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Lockhorns, 6/4/16

One of the fun things about the United States is that most people learn some fairly specific aspects of very local history when they’re in elementary school that only later do you find out are not globally important facts. Growing up in Western New York, we made Iroquois longhouses out of papier-mâché, whereas our counterparts in California were building Spanish missions. When covering the War of 1812, our teachers described in vivid detail the way the British had cruelly burned down Buffalo, mentioned only in passing that they would go on to do the same to Washington, D.C., and did not at all discuss that the Americans had done it to Toronto first. My wife, who grew up in Washington, Pennsylvania, got the Whiskey Rebellion, so I’m always charmed to see it get a shout-out in print, which doesn’t happen enough for my taste. It even got cut from the Hamilton musical! Anyway, I guess the point here is that Loretta saw the American Revolution as being just the first step towards knitting together a unified political and economic power out of disparate colonies, whereas Leroy saw many of the British taxes and other measures that sparked the revolution as being evil in and of themselves, not just because they were enacted without the colonists’ consent, and also he’s an embarrassing drunk.

Pluggers, 6/4/16

Pluggers will never, ever get healthier. They will just get sicker and sicker until they blessedly die.

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Guys! Don’t forget (if you’re in LA and don’t have an early bedtime) that I’m in a show of cool, weird shit at UCB Franklin, 5919 Franklin Ave in Los Feliz, tonight at midnight! I’ve seen other iterations of the show and the acts will definitely be cool and weird.

Tickets do sell out, so buy ’em online!

Also! I last week I was terribly remiss in letting you know that I was on the super fun Book Fight Podcast, talking about both my book and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad. I had a blast — check it out!

OK! With that out of the way, check out the top comment of the week!

“‘Ooh Mark! Are you married?’ Yes Carina, I am! Hahaha, I’m just kiddin’, she’s dead. Ventriloquism is a useful survival skill! Use it to confuse mega predators, or amuse yourself! I’m Mark Trail, trapped forever in this cavern.” –Bunivasal

And the runners up! Very funny!

“Wait, the Count’s helicopter gets the same mileage as the Slylock-mobile? Weirdly should stop screwing around with killer robots and go into the general aviation manufacturing business. He’d make a mint, and would be able to afford the best legal beagles around to keep Inspector Fox from trying yet another frame-up job. And yes, they’d be actual beagles.” –dmsilev

“Weirdly has given much attention to robotics recently and he has been very successful. Maybe living in a world of sapient animals that have slaughtered humankind has finally put to rest every stupid question about ‘what is human’ and ‘ethics’. It’s all robots thinking about murder every moment of their life — or equivalent.” –Ettore

“Wow, Pam and Jeff sure aged a lot in ten years. Take your bets, Cancer? Stress? Cancerous Stress?” –DimensionalOtter

“Everything on this platter was cooked on my grill! I don’t know how to make plates or buns or condiments or utensils on a grill, so it’s literally just a big heap of meat! No beverages, either! Enjoy!” –Doctor Handsome

“Oh look, a sexless, dull marriage has turned into a game of one-upmanship in order for these two to have some excitement. This is the most realistic Hi and Lois to date.” –Daria’s Son

“Meanwhile, an ad written in Serbo-Croatian warns Pam and Jeff that their Yugoslav-breakup-era war crimes are about to catch up with them.” –Nekrotzar

“Separate word bubble for Carina’s name, because ‘Yes, [INSERT NAME], I am happily married!’ is a phrase Mark has learned to recite automatically, without any kind of suspicious pause for thought.” –Dan

“True to its town’s ‘Fuck it, Whatever’ spirit, the Westview Gazette is happy to print whatever nonsense people send in, as long as they pay the $15 for the ad space. And honestly, kudos to the joker who did send in that ad. He obviously knew full well that half a dozen egocentric old men around town would waste countless hours trying to decipher gibberish because they were sure it had something to do with themselves.” –pugfuggly

“How prescient of young Harry to write his name on the comic books! It’s like he knew that someday an unscrupulous person would try to steal them.” –Arabella

“Meanwhile, I’m busy trying to decipher the runes on Dolly’s shirt. I’m betting there’s a malapropism involved.” –Pozzo

“These are like newsstand fresh — Unread, even! [breaks the comic’s spine and opens it wide to the relevant page] These may be the best condition copies that exist! [copies were stored without protection in a dusty attic for years] And they are worth a ton of cash, Rex! [price continues to drop as he holds the cover with his grubby bare hands]” –Enlong

“‘Tonight I have other plans’: Dawn has practiced that sentence in front of the mirror for the past week because she has never had occasion to utter it before in her life.” –Lacey Wootton, on Facebook

“Dennis’s parents look strangely unhappy for a couple of people stocking their refrigerator with massive quantities of morphine.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

“He told me to take a hike! Oh, this? The wizard staff was all me, going for a druid look this season.” –Bradley

“You know you’re a plugger when you’re 70 years old and still masturbating to a teenage Annette Funicello.” –Beppo1963

“Look at the tongue hanging out! He’s the Michael Jordan of rudimentary cryptography.” –Chareth Cutestory

“And that’s how Dawn stopped obsessing over Harlan Jones and began obsessing over Jennifer Lawrence. ‘No, Dawn, for the last time, I don’t know whether or not Jennifer practices yoga! Sheesh!’” –made of wince

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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Crock, 6/3/16

Haha, it’s funny because the patrolmen are dying horribly in flames, miles away from help or rescue or even water! As the fire burns away everything that makes them human, their commanding officers coldly refer to them as “objects.”

Beetle Bailey, 6/3/16

Like many military operations, this started as an attempt to remove something with precision and skill and has now devolved into a test of strength in which someone is probably going to lose a limb.

Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, 6/3/16

Welp, I guess Jeff wasn’t being fired by his therapist earlier this week; he was being told to go back to his childhood home, to get “closure” or whatever, and also just start pulling up the floorboards of his old attic, despite the distinct lack of enthusiasm displayed by the house’s current resident. Meanwhile, in the future, we’re discovering how this actually ties in with his mother’s death: he’s using the decoder ring he’s found to translate a message from his mother, who is in outer space, which is apparently where hell is.

Mary Worth, 6/3/16

Looks like all the girls who were being super mean to Dawn because they thought she was sleeping with her professor are pals with her again because she’s deigned to spend time with them in between dropping Harlan’s name every other sentence, because that’s how human beings work! I am very much assuming that this upcoming showing of X-Men: Apocalypse that Dawn is being lured to will go pretty much like the prom scene in Carrie, except without the revenge via psychic powers.

Hi and Lois, 6/3/16

“Maybe I’m just not very good at school?”

Pluggers, 6/3/16

You’re a plugger if your grandchildren dislike you and flee from your presence the moment you’re distracted.