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Hey all! First off: I’ve know there’s trouble seeing and posting comments on the mobile version of the site. I’m not really sure what’s going on, and Adam my web design guru is at a conference this week, but hopefully it will be resolved soon! Huge apologies.

IN MORE FUN NEWS: You are probably aware of my monthly live comedy show in Los Angeles, The Internet Read Aloud, because I keep telling you about it! BUT DID YOU KNOW: it’s on a NEW NIGHT at a NEW TIME — the first Friday of the month at 8 pm, to be exact? So no more complaints about “Oh, it’s on a school night” or “Oh, I can’t get there after work in Los Angeles’s notorious traffic!” Now you can drive there in a leisurely fashion and park in The Clubhouse’s huge free parking lot, or perhaps take the Metro Rail Red Line to Vermont and Sunset, and enjoy a weekend evening of Internet-based comedy fun!

There’s also a FUN NEW POSTER, created by the great Matt Lubchansky. And our next show is ONE WEEK FROM TONIGHT, and has many extremely great acts!

Here’s the Facebook event, if you like those!

OK! And now, here’s our comment … of the week!

“When an object shows up in Charterstone, it’s a clear signal that the object is no longer edgy. Farewell to the hipness of square plates.” –Poteet

And your hilarious runners up!

“And now we continue our lengthy story of two powerful superheroes trying, and nearly failing, to get places. Oops, Elihas Starr already took over the world, aided by his newfound control of the press and a reliable Toyota Camry.” –BigTed

“I thought ‘Whoops!’ was something you say when a cashier is giving you change and you drop some of it. But if you’re sufficiently chill, I guess it’s also something you say when you fall off a cliff.” –A Concerned Reader

“Look, just because you put it on a coffee mug does not mean Dick Tracy is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” –Dragon of Life

“I’ve always pictured Hagar the Horrible as a strip that’s mostly a (spoiler alert!) Jacob’s Ladder-style hallucination. The occasional strip with see with Hagar and Eddie on a tiny desert isle — that’s the reality, with both of them the survivors of some horrible cruise ship disaster, after which they were able to save themselves by latching onto a trunk filled with a few Viking-themed props set aside for kjøttboller night. Everything else is just a hallucination from one of the two dying men, which explains not only the strip’s anachronisms but also why their world seems less rooted in a deep knowledge of Viking history and more like what someone would come up with after riding Maelstrom at Epcot once.” –Mike

“Moving on now, Congresswoman Bellowthon. What do you say to the accusations made by some that with your powdered wig, pearls everywhere, and ruffled shirt cuffs that you are, in fact, a spy dispatched by King Louis XIV’s court?” –Chareth Cutestory

“I’m having trouble sleeping too. If you can explain how Plato fits his oversized body into that grotesquely undersized baby bed, maybe I’ll stop having nightmares.” –Steve S

“I’m positive Zero is masturbating in panel two and that’s horrifying and everything, but we can pretend he just has a thing for female bears, a fetish that ranks more towards the ‘normal’ spectrum at Camp Swampy.” –Irrischano

“There’s something that makes me laugh about the image of Ant-Man and Spiderman stealthily keeping their heads down even as they awkwardly hoof it across this spacious lawn up to the house, in full costume, whispering loudly to each other about their secret identities, seemingly planning to just knock on the front door and shrewdly proclaim ‘Candygram’ like SNL’s Land Shark. At least there will be a fine, fine picture on page six of tomorrow’s Bugle showing Elihas Starr blowing off Spider-man’s head with a sawed-off shotgun through the peephole.” –Jack loves comics

“Two bedrooms for the kids, two bedrooms for home offices, a bedroom for June, and a lab for Rex where he works late into the night trying desperately, against hope, to reproduce human-like emotions.” –pastordan

“In a mounting state of cultural panic, Crankshaft’s wordplay grows ever more desperate. ‘Do they offer Ballet Parking? If this were in outer space, would they be Dancing with the Stars!? You Make Me Feel Ted Danson!?!’” –Peanut Gallery

“Weird that June should feel the need to emphasize the word ‘play’ when she mentioned ‘a loft for the kids to play in.’ Maybe Rex was thinking, ‘A loft, eh? That might be a good place to set up a sweatshop for the children. I wonder how many iWatches a baby could make in an hour?’” –Joe Blevins

“At last! I, Egghead, have captured Ant-Man! By shrinking him! Which is kind of what he does all the time, so he already knows how to use it to his advantage! Plus he was probably going to do it some time after entering my house, anyway … But, hey, at least I shrunk Spider-Man, too! Because everyone knows that the only thing better than a spider you can see is knowing there’s a little one hiding in your house somewhere and you have no idea where it is… I’m– I’m really bad at this, aren’t I?” –WLP

