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Your comment of the week is here for your enjoyment!

“We are discounting the possibility that Mary’s ‘vegetables’ were just real roots of some remnant plants long dead in the gardens around her condo, and that Drew was just too polite to call her out on it. But that opens the possibility that the ‘roast lamb’ could also have been some available horrifying remnant, such as Saul’s dachshund.” –McManx

Please also enjoy these delightful runners up!

This whole strip is a wonderful cavalcade of dopey facial expressions and gestures but for my money the best is Rex in that final panel. ‘Like ice cream?’ he says, holding up his hands like a fisherman telling a story. ‘I only know it by the shape of the box. It is incompatible with my Soylent diet…’” –pugfuggly

This strip is very upsetting to me because I’d always thought of Joey as a character with no inner life whatsoever and no outstanding personality traits to speak of. He exists only to be a sidekick/accomplice to Dennis Mitchell. He’s a blank slate. His shirt literally has a big zero on it. Now, suddenly, Joey can’t sleep? Does this mean he has thoughts that keep him awake at night? Is he tortured by guilt over what he and Dennis have done over the decades?” –Joe Blevins

Joey is five so if anyone asks him how old he is he says, ‘Time? I have transcended time. I swim in the infinite.’” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“Leafblowers are the worst, most annoying thing to listen to, and I hate it every time my neighbors use one for simple tasks that could be accomplished by a rake or a broom. Seriously, who needs to blow the sidewalk? Anyway, these hellish devices cause so much disturbance and discomfort that I’m surprised that an established misanthrope like Crankshaft only owns one.” –Larry McAwful

Mason has had Lisa’s body exhumed and discovered that it’s miraculously preserved! He’s already filed the paperwork with the Vatican and the lengthy process of canonisation is underway. The nominated second miracle is that time two women fought over Les.” –Truckosaurus

“Of course Jeff doesn’t understand romantic relationships. He hasn’t been in one for years.” –Inspector Gotcha

“You can’t post the same thing on all social media platforms — it must fit the style of the medium! First, you post the original video on Instagram, where it becomes a huge success. Then you remix the original video with some popular music for TikTok. Some months later, the video is uploaded to Facebook, for the joy of grandparents. Finally, it gets to Twitter, in the form of a 45-tweet thread on how videos are problematic (‘Turning entertainment into capitalistic consumption’), zoos are problematic (‘They educate children to accept carceral institutions for the sake of the inmates’), children are problematic (‘reproduction is offensive to people who don’t do sex too often’), and polar bears are problematic (‘not only are they white, but they culturally appropriated fur from brown and black bears!’)” –Ettorre

“‘Didn’t you go through something SIMILAR?’ says Mary as she sinks the needle into Drew’s neck. ‘It seems we’ll have to continue THE TREATMENTS until we can break this cycle of self-sabotage!’” –ArtOfWargames, on Twitter

“Mommy and Daddy don’t worry about keeping the kids away from the edge at the Grand Canyon. They know Dead Grandpa will be there to catch them when they fall. At least, that’s the reasoning their lawyers will present in court when arguing for an insanity verdict.” –GeoGreg

“Based on their expressions, Dennis knows this is BS and Gina knows this is BS, but still they must go through this farce for their comic overlords. ‘Are you amused?!?’ their dying souls cry out.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“I’m marveling at Grimm’s look of defeat and disappointment at the total lack of professionalism on the part of the veterinary staff. So intense is his feeling that’s it’s overcome the otherwise overwhelmingly horrific pain and madness of rabies itself. I mean, look at this poor dog! He knows he’s done for, he knows it’s his fault, and all he wants is the solace and comfort that is the lethal dose of barbiturates that can only be gotten from the very people fleeing him in panic.” –Effluvius Erratus

“There’s an impressive amount of patriarchy to unpack in just two panels of Beetle Bailey, but let’s start with the vacuum cleaner drawn based on a vague description by the artist’s secretary.” –Francisco Arrowroot

“Just promise me, Les. Promise me… that you won’t bury me in Ohio.” –jroggs

Changing the aspect ratio for every shot is a bold visual choice. I hope they’re being more conservative with the audio mix, though, and optimizing it for airline headphones.” –Flipper

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/13/21

So, in case you haven’t been keeping track and/or want to feel a million years old, Lisa’s death in Funky Winkerbean happened [dramatic music sting] almost 14 years ago at this point. And you’d think, in theory at least, that ongoing syndicated media products like Funky Winkerbean would have as a goal, if only an aspirational one, that they have some regular readers today, in the year 2021, who weren’t regular readers in 2007, and would tailor their content accordingly. You’d think that! But then you apparently haven’t reckoned with the sheer dramatic intensity of characters watching actors re-enacting strips from 2007, while expressing no visible emotions of any kind.

Mark Trail, 8/13/21

So Mark is going to punch [checks Wikipedia] the lakes of southern Russia and Ukraine? He’s gonna unleash the right fist o’ justice on [scrolls deeper into article] the ballast water of ocean-going ships traversing the St. Lawrence Seaway??? He’s going to use his crushing right cross to get to the root of the problem, which is [keeps on scrolling, surely it’s here somewhere] trailered boat traffic? Can we stop trailered boat traffic, with punching? We’re gonna find out!

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Mark Trail, 8/12/21

Oh, uh, the “Mark parties with influencers” storyline has wrapped up, and I’m not going to describe everything that happened (it was confusing?) but there was definitely punching. Now Bill Ellis is assigning Mark to a new editor who works for a member of Woods & Wildlife’s family of trusted brands: Hot Catch’s print run ended in 2011 and now it’s a blog with six to eight mostly aggregated content items per day, but it does have a freelance budget for the stories that it knows will bring in those clicks. And the W&W audience development team has determined exactly what that magic element is: Mark punching somebody. Will Mark be punching people violating fishing conservation laws, or just punching the fish themselves?

Dennis the Menace, 8/12/21

We established years ago that Dennis has achieved at least basic literacy, which raises a lot of questions about today’s panel. Is he doing a gender-reversed version of the thing where girls pretend to be dumb so boys will like them? I leave it to you to decide if the overall terribleness of this strategy is mitigated by the menace to the patriarchy that this particular move represents.

Beetle Bailey, 8/12/21

In order for the rhythm of this interchange to work, we have to assume that General Halftrack already has that bottle of liquor in his right hand in panel one, just out of our sight. I was going to say that he was wandering around the house with the bottle, waiting for the perfect setup for him to unleash a bon mot as he poured himself a glass, but based on his well-known disdain for his wife, perhaps any interaction with her would serve as a suitable trigger.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/12/21

A couple weeks ago we learned that Grimm is dead, and being tortured eternally in hell. “But how did he die?” you probably wondered. The answer is revealed in today’s flashback strip: it’s rabies. He didn’t get his rabies shot, and then he contracted rabies, which killed him.