Comics Curmudgeon

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**The Comics Curmudgeon**
URL	http://www.comicscurmudgeon.com
Commercial?	no
Type of site	comic strip-related weblog and online community
Registration	Required
Owner	Josh Fruhlinger
Created by	Josh Fruhlinger

The Comics Curmudgeon is a blog written by Josh Fruhlinger and is a light-hearted deconstruction of the daily comic strips. Although all types of newspaper strips are covered, the emphasis is usually on the "soap-opera" strips such as Mary Worth, Apartment 3-G, and Mark Trail. The blog has developed a commenter community that call themselves the College of Comics Curmudgeon Cardinals.

Originally titled I Read The Comics So You Don’t Have To, the name was changed to its current title after Tom Scocca complained about the similarity to the subtitle of his similarly themed, but on hiatus, column Funny Papers on the Baltimore City Paper website.

Josh is a freelance editor and writer. He lives in Baltimore with his wife Amber and his cat Hoagie.

Josh also analyzes political cartoons for Wonkette every Friday in a series called Cartoon Violence.

[edit] Inside jokes

The site features a number of inside jokes taken from unintentionally humorous parts of otherwise serious strips.

"More (something), mule!" comes from an Apartment 3G strip in which Margo is forced to work in a sweatshop manufacturing clothes. One of the supervisors tells her they need "More zippers, mule."[1]

"Work them like a claw, and call me Randy" comes from a Judge Parker strip in which the character Randy is demonstrating how to use chopsticks.[2]

"More information on licorice can be found on the Internet" comes from a Mark Trail strip about the plant. Most of the humor derives from the idea that such a statement could possibly be telling anyone something they didn't already know.[3]

"Roadside" is a nonsensical slang word invented by For Better or For Worse author Lynn Johnston to describe a girl who had been sleeping around.[4]

One recurring gag on the site is "Finger Quotin' Margo", a reproduction of a main character from Apartment 3G making air quotes. Fruhlinger unleashes Margo when he catches a comic strip using quotation marks unnecessarily.[5]

Aldo is a character who appeared in a long storyline in Mary Worth stalking Mary.

The site sells T-shirts with designs inspired by the Finger Quotin' Margo, licorice, and Aldo running gags.