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Faithful readers, we interrupt our usual programming for this important message: it’s time for the Comics Curmudgeon Fall 2017 Fundraiser!

For more than ten years (!) now, I’ve subbed for Josh to keep things going during vacations and breaks, and hosted fundraisers once or twice a year to help out financially. Things have changed a lot over that time — some strips died, new ones arrived, and more than a few old ones got a new lease on life. Online financing has changed a lot, too, mostly by drying up. So your support means more than ever.

Please help out with a generous contribution. If you haven’t contributed before, consider sending an amount proportional to the enjoyment The Comics Curmudgeon brings you every day — I bet it’s a lot!

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And thank you, generous readers! We now return to our regularly scheduled programming — just click that little arrow down there, that’s it.
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— Uncle Lumpy

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Blondie, 9/18/17

Sometimes I wonder about the Bumsteads’ relationship. They have a sweet romantic backstory: Dagwood gave up his inheritance to marry flapper Blondie (née Boopadoop) for love. And they seem affectionate — kisses in and out the door, shared bed, respectful and brief arguments, even if Blondie seems to get the upper hand more often. No Lockhorns-grade emotional desert, that’s for sure. Still, I’m just not feeling the spark, y’know? Arlo and Janis, Walt and Connie, Darryl and Wanda, Henry and Alice, Frank and Nancy, Ted and Sally; hell, Gil and Mimi — you know those folks got it going on, right?

Maybe 87 years together sands off the highs and lows? Or having a pair of teenagers underfoot since oh, say, 1958 puts a lid on intimacy? Maybe living so long in the public eye encourages an excess of modesty? Not for me to judge.

Anyway, every once and a while like today a co-worker will open a window to the cauldron of longing, passion, and betrayal raging just outside Dagwood’s matrimonial bubble, and it leaves him pensive: Is he missing out on all the excitement? Could Blondie be stepping out on him like that? Did he blow a chance to bang this guy’s wife?

9 Chickweed Lane, 9/18/17

Erstwhile Catholic schoolboy Amos van Hoesen checks his list to see if there’s any sacrament, commandment, or sacred tradition he and his new bride have not yet reduced to a sexual fetish.

“Nope — we’re good, babe!”

Herb and Jamaal, 9/18/17

For this joke to work, you have to believe that Herb a) remembers his wedding year, b) can subtract, and c) hasn’t aged since the strip ran five years ago. Even so, Sarah’s estimate seems way high.

Isn’t it adorable that Herb’s coffee gets mad when he does?

Curtis, 9/18/17

Some guys find dress codes an unbearable affront to their dignity — I guess Curtis is one of those guys; I guess Greg isn’t. But jeez kid, don’t call your father a corporate stooge after all those years he put in at the DMV. He’s a government drone, and don’t you ever forget it.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Arlo and Janis, 4/10/08
Dennis the Menace, 9/17/17

Margaret puts her own dark spin on the Arlo and Janis classic: It was her idea, Dennis, all hers. And she has so very many ideas for you.

Menace level: Grandmistress.

Spider-Man, 9/17/17

Hoo boy, is this strip ripping off Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or what: underground standoff, chalice of immortality, unstable geology, icy-hot villainess — the works.

Now Tyrannus here is an evil guy, no doubt: he usurped a kingdom from good ol’ Melvin the Mole Man, busted up his wedding, put him in chains, talked endlessly about killing him, yada yada. But Spider-Man’s plan is to deprive a desperate old man of the cheap, plentiful resource he needs to postpone his degeneration and death? Brr. Dude, you’re a super-hero, remember?

“Next: Hiding Aunt May’s digitalis!”

Phantom, 9/17/17

Speaking of stretching the limits of heroism, seriously Phantom, I know Prince Valiant set a precedent, but you gotta crucify these guys? (OK those aren’t technically crosses, but what else: “isocelate”?)

And isn’t Guran reaching for the blackout powder just a little too often? Last time I looked, that was for enemies, or at least mildly inconvenient nosy reporters. But he may need a lot more of it once it dawns on these cops that the sketchy rando who shows up out of nowhere and starts explaining the crime to them is pretty obviously the perp. Has nobody in this godforsaken backwater seen a single episode of Law and Order?

— Uncle Lumpy