Post Content

Folks: next Friday is the first Friday of the month, and you know what that means: my live comedy show, The Internet Read Aloud, is happening Los Angeles!

It’s a great batch of performers this month, so definitely you should come out and watch us!

And, as usual, Uncle Lumpy loves you all too much to choose favorites, but I have no such compunctions, so here’s the best comment of, well, the last couple of days, at least:

“We always assumed that the Phantom was an old colonial imperialist, but think about it! There is an old Bandar compound that stops blood loss and pain, but none of the past Phantoms ever used it to help the hemophiliac descendants of the arch-imperialist Queen Victoria. It also means that there must have been The Ghost Who Enables the Decay of the Tsarist Regime and Opens the Way to the Workers’ Revolution. Maybe when Marx was talking about a spectre haunting Europe, he had something more concrete in mind…” –Ettorre

And the very funny runners up!

“I love how, in his indignation at people questioning his intelligence, he’s also confused about whether or not they’re questioning his intelligence. ‘Hey Cherry? What’s a fuckwit? Is it something good?’” –Thomas Nolte, on Facebook

“I really like how it looks as though Guran is trying to upsell Phantom on some extras. ‘Ok, you’ve got the compound that stops the blood loss and pain, but this one makes sure you don’t get too much scar tissue. And if you have two bottles you really should have the carrying case…’” –pugfuggly

“Whatcha gonna do, Mark, come to my house and slam my head into my keyboard to ‘teach me a lesson’ about making snarky comments about you online? Why don’t you stick to teaching me lessons about the migratory habits of banana slugs you dumb sack ofshufwsepuihgriuhwsefgruiwshrg uiwgruihifgtwerguih
drggegrg greerge4t5efdrgwgtyrehtd” –The Silent Penultimate Panel

“Of course a plugger’s ‘honey-do’ list grows on long weekends. It’s important to keep him busy so they don’t have to spend any time together.” –nescio

“Pluggers adhere to a central doublethink principle where they are simultaneously the principled, hard-working salt of the earth and the laziest bastards in existence.” –TheDiva

“Why don’t they just go the full-on Scandinavian and put slashes through the o’s in ‘Voof‘? In for an øre, in for a krone, I always say.” –Pozzo

Thanks to everyone who became a Comics Curmudgeon Supporter to get an banner-ad-free site, put some scratch in my tip jar, or backed me on Patreon!. And we need to give a big shout-out to our advertisers:

• PicturePunches: Join our community of funny memers who like to earn from their sense of humor.

If you’d like to advertise on the Comics Curmudgeon, and get your very own shoutout in this space, head on over to my BuySellAds page!

Post Content

Hagar the Horrible, 8/30/19

One of the running gags of Hagar the Horrible is of course that it’s The Honeymooners or [insert up-to-date cultural reference to a sitcom where the whole gimmick is that the married couple at the center of it don’t seem to like each other very much and fight all the time], but in a 9th or 10th century Europe under relentless attack by vicious Norse warriors, with said warriors being the viewpoint characters. But every once in a while we see that, despite their constant bickering, Hagar and Helga are indeed a well-matched pair. Does Helga for a single moment indulge herself in sentimentalism about the scores of men and women her husband has slaughtered for plunder, about the whole kingdoms that were torched to keep her in finery? She very much does not.

Pluggers, 8/30/19

Hmm, you’re a plugger if … you have adult responsibilities you have to fulfill before you can engage in recreational activities? And if your family life involves negotiating how much priority to give to those responsibilities with other members of your family? I have bad news for … literally everyone.

Post Content

Folks! I’m back from vacation! Thanks for being so kind to your favorite Uncle Lumpy, and huge thanks for being so kind to me in the summer fundraiser! Those of you donated will be getting a personal thanks from me shortly, but you’re all my beloved pals who help keep this site going! Meanwhile, let’s catch up on what the strips have been up to in my absence! Probably none of them are in the midst of a rambling week-long dialogue that’s obliquely about me personally and the site I run, right?

Mark Trail, 8/29/19

Uhh … Mark …?

Gil Thorp, 8/29/19

Anyhoo, it looks like Gil Thorp is finally zeroing on what this year’s football season plot is going to be! Seems like we’ll be taking on the perennial question, “Can you convince your ungrateful stepchildren to love you by lying to them about how good they are at sports?” Jury’s still out!

The Phantom, 8/29/19

The Phantom has really tried to clean up its act over the past couple of decades, wokeness-wise, but does it occasionally return to its roots: extolling the virtues of a powerful white superhero whose powers are largely the result of resources extracted from the colonized nation he dominates.