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Blondie, 6/23/20

Man, what’s your favorite facial expression in today’s Blondie? Is it Dagwood in panel two, stone-cold going nuts that his supplier has found another way to escalate the intensity of his food consumption, to help him keep chasing that ever-elusive high? Or is it the firefighter in panel three, who needs the overtime he’s getting working this job but can’t help but feel that his noble profession is being insulted and degraded?

Hi and Lois, 6/23/20

Congratulations to Hi and Lois, which has managed to find the pettiest gripe possible to base on a daily strip on. Confidential to the rest of the newspaper comics industry: the gauntlet has been thrown down, time to up your game!

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Mark Trail, 6/22/20

Just because life is a rich tapestry, the whole Funky Winkerbean plotline where they’re making a movie about material we’ve already seen in earlier comics never fails to send me into an absolute rage, whereas I am very excited about this upcoming Mark Trail plotline, in which some hot-shot movie producers (having communicated with the IP rights holders via a message sent in a manila envelope, like you do) want to make a movie about an adventure Mark had back in 2015 and 2016! You remember this thrilling tale of white nose syndrome and human trafficking, don’t you? It started with Mark talking bat illness with an amiable academic, and then brushed up against some human traffickers out there in the desert, who dynamited them into a cave, where they were trapped for month after month after interminable month, until they managed to swim out. This all has “third act problems,” as they say in the biz, but I’m sure the geniuses at the Hollywood dream factory will smooth it all out, and because Mark isn’t a whiny little pissbaby like Les Moore, instead of lurking around the set fuming with his arms crossed not talking to anybody, he’ll just say “The movie business sure is interesting, Rusty!” and cash his option check.

Crankshaft, 6/22/20

Speaking of Funky Winkerbean, we all know that Funky Winkerbean is ten years in the future from Crankshaft, but the fact that autonomous cars are cruising through residential Ohio neighborhoods in Crankshaft indicates that Crankshaft is several years in the future from us. So the good news is that Mason is trying to put together funding to make Lisa’s Story: The Movie just as the entire movie industry is about to finally collapse because everyone is just watching short homemade porn clips on their phone for entertainment now.

The Phantom, 6/22/20

Sorry that I haven’t been keeping you up to date on The Phantom, and I’m not really going to bother catching you up now, but I do want let you know that a flaming skeleton has been berating our hero for like a whole week now and it’s been glorious.

The Lockhorns, 6/22/20

OH MY GOD THAT MUTANT OPERA SINGER IS AT LEAST 40 FEET TALL

RUN, LEROY AND LORETTA, RUN

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Funky Winkerbean, 6/21/20

Imagine you’re a relatively normal person, who only has as context to assess today’s Funky Winkerbean the last couple days of strips where Les is worried that the actresses being tested for Lisa are too young and sexy. Maybe you even remember that there was an earlier, abortive stab at making this movie, where it was going to be called Lust for Lisa, and Les only agreed to sign on for this version because Mason agreed to tell the story “the right way,” and even then he was dubious. With that as background, your read on the absolutely insane dialogue from the script that we see in today’s strip would probably be that in fact the entire project is clearly going off the rails.

But you’re not a normal person! You’re a dedicated reader of the Comics Curmudgeon, and “once the chemo starts, this playground will be closed for repairs” has been permanently burned into your brain for the last 14 years, ever since the dialogue from today’s strip played out in Les and Lisa’s real, actual life.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/25/06

I’m not really sure why Les felt compelled to change “Summer’s in bed” to “Summer’s at her grandma’s”; I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to have sex when your kid is in the same house as you! But the important thing is that, yes, this dialogue we’re seeing is the story being told the right way. If only we could find an actress who can satisfy Les’s exacting specifications, which I assume are “can say this dialogue without visibly recoiling in disgust.”

Mark Trail, 6/21/20

It really makes Mark, who’s nattering on about larvae and fresh scabs while Cherry grimaces silently at him over her morning coffee, seem like husband of the year, doesn’t it?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/21/20

God damn it, Snuffy Smith, I thought talk of “all these father’s day cards” was setting up the long-awaited big reveal of where Jughaid’s real father has been all this time! But nope, it’s just another joke about the notorious laziness of Hootin’ Holler’s residents.