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Hey, it’s Spring, and May, and Sunday … and from the look of things, everybody’s feeling pretty darn good about themselves.

Crankshaft, 5/1/16

Here, Team Crankshaft congratulates itself for its tortured “blacksmith/booksmith” wordplay by showing in-strip proxies Lillian and Jeff gushing over it. But adopting Crankshaft’s sloppy malapropism will doom Lillian’s fledgling used-book business.

Sure, throngs of would-be readers will stream through Lillian’s quiet residential neighborhood, walk past her second-floor shop, and glance up at her sign. But being literary folk who know full well that a booksmith is a person who makes books, they’ll pass on the chance to climb all those stairs only to find an author, a publisher, or a bookbinder shooing them away.

Perhaps they’ll mutter as they pass by, “If only this town had a decent bookmonger — somebody could make a lot of money!”

The authors also missed the obvious opportunity to call the place “Mom’s attic” and sell old comic books. It’s like they lost track of the strip’s core mission.

Phantom, 5/1/16

Appearances aside, that’s not Disco John Belushi. It’s Hojo, recently destereotyped and crossing over from Lee Falk’s other creation, Mandrake the Magician. Hojo is fluent in six languages, head of global crimefighting outfit Inter-Intel, and a 10^th-degree black belt in some martial art or other. But here, he’s just pleased as cheese to be out in the Seven Nations working together with his good buddy Phantom to suppress political opposition to Lothar’s brother. Lucky we can’t see his face when he learns they whupped the wrong guy; poor fella must be shattered.

But hey, why is that Phantom-cam shot of Otanko taken from the perspective of someone flat on his back? That can’t be good!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/1/16

June squicks out Rex as a form of bedtime recreation; it’s the only kind she gets. “Because you’re a doctor and she respects your judgment — despite your hilarious discomfort with anything even remotely biological. You think reproduction is icky, ‘doc,’ take a whiff of this guy.”

– Uncle Lumpy

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Six Chix, 4/30/16

Sure, “Kids Today” and “Technology Bad” are two of the classic themes, but if you want to go full plugger, Mom, you gotta grow the tail.

Archie, 4/30/16

Even the folks at Team Archie know this joke would be unpublishable with the roles reversed. Hey panel-2 Veronica: his eyes are down there!

Curtis, 4/30/16

Oh man, I was all set to go off on newish tertiary character “Heart-throb” for what I thought was a transparently false boast about an obviously impossible YouTube video. But then I checked and learned that kids all over the world post School Fight videos faster than Google can knock ’em down, and of course some of the fights are staged specifically for the videos.

What I’m saying is kids today are terrible, and technology makes everything worse.

(Checks behind for tail; still OK whew)

Judge Parker, 4/30/16

Hey, remember when Derek tried to go to a party with his real girlfriend Honey Ballenger and it made Sophie want to get all trained up at military school and flat-out murder everybody? But then Honey got grounded so Sophie dropped the idea and resumed her campaign to stalk/purchase Derek?

Well, those slick brochures from the military school kept coming, and they’re like porn to poor Marie here. Look at her caress that embossed coat of arms, dreaming of the sweet barracks pleasures she’d enjoy if only she could escape her hated employer/tormentors.

“Did you know they have a separate school for aerospace studies?” she coos. It’s her ultimate fantasy, to slip the surly bonds of Spencer Farms and fly, alone and free, into a brand-new life. Well, maybe one little strafing run first.

Hello there, faithful reader! I’m sitting in for Josh through Sunday, May 8 while he wraps up his book tour and recovers from same. Drop me a line at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if you need any admin help, for example if one of your comments gets hoovered up by the site’s new and voracious spam filter.

– Uncle Lumpy

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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.