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Turtle Carl is traveling. Slowly.

Family Circus, 7/26/26

The Biliad

Draw him, O Jeffy, and show us his exploits—first-born of the Keane clan,
Follow the long dashed line from his birth to his triumphs in Scottsdale.
Sing of the talented Billy Age Seven as substitute artist;
Tell of his prowess at baseball and schoolwork and elegant wordplay;
Speak of the pride with which Thel and his father must always esteem him!

What’s that you say, he’s a smug little jerk who oppresses his siblings,
Blaming his failures and sins on Not Me to avoid retribution,
Dumb as a rock and possessed of no gifts but a venomous mean streak?
Why then do you, O Jeff, spend your days documenting this jackass?
What is your own great sin that the gods have assigned you such torment?

“Listen, O Muse, it appears your assessment is missing some context!
“There was no choice in this job that I started in twenty-eleven.
“The circle, the kids, and the jokes were a fifty-year legacy burden:
“My readers would rise up in arms if I altered the tiniest detail!
“And Billy’s the price that I pay to maintain a respectable income.”

Mark Trail, 7/26/26

Species like cockroaches and sharks, well-adapted to stable ecological niches, often show decreased rates of biological diversification. Yet species like songbirds and tropical fish, equally well-protected from harsh selection pressures, differentiate lavishly in secondary sexual characteristics like song and coloration.

Mark Trail has survived 80 years in the brutal environment of the newspaper comics page: is he a shark or a songbird? On the one hand, he dominates the “outdoor adventure comic” niche with unassailable Nature Facts and Fists of Justice at the ready. On the other, he’s kinda cute. We should get Cherry to weigh in on this.

Thanks for a fun week and all the generous contributions to keep this fine blog strong and independent. Josh will be back tomorrow morning, rested and ready to deliver the Internet’s finest newspaper comics mockery!

—Uncle Lumpy

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So ends the 2026 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser. You guys are the best; thank you!

9 Chickweed Lane, 7/25/26

Say, did you know that people have sex? 9 Chickweed Lane does, and wants to show us as much of it as possible! It started in 2008, when Edda and Amos abandoned their adolescence and virginity on the lid of a Böesendorfer Concert Grand in Brussels. With the “will they or won’t they” tension broken, the strip sustained interest by introducing stand-ins Xiulan and Hugh Godalming, Fernanda Jons and Seth Appleby, Fleurrie and Sven Spocket, Diane and Francis Durly, Nan-Lin and Arthur Peel, and others, all with the same story: Will they or won’t they? Oh yes they will, and often!

Soon, horny couples crowded the strip and their stories grew monotonous. To escape that trap, the strip rushed Edda’s twins Polly and Lolly through adolescence into adulthood and marriage, and loosened up the timeline. Now lucky readers can look back at Edda’s and Amos’s awkward teen courtship while enjoying the sexual antics of three generations: grownup Amos and Edda and all the others in the present, daughters Polly and Lolly and their husbands in the future, and Edda’s stepdad Elliott’s lusty courtship of Juliette in recaps of the past.

Nice save, but not a long-term solution. After all, assuming monogamy, the maximum rate of couplings is (P/2)*f, where P is the number of people and f is frequency. I fear Team Chickweed may have its eye on combinatorics: C(P,2)*f, dropping the monogamy (and incest) restrictions, or even (C(P,2)+P)*f if we throw in self-pleasuring. After that, I fear for Edda’s cat.

One Big Happy, 7/25/26

Hey Joe, Pluto is the Roman god of Death and ruler of the Underworld, and you do not want to piss that guy off. And Disney’s copyright lawyers won’t go any easier on you, so tread lightly.

Lockhorns, 7/25/26

They have one, Leroy, and you’re not gonna like it.

—Uncle Lumpy

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Oh my gosh it’s the very last day of the 2026 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser! Hurry! Thank you!

Crankshaft, 7/24/26

Boy, these multiverse stories sure get complicated! Like when Barry Allen Flash teamed up in the past with Jay Garrick Flash to battle The Thinker, The Fiddler, and Shade so Barry could persuade real-world writer Gardner Fox to write a comic book about their adventures! Or when Spider-Men Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire team up to defeat Electro, Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man: No Way Home to keep the hordes of people who know Spidey’s not-so-secret identity from overrunning our world. Or here, where transparent authorial self-insert character “Batton Thomas” teams up with opaque actual author self-insert character Tom Batiuk, presumably to Fight Crime. I don’t know, but if I were Lillian Mackenzie, Harry Dinkle, or Ed Crankshaft, I’d watch my back—these guys are cartoonists—they have erasers and they know how to use them.

Bizarro, 7/24/26

Whoops, looks like the stress finally got to our guy. Forget what I said yesterday.

Crock, 7/24/26

“At last! Our comic strip is saved!”

Phantom, 7/24/26

Chatu “The Python” has surrendered and put on the AI-enabled “Tokoloshe” control anklet, and I’m frankly a little disappointed in him. I mean, this is the guy who tried to Ebolify the whole world through an infected fruit-bat scheme, and blew up half of downtown Mawitaan just to get back at his nemesis the Phantom. He may or may not be a coward, but there is no way he’s gonna let some rich upstart out-evil him! All those years in that cage must’ve softened him up, or maybe he went mad from that interminable drum solo. Either way, get ready for an epic supervillain match-up and battle—now enhanced with AI!

No Comments of the Week on my watch; last week’s victor Victor Von gets a twofer.

—Uncle Lumpy