Wednesday, August 31, 2016

How Much Is That Apple and Orange Soda?


Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
Snuffy doesn't seem like someone who would buy an apple when there are plenty of them around that he could just steal.

Blondie
How fitting. We opened the month with Bumstead neighbors The Gabbers and we close the month with Bumstead neighbors The Gabalots. It's nice to have a comic strip that bookends the month.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Even for a Right-Leaning Caricature, It's Still a Bad Resemblance


Mallard Fillmore
Is Tinsley seriously using Sean Hannity's website as a legitimate source? It's slightly better than those few times I've seen him use Breitbart and Drudge Report, but it's still not legitimate.

Family Circus
Hey, two days of modern pop culture. Let's see if Jeff keeps it up.

Monday, August 29, 2016

Daily Corpse Theatre


Funky Winkerbean
Oh, good. It's not an Alzheimer's storyline. It's not a dementia storyline. It's not a stroke or heart attack storyline. It's a chronic traumatic encephalopathy storyline.

Judge Parker and Mary Worth

"Refilling my prescription entails me going to half a dozen doctors first and then going to half a dozen pharmacies. But I shouldn't have told you that."

People are commenting about how good the art on these two strips have been over the last couple weeks (Judge Parker) and month (Mary Worth). It's not surprising to me considering I am familiar with Mike Manley and June Brigman's work in comic books, specifically Batman during the Knightfall storyline, and Supergirl in the mid 1990s. I'm a fan of both of their work although I am hoping Marciuliano and Manley aren't going to turn Judge Parker into a macabre comic strip of corpses.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Randy #8

Randy ate a bowl of cereal standing against the kitchen sink an hour before work when Brian came out of Erin’s bedroom. “Oh, good. That’s started up again,” Randy said.

“I did not know you’d be here,” Brian said.

“I live here.”

“I mean, I thought you’d be at work. Wait, why am I acting ashamed? I’m an adult, what we did was consensual, and I happen to like having sex with your sister,” Brian said.

“Hmm, more’s going to come up than down,” Randy looked at his cereal. He rinsed out the bowl and dried his hands on a dish towel. “What are you up to today?”

“Going to be driving around with Kate taking her to job interviews and apartment complexes. It’s going to be fun.”

“Sounds like it. So are you going to be seeing Erin regularly again?” Randy asked.

“No, I’m pretty it was just a one-time thing. Because we were both kind of drunk. It was just for fun,” Brian explained.

“Too bad. I’m trying to get us to a point where we are all dating someone at the same time. We’ve never had that before.”

“Last I knew, none of us are anywhere near dating anyone,” Brian said.

“Sure we are. I met Jackson, Jess has that coworker guy.”

“Oh, yeah. A guy you literally met yesterday and a guy whose name you don’t remember,” Brian laughed. “Perfect dating material.”

“Let’s not forget that Kate and Chrissy don’t have anyone hovering around them at the moment.”

“Maybe you could hover around them.”

“Both of them? I’m not saying that I haven’t thought about it but the odds of it happening is literally every single number to one.”

“Well, at least you get to hover around Kate today.”


The Climate Doctor Even Has a Spit-Curl!!!


Family Circus
What the hell is PJ doing to himself?

Curtis
Hey, a Curtis comic strip where Curtis is actually right. Stop opening the dressing room door, Mom. Just hold onto the pants until I am ready to come out. This is why I put you in that home, Mom!!

panels from Rex Morgan, M.D.
Look at the disdain on Rex's face. "I am a doctor, after all. I'm better than all of you. Than everyone, actually."

Funky Winkerbean
So what's the percentage of Funky Winkerbean readers who understand the Dr. Jor-El reference? Greater than 50%? What about people who don't read Funky ironically?

Barney & Clyde

Saturday, August 27, 2016

Tauy Creek Digest #23: Three Times With Lana

Lana was standing in front of the vending machine deciding what to get. She sat behind Jason at work so the two of them had started getting along and becoming friends. Jason stood in the doorway to the break room, looking at Lana. She was shorter than him by several inches, overweight with a round belly and chubby cheeks. She had brown hair dyed blonde and wore glasses. Jason went up to Lana as she was selecting Nacho Cheese Doritos.

"Hey, Lana," Jason said.

"Hey, Jason."

"I had the same idea," Jason said holding out a handful of change. "I have a question. I have to take my car to a mechanic this morning so I was wondering if you could come with me and give me a ride home. We could stop for coffee or something."

Later that morning, Jason dropped his car off with a mechanic who would look at the problem and call him back with a price. Jason got into Lana's car and she drove to the nearest coffee shop. "Thanks for the coffee," Lana said, taking a sip.

"No problem. It's the least I could do. Thanks for chauffeuring me around this morning."

