children’s relationships. Knowing this, Sophie and Neddy stage little Facebook dramas to spark up their parents’ lives. Now playing are “Hank is leaving,” “Who hates Honey Ballenger?,” and “Neddy starts a business.”

In reality, Sophie’s the B-student treasurer of her public high school’s Future Farmers of America, and Neddy’s a Carmelite nun. Nobody tell Sam and Abbey — and especially not the strip’s new writer, who’s going to be terribly disappointed when he shows up for work at Spencer Farms on the 22^nd and sees how things really are.

PS. Abbey looks nothing like that, chews tobacco, and is wearing a parka.

–Uncle Lumpy

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/8/16

Aw jeez, where to start? First thing, you can’t take your wacky bandmaster character, recast him as a tragic victim of advancing deafness, recast him again as a Wise Elder, and then expect him to sell your wacky “midnight practice” punchline in panel three there.

Second, that “punchline”? It’s what comedy folk call a “setup.” It goes in the first panel, not the last. That way you can actually show the midnight practice, maybe in sepia with those cute little photo corners the way you like so much. Then Becky can say, “Well, we don’t have midnight practice anymore — (ominously) but we’re still dealing with hazing!” — and maybe in the third panel we could actually see some hazing? A wedgie, “kick me” sign, towel snap or something? There’s a list! Sure, it’s still not funny, like fog still isn’t haze, but at least it would meet the formal requirements of a joke.

What a mess. None of it matters, though – somebody decided this is hazing sermon week, and jokes be damned. Don’t bully, kids. Adopt a damn animal or something. Stay off drugs.

Curtis, 8/8/16

Back in the 1980’s pranksters would order pizzas for delivery to their mark’s house. Hawaiian, with the ham and pineapple, was the canonical “funny” menu selection. The practice ended quickly when pizzerias started confirming orders by phone, and of course won’t work with prepaid online orders.

So Greg’s not out any cash – what’s his beef here? He seems pretty steamed! That somebody bought him pizzas? Interrupted his dinner? He doesn’t like pineapple? His son is a wretched little jerk? Ooh, I think we have a winner.

Mary Worth, 8/8/16

Tommy “the Tweaker” Beedie first appeared on this blog almost twelve years ago, in a post lovingly titled “Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, what in the name of God is THAT?”. But say what you will about his unfortunate grooming and fashion choices, our Tommy is a go-getter: whether selling tainted meth, proselytizing his mom in prison, or just mopping up the joint, he puts heart and soul into everything he does.

Here, he throws himself into doc-shopping for Schedule III narcotics, blissfully unaware of the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program that will soon set him up for his third strike. So long, Tommy! We’ll be looking for you in 2028, if you’re lucky and if newspaper comics are still even a thing anymore by then!

Spider-Man, 8/8/16

“Peter? What if somebody saw you coming in here? They might think we’re a couple, and my reputation would be ruined.”

Pity poor Mary Jane Parker — she tries to be a loyal wife but honestly just can’t hold it in anymore about this ridiculous insect-based superhero crap. And if Peter gives her that “Spiders aren’t insects” B.S. again she’s gonna smack him with a rolled-up newspaper. Probably the Bugle, just to make it extra hurty.

Hey, I’m sitting in while Josh takes a week’s vacation. Email me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if you have problems with the site. And if you use the comments section, please see comment #1 with information about the spam filter and moderation policy. Enjoy!

–Uncle Lumpy