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Oh boy! The week’s top comment is here!

“Aw, I like the look on the judge’s face. ‘One star in the sky, you say? All right, I’ll allow it. But I’ll warn you, counsel … you’d better be going somewhere with this.’” –Dan

And the runners up are here too! Huzzah!

“Max is sitting at Buford’s table taking notes. Is … is he on Buford’s legal team? Does the New Animal Order allow for counsel separate from the prosecutorial team, and indeed separate from the investigators who build the legal case? Does animal law follow the French legal system, with its assumption of guilt on the part of the accused? There’s a reason Max gets strapped to so many experimental aircraft, is what I’m saying. He’s a terrible lawyer.” –pastordan

“Low’eezy was already pregnant when she married Snuffy and yet while they look middle aged they only have one infant son and a live-in nephew. There’s at least one tragic story here, probably several.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

“It’s bad enough that Slylock is somehow both the lead detective and state prosecutor, but now he’s also testifying on witnesses’ behalf. One day Sly will realize he can just steal bikes and window pies himself and thus complete his monopoly on crime/law enforcement roles.” –jroggs

“‘Grandma still uses a landline and the postal service, but what’s really strange is that corners of her house meet at euclidian angles and her head doesn’t pop off of her body and crawl along the walls’ –Billy, saying too much to a child who can now never leave the Keane household.” –iagbegreg

“[chuckles to self] Those kids on the playground … how they laughed at my rigorous utilitarian and solitary training on the slide — even eschewing the corkscrew slide as it was unlikely to be used in an emergency. Well who’s laughing NOW?” –Foodar

“I’m thinking if you show up at practice with that haircut, I won’t let you in. I mean, Jesus, kid, do you even have a mirror at home?” –The Mighty Untrained FOOZLE

“That ‘whoa’ may have briefly fooled us into thinking he’s a real kid, but doing the Charleston after landing immediately disabused us of that notion.” –Jenna

“Rusty’s ‘Say you’re interested in the thing your dad does and the girl you like might send you a sample of it‘ gambit intrigues me, mostly because my dad was a nuclear engineer.” –matt w

“Is Toby gaslighting her husband? ‘You are those things … to me. Other people though think you’re old and repulsive so don’t even consider leaving this totally healthy marriage.’” –Escape Zeppelin

“‘I struggled with grading Jannie fairly.‘ ‘So her name’s Jannie Fairley? I never knew her last name.’ ‘No, what I meant was … yeah, yeah, her last name’s Fairley.’” –Pozzo

“Earlier: ‘Rusty is still just a stupid kid who reads comic books.’ Today: ‘I LOVE reading the funny pages.’ Mark is definitely a complex guy, containing multitudes.” –Everything Is Better With Monkeys

“Blondie must play a dangerous game: enough food scent to sexually arouse her husband, not enough to awaken his obvious cannibal tendencies.” –Ettorre

“I can only imagine how disgusted Rex is when he looks around at his fellow passengers. Each year, the American Posture Association spends millions educating the public about the dangers of slouching — brochures, PSAs, robocalls — and still the message isn’t getting out there.” –Joe Blevins

“So…the plane they were on was so ramshackle that there’s no working radio equipment on it or other way to trace their location? I’m starting to think Mr. ‘I’m going to sue’ Hawaiian shirt guy is actually the most realistic and relatable character in this storyline.” –Her Father, John Darling

“No, really, Max. I’m desperate for a win, here! Rub this salve on your face to cause a reaction that looks like acne, and talk about Pogs and Furbies and whatever else kids are into these days” –JJ48

“The terrible empty Entity of which Dagwood is but a protrusion into our reality prefers that there be no witnesses to its ritualistic feeding.” –Dread