"It's just for the morning. I've been wanting to get to know you outside of work anyway," Lana said.

"I am pretty amazing," Jason laughed. "Sorry our first hang out isn't under more exciting circumstances."

"We have to start somewhere," Lana took another sip of her coffee and then belched loudly.

Jason noticed the other patrons took to look at them. "That was loud. And rude," he said softly.

"What do you do when your car isn't in the shop?"

"If I have any errands to do then I do them. Usually I just go home, watch some TV, then go to bed. I then usually wake up in the early evening, watch more TV then get ready for work," Jason went through his typical day. "I'm assuming it's the same for you."

"Just about."

They finished their coffee, talking about things they like to do when not at work. As they walked back to Lana's car, Jason's phone rang. "Hello? Really? Okay, go ahead and do it. How long will it take? Okay. Give me a call when you're done," he hung up. "That was the mechanic. It's not going to cost as much as I thought. They'll call me back when my car is done. You can take me home now."

"Let's just go back to my place," Lana suggested. "You'll have to get out and go get your car later anyway."




They had started making out and wound up in her bed together. When they were finished, Lana spent some time catching her breath. "You're the first guy to go down on me," she said.

"Really?" Jason questioned whether that was true but why would someone lie about that?

"Yep. Wish someone would've done it sooner," Lana laughed and got out of bed. She walked toward the bathroom and shouted back at Jason, "I'm going to hop in the shower. Feel free to join."

Jason continued laying in bed until he heard the water. He got out of bed and began looking around her bedroom. He opened her dresser drawers and looked at her socks, pants, underwear, and found her vibrator. He sat back down on her bed when his phone rang. "Hello? Okay, great. I'll be there to pick it up as soon as possible," Jason got up and went to the bathroom. "My car is done."

"Okay. I'm almost finished," she said.

Jason put his clothes back on and waited for Lana to finish showering. She dropped him off at the mechanics and they went their separate ways, neither one acting fine with the decision that they made. At work, they kept the conversation light but minimal. Two days later, Lana was the one who approached Jason. "Hey, what's up?" he asked.

"I have a friend coming by this morning and I was wondering if you'd like to come over. He's bringing over some pot," Lana convinced.

"Sure, I'll follow you home. Thanks for the invite," Jason smiled.

Lana and Jason finished the pot that her friend had brought over and were again in her bed, having sex. It was louder and more boisterous than their previous time but when they were finished, they were more accepting of the roles that they found themselves in. Jason stayed the day and rode into work with Lana but they took care to stay away from saying they were in a relationship.

They didn't spend any time together over the weekend but got together the following Monday. They went to his apartment this time, it was her idea to have sex and he invited her over because he just wanted to sleep. When they were finished, Jason walked Lana out.

"Do you want to go have lunch?" Lana asked suddenly.

"What?" Jason asked.

"I'm hungry after that workout. Do you want to get lunch?"

Jason hesitated with an answer to several seconds before acquiescing. They ate at a Mexican chain restaurant, taking their time. When they returned to Jason's apartment, Lana kissed him good-bye and he drowsily went up to his apartment, into his bedroom and collapsed on the bed. Sleep came slowly as he thought about Lana. "If we have sex again," he said out loud, "I will formally start dating her."




It was almost a week before Jason and Lana spent time alone. Jason was feeling horny and, mimicking how this all started, cornered Lana in the break room. "Hey, Lana."

"Hey, Jason. It's been awhile."

"It has. I was wondering if you'd want to grab breakfast this morning and maybe stay at my place," Jason offered.

"I would love to but I have a breakfast date with John today," Lana revealed. John was another coworker. Jason had noticed them getting chummy but didn't think anything about it. "Sorry."

"Not a problem. Glad to see you and John together. My offer is open whenever you want."

"Good to know. I'll see you, Jason."

"I'll see you, Lana."

Saturday Quickies


Judge Parker
You call the police. They are only a couple miles away on the main road. But no, go ahead and continue calling your radio show.

Blondie
The candidate promised to make sandwiches great again.

Friday, August 26, 2016

What's Stan Smith Doing There?



I actually own this game. I owned a lot of really bad Nintendo games but this one took the cake because, while most bad games are still games, this one was really if you had six minutes to spare and said "Hey, I should play some Nintendo."

Where's Waldo, however, does carry some emotional baggage with it. My Grandma got me Where's Waldo for Christmas one year. I believe I picked it out from a JC Penny's or Sears Wishlist Catalog so no one was really sure what they were getting into when this bought this thing. My Grandma never knew how bad of a game it was although if she is able to follow me around online up in Heaven, she knows now, and I've kept the game because she got it for me.

I believe my cousin and I beat the game almost immediately and I spent the next several Nintendo-filled years beating it again and again because I had very few games. The graphics, as you can see from the video, are terrible, it's not really fun, and there is no reward--just Waldo landing on the Moon.