“I’m a 20 something ex con with a debilitating addiction living in a bland condominium complex with his mother, dumped by his girlfriend and fired from his menial labor job. So almost entirely irrelevant to our culture’s economic, political and cultural interests, yes. Surely. But not technically dead, in biological terms.” –James Dowd, on Facebook

“I’m glad these two newspaper birds are cracking wise instead of investigating that mass grave right behind them.” –Naked Bunny with a Whip

“It takes a special kind of dad to see his child and dog enjoying a carefree existence, and decide to put a stop to it by putting that child to work.” –Red Delicious

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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Shoe, 9/30/16

This is one of those jokes that works perfectly serviceably as it’s presented here — essentially a verbal joke, describing something after the fact, with Shoe and the Perfesser in the particular setting for color. Can you imagine how vivid it would’ve been if we had seen the whole thing unfold, though? Just think about it: the assembled mourners, each quietly contemplating mortality in their own way, the ceremony unfolding with predictable solemnity, until that first time when the mortician and his aides try, and fail, to lower the casket into the grave. The first time a corner just barely bumps into the freshly disturbed earth to the side of the newly dug pit, the mortician mutters something to his assistants, the casket is lifted up again for another attempt, no one feels like they need to say anything or draw attention to this little gaffe. But then: attempt after attempt to inter the coffin with dignity fails. Maybe the machinery used to lower the coffin sputters and noisily seizes up. Maybe the mortician trips and drops one of the cords, causing the casket to dip precariously. Maybe, somehow, the casket is accidentally lowered into place perpendicular to the direction the grave was dug, causing much squabbling, and not muttered, this time. As the ceremony goes further and further off the rails, some in attendance begin quietly weeping, seeing Ernie’s memorial service transformed into a ghastly farce; others, perhaps those not part of the immediate family or more attuned to the irony of the situation, begin to chuckle under their breath, and remark to each other that Ernie would no doubt get a good laugh out of all this. Still, even these mourners have a hard time holding it together when, without it ever being quite clear why, the coffin tumbles once more onto the ground, this time popping open and revealing the deceased’s mortal remains, no longer arranged in a pose of dignified slumber but now twisted horribly to remind everyone that one day death will come to them and rob them of everything they have, even dignity. Ernie is roughly bundled back into his coffin, which is finally, blessedly, lowered to its final resting place on the seventh try, but it’s too late: the widow, hysterical with grief, has to be physically restrained from assaulting the mortician; lawsuits have been threatened, careers have been ended. In the end, the drama has moved elsewhere, leaving only Shoe and the Perfesser at the gravesite, cracking wise to cover up how completely shell-shocked they are at what they just saw.

Gil Thorp, 9/30/16

Welp, looks like we’ve got our football season A and B plots set: Heather the soccer-player-turned-trainer is going to provide unpaid, unrequested coaching of the kind that helps/undermins Gil and Kaz every three or four storylines, and Kevin Pelwecki, who is an offensive lineman or some similar position that I’m not going to bother looking up, is going to have his dreams of playing quarterback utterly shattered, as today he proves completely inept at the most basic of quarterbacking tasks. I have to admire the strip for managing to deliver a one-panel version of the hilarious failure montage we’d get if this were a TV show or movie. Sad to see that Kevin’s plan to replace his jersey number with a lightning bolt to denote his near-divine superstar status was a bit premature!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/30/16

Aww, isn’t that cute! Rex’s nickname for his daughter is “punkin’”! He calls her this because her head roughly the size and shape of a pumpkin.

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Mary Worth, 9/29/16

I’m not shy about my longtime affection for Joe Giella’s decade-plus at Mary Worth, I’ve been fans of June Brigman and Roy Richardson so far as well. Like Giella, they too come from the superhero world; as a result, despite the big shift in style they’ve brought to the strip, they carry on the tradition of the art feeling a little too jazzy for the banality of life in Charterstone. Anyway, one of my favorite little details of the Giella era was the weird food blobs. The Brigman/Richardson era may have opened with some lovingly detailed sandwiches, but they’re clearly aware of strip traditions, so shoutout to the meal of weird brownish chunks of Chinese food Iris and Tommy are sharing off of a single plate, washed down with chocolate milk.

Spider-Man, 9/29/16

“At last! I, Egghead, have captured Ant-Man — and Spider-Man to boot! And now all I have to do is scoop them up and — what’s this? Blast! I knew this shag carpeting was a terrible mistake! ‘It’ll be so comfy on your bare feet,’ they said! My plans are ruined!”

Blondie, 9/29/16

“Plus, you’re definitely going to be killing people — only this time without any lame-o ‘Geneva Conventions’ to cramp your style!”