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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/4/20

“Get lost, kid; can’tcha see I’m working? Go huff glue or something.”

Judge Parker, 9/4/20

Producer Ellen knows the score. Don’t confront a hysterical narcissist who has the attention span of a gnat. Just spool out empathetic-sounding noises until she loses track and falls into incoherent screaming.

Kevin and Kell, 9/4/20

Net neutrality is a policy that regulates Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as common carriers. ISPs generally hate net neutrality, because it doesn’t let them prioritize, meter, block, or differentially price different types or volumes of traffic. So Kevin is acting against his own interests here — maybe he’s a customer-service-driven altruist? We’ll see what happens when a couple basement-dwelling teenagers choke his routers with game and porn downloads from The Pirate Bay.

Or maybe haha he’s a rabbit and doesn’t want to be a tortoise.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/4/20

Ol’ Grimm is on remarkably good terms with his parasites.

For Better or For Worse, 9/4/20

Long-time readers will remember when For Better or For Worse was a BIG DEAL here at The Comics Curmudgeon. I remain impressed at the author’s gall in promising “new-runs” that would blend legacy strips into new material to create a “Michael and Meredith nostaligize” narrative, only to drop that pretense the instant editors fell for the scam, offering instead flat-out reruns for the next thirteen years.

One of the strip’s unresolved puzzles was how insufferable Michael and vapid Elizabeth could Do No Wrong (even in the choice of the execrable Anthony as her spouse), while relatably human younger daughter April could never catch a goddamn break. Here, in recap, we see the exact moment April was ostracized. It appears that Les Moore may not actually be the biggest asshole in comics!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Judge Parker, 9/3/20

Oh c’mon people, this show should obviously and entirely be about April Bowers-Parker. Norton is comic relief, Godiva’s dead foot showed up in one frame, and her vengeance-crazed Austrian producer/druglord/CIA-stooge boyfriend didn’t even rate a name. Neddy? Two lines and a Supporting Cast credit as “Entitled Girl,” best case.

And don’t forget that Neddy and Ronnie rewrote the script to April’s specifications at gunpoint. April put “her truth … her life” in Neddy’s hands, demanded Neddy not disappoint her, and threatened murder if the studio made revisions to the script. So if this doesn’t turn out to be April’s story, Neddy’s gonna die, ’cause April’s nuts, yo. All in all, pretty terrific television!

But does any of this matter to Neddy? Nope. I wouldn’t even be surprised to see her set up a hit of her own, to stop more interesting people from stealing all that sweet attention.

Beetle Bailey, 9/3/20

I’m delighted to learn Mort Walker isn’t really dead, but alarmed that his human form is being eradicated line by line in some afterlife purgatorium while his creatures grin and wave.

Phantom, 9/3/20

One of my least favorite Spider-Man and Silver Age Superman tropes is the Secret Identity Crisis, as in: “Oh Jeez, somebody took a photo of me rescuing a bunch of Burmese kids and now they want to make a stamp out of the photo and when they postmark the stamp the O’s in “Rangoon” will frame my eyes like glasses and everybody will realize I’m Clark Kent!” But I think the Walkers have legitimate grounds for concern here. Kadia Sahara knows that Heloise’s Dad is a mysterious well-built guy who never shows his eyes, is good at heroics, and is in with Bangalla’s President. Mom Imara has seen — in and out of costume — a mysterious well-built guy who never shows his eyes, is good at heroics, and can be reached by mailing a letter to the Walkers. Connect the dots, Saharas!

And Walkers, change either that “Ghost Who Walks” tagline or your family name: “The Schwimmers” has a nice ring to it!

Hello, faithful readers! I’m letting Josh out of quarantine for a well-deserved break through Sunday the 13th; reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if you have any problems with the site.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Hi everyone! Your eyes do not deceive you: this is a truncated comments of the week post, because I’m doing a truncated week of blogging! Your favorite Uncle Lumpy is coming by tomorrow to do some guest blogging, while I take a relaxing vacation at an undisclosed location. Be nice to him, and each other! I’ll be back in the blogging saddle on Monday, September 14th, and as usual, Uncle Lumpy loves you all too much to try to choose a favorite commenter, so this week’s winner will stay up at the top of the site for a bit:

“‘Are you Corina Karenna?’ ‘Why? Are you authority?’ Oh man this bad girl with a heart of gold is gonna need so much of the discipline and integrity you only get from organized sports.” –Dan

This week’s runners up will also stand the test of time!

“‘That’s impossible!’ thinks Slylock, who has been mind-controlled into believing that the Acme Mind-Controlling Crown Company, a well-established corporation two towns over, can’t logically exist. (Their actual slogan is ‘We’re Space Aliens From From a Galaxy 5 Million Miles Away, So Your Friend or Neighbor Couldn’t Possibly Be Using Our Products on You!’) Slylock has also been made to believe he’s a hyperintelligent fox with extensive law-enforcement training, when he’s really only a moderately intelligent fox who attended a lesser state university.” –BigTed

“Shoe’s joke is so incredibly stupid that it annoys me and then I’m annoyed that I’m letting Shoe annoy me. Why a woodpecker? Why, dammit? Who’s eating those chickens? Can’t we have Shoe removed from the papers by a court order or something? So many questions.” –Chance

“I don’t know, but yours is going to be sent to Elon Musk’s orbiting nursing home satellites as soon as we can get the technology nailed down.” –Christine Lehman, on Facebook

“‘Corina Karenna‘ is what you call your protagonist when the Tolstoy estate refuses to endorse your Anna Karenina porn parody.” –Schroduck

“When I started my first corporate job, it was well-known that any email from our VP had actually been typed up by his secretary, per his dictation. I used to think this was just a power thing, but I later learned that he never typed anything at all. That’s because he couldn’t type, and had in fact had never used a computer and never planned to. This was 20 years ago, and it while it was slightly odd then, it would be unheard of now, where the current, 55-year old VP conducts business on his phone 24/7, and you can’t get him off it long enough to pay attention in a meeting. The point I’m trying to make is, the 3rd panel of Dustin should be: ‘Dude, shut the fuck up.’” –Carsick Yankee

“‘Reckless‘ behavior can be surprisingly tame for people who sit around all day pretending to be restrained by imaginary straight jackets.” –nescio

“Cayla doesn’t want Les running off, she needs to produce a body and a death certificate to collect on that insurance policy. Her first attempt didn’t quite pan out, but we’re all still rooting for you, Cayla. Don’t give up.” –K.M.

“The trope ‘A number of women greater than one struggle for Les’s affection’ is the Funkyverse’s worst trope. Please bring back depression/comic books/comic book-related depression.” –Ettorre

“Let’s do something reckless tonight — let’s reference Scrabble without putting the little circle-R symbol after its name. Come and get us, Hasbro!” –Pozzo

“My favourite part of this strip is the smile on the snake’s face, almost as if this whole gag was his idea. If this was a Chick tract, in the next panel that snake would definitely be telling Denis to skip church and listen to heavy metal.” –pugfuggly

“‘I gotta say, Will Thayer looks like he lived in the weight room all summer.’ ‘Yeah, he’s pretty disheveled all right. Do you really think he’s homeless?’ ‘Uh, that’s not what I meant. I … you know what? On second thought, let’s just enjoy this beautiful day in silence.’” –Joe Blevins

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