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Hi everybody! Huge thanks to all you wonderful people who came out to my DC and Baltimore book tour events — I had a blast meeting and talking to you. Those of you at either end of New York State: I am coming your way next week, so please plan your lives accordingly!

• May 2, 7 pm, at the City Reliquary in Brooklyn!
• May 5, 7 pm, at Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo!

If you haven’t bought my novel yet and are planning on attending one of these events, I would ask that you hold out and buy it there, because that helps out the bookstores who have been nice enough to host me. (If you haven’t bought my novel yet and won’t be able to make it to any of these events, well, you know what to do.)

And to give me a little breathing room as I lean into the second half of my trip, I am handing the keys to the site to your beloved Uncle Lumpy for the next week or so. He’ll start tomorrow and be in the driver’s seat until Sunday, May 8. Be nice and don’t get into the liquor cabinet while I’m gone!

And meanwhile, here’s the comment of the next couple weeks, since Uncle Lumpy can’t bear choose amongst you:

“Skitter, the social media platform where cockroach politicians accidentally post pictures of their genitalic hooks.” –Dagger

The runners up are also hilarious!

“Torture sheds, or hot boxes, are an old tradition. Making them too small to stand up in is basic. But really, the combo of lowered floor and giant window is evil genius. Not only does it mean Herb will cook in the sunshine, it means Tootsie can stand outside, watching him, mocking, and waving the key to the shed forever beyond his reach.” –Downpuppy

“More aggressive hardhat and chin-thrust profiles please. Let’s re-launch Socialist Realism!” –Lorne

“Why youze not blooming like th’ oddas? I’d hate for to have to spill this hot coffee on ya, all accidental like.” –James Dowd, on Facebook

“What’s really selling the book, Rex, is that new font your daughter designed. Monotype Saramond is going to ship with Windows Word!” –Voshkod

“‘This cavern must be worth a fortune!’ thinks Mark, as he launches into his famous Ethel Merman imitation in a chorus of ‘Everything’s Coming Up Sheetrock’ from the musical Gypsum.” –seismic-2

“I’m a little disappointed that this conversation is actually germane to the plot. That cheapens it, in a way. This stirring repartee about gypsum seems like the kind of thing Mark would do just to pass the time while trapped in a cave. Or while waiting at an airport. Or during a romantic dinner with his wife.” –Joe Blevins

“At least the creators have enough savvy to know people nowadays take photos with their smartphone. Panel 2 could’ve had a guy in a fedora holding up an accordion camera with a giant flashbulb.” –giraffe-o

“Ha ha, silly Dolly: drones don’t deliver life, they deliver death. Someday, when the ATF finally comes for the Kompound, you’ll understand this.” –pugfuggly

Mary Worth: “I have no doubt that there’s nothing more that color monkeys — frustrated artists that they undoubtedly are — enjoy more than flood-filling the masters’ works with 25% gray tone. ‘I can’t get a showing the most marginal of galleries while this motherfucker’s been dead 500 years and is not only still on display in every major museum, but he gets all the sweet Mary Worth cameos. Take that, Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur!’” –Effluvius Erratus

“I’m always constintly at odds, a-fussin’ and a-fightin’ with my maw. Who knows what kinda psychic-a-mological reepercussins this sorta dynamic is gonna have on my relations to women later on in life, includin’ the way I treat you, Mary Beth!” –Chareth Cutestory

“Gil’s treating this ritual with exactly as much reverence as he treats anything involving Marty Moon. It will end, as always, with the ceremonial Contemptuously Flippant Dismissal of Marty’s Opinions About the Team.” –Horace Broon

“Ok, I recognize Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’ but is that supposed to be Degas’ liitle dancer in the glass case? Or is that the ‘Break glass in case of not succeeding with the coed you are seducing’ fixture?” –lumaca morente

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! And let’s give thanks to our advertisers:

• Bluebeards Original is proud to join The Comics Curmudgeon as an advertiser! Company owner Paul Kaniewski is a longtime follower of this site, to the point that it inspired him to created the famed Aldo Kelrast MySpace profile. Bluebeards has been making top-rated beard care products for ten years now, so any bearded folks or those that love them, please check out the site and try their stuff.
• Oh, yes, and my novel is something you should buy, in hardback, paperback, or ebook form! It’s called The Enthusiast, and it’s about trains, comics, stealth marketing, capitalism, and joy

If you’d like to buy advertising on the site, you can do so on a CPM basis through BuySellAds. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

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Mary Worth, 4/29/16

Pop quiz, y’all! Who are the saddest people in the comics todays? Are they Dawn and Harlan, psyching each other up to make out by staring at a statue and assuring each other that their greatness is the reason nobody else wants to hang out with them?

Funky Winkerbean, 4/29/16

Is it the next-gen teen characters of Funky Winkerbean, whose names I have never bothered to learn, and who are already so convinced of life’s eternal, oppressive gloom that they look forward to their future dementia wiping their minds clean?

Gil Thorp, 4/29/16

Nope! It’s the guy in panel two of today’s Gil Thorp, who’s so desperately lonely that he leaves the radio on all the time just to hear other human voices, even those humans are Gil Thorp and Marty Moon, and they’re talking about high school baseball.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/28/16

“Maw” is a typical Snuffy Smithism meant to signal the characters’ nonstandard, uneducated speech patterns without actually trying to capture any specific dialect. Nevertheless, I am going to interpret it literally. “Aunt Lo says maws are s’posed to, Mary Beth! She says it’s strange to have a hole in the middle of your face, to realize your body is just meat wrapped around a tube, to need to constantly push dead animals and plants into yourself just to keep alive! It’s only when you know that your body is a disgusting prison in which the cruel demiurge has imprisoned your immortal soul that you realize you must shed it order to transcend to the highest heaven!” I’m, uh, not sure how this joke ended up with the Hootin’ Holler folk becoming gnostic dualists? Whatever, let’s just run with it, that’s canon now.

Gil Thorp, 4/28/16

Ah, we have come to the sacred beginning of any Milford sports season: the ritualistic Reciting of the Names! Honestly, Gil does not appear to be treating this occasion with the reverence it deserves. Pretty sure he’s rattling them off into Marty’s phone so quickly that he doesn’t have time to inhale, which is why he’s going a little cross-eyed in that last panel.