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Blondie, 2/15/19

Look, while it’s conventional wisdom that legacy strips somehow remain lucrative enough to pay ghost writers and other gagsmiths, I don’t have any specific knowledge of what goes on behind any particular strip. Officially, Blondie has been written by Dean Young, son of strip creator Chic Young, since 1973 — literally as long as I’ve been alive — and beyond that one can only speculate. Still, I recognize creative exhaustion when I see it; all I can say is that back in 2005 whoever was behind the strip was still enjoying themselves, coming with absurd names for characters like Glambaster just for the sheer silliness of it. But now, fourteen years later, it’s a different, and much grimmer story. “These people, uh, they don’t like it when you’re late. What should we call them. Uh. Time. Clock. Clock … ers? Clockers. There. Done. What was that, Friday’s strip? Just one more to go for the week, thank Christ.”

Beetle Bailey, 2/15/19

I once was a groomsman in a Catholic wedding where the sermon started off nice and went quite long, and I tuned out for a little bit and then when I started listening again the priest was in the middle of a story about how his parents has a huge fight with each other at a McDonald’s because they couldn’t fully love each other because they didn’t love Jesus. “This seems like an odd childhood story to dig up in this context,” I thought, but then it became clear that I had missed the setup and the fight had actually happened less than a month prior to the wedding, at which point I thought “This just seems to reflect badly on your persuasive powers as a professional clergyman, Father.” Anyway, should Chaplain Staneglass have advised Beetle and Sarge that fellowship in Christ might improve their relationship rather than just telling them tautologically “you’d be nicer to each other if you were nicer to each other”? Maybe, since you’d think he would have some sense of how profoundly emotionally damaged Sarge is and realize that heavy spiritual artillery is in order.

Gil Thorp, 2/15/19

We all of course remember B/Robby Howley, the student basketball manager who perpetrated the entirely victimless crime of hooking a player up with fake Adderral, who for his trouble was banished to the rec center and would grow up to become twisted and hell-bent on revenge. But whatever happened to Max Bacon, the other participant in that transaction, the one who incessantly badgered and guilt-tripped poor B/Robby who finally came up with his hare-brained fake pill scheme just to get him off his back? He’s grown a beard and stopped bleaching his hair and is totally still in Gil’s good graces when he comes back to his old high school to yuck it up! Remember, it’s natural for an athlete to use any means necessary to compete at the highest level, and it’s the moral responsibility of those around them to not fulfill their expressed wishes.

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Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody! Which of today’s valentine-themed comics is the most depressing?

Blondie, 2/14/19

Is it Blondie, where the title character is an eternally youthful bombshell yet still needs to go to increasingly grotesque lengths to elicit the sexual interest of her food-obsessed husband?

Beetle Bailey, 2/14/19

Is it Beetle Bailey, where the title character has fallen asleep and his girlfriend is using him like a sex doll, but for feelings? (I somehow find the glass on the end table here particularly evocative; I assume Beetle, committed to never ingesting any stimulant that might impede his ability to doze off, took a few sips of room temperature tap water before slipping into blessed unconsciousness mid-date.)

Mark Trail, 2/14/19

Is it Mark Trail, where Cherry wistfully remembers the time where there were romance comic strips, the sort of comic strips where a character might get her emotional and physical needs met once in a while, you know?

Six Chix, 2/14/19

Is it Six Chix, where this lady is on a date with a sock puppet? You know, the extremely normal and relatable situation where you meet someone and they turn out to be a human arm inside a sock that has eyes sewed on it?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/14/19

In fact, to find true emotional fulfillment in today’s strips, we need to go beyond the world of traditional romantic attachment. For instance, imagine that you’re a ham radio operator who lives out in a desolate wasteland. Not a lot of opportunities to go on dates out there, of course. But now imagine a plane full of people suddenly arrives, their cell phones useless. They need to be able to communicate with the outside world somehow … using some kind of radio apparatus … perhaps one operated on an amateur basis. This is it. The moment has arrived. Other people dream about the day they stand at the altar, before their family and friends, to be united forever with their beloved. You’ve been dreaming about this.