9-1-08: Is this gag salient to anything? Anything at all? I honestly don't know where to begin tearing this stupid thing apart because it's so far outside normal relevance. Better luck tomorrow, I guess.



Upchuck Update: You gotta hand it to Benny... he's a fighter as this cartoon originally appeared five years ago on 6-13-03.

9-2-08: A slumlord is a person who occupies a property and then proceeds to scrimp on proper maintenance. Preying on those at the lower end of the social spectrum he accrues a steady revenue stream while the property itself is allowed to deteriorate.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Bucky Hinkerson, Slum Lord of the Comics Pages.



Regurgitation Report: "Hello! Yeah, dis is Bucky. Whazzat? Ya say ya gotta hole in ya newspapuh? Look, Celebrity Rehab is on right now so da best I can do is patch it wit dis cahtoon from 2003. Yeah, yeah, I know it's all schmutzy but dis is high-quality stuff, my friend. I mean, look at dat papuh, and all dat ink. Dey don't make no gags like dis dese days.

Okay, I'll be ovuh on Toisday. Yeah, Toisday! Same to ya, pal!"

9-3-08: "Thankfully, I was blessed with an exceptionally large bladder, allowing me to pee on more of our adversaries than all senior managers in the past four fiscal years, which really pissed them off. Seriously, my bladder is enormous, easily the size of a toaster over. Not only can I store enough urine to write my name in the snow I can actually piss our entire on-line privacy policy including the URL and the underlying javascript. I'm talking micturation of Biblical proportions, my friends, aided in no small part by a urethra the diameter of a shillelagh. Yes, thanks to my unique ability to pass urine this company is no longer piss-poor."



Puke Patrol: There was a time when jokes about the more common bodily functions were verboten in the funny pages. Considering this "gag" of Bunky's it was a very sensible policy. The temptation to break this barrier was fierce among cartoonists because it meant cheap, easy shock laughs. But, little by little, the line in the snow was blurred until almost anything short of characters flinging feces at one another is tolerated. But give Stephen Pastis enough time and anything's possible.

9-4-08: Bunky Hinkerton trying to do a geometry-based joke is like letting a chimp drive the produce truck just because he likes bananas. The result is never pretty.



Sloth Alert: Speaking of chimps chumps, Bunky's pal Rocco made the mistake of burping up a trite phrase at the wrong time and it got mistaken as a joke.

You have to be more careful, Rock Man because, as we all know, when Bunky makes a bad cartoon, God kills a kitten.

9-5-08: "Sorry, Bill, but the knowledge that someone wants to skin me and wear me like a gimp suit isn't all that comforting. "

Oh, I get it now. The cow on the left is so stupid that he doesn't even understand the meaning of the word "reinforce". He's a stupid cow. Ha-ha, stupid cow doesn't understand what he's sayyyyyyy-ing!

Yeah, that's gotta be it.

BTW, Bunky, we're ALL made of leather. You could have just as easily have had two jews in this cartoon:

"I'm tellin' ya, Bernie. You're good enough, you're smart enough and, darn it, you'd make one fine lampshade."

BTW, I realize this line of gallimaufry isn't going to win me any friends in the vast, far-flung Jewish community but YOU tell me of another widely-accepted instance where man's largest organ (Yes, our skin is an organ) is reconfigured into something morbidly utilitarian and I'll be happy to edit the line.



Regurgitation Report: Look at the cartoon above and compare it to the original to your left. Note how the outside edges have been all schmutzed up. This makes me strangely giddy.

9-6-08: If I didn't already know that Bunky couldn't tell subtext from the Large Hadron Collider I'd swear the words "exciting" and "suggestions" in this context weren't simply random choices from of his personal copy of The Limited English Users Guide (Or "How I became President with a 200-word vocabulary") but actual intimations of something MUCH racier. Judging from the excessive overuse of the first-person pronoun it appears that "something" must be Onanism.

What more could you expect from a jerk-off?




Regurgitation Report: To prevent people from suspecting that this was a previously-used cartoon Bunky cleverly shifted his signature from the left side of the comic to the right side. What a clever little Bunky.

9-8-08: Once again the public education system has failed Bunky Hinkerson, creator of Dude, What Are You Smokin'? The Quigmans and, by extension, us.

You see, BunkMan, male bees get the waxy end of the honeycomb as they get but one chance to boff the queen bee. Then they drop dead, right in the saddle.

They come, and they go.

I know. Sad but true.

So this brobdingnangian bee, which is our first indication how stupid this cartoon is, has to be a female. Yes, Bunky is intimating some hot lesbian, girl-on-insect bow-chicka-bow-wow for all the kiddies to see right there in the funny pages. Rrrrrowr!