Mark Trail
"What? Why? All I've done is cause one or two boats in my possession to explode but it was all for the good of the planet!"

Crock
Either the poison used is one that you can smell or there is a guy laying dead on the floor in a pool of his own vomit just off-panel.

Marvin
"Hey, it's Tom Armstrong's birthday next week."

"Who?"

"He draws Marvin."

"Ah. How do you know it's his birthday?"

"He's been writing about all week in Marvin."

"Well, we'll throw him a party but it'll be Friday afternoon at 4:55."

Beetle Bailey
Ignoring General Halftrack's debilitating forgetfulness for a second, I originally thought Private Blips was looking at husky memes on her computer but is instead doing something about the UCONN Huskies. That's much less interesting.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Just Divide the Room With a Sheet


Family Circus
Jeffy's cool eyes of "Yet another swear I can keep under my belt just in case" is great. Jeffy's not even five and already he knows that parents will swear like a drunken sailor on shore for the weekend and no amount of "never use that word" will keep kids from saying them anyway.

The Amazing Spider-Man
Oop, Spidey found Ant-Man--the only way Spider-Man knows how.

Curtis
Curtis' dad must've been one of the last people hired who went "Starting my job at the DMV! My life is really going to take off from here!"

Mark Trail
"I'm intrigued, Mark - go on!"

"...Really? Most people just roll their eyes and nod in agreement when I talk about stuff like this. Oh, wait. You're paid to give a damn about what I say. Please give me a boat allowance."

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

They Should Go Crafting


Mary Worth
I don't know about other people but the last thing I wanted to do when a girl broke up with me was hang out with my mom. It will be fun to see Iris find Tommy buried under hundreds of prescription bottles. Here's hoping this storyline is almost over.

Beetle Bailey
Ah. So this is how the soldiers at Camp Swampy die.

The Born Loser
I found Michael Phelps the least inspiring part this Olympics--well, his and Ryan Lochte's. I enjoyed women's gymnastics and really enjoyed getting to see and know beach volleyball player April Ross. I mean, look at her. She's just so cute.

Monday, August 22, 2016

What Would Happen If All the Ants Jumped?


Just a reminder that everything else that is posted on this website is posted on weekends now. I post a link to whatever has been updated on Twitter. If you feel like you have missed something, go to the Sections tab in the top menu and click whichever title you may have missed and see when the most recent update was. Now, onto comics.

Beetle Bailey
I love how determinedly Sarge is shoved that food into his mouth. "You don't think I'm pulling my weight? How do you like this?!"

Scary Gary
If Mark Buford ever wanted to use my likeness as a new friend for Gary, I wouldn't mind. However, I retain all animation rights for that character.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
"I've seen Snuffy's ass on more than one occasion. I've seen his ass so much. Why do I see his ass so much?"

Sunday, August 21, 2016

Liberty #62: Panda

Her parents met many years ago. No one was quite sure when but they were married a long time before the girl came along. He had wanted a quiet marriage, a quiet life, and he got it. He and his bride moved into this old house shortly after getting married. It was too large for just the two of them but he made it clear that he did not want children. For several years, fate complied with that even going so far as to cause three miscarriages. They were still happy but for her, there was an emptiness.

When she was finally blessed with a little girl, she was told to keep her quiet. She complied as best she could but too many long nights forced her husband to move their daughter’s room into the attic. It was there that a large stuffed panda sat in the window. The girl had received the panda from her grandma, her father’s mother. It was unknown if her mother still had her parents.

Her grandma would dote on her as much as possible. Her mother often gave her too much attention, and her father not enough but grandma did it just right. The girl loved seeing her grandma come through the attic door.

“She seems thin and looks pale,” the grandma said to the girl’s mother. “Have you been feeding her enough?”

“She never gets hungry,” mother shrugged. She could never hear if the girl was crying so she rarely came up to feed her. She was fed only when the adults were. “And we don’t get out like to the park as much as we would like,” mother explained. They had stopped leaving the house because her husband began worrying that someone would take her. Her husband had become very erratic over the last couple of months. She just brushed it off as he was a new father. Everything would be back to normal soon.

Two days before the girl turned three, their phone rang. Both the father and mother could easily hear the phone in the hallway but not the girl screaming and crying right above them. She tried to get out of bed but both her eyes were cloudy and unfocused, a problem she noticed a few months ago but kept to herself. They usually fixed themselves by the afternoon.

He got out of bed and shuffled to the phone, answering it with a gruff “Hello?”

A man on the other end explained that something had happened at his mother’s house and that he should come over. Within minutes, he and his wife we dressed and heading out the door.

“What about…?” she asked, pointing to the door to the attic, but was interrupted.

