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Hi everybody! This is my monthly post introducing new readers with all the stuff that this site has to offer. If you’re totally familiar with all the doodads and hoohahs along the left side of your screen, you can just skip all this; but if you’re not, you might want to read on. Even if you’re a regular, some of this stuff may surprise you! This month, there’s some updates to information about merchandise and advertising, and a special surprise photo.

Here’s some of the features of this site that go beyond the front page!

Archives. This site has been publishing for more than two years now, and every single post is still available for your amusement. Check out the archives menu just below all the advertising (or click here to jump there). You can see all the posts that deal with a particular comic; see all the posts from a particular month; or search on a keyword or phrase. If you’re feeling reckless, you can also click on the Randomly Selected Post O’ Mystery and enjoy an arbitrary entry from the past; this post will change every time you reload the page.

Discussion. Everybody knows that you can put witty comments on each post. But did you know that there’s a full-fledged Comics Curmudgeon discussion board where you can chat with your fellow comics fans? It’s true! You can read the forums without registering, but to participate, you need to sign up for a forums account. Before you sign up to participate there, though, you should read the posting and discussion policies (which apply to comments on the main blog too, for that matter).

Subscribing. Tired of hitting “Refresh” on your browser over and over? Would you like to be alerted every time this blog is updated? You can, thanks to the magic of RSS Webfeeds. Check out the “Subscribe” heading in the left-hand navigational column. Click the “RSS” icon to get the URL to my feed for the newsreader of your choice. Alternately, you can click on any on any of the icons below it to add my site to a variety of popular feed-reading services. You can get updates on your My Yahoo!, My MSN, or Google homepage; add me to your Bloglines or Newsgator page; or even to your Livejournal friends list or your del.icio.us page, with just one click!

If the idea of getting Comics Curmudgeon updates automatically appeals to you but you have no idea what the hell anything in that last paragraph means, feel free to e-mail me and I’ll try to help you out.

Josh’s other comics projects. I do a bit of Comics Curmudgeoning on other sites as well. I write a weekly column called Cartoon Violence on Wonkette, a snarky political blog; it’s pretty much the same schtick as I do here, only with political cartoons, and lots more swearing, and it’s updated every Friday. I also write a short blurb called the Geek Comic of the Week for ITworld.com, a site that focuses on computers and IT; it focuses on Web comics and other cartoons outside of your daily paper with a geeky twist to them, and it’s updated every Sunday night.

Merchandising. Those smiling faces at the bottom of the ad bar aren’t just for show. They’re modeling delightful Comics Curmudgeon gear, which is available for purchase on CafePress! Yes, you can wear and/or drink out of merchandise reminding you of classic Comics Curmudgeon moments, such as “More zippers, mule!”, “In the absence of weights, I am employing isometrics”, Mark Trail’s licorice advice, “Roadside”, Fence Post Frank, inappropriate Chinese food eating banter, and Finger Quotin’ Margo madness. And if you’ve bought some merch and you’d like to join those smiling faces, just take a pic of yourself and send it to me like Naladahc here did:

Advertising. Comics Curmudgeon readers are collectively the best people in the entire world, it goes without saying. Therefore, you’d be wise to market your product or service to them. And you can, by advertising on this site. Thanks to BlogAds, you can do so pretty easily. Just click here to get started. I think you’ll find the rates quite reasonable!

Tipping. “Gosh,” you may very well be saying, “Josh does all this for me; what I can do to make his life a little easier?” Well, you can always put a bit of scratch in my virtual tip jar through the magic of PayPal. Rest assured that every dollar I get allows me to spend less time on my boring real job and more time putting hilarious stuff on my site. Click here to start!

Anyway, thanks to all of you for your support, readership, and hilarious commentary. I’m way too narcissistic to keep doing this without knowing that you’re all out there reading this, so keep it up!

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Pluggers, 7/19/06

With this three-pizza impulse-buy dinner, I begin to see the origin of both Rhino-Man’s rhino-like girth and his serious financial difficulties.

Apartment 3-G, 7/19/06

While you might think that this presages sitcom-style misunderstandings and complications and wackiness, Lucy knows full well, just like the rest of us, that nobody loves Tommie.

Spider-Man, 7/19/06

Hold on, there, Spidey, you forgot to take off your … no, wait, it’s going to be much funnier if he doesn’t realize.

Slylock Fox, 7/19/06

The world’s cheeriest pignappers are stealing the world’s smallest pig from the world’s jumpiest farmer.

Gasoline Alley, 7/19/06

I found this funnier than anything else in the comics today; does that make me a bad person?

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Crock, 7/18/06

If there was ever a time in the thirty-year history of Crock — a comic strip about a group of Western military men engaged in a seemingly unending mission somewhere in the Arab world — in which it ought to by right match up to the geopolitical moment, this is it. Unfortunately, and yet to the surprise of nobody, it hasn’t lived up to the challenge. One doesn’t expect Ph.D.-level theses on interactions between Western and Islamic culture, but one does expect someone identified as a “nomad” to look less like a parody of a cold-war era spy, complete with totally-inappropriate-for-the-desert all-black clothes, and more like, oh, I don’t know, a middle-eastern nomad. Surely a picture could be found in a book or magazine to serve as a guide. Interestingly, the artist may be somewhat embarrassed about this: in panel three, the nomad is forced almost completely out of the frame, giving up screen space to a lovely palm tree.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/18/06

Some of you commentors have reacted to this TDIET with disparaging comments along the lines of “What the hell is wrong with this guy” and “Nobody does this ever.” You people don’t understand that you’re seeing a master at the top of his game. Look at how he diagrams the entire joke for you along the right of the word balloon. In the hands of a lesser artist, revealing how the process works like this would be an open invitation to host of imitators, but even if you see all the individual pieces of the puzzle, you can never fit them together in that oh-so-special TDIET way. It’s like the time I saw Penn and Teller and they did a trick twice, the second time explaining what they were doing as they were doing it, and you still came away amazed. The “P.S.” at the end is just a little reminder that you that this, in fact, is how we roll in They’ll Do It Every Time. Oh yeah!

Marvin, 7/18/06

Ha, ha! You see, in the west, we’d use “sticks and stones,” but in the east, they’d use “bamboo and pebbles.” Because, see, they don’t have trees in China, just bamboo. Lots and lots of bamboo. And pebbles are … um … zen … oh, Christ, this strip is just totally appalling to me.