12-3-07: When you stop and consider it, this joke is basically about a big dumb guy hurling himself against sharp, pointy surfaces. The bleeding isn't just a byproduct of the joke, it IS the joke.

More to the point, this 'dress' bears about as much resemblance to a Frank Gehry structure as a housefly does to a houseboat. Old Hicky-pants better hope Mr. Gehry isn't too litigious as there's certainly some measure of slander here.

All that aside, why is this guy in his underpants? Are we actually witnessing an example of foreplay gone awry?

Ewww!

Must. Scour. Cerebellum.

12-4-07: Although my years of wreaking bloody havoc on the deserving has been most satisfying I'm very disappointed to discover that the everlasting torments of hell suffered by the souls of each Jehovah's Witness buried in my back yard will be occasionally interrupted by a cool and tasty snack.

What a gyp.

But, thanks to old Hicky-pants' vision of the afterlife, they'll evidently have to eternally endure the Borscht-belt spectacle of Old Scratch wandering around in gaily-festooned boxer shorts. You see, it's more than just being gauche as angels, and Satan is a fallen angel, have no need of genitalia. So he's shashaying around in these eyesores purely for effect.

The fiend. (And , yes, that's two days in a row of striped underpants. I hope this isn't a trend.)

On a technical note, this comic is a fine example of the difference between irony and humor. You see, serving cold food in a lake of fire is ironic, not comic. This cartoon is therefore better suited to the 'irony' section of the daily newspaper, but it appears on the comics page by default since the irony pages are already overflowing with accolades for George Bush's masterful foreign and  economic policies.

Barrump-shhh.

12-5-07: This cartoon was drawn about two weeks before it appeared in newspapers, which means that just about now a cat is digging into his breakfast and saying to himself "Hmmm. This 'Turkey-Head-n-Bits' is missing something but I can't quite put my paw on it. It's just not as... 'wattley' as usual."

It's hard to tell from old Hicky-pants' crappy drawing but it appears that the turkey on the left, if it is indeed a turkey, had its wattle removed from its chin and implanted on its back.This is not a bad idea for all you ladies out there considering breast reduction surgery. Such a technique would single-handedly revive the waltz as a form of popular dance.

12-6-07: One of the most hackneyed concepts submitted by aspiring comic strip artists is the "alien from another planet" strip. You know, little green man comes down to Earth, looks around, and then makes comments like "You mean you eat chicken fetus for breakfast?"

Think Mork from Ork.

On second thought, don't.

Old Hicky-pants <hack-hack!> has his own little green men in the form of the mentally disturbed, as you see here. These are people who show up in the strip and, because they're totally unhinged, can say almost anything. It's fairly safe to say that the Quigmans exploit more psychologically-challenged individuals per comic capita than any other contemporary comic strip.

I am of course referring to actual madmen, not the adorable one-crisis-shy-of-an-exploit neurotics found in Peanuts, or the charmingly deranged Zippy, or the Zoloft-fortified cast of For Better or For Worse.

If you feel the need of a hearty guffaw at the expense of the deranged then look no further than Fox News, or whitehouse.gov.

12-7-07: Logically, by extension:
"Here's to me, drinking to cover up erectile dysfunction!"
"Here's to me, drinking to cover up terminal cancer!"
"Here's to me, drinking to cover up the deaths of my children in a car fire!"
"Here's to me, drinking to cover up my inability to write a decent joke!"

You know, if old Hicky-pants had drawn the other characters smiling then we'd all know that this statement was simply tossed off as a joke. But it's clear they're all thinking the same thing: "Awww, geez! In about two weeks I'll be asked to identify this jerk's body. Why me, god-dammit?"

12-8-07: As the interviewer rambled-on unawares the assembled band of geeks watched with rising anticipation as the giant magnifying glass was maneuvered into position over her head and aligned carefully with the glaring afternoon sun. Soon this corporate lackey would be no more than a charred husk and they would be free. Free to be featured in a comic with an actual punchline.

Rocco wrote it, Buddy drew it. That's double the clusterfuckery for the price of one.

12-10-07: Do they even still MAKE Jungle Gardenia? (Yes, but it's not the original.) Is there a version of the cologne for men? (No.) Did old Hicky-pants get the idea to reference this vintage fragrance as a result of my 11-29-07 Cathartic review? (Most likely.) Does this Quigmans joke suck? (What joke?) Are you still reading this? (God, I hope not.)

12-11-07: You're not looking at a cartoon, you're looking at a missed opportunity. I hate to have to spell this out, but here we go.

They make a shoe called 'crocs'. They're ugly and they might getcha killed on an escalator but they've been embraced by a public that wouldn't understand taste if it pinched them on their oversized buttocks. It would have been sooooo easy to have made this comic a mild rebuke of the blasted things. Heck, it might have even made a little sense, but I'll betcha a sawbuck they didn't even enter into old Hicky-pants' head-thing when he wrote this. He just saw the 'things that pinch' category on the $100,000 Dollar Pyramid and then squeezed out this dumb visual pun. You gets what ya pays for.