Aside from all that, the world's bees ARE disappearing at a furious rate, due no doubt in part to Monsanto and its ilk. Trust Bunky to take a serious issue and reduce it to a stale pick-up line.

9-9-08: Bunky's ex-GF, Angela Szyszka, is credited with this gag and I like to imagine that the idea was more-or-less autobiographical, the entire premise arriving full-blown as she sat across from Bunky one afternoon at What-A-Burger, watching his sweat-drenched brow piteously writhe and squirm as he laboured to decide between the Taquito with Cheese and the Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit, a demonstration of such unmatched intellectual constipation that it probably explains why she's now an Ex instead of a Current.



Sloth Alert: This space for rent.

9-10-08: Man, that's a long way to go just to modestly conjoin the words "in style" with "insulated". I'm supposing this comic should have a punchline but it's almost as though some tough, fibrous shield has been erected to protect our minds from damage.



Puke Patrol: The original syndication date of this cartoon was 7-22-02. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go save humanity from itself again.

9-11-08: For the first time in years, perhaps decades, I actually didn't sneer in revulsion at a Quigmans comic.

I take that back as this should be called a "terrorist" fist bump.

Oooooh, so close.

Sorry, Bunky.

9-12-08: Cool! A gun that points towards magnetic north. That's pretty funny.

What? That's not what the joke is about?

Hmmm. Is it funny because the crook is threatening the corpse of Ronald Reagan, which has been disinterred and propped upright for comic effect?

What? Not Reagan?

Geez! This comic stuff is harder than it looks.

Is it... because this is a robbery in the middle of the street in the middle of a park in the middle of the day?

No? Hmmph.

Whazzat? The joke is ironic? The crook is using immoral techniques to become more accountable? Oh, I guess that's why they name that section of the newspaper "The Irony Pages".

9-13-08: Why would someone who obviously needs Ritalin be demanding Prozac? Unless he's also suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder , bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, panic disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder.



Regurgitation Report: Even though this cartoon is almost five years old Wikipedia had been around for two years by 2003, long enough for Bunky Hinkerton to have accumulated enough information about Prozac to realize he was on the wrong pharmaceutical track.

9-15-08: You know.... a gruesome death might just make this cartoon interesting.

Go, Fenderman. Go.



Upchuck Update: No, seriously. Go, Fenderman. Please go, and don't come back again.

9-16-08: The gag should be that the hurricane was suffering from tropical depression. End of story. End of story. I'd suggest that Bunky over-thought the concept but that's like saying Jeffrey Dahmer was a bad cook.

Although it's clear that Bunky simply rummaged around in his pile of banana peels, used tissues and old Quigmans cartoons until he found a comic that would singularly address the seasonal issue of massive weather disturbance, I'm sure that the hundreds of thousands of Texans along the Gulf coast appreciated the good chuckle it provided as it took their minds off the unimaginable amounts of death and destruction they've just experienced. Bunky obviously deserves some sort of humanitarian award for his sensitivity towards the victims of this tragedy. Way to go, Bunky.



Regurgitation Report: Yesterday's Quigmans was originally printed one week before this one. Looks like it's just too. much. effort for Bunky to spread it out a little these days.

9-17-08: "It about same as humor content of this cartoon... not so much. Me would say 'nothing' but concept of zero not invented yet, so me cut it some statistical slack."

Man! This is one butt-ugly cartoon, even by Hinkerton standards. And what the hell is that in the foreground? It looks like a caveman with a giant malignant tumor on its head.

Ohhhhh, it's John McCain. That figures. (You see, John McCain is ollllld old. Like dinosaur old.)

9-18-08: "Oh, crippled hobo bear, I love you."

"And I love you, too, Timmy. Now let's go kill your parents and then we'll steal their car. Afterwards we'll get us some crystal meth and a couple of hookers named Crystal and Beth."



Regurgitation Report: See the cartoon above? Do you know why it looks exactly like the little teeny cartoon to the left? It's partly because it's the same cartoon, only five years older. But it's mostly because the artists's brain seized-up years ago.

9-19-08: "You see, Stan, I generally prefer to bare my naked body and soul to the scum of the Earth --- klansmen, drug dealers, sadists, crooked cops, misogynists, oil lobbyists --- because the physical and mental torture they inflict affords me the disturbingly rewarding opportunity to sexually frustrate nice, considerate guys like you. I know it seems like a bad joke, and it is."

Why would Bunky Hinkerton, creator of the Quigs, write a joke like this? In answer, picture yourself as Stan and picture Bunky as the fair damsel who says "I'd write a decent gag, but I need to wash my hair."

See?



