In which The Comics Section evolves. Or devolves. Or something.

As you may or may not have noticed, depending on how much attention you pay to this silly blog of mine, I haven't been doing the daily Family Circus posts you may or may not have grown accustomed to. Indeed, I haven't been doing any posting at all for the past couple of days. "Why is this?" you may or may not be asking.

Well. As it happens, it actually takes quite a lot of effort to write this blog. That was OK when I was enjoying myself. But lately, keeping the blog up to date has started to feel an awful lot like work. And, frankly, there are other ways I'd like to spend my time and other subjects besides the comics section that I'd like to write about. So I began to give serious consideration to retiring the blog.

But I don't want to give up comics blogging entirely. Of all the aspects of the blog, the one I still enjoy without reservation is the daily Family Circus post. With that in mind, I've created a new blog: The Annotated Family Circus. It's a somewhat different format than what I've been doing here at The Comics Section, and it's a heck of a lot less work. But I think it's still pretty funny, and I'd love it if all my loyal readers (and all of my not-so-loyal readers, too) came and joined me over there. I've decided to host it on Tumblr--which is a decision I'm still not sure about, because it seems sort of glitchy to me--but it seems better a suited for a blog like this. While there is no commenting system at the moment, you can like individual posts and follow the blog if you have a Tumblr account. And of course you can add it to your RSS feed--which you should do immediately--and bookmark it and tell all your friends about it and all that good stuff. There are a couple of weeks worth of posts up already, so go and check it out.

Additionally, I'm going to try my hand at pop culture blogging over at Late Reviews, which is pretty much empty now, though I'm working on getting some content up over there even as you read this. If you're interested in that, feel free to stop by there as well. If you follow me on Twitter, then you're already pretty familiar with the stuff I'll be writing about over there.

As for The Comics Section, I'll still be posting here occasionally when something catches my eye. Most likely, when I do post here, it will be longer, more analytical stuff. (Or, you know, short, snarky stuff. I guess we'll see.) I encourage you to check in to The Comics Section once in a while, but be aware that posting here will be greatly reduced and of a slightly different form (maybe).

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone for reading. I said earlier that the Family Circus posts were the one aspect of the blog that I still enjoy unreservedly, but that's not completely true. That there are people out there who take the time to read my silly blog posts about Beetle Bailey and Hagar the Horrible is a pretty terrific feeling. And I hope you'll continue to read my silly blog posts about The Family Circus. Thank you so much.

And so, in closing, everybody go read my new blog, damn it.

Mutts and Mother Goose and Grimm: I don't think I have time to send out Christmas cards this year.

I'm feeling magnanimous, so there are just going to have to be a few best comics of the day today.

The cat in this Mother Goose and Grimm is basically me, and the single best way to get me to mention a comic strip is to appeal to my sense of egotism.

Mutts, meanwhile, is just delightful. I don't know what else to say about it, really. It's just so damn delightful. Which, as a general rule, is pretty much what Mutts usually is when it's good.

Get Fuzzy: So in your opinion, Barney is the toughest children's character?

Bucky's deconstructionist analysis of children's characters is not all together different from my analysis of the Keane children. Of course, Bucky's completely serious about. And I'm not. Not completely, anyway.

Pearls Before Swine: I'm thinking about running for the senate...I want to make a difference.

True story: I plan on running for public office next year. I think this blog and the anal rape joke I just made will really help my chances.

Family Circus: Goodbye, ocean! 'Bye, beach! So long, gulls!

And so I have managed to miss the entirety of the the annual Keane family vacation. On the one hand, I feel somewhat irresponsible, as I know that this blog is the primary source of entertainment for many Internet denizens. On the other hand, that's around 60 Family Circus cartoons I will never have to read, and that feels pretty good.

Anyway, the long national nightmare is over, and as of today this blog is back up and running.

Drabble: Ralph, we need to get you a Facebook page!

I finally bowed to the Internet gods and signed up for a Facebook account just other day. It's good to know that this puts me on approximately the same pop cultural level as one Ralph fucking Drabble.

Zits: What's on your playlist, Mr. D?

One of the nice things about comic strips is the way your relationship to them changes as you age. Take Zits, for example. Not all that many years ago, I used to relate exclusively to Jeremy. But now, I have at least as much in common with old Papa Zit here. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that, but his series of podcasts on the history of Minoan bull leapers sure does sound interesting.

Pearls Before Swine: Ping!

And so it turns out that I am pretty much Rat. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Family Circus: ...sounds like she needs to get some glasses.

Seriously, Dolly, how lame do you have to be to spend all your time belittling fictional characters?

Untitled

Apologies for the lack of blogging around here lately. I might be able to get some stuff up today, but regardless The Comics Section will return in full force starting tomorrow.

Sadly, I fear that nothing will ever be able to top last month's Mark Trail story.

The Comics Section goes golfing.

I'm not actually golfing, of course, because I don't actually live in a comic strip. But I am away on vacation right now, which is why the blog has been so barren for the last few days. I kind of thought I would have Internet access by now, but it hasn't worked out that way. So you can expect yet more barrenness until Monday or so, at which point this post will be replaced by forty-plus posts about how terrible the comics have been since I left. The catch-up is going to suck. By the end of it, I will either be a hollow shell no longer able to take enjoyment from Family Circus mockery or more bitter and sarcastic than ever before. We'll see how it goes.

UPDATE: In a cruel twist of fate, I was actually camping for part of my vacation. So, yes, my life is literally turning into a Bil Keane cartoon. Soon I will marry a constantly angry housewife, who will give birth to a passel of hydrocephalic toddlers.

UPDATE 2: And the blog is now up to date. I was going to delete this post, but now I think it would be better to just let it stand as a testimony to my diligence. As in, yes, I really did write 60 posts about two weeks worth of comic strips in one week.

Momma: See? I begged you to learn long division.

I sometimes think that I should have gone into a professionally useful program like engineering and finished my schooling in a timely manner. But then I wouldn't be mostly unemployed and have all this free time to write this swell blog. So you're welcome, I guess.

Hagar the Horrible: Here you are--ice cream, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, and a cherry!

The Internet tells me that Kurt Vonnegut once said that "any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae." That's probably true, and probably even more true when the loathed subject is not a novel but a daily comic strip.

And so I attack a lot of hot fudge sundaes around here. This is a very mean-spirited blog, on which I write a lot of awful things about the work of people I've never met, perhaps in an effort to redirect my frustration from my own inability to produce anything better. It is almost certainly preposterous. But so it goes, I guess. Because the thing of it is, attacking hot fudge sundaes is kind of fun.

Besides, who's to say a bad hot fudge sundae shouldn't be attacked, preposterous or not? If I were to produce even something as mundane as the above Hagar the Horrible, let alone as unspeakably hackish as this piece of crap, I would expect it to be attacked. Indeed, I'd almost be disappointed if it weren't. What good is an audience if it isn't demanding?