Post Content

Gil Thorp, 9/13/14

The tale of True Standish from the summer is now clearly also the tale of True Standish for the fall, and that tale will entail: quarterback controversy! Yes, the next several months will involve high school QB phenom with painfully overbearing dad True being preternaturally nice about the fact that he just loved Milford and really wants to win and if that means that high school QB phenom with painfully overbearing dad True Standish ends up taking the starting quarterback job away from “Jarrod,” a guy who’s probably been on the team for a while and who’s maybe even been in the strip before but about whom I could tell you exactly nothing, then that’s just how the ball bounces, you know? Anyway, today’s episode involves “Jarrod” dishing out a sick burn about not knowing the name of the local newspaper. All of today’s teens are very clued into their area’s print media outlets; the daily paper is a core aspect of teen identity in modern culture. Point: “Jarrod.”

Gasoline Alley, 9/13/14

Gasoline Alley has spent the past few months on an extremely mawkish story about a dying little boy with a wacky parrot sidekick who just wants to operate a real life steam locomotive before he kicks it. I’m a guy who loves trains and isn’t in favor of little children dying of mysterious diseases, and yet am wholly unmoved by all this, mostly because the lad has been introduced to us already pre-dying, a transparent spectacle for our emotional catharsis. “I’ll remember this the…” [SIGNIFICANT PAUSE TO REMIND YOU THAT THE NEXT PHRASE IS POIGNANT AND SIGNIFICANT] “…rest of my life! Come here, parrot, give me a big hug! WEEP FOR ME, ENGINEER-MAN!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/13/14

By the way, if you’re wondering how long it takes Uriah the mailman to “give Miz Prunelly a special delivery” (i.e., have sex with Miz Prunelly): it takes about half an hour.

Post Content

Hello all! I hope that you feel that I’ve been doing a decent job of mocking the comics from the opposite side of the country from where I had been previously mocking them. You all continue to do a good job with the funny comments, as it turns out! Like this top comment from the week, for instance:

“Calm Dennis is so spooky. ‘You’ve discovered my secret, Mother. Congratulations. Yes, I like to watch vintage lumberjack romances on Turner Classic Movies sometimes. Tell Father if you’d like. I don’t care one way or the other. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to return to Ardor Amid the Pines please.'” –Joe Blevins

And these hilarious runners up!

“I’m really glad you’re home, Hemingway. I call you ‘Hemingway’ because you remind me of him. You both have smaller than average penises and it’s only a matter of time before you kiss the business end of a shotgun. And you both like cats!” –gelded wildebeeste

“Who hired me? Alaistair Z. Footfieldmanstein, on accounts that they were rivals to win this year’s ‘Dumbest Fucking Name in Comics’ award.” –Comrade Dread

“I’d submit to Pluggers too, if they’d expand their repertoire of Dr. Moreau-beast-people a bit more, instead of the regular dog-men, bear-men and chicken-women. For example, there would be one where the caption was ‘The Plugger Web.’ where the picture was of a massive, Shelob-like spider-plugger in a John Deere hat, ensnaring a horrified fly-man in its massive web.” –Jack loves comics

“It’s almost like Dennis the Menace the comic needs a talk about good attention/bad attention more than Dennis the Menace the child. Depicting a 5-year-old watching porn on the family TV in front of his mom will probably get you some letters, but they’re not the kind of letters you want! There are better ways to get us to notice you, like jokes!” –Alex Blaze

“Just how far does Dagwood’s food obsession extend, anyway? Cause I’m wondering if Blondie just has to do the 9 1/2 Weeks thing to get him interested, or if she needs to go all-out and dress like a comically oversized sandwich.” –TheDiva

Mary Worth: “So just to recap this adventure’s moral: Don’t listen to your parents, kids. Listen to angels, faeries, and the small lump of neurons in your digestive tract. And Mary of course, always listen to MARY.” –pugfuggly

Mark Trail: “And Chekhov’s Rhinoceros finally leaps off the mantlepiece … and into our hearts.” –Shrug

“At the mention of the guv’mint, the kids switched holding their pencils from writing tool into holding them as stabbing tools. Yes, they are learning everything there is to teach at Hootin’ Holler High School.” –Chareth Cutestory

“Hee-Hee. I’ve got a second brain in my tummy! BEFORE LUNCH IT WAS IN DOCTOR KAPUHT’S SKULL!!!” –Dr. Mabuse

“It makes me sad that he isn’t proffering a hamburger sandwich and French fried potatoes as bait, since that is the agreed upon bait of choice for American teenagers. How is he going to attract a teenager with just a comfy chair? These coddled teens have all the comfy chairs they want already. Kids today, with their hamburger sandwiches and their comfy chairs, and their loud music like the 1812 Overture. They make me sick!” –Jejune (who posted this comment on Facebook, guys did you know that I have a Facebook and you can post funny comments there too if you want)

“‘In the time I traveled here from, we loved beehives so much that we even named a women’s hairstyle after them,’ said the 1962-era government functionary as the older folks admired his glasses, mustache, crew cut, short-sleeved white shirt, rumpled black tie and pocket protector.” –BigTed

“Yes, it’ll be interesting to follow Olive’s progress as she grows up. Except that I won’t.” –A New Day

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! 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.

Post Content

Shoe, 9/12/14

Oh, Shoe, you know that given my druthers I’d prefer not to contemplate the twisted chimeric anatomy of your bird-person characters, right? Especially when it comes to the naughty parts. I try not to think about those at all. I only contemplated the concept of bird-breasts obliquely, once, which didn’t stop TV Tropes from quoting me in the epigraph of the article on the subject. Anyway, the secondary sexual characteristics of these abhorrent beings are unpleasant enough to grapple with, but today’s strip demands that we give serious thought to the downstairs situation of these monsters. Specifically: do the bird-people of Shoe have a single cloaca that serves as the end point for their intestinal, reproductive, and urinary tracts, like birds, or do they have separate orifices for these different jobs, like humans? Related: do they bear live young, or lay eggs? I mean, any joke about some poor woman going into labor in the midst of a natural disaster and having her child forced back up inside her so she has to give birth again and again is awful enough even if it doesn’t raise disturbing questions about the the plumbing involved, you know?

Mary Worth, 9/12/14

Welp, as predicted, Mary is already starting to justify to herself the slow fade she’s going to pull on her beloved little friend Olive. “If only there were some way to communicate over a long physical distance! If these new-fangled computers could carry a message, that would be convenient, or perhaps if some government agency or private business existed that would, for a small fee, transport written correspondence. Ah well, no point in having regrets over the impossible, I suppose!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/12/14

You heard it here first: Mrs. Pierpont, recognizing Sarah’s prodigy-level artistic talent, is going to groom her as a master art forger, having her current aging employee train her in this lucrative craft before his eyesight goes. Hope you enjoy spending your childhood churning out fake Miros in a windowless warehouse basement “studio,” Sarah!

Crankshaft, 9/12/14

Crankshaft is of course an insufferable asshole, but his name is the title of the strip, which means that he is literally the reason his entire spacetime continuum exists, and everything and everyone else there has been called into being merely to further his story. When you think about it, it’s actually surprising that more characters in the strip haven’t angrily turned their back on God.