12-12-07: What exactly was she doing with her tongue? Painting his house? If they were 'just' kissing you'd think they would have been drawn in something more resembling a clinch.

I know that torture is illegal in America but old Hicky-pants certainly waterboards his grammar with almost predictable regularity. For example, in any civilized country the above caption might have more simply and accurately stated "I knew you were in the musical 'Cats' but that didn't prepare me for your rough, cat-like tongue. Long story short, the oral sex was memorable but I'm no longer able to father children."

When you get to that new syndicate, Hick, make sure they throw an English 101 primer into the deal.

Note: This cartoon is also an exmpale of Buddy's tried-and-true comic formula of "I appreciate (situation) but (realization)" as used not only in this Qugimans but also in the cartoon of 12-3-07. (See above).

12-13-07: Old Hicky-pants had me until he got to the part about the world's love affair with llamas, then I remembered the source of this information was the poor man's Far Side.

I take that back. Not just 'poor', but homeless... homeless, crippled, and destitute. The Quigmans are the homeless, crippled and destitute man's Far Side. And mentally ill. With poopy pants.

12-14-07: Has old Hicky-pants seriously never heard of a little thing called 'the vagina'? He really should look into it (Hah!) because I'm led to believe it has a powerful effect on men's sensibilities, even more so than salsa de la carne.

Yeah, I know it's a radical idea but someone had to say it.

Seriously, I think the idea here was that the big fat guy was supposed to be a big fat HUNGRY guy who was quite literally feasting his eyes on this curiously misshapen woman. However, his outward appearance is less of insatiable desire than one of seething rage at seeing his last jar of Ragu purloined and desecrated.

This joke might have worked if old Hick had just drawn the guy smiling, but you're more likely to see some woman giving herself a reverse meat douche.

Oh, wait.

12-15-07: Quigmans fat joke #1,273.

You realize, of course, there's really no such thing as a self-inflating air mattress since every single one of them depends on a human being to flip a switch or turn a valve for its high-pressure fix.

When you think about it, it would be really creepy if they actually were self-inflating as that would mean they would have some measure of free will, inflating and deflating themselves as the need arises. And if they have self-determination then we might well assume that they also deserve the right to vote, and Zeus knows we have enough air-heads selecting candidates as it is.

12-17-07: Since he recognizes the number are we to understand that the duck and the hunter have met socially and exchanged personal information with one another prior to this episode?

Funny, I can't picture him attending a PETA fete' nor the ducks cruising an NRA shindig.

My guess is they probably hooked-up on Craigslist when the hunter answered the duck's ad for "Young gay bird seeks older man with large bore gun". That must have been ONE awkward afternoon at Starbucks.

This of course would help to explain why the duck on the right would rather continue plowing his plucky pal instead of taking the call. Although the comics page is a rather odd place to illustrate an act of avian anal sex the left duck's plaintive expression of "Perhaps I should have stayed in Toledo and married Wanda" is pretty amusing.

On the positive side, at least old Hicky-pants drew the species correctly, although anatomical accuracy isn't one of the things I expect of a comic, especially a Quigmans.

12-18-07: This cartoon is old news as everyone already knows that all businesses contracting with monster.com are staffed and managed by nightmare creatures who feed on the flesh of unsuspecting applicants. In fact, the company intentionally added the word 'monster' to its name in 2003 as the result of a deceptive trade practice lawsuit filed by the U.S. military, who successfully argued that they had first pick in the cannibalization of our nation's young.

While I'm pointing out the bloody obvious, how could this woman be considered 'plump'? She's bootylicious, no doubt, but there's not much extra meat anyplace else on them bones, especially when compared to the average Hummer-assed American. This is actually a first for the Quigmans as it's a kind of an 'anti-fat' joke.

12-19-07: It was at that precise instant, after 15 years of forced confinement, daily shock treatments and experimental psychotherapeutic drugs, when Calvin realized that everyone had been wrong about his stuffed tiger.

On to the real review: You call that a monster? Dang, man, I've seen scarier things than that in my Big Mac. Or my stool sample. Or my stool sample after eating a Big Mac. This goofy thing couldn't get a job as an understudy for a box of Freakies. Monster? Pffft! Come with me to Mara 18 in LA and I'll show you some monsters, guero.

12-20-07: So the bride has been predetermined to be mentally unsound by professional psychopathologist's?

That's actually kind of a bonus, isn't it?

I mean, this way you know it's only her psychotically induced cognitive dysfunctions that are responsible for your clothes being torched on the front lawn rather than simply her period.

