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Click the banner to contribute to the Comics Curmudgeon. Details here.

As regular readers know, I host fundraisers once or twice a year to support the time, effort, and talent Josh puts into the Comics Curmudgeon. There’s even more to support this time around — behind the scenes, Josh and his IT Department Adam Norwood are upgrading, tuning, and expanding the site to:

• Redesign it for improved readability and efficiency, especially on mobile devices
• Accommodate feedback and recommendations from last month’s Reader Survey
• Review commenting functions and improve them where possible
• Add unspecified but potentially exciting new features!

Please help out with a generous contribution. Even if you haven’t contributed before, consider sending an amount proportional to the enjoyment Josh’s work brings into your life — I bet it’s a lot! If it turns out to be $25 or more, you’ll receive a stylish and practical Comics Curmudgeon tote bag in addition to Josh’s personal and effusive thanks:

Contribute however you like:

• By credit card or PayPal — Click the banner at the top of the page and follow the instructions on the secure PayPal site.
• By mail — Email uncle.lumpy@comcast.net; I’ll reply with an address for your generous check, money order, or in-kind contribution.
• NEW Patreon sponsorship — If you’d prefer to support all of Josh’s artistic/comedic efforts on a “set it and forget it” recurring basis, visit his new Patreon page for complete details of this new option. A pledge of just $2 per month qualifies you for a CC tote bag.

Full details, terms, and conditions are here.

The banners at the top of the page are selected automatically on a kinda-random basis. If you’d prefer to browse through a directory instead of wearing out your Refresh finger, you can find one here, along with 500+ banners going back to 2008. I’ve wasted hundreds of hours on these — join me!

And thank you, generous readers!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Gasoline Alley, 10/17/16

Part of Gasoline Alley’s schtick is the Picaresque Idiot Duo (PID), pairing an illiterate English-mangling leader with an improbably even more hopeless sidekick. These roles are most often played by Rufus and Joel. But Harold and Stick are here to remind us that it’s PIDs all the way down. From an apex somewhere around the Beverly Hillbillies’ Jed and Jethro Clampett, the line passes through Hootin’ Holler’s Snuffy Smith and Lukey, the two Gasoline Alley crews here, and then descends inexorably toward the Beavis Horizon.

Pluggers, 10/17/16

Joke-a-day strip Pluggers experiments with serial narrative: behold the pluggernovela. We’ve long known that Henrietta Beak is married to Earl Houndstooth and Andy Bear to Sheila Roo. Now we discover they’re next-door neighbors. The affairs begin innocently: a little bit of harmless robe-gazing and rake-play, some “accidental” pouch-flashing. But things spiral quickly into unnatural chicken-on-bear and dog-on-kangaroo depravity, threatening the very foundations of strait-laced plugger society. Claude Manx watches heartbroken from his mansion on the hill: Andy will never be his.

Slylock Fox, 10/17/16

Why suspect Shady? Maybe because he showed up to gloat? Seriously Sly – he’s standing right outside the greenhouse with a big grin on his face. More to the point, he’s Shady Shrew, for crying out loud. Why do you even waste your time with these “clues”? If this were Dick Tracy, the guy would already have been broken on the wheel.

Mutts, 10/17/16

Dude – have you ever even met a dog?

— Uncle Lumpy

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Crock, 10/16/16

Buns of Steel — you remember: Alaska fitness entrepreneur Greg Smithey, VCR tape, 1987? Thirty years ago? Inherently funny. I mean, “buns,” heh, that’s comedy gold amirite. So, are we done here? Draw it up and publish — just be sure to put a big butt in there somewhere.

Judge Parker, 10/16/16

THINK, NEDDY, THINK!

THAT NEWS LADY WILL TRY TO PIN THIS ALL ON YOU.

CHEATING THE OLDS. LOCKING THEM IN STEEL BOXES. BRIBING THE BUILDING INSPECTOR.

SO UNFAIR.

WAIT, HERE’S HANK.

♫ “Hi, Hank!” ♪

THIS WAS ALL HANK’S IDEA. WASN’T IT? YES IT WAS. HE USED ME. THE BRUTE.

SO UNFAIR.

♫ “Thanks, Hank — ‘Bye!” ♪

SAY, I WONDER IF MARK STILL WANTS TO GET MARRIED? HONG KONG SOUNDS PRETTY SWEET RIGHT NOW.

Spider-Man, 10/16/16

Next to their endless faux-clever dialogue while they “battle,” the thing that annoys me most about superheros is the ham-handed logic used to get them out of jams. The conceit here is that the reformulated shrink-gas that took away Ant-Man’s “powers of a man” affected only Spider-Man’s man-strength, leaving his spider-strength untouched so the joke’s on you Egghead a.k.a. Elihas Starr, nemesis of the first Ant-Man Hank Pym and the second Ant-Man Scott Lang. But hey waitaminute – if that long-ago bite gave Peter a spider’s proportionate strength, shouldn’t shrinking leave him with the actual strength of — a spider? So splot, right?

Algebra is hard. I think Egghead’s chosen the right approach here.

— Uncle Lumpy