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Hey y’all, just a quick note to Los Angeles and Los Angeles-adjacent folks that you can see me perform my beloved character Gary The Emotionally Fragile Substitute Yoga Instructor for free, tonight, in Echo Park! It’s in a show called Underbelly, full of stand-up comics doing comedy in non stand-up forms, and it will be WEIRD and GOOD. At Echoes Under Sunset, 1310 Glendale Boulevard. Doors open at 9:15 pm, show starts at 10. Don’t miss it! Gary will be even sadder if you do!

But now, it is time for the comment of the week:

“Let’s take a minute to really appreciate the Phantom’s costume here. By having the majority of it be the same shade of purple that the world apparently turns to at night, all of the costume blends into the lavender ‘darkness’, except for the midsection. To the criminals he battles, this must create the illusion of being attacked by a floating pair of blue and black striped granny panties, which, if nothing else, must be confusing as hell.” –Brad

And the hilarious runners up!

“I’m not sure that Nancy would agree that you were improvising. You negated a lot of her pitches and brought the whole scene down.” –pugfuggly

“I choose to believe this is just Dagwood’s custom ringtone. HERB WOODLEY! ‘Oh, hi Blondie. Yeah, I’ll take the tenderloin out of the freezer.’ HERB WOODLEY! ‘Yes Mr. Dithers, first thing Monday morning.’ HERB WOODLEY! ‘Ha ha, hi Cookie. No, just laughing at the ringtone. It never gets ol– no it doesn’t, sweetie.'” –Dan

“Mary’s non-Euclidian rose bushes are looking very good this year. See how, in the second panel, they healthily interpose themselves into spaces that shouldn’t exist, such as where Mary’s forearm and neck should be? I do hope Terry doesn’t prick herself on one of the fifth-dimensional hyperbolic thorns, though. Not only will she rapidly bleed out into unknown space and time, but her blood might awaken the Howler in the Walls (also known as Wilbur).” –Voshkod

“Slylock is hesitant to criticize Ronny. He knows he comes from a tough part of town. He knows he grew up without a father. He know this because he ate him and several other members of the Rabbit family. ‘I knew your father, kid. You should aspire to be more like him. He had great taste. Heh heh!'” –Mikey

“Why does the crow think Max’s tail is an earthworm? Why are statues of primates valued more highly than a bowl of life-sustaining water? Why is the owl out in the daytime? I only hope I’m dead and gone before this dystopian future becomes reality.” –Nekrotzar

“That put-down made a lot more sense before the syndicate changed ‘penis’ to ‘director.'” –Chyron HR

“I see what Lantern-Jaw-Purple-Polo-Shirt is going for here: is it possible to have a reunion and not invite the reunion committee president? It’s certainly worth a try!” –handsome Harry Backstayge, idol of a million other women

“They get cell reception, but they still have to light the cave with torches?” –Molly Dolan, on Facebook

“Because the other two people are in your bra, because you have big boobs. Yes, you heard me right, that’s what I’m saying. Lately I’ve cheerfully accepted the fact that I’m losing my mind. Hey, did you know that technically we’re a sixsome, because of my testicles?” –made of wince

“Dear Beetle Bailey, I had a hard time figuring this one out partly due to your minimalist ‘style’ when in comes to depicting everyday items (such as golf clubs, golf shoes, tanks, etc.). If you draw a golf course in the future can you please draw all eighteen flags in a single panel so as not to confuse me further? Also, if the joke involves a sexual innuendo please draw Halftrack’s half erect schlong hanging out.” –Mikey

“Speaking of home … this home is so much better than my home! Instead of what I was going to do, why don’t I just wait for him to get home, shoot him with this gun until he dies, and then make his home mine! Haha! No more sleeping in a dark cave or risking life and limb fighting crime for ol’ Phantom, no siree! I’m moving on to bigger and better things! I’m going to call my kids to tell them to go fuck themselves! I wonder if this rich guy keeps any cocaine around here?” –Jack loves comics

“‘But do you know how hard that boy is throwing?’ ‘Uh, no. Why? Is there some way of measuring it?’ ‘Gil, we have a radar gun — we can chart the pitch speed for your entire staff.’ ‘What? So I can make personnel decisions based on data rather than my seat-of-the-pants impressions? There was this kid who kept telling me that during basketball season too — I had him thrown off the team on trumped-up drug charges, so don’t push me, Billy Beane.'” –But What Do I Know?

