The Comics Curmudgeon

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Exhausted long-running comic strips

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Momma, 10/27/15

This strip’s been running for 45 years, OK? You try coming up with new things for Momma to be annoying about. “Not understanding standard English idioms” is certainly preferable to Oedipal horror.

Shoe, 10/27/15

I was going to make fun of the Perfersser to reacting so negatively to this slur against his hometown — he is, with his defeated slouch and his hand at rest inside a chip bag, part of the very problem being mocked — but then I wondered if the whole thing wasn’t a cry for help on the part of the artist. “Look, I thought I could wring endless funnies out of a town of bird-men, but I can’t, OK? I’m bored. I’m so bored. This bird-man who can’t even muster the energy to lift his hand-wing out of the bag of potato chips … that bird-man is me. I am that bird-man.”

Apartment 3-G, 10/27/15

Ooh, Apartment 3-G plans to go out with a bang by assembling all of Margo’s boyfriends at her bedside! That’s Greg, who used to be Margo’s boyfriend and also played James Bond, in the movies, no big deal. Who else will be showing up to proclaim their love to Margo’s unconscious form? Scarf-wearing architect Trey? FBI Pete? Will they be bringing any of Lu Ann or Tommie’s exes with them? (Haha, just kidding, nobody cares about Lu Ann or Tommie’s exes.)

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I mean, aim high, Holly, but jeez

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Spider-Man, 10/26/15

Oh, hey, Spider-Man vs. Namor, remember that whole business? It’s been 11 days since I last updated you and these two guys are still just jawin’ down by the docks, getting ready to maybe someday go over to the U.N. to talk about pollution or whatever. I assumed this was just the strip’s usual go-nowhere pace, but apparently Namor was stalling as he brought out his secret weapon: a poor, sick undersea child who will tug at the world’s heartstrings and cause the surface-dweller leadership to rethink our ocean-polluting ways and hahahahaha I can’t even finish that sentence. Yo, Namor, there are plenty of human children who get sick due to water pollution; do you think we’re gonna care about some little fish-boy? Anyway, undersea life seems like it’s pretty harsh, with no concept of “focusing the positive,” since Namor responds to Pharus’s plea for hope by letting everyone know that, nope, this kid’s gonna die, and the best-case scenario now is that he does it adorably enough to get some kind of toothless UN Security Council resolution passed.

Gil Thorp, 10/26/15

“It didn’t happen to Survivor or American Idol, two shows that launched early in the era of reality television and were very different from anything else on American TV at the time. What do we need? A time machine? A time machine, to go back and launch our show in a less reality-saturated programming environment?”

Family Circus, 10/26/15

Man, I for one really wish we had gotten to see what Jeffy and Dolly did to get themselves expelled from the Keane Kompound, with only their paternal grandmother and God willing to take them in. Was it redhead-related? Did Big Daddy Keane get a revelation that gingers were spiritually unclean?

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Things I can’t get past

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Mary Worth, 10/25/15

I was going to make a joke about how Mary is planning on journeying to New York to pledge her fealty to Olive, our new hyper-evolved Goddess-Queen who will one day enslave humanity with her mind powers, but I can’t get past today’s Inspirational Sunday Quote, from former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, who lost the bitterly contested 1968 presidential election and then apparently went on to claim that, really, nothing in life is better than friendship. He didn’t want to be president anyway. Nixon was fine, and he’s not even mad about losing, since he’s got good pals. Yep, friendship, that’s what really counts.

Family Circus, 10/25/15

I was going to make some joke about how Kids Today can’t conceive of a Halloween celebration without the omnipresent branded characters that have crowded all imagination out of their fantasy world, but then I saw panel one and got a load of Ma Keane’s costume: she’s going as some kind of horrifying pinheaded circus freak.

Panels from Beetle Bailey, 10/25/15

I was going to make a joke about how today’s Beetle Bailey throwaway panels are pretty clearly about how Miss Buxley wants Beetle to have some energy tonight, for sex, but then I got a look at this strip’s attempt to depict ears from behind and ew ew ew ew ewwwwwwww