Regurgitation Report: "I'd create a new cartoon, instead of resubmitting this one from six years ago, but I have an aunt who's visiting me."

9-20-08: "You misunderstood, Quigman. I said to get debriefed, not betowelled. Now get benaked before you get dejobbed."



Upchuck Update: Fred "Mr. Rogers" Rogers died on February 27, 2003. It's now clear that this cartoon is what did him in.

Can you say "rigor mortis"? I knew you could.

9-22-08: It's nice to see Britney finally getting her life in order. Now if we could only get Bunky to take his gag-writing as seriously.

Without putting too fine a point on it this is a venti OMFG with a double-shot of WTF and a heavy dusting of whatever.

9-23-08: I would have thought the mother of all SUV's would be big, not long. This vehicle should more accurately be called the Parallax.

And, Bunky, you be-pimpled dunce, the word "oblivion" means:

1. the state of being completely forgotten or unknown
2. the state of forgetting or of being oblivious
3. official disregard or overlooking of offenses

It does not mean big or large or voluminous. If found in a sentence it would be used thusly: "The Quigmans teeters on the periphery of oblivion."

Finally, Bunky, I realize you're an "artist" but would it have killed you to have employed the basics of perspective to make the foreground and background objects look like they're at least in the same universe?



Puke Promintory: When this gag first sucked all the air out of the room back in 2003 the brand name of the car, Infiniti, was misspelled "Infinity" in the caption. I hope this means that five years from now, when we see this gag again, he'll have fixed the "oblivion" fuck-up, too. Of course, that means he'll actually have to write a joke....

9-24-08: From a humorous standpoint what does a shifty smile have to do with this Cheshire Cat-ization of old Ralphie? Yes, I realize it casts his smile into sharp relief but if old Ralphie had been fully visible, wearing a leopard-print dickie, juggling flaming kittens and squirting Prestone All-Season anti-freeze out of his ass the caption would have had more puissance as Sheila would have been fixating on something quibblingly minor in the midst of madness. In essence, old Bunky made the joke LESS funny by drawing it this way.

And so it is ever thus. Thanks for nuthin', Bunk.



Vomitorium: So far this month Bunky has re-used ten cartoons from 2003, three from 2002 and two from 2004. That's fifteen out of a possible twenty-one.

I don't even HAVE a syndicate deal and I've created more new comics than Bunky.

9-25-08: "Welcome, class, to EMT 101. Today, we are going to discuss and investigate the obvious clues of drug addiction. Our first subject <click> as you can see in this slide is 'Brock', a 29-year-old caucasian male. Can anyone cite a physical clue as to what type of drug Brock may be abusing? Anyone? No? Actually, this is a trick question as Brock is merely a Microsoft phone-support specialist, all of whom generally look like warmed-over death. This gentlemen is hooked on nothing more toxic than Ho-Ho's or Red Bull.

Next <click> meet George Bush, a 62-year-old resident of Washington, DC ..."

What happens when you cross Mad Libs with faux social conciousness? The same old inane Quigmans crappola.

9-26-08: Pffft. Like there's no other bum in LA holding up a clever sign in an attempt to get his drunk on.



Sloth Alert: Why do I post these tiny thumbnail versions of the original art? Because I wanna.

9-26-08: So, she replaced his former girlfriend and then taught him to be independent which, by the logic of this gag, means he won't need other women?

Ooh. Where do I sign up?



Puke Patrol: In this re-use of the comic Bunky moved the syndication date from the bottom of the comic to just inside the door. Why?

9-29-08: "Red Alert! Red Alert! We have a core breech in the Premise Compartment of Control Deck C! Prepare for immediate collision of reason with imbecility! This is not a drill!"

(Captain Snark sits back, cracks his knuckles, takes stiff drink)

Okay, here we go...

(1) Human growth hormones affect growth, not age.

You're a moron, Bunky.

(2) Why isn't the babyman small all over, like a real baby?

You're a moron, Bunky.

(3) Why is the babyman holding a plate of food and a beer yet is asking for mushed peas?

You're a moron, Bunky.

(4) Why is everyone glowering at the babyman, especially the woman? I mean, awwwww, it's a bayyyy-beeeee!

You're a moron, Bunky.



Regurgitation Report: And, my, look how much the babyman has grown over the past five years!

Or... how much he hasn't grown, whatever the case may be.

9-30-08: Bwah-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa! She's going to kill him! Bwahhhhhhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaa! He's gonna die a senseless death! Ahhhhhhhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaa! It's so funneeeeeeee! Bwahhhh-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaa!



Upchuck Update: Shoot me. No, really... shoot me! Make the pain of this thankless job of reading the Quigmans every day stop.