“She’ll be fine,” he grabbed her hand and pulled her along.

They drove across town to his mother’s house. Police tape encircled the front yard and there were a couple of police cars. He and his wife stepped over the tape and went into the house. “What are you doing? This is a crime scene,” an officer said.

“This is my mother’s house,” he said gruffly.

“Oh,” the officer hung his head. “Sorry. We’re thinking it was a robbery. Someone broke in through the side door and your mother was unfortunate enough to still be awake.”

The officer led them to where his mother was, covered with a sheet. He collapsed to the floor and began sobbing. His wife stood over him and gently put her hand on his shoulder.




Over the next few years, they grew more reclusive. Dark shades were drawn on every window except the one with the panda. His mother had left him a small fortune so he no longer had to go to work. They lived meagerly on his inheritance and kept from going outside as much as possible.

The girl was now six and, while skin and bones, still cute with her short, home-styled haircut and freckles dotting the area across her nose under her eyes. Her mother went upstairs every evening before bed to give her food and clean up the child’s toilet that she had been trained to use.

“Hey, there,” her mom would always say. She would never use her name. She may not have even remembered it.

“Ay, deer,” the girl would repeat.

“Here’s your food.”

“Dood.”

The bowl was placed on the floor and she was unchained from an o-hook screwed into the wall. Her mother would clean out the bowl while the girl ate then drop off the clean toilet and a baby bottle of water, take the empty dish and the empty bottle from the evening before, the girl would be chained back up and her mother would leave, locking the door behind her. That was most interaction the girl would get for the next three years.

Downstairs, the girl’s father had moved he and his wife’s bedroom into the living room. He never went upstairs and she only went up to tend to the girl. Everything had been moved downstairs whether they needed it or not. The downstairs of their house became a cluttered mess and he began worrying about thieves wanting his family’s possessions. He kept a gun an arm’s length away all the time.

He spent the days muttering and wandering around the house, making sure their piles of trash were suitable or that their piles of trash were where they were supposed to be. She just stayed out of the way, in her rocking chair, attempting to read through her diminishing eyesight. Then, one day, it was gone. Replaced with a white, cloudy image, her vision never readjusted like it usually did. She carefully felt her way to her rocking chair and sat down, unmoving, untalking, unseeing.

The girl had been crying for over an hour before he finally heard it. “Why is she crying?” he asked.

“She’s hungry.”

“Then feed her. You’re supposed to keep her quiet.”

“I can’t feed her.”

“Why?”

“I can’t see,” she revealed to him.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t see. It’s like I’m looking through clouds. I can’t get her dinner fixed. I can’t go up and down the stairs. I can’t clean her toilet. You’re going to have to do it.”

“I don’t go upstairs,” he grumbled.

“Then she’ll just cry,” she shrugged.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the girl’s cries clearly drilling into his ears. “Why didn’t you tell me about your eyesight?”

“You don’t want to be bothered by our ailments,” she answered.

The crying deafened him. His wife continued to sit in her rocking chair, acting like nothing was wrong. She could barely hear her daughter but he was being tortured by her screeching wails. The girl couldn’t hear the two gunshots her father used on her mother and himself. They were too far away, the walls too thick, her crying too loud.




The shots did catch the attention of their neighbors who found this the last straw in the family’s oddness. They called the police who came over, saw all the windows covered to keep out the light, and pushed their way into the house. Inside, they found the woman bleeding and slumping in the rocking chair. The man, in his armchair. The police heard the faint screaming coming from upstairs.

Upon breaking into the attic, they found the girl, chained to the wall, her toilet nearly full. Nothing in the room besides a mattress, blanket, and the sun-bleached panda in the window. One of the officers carefully went to unchain the girl while the other radioed in.

“Hi, there,” the officer said kneeling down in front of the girl. “My name is Hal, what’s yours?”

The girl had stopped crying but was still sniffling. “Pa-naa,” she said, but was pointing at the stuffed animal in the window.

“Okay, we’ll just call you that for now. Panda,” the officer said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Veterans and Sandwiches--That's It


Blondie
Dagwood's not wrong here. We throw the term 'hero' around so loosely anymore on the Internet that the word has lost a lot of its meaning. I went on a rant about it not too long ago but not in my house to my wife and dog like a normal person but on Twitter.

Ripley's Believe It Or Not
A monkey? A squirrel is usually the cause of the near-daily blackouts Baldwin City, Kansas has and has had for over 20 years.

Dennis the Menace
Mr. Wilson is genuinely upset and frustrated by he and his wife's financial situation. Their income only is comprised of his Social Security and his pension and he wonders how he will continuing living the adequate yet meager lifestyle they have cultivated. Martha, however, ignores everything her husband says to make a fat joke. Dennis should be taking notes.