I could live with that.

12-21-07: In case you're wondering, yes, you can breed children but only in South Carolina. They refer to it as 'marriage', though.

South Carolina, where the state motto is "If they're old enough to bleed, they're old enough to breed. And if they ain't bleeding enough, shoot 'em."

South Carolina is famous for exceedingly long mottos, too.

12-22-07: There's a comic strip called "Non Sequitur" that makes funny jokes. The Quigmans' is a strip that makes non sequiturs but no jokes. Odd, isn't it?

12-24-07: Wow! Santa's so gullible he'll eat and drink anything. Makes you kinda wonder how the old boy's managed to avoid a Clorox milkshake or two over the years what with all the vengeful, angry, pony-less kiddies out there.

12-25-07: If you have a daughter who is growing up too intelligent, courageous or dignified for your taste you can nip those positive, self-reliant tendencies in the bud by exposing her to the endless cavalcade of witless, neurotic females as presented courtesy of the Quigmans.

Case in point. Under normal circumstances a person with a security camera protruding from his skull would elicit responses of curiousity or concern, but this young lady is only anxious about how others judge her appearance. This is precisely the sort of nervous, flighty, unsure female that our society needs to help ensure a continuing patriarchal oligarchy.

So let's hear it again for Buddy Hickerson and his singularly heroic comic crusade to advance unfortunate female stereotypes.

12-26-07: As you know, an ant's sense of smell and taste is accomplished by the use of its antenna, so here's the way the caption should have been written:

"Yes, Margaret, I realize I'll lose my sense of taste if I trade my antenna for cable. Ask me again when I'm watching Bill O'Reilly."

I'm just here to help.

12-27-07: Criminy! Is old Hicky-pants stealing gags from Mallard Fillmore now?

No, on second glance this malodorous bon mot was written by the enigmatic Gygli , which means it's twice as moronic as usual since old Hicky-pants read it and approved it. It's clear neither of these genii would understand the basic tenets of intelligent design if it crawled out of the primordial ooze of their underpants and joined the NRA.

Let's try this odd concept on for size: Geology. It's a tested and accepted fact that the Earth is billions of years old, not 5000 as I.D. would have you believe. The mountains of data corroborating this assertion should convince anyone with the minimum of an operational brain stem that I.D. is just so much fundamentalist hogwash. I assure you that those who support evolution do not have to go racing for the latest in platypus abstracts to support their arguments.

And for those of you (Yes, you!) who willfully embrace I.D., riddle me this: Where did such an all-powerful deity, the creator of a billion galaxies, who knows when each sparrow falls on Rigel VII, who notates each time you spank yourself to Anne Coulter's latest tripe, originate?

Yeah, didn't think so.

God is a myth, a lie, a fabrication. The Bible is nothing more than a disjointed accumulation of half-truths and hoary legends, no more scientific than Mother Goose. Religion is an industry of fear that preys on the dark, primitive, insecure recesses of the primate brain. Grow the fuck up and embrace science because, palsy, it's the only thing you got between enjoying the American Way of Excess and fishing for termites with a stick.

The Quigmans used to be harmlessly idiotic, but today it has shifted into the realm of the astonishingly vacuous. If there's any proof that old Hicky-pants has no conscious idea what he's creating anymore, this is it.

12-28-07: "Would you care to have lobster thermidor for lunch or a big bucket of poison? Would you rather go home in a chauffeured limousine or have a ton of moose turds dumped on your head? Is your preference a bevy of Broadway show girls or an AIDS-riddled Haitian meth addict? I hate to keep asking these ridiculous questions, sir, but if I keep talking long enough the reader will get bored and drift away to an alternate strip, never guessing that this cartoon has no real punchline."

12-29-07: For those who appreciate such sophisticated third-grade waggery:

Q: Why was Anna not allowed to visit the King in his jungle kingdom?
A: He had his guards ban-anna from the castle.

Q: Why did the banana go to the doctor's office?
A: She wasn't peeling well.

What would you call two banana skins ?
A pair of slippers.

What is a ghost's favorite fruit ?
Boonanaa.

And, finally....

Why did the banana go to the spa?
To get a chemical peel.

12-31-07: "Who? You mean the guy with the fake feathers sticking out of his pants? Yeah, that's Frankie Martoni, the poor bastard. His mother drank brake fluid or something when she was pregnant so he's not quite right in the head. Thinks he's a fuckin' peacock. Eats worms and birdseed and stuff and sleeps on a perch. Even built a big nest in his basement. No, I swear! I been there! I seen it! He even tried to get me to lay an egg in the fuckin' thing but I told him uh-uhh, I ain't that kinda species. But that's also when I found out he uses duct tape to strap those feathers to his ass. Hey! What are you laughin' at?"

All snarkiness aside, doesn't THIS look familiar: