behold: the Comics Curmudgeon

I have an addiction to Great Grains - Raisins, Dates, and Pecans Cereal, the most appropriately named cereal in the history of cereals. In addition to enjoying a bowl of this delicious, hearty goodness daily for the last 14 years my morning routine also includes reading the Los Angeles Times cover to cover. When I say reading I mean opening each page, hunting for the meager articles among all the ads, and skimming the headlines to see if anything is worth a glance. A while back, some businessman with the last name of Scrushy was on trial for something or another. Those headlines always made me snicker because it sounded like a baby's favorite toy was being brought to justice. Occasionally, some real thought-provoking articles practically leap off the page at me. Once, two articles on the same day demanded a full read-through; rare indeed.

The first, located on the Very Front Page was about some girl that had become a major celebrity in the edgy world of alternative scrapbooking but had inadvertently broken a minor rule when entering a scrapbooking competition and had been subsequently ostracized by her scrappy fans, apparently not a tolerant lot. Fascinating! The second article was on the front page of the Business section and was a lengthy, in-depth piece on some old fart who rents a bike every year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Yep. He rents a bike because traffic is bad and venues are far apart and this saves him a lot of time and money plus he gets some darn good exercise to boot. That's what it was about. The whole article. There was a picture of him on his bike. It was written in a gee-whiz! style as if he had invented a teleportation device to beam him around town in flashes of shimmery light. The article explained that "over the years" this guy has learned all the good bike parking spots. They didn't question the fact that this simple knowlege acquisition TOOK HIM YEARS! It's articles like these that keep me turning the pages of that once-proud rag to see just how often it can suck.

However, I love the comics. The good, the badly drawn, the couple that are actually funny, the ones that have been around since Hitler invaded Poland, the idiotic ones, even the ones I can't even glance at because they're so damn annoying (Cathy). Every morning I read the comics and have my own running dialog going in my head, laughing internally at Get Fuzzy, Lio, and Bizarro, marveling at the fact that Marmaduke is still published, wincing at the crushing stupidity of Family Circus, wondering how much money the no-talent hack that draws Sally Forth makes, getting misty-eyed as my heartstrings are pulled by For Better or For Worse, etc. I even cut out and saved the one and only Peanuts strip that has ever made me laugh out loud in the 112 years that strip has been around.

I thought I was alone with my comics appreciation, but then I stumbled across a blog that confirmed the fact that If You Can Imagine It, It Already Exists on the Internet. I don't know how I found the Comics Curmudgeon but I did and even though I was a little late to the party I'm still glad I got there. This guy is hilarious with a smart wit that is dry and sharp. I read him every day and laugh my ass off as he skewers the easy targets like Dennis the Menace, Family Circus and Marmaduke as well as crappy veteran strips like Beetle Bailey, BC, and Snuffy Smith. He's particularly fond of the soap opera strips that I never used to even notice. Apartment 3-G, Judge Parker, Mark Trail, Mary Worth - these all get lots of well-deserved attention and man, is it funny. Thank you, Comics Curmudgeon! I couldn't have said it better myself.



Dolly, ever the kiss-up, has apparently decided that the ants will inevitably emerge victorious in their long war against the human race. She imagines that when she's prodded by the warriors' mandibles into the vast breeding chamber, she'll be able to say to the queen, "Your majesty! I have always been a friend to the ants! I made sure that the choicest morsels that fell to the ground remained there! I favored the ants over my own brood-mates!" But the sinister colony insects don't understand human qualities like "loyalty" or "forgiveness," Dolly. You'll be sucked dry of your nutritive value and used to feed the larvae, just like everyone else.

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