“Is that … a mushroom cloud Momma is painting? What’s that guilty ‘They’re on to me’ sideways glance as she hastily splashes paint over it to cover it up? Was WWII … secretly Momma’s idea?” –tommie

“Bored with wasting his awesome mental powers on simple stunts such as replacing the curtain in panel one with a table lamp in panel two, Professor Xavier challenged himself with something more more difficult, namely getting Lu Ann to change her Pepto-Bismol pink shirt. It took all his mental faculties, but sure enough he got her to change it — from one that buttons on the right to one that buttons on the left. This will be the most exciting development in this strip for the next three weeks.” –seismic-2

“The late Harvey Pekar confuses his grandchildren.” –C. Sandy Cyst

“Notice that the teacher has written ‘Write to: Pluggers’ followed by the address on the board. It’s part of the history lesson. ‘This is how people used to communicate, kids. It’s what you now call snail mail. Send them something. It’s a comic written by people who are so old they’re literally dying for new material.'” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

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.

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Spider-Man, 6/5/15

As entertainment becomes more and more dominated by reboots and sequels of well-known franchises, moviemakers are encountering a real dilemma: is it worthwhile to spend significant portions of the first movie of a rebooted continuity covering the protagonist’s origin story? Can we assume that pretty much everyone already knows about the radioactive spider, great power great responsibility, Bonesaw is ready, etc., and just skip to the superheroics? Or are there still newbies out there who would end up baffled and alienated by this approach? Today’s Newspaper Spider-Man proposes a radical solution to this problem: simply start each new series with the main character explaining his background story to a Freudian analyst. Problem solved! Storytelling problem solved, I should say; Spider-Man’s deep and crippling emotional problems certainly aren’t going to be resolved in just one session.

Slylock Fox, 6/5/15

When this puzzle appeared in a Sunday strip in 2009, I mostly saw it is a convoluted trick by Grandpa to make his grandkids feel like jerks for not remembering his birthday. But now that we get a closer look at him — his stubble, his wild eyes — I’m getting a different vibe. A crazier vibe. A “last year was 72 and this year is 74 and you add the digits and you get 20 which is what the Illuminati invoke as a ‘triangular’ number” vibe.

Pluggers, 6/5/15

Nice job, colorists: textual clues clearly indicate that those are supposed to be white stars on a blue background, the better to make American flag footwear for the Fourth, but by making them red you’ve turned our plugger child into a promoter of Godless Communism.

Apartment 3-G, 6/5/15

I know there are only two kinds of background in Apartment 3-G anymore — “dowdy mid-century apartment interior” and “mid-century New York City streetscape” — but a narration box in Wednesday’s strip said that Lu Ann and Mike’s gross flirting was happening “at the hotel.” But now suddenly there’s a knock on … some door? And Tommie’s arrived? And she’s keeping busy? And the background is different? WHERE IS EVERYONE WHAT’S GOING ON WHAT IS HAPPENING HELLLPPPP

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Apartment 3-G, 6/4/15

Hey, remember Mike Downey, the manager of the hotel where Martin lives who practically runs the place, and who, when he first met Lu Ann, thought she was Martin’s much younger mistress, or maybe a prostitute? Well, they’re totally gonna date now! Haha, it’s the classic movie thing where first they hate each other and then they love each other, if by “hate” you mean “he held her in contempt due to his assumptions about her sexual choices” and “love” you mean “he wants to have sex with her and she’ll probably go along with it for some reason.”

Momma, 6/4/15

Wow, who knew that we had misunderstood German calls for Lebensraum in the ’30s? It didn’t mean that the Master Race wanted to purge the steppe of Untermenschen; no, they just needed to get a little space between them and their nagging wives, amiright fellas? Also, Momma is of course long-widowed, but her dialogue in panel one makes it seem like she’s part of the club of women whose husbands are avoiding them. Perhaps death is the ultimate fake business trip where you’re secretly cheating on your wife? Makes you think.