2-1-10: In the past whenever Buddy used a totally inappropriate word in a punchline, in some misguided attempt at appearing erudite, I've always referred to the result as a symptom of the dreaded Lebanese Fry-Cook Syndrome.

Well, it's struck again.

Ahem.

Parrots, Buddy, do not derivate. If you say "eat me" to a parrot often enough it will eventually respond by saying "eat me" right back at you. However, it will never, almost without exception, respond by asking you what your fucking problem is.

What you actually meant, Buddy, was "reiterative", which is to repeat something verbatim. But that not-so-subtle difference would have required 30 seconds of research on your part at theasaurus.com. But I'm guessing Judge Judy was mere moments from her opening monologue and you wouldn't wanna miss that.

So do us all a favor, Buddy, and write down theasaurus.com. Put it in a safe place, like next to your supply of White-out. And, while you're at it, jot down dictionary.com, too. If you don't have access to a computer just call me and I'll laugh in your face.

I hope the president gets his health care bill signed soon because if anyone had a pre-existing condition that requires treatment, it's good old Buddy "Fry Cook" Hickerson.

2-2-10: Such delicious subtlety. Such magnificent use of sub-text. Such a grandioise manifestation of the artist's ouvre through irony and metaphor. What a...

Oh, sorry. I was reading À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. This Quigmans cartoon, on the other hand, is a justa hunka shit. Why are you even here?

2-3-10: Next to the Quigmans I find Garfield to be one of the most humorless, cynical strips in existence. That is, until Garfield Minus Garfield came along. It takes the normal Garfield strip and removes Garfield completely, which turns it into a sometimes hysterically funny, largely existential cartoon. Click the link above to see what I mean.

So I got to thinking.... what could I do to make the Quigmans funny?

It didn't take me long to realize that it would involve replacing both the art and the jokes. In other words, ain't gonna happen.

2-4-10: In answer to the first question: Excluding that intracranial tumor in Buddy's head then, no, this is no one's idea of a joke.

As for the second observation made by our furry little friend, well, please please PLEASE stay away from the baby food aisle or else you'll be sadly disappointed.

2-5-10: Allow me to hazard to opine that t'were you or I "enjoying" some food we'd probably be frenetically rubbing it into our respective groins with passionate gusto, hopefully with the aid of an attractive person of the opposite sex with similar inclinations.

As for this gag let me say that I don't enjoy sleeping.... I enjoy waking up. Think about that.

2-6-10: So far this February Buddy has syndicated three recycled Quigmans and three new ones. It's possible that his boss at Creators noticed that he essentially took the entire month of January off (20 old Quigmans, 6 new) and said "Look, we don't care what kind crap you submit, just quit submitting so much old crap!"

That would explain today's crap.

Speaking of which, the cat should have said "when I have a perfectly good couch" not "they have".

You are one dumb fuck, Bud.

2-8-10: Most of us by now know what a cougar is... an older woman who is on the sexual prowl for young man-meat.

So let's see... what would be a good name for a skanky older man looking for younger women....

Ah, I know! Buddy Hickerson!

Takes a skank to know a skank, after all.

2-9-10: I blame myself for this cartoon.

If I hadn't faithfully notated Buddy's daily regurgitated sloth all these years he would have happily, blisssfully continued to recycle his old cartoons day-in-and-day-fucking-out and no one would have been the wiser.

Actually, no one would have noticed or cared but that's a whole 'nother, dismal story.

So now he's apparantly under some unknown pressure to create new cartoons, either from his syndicate or from some new piece of tail appalled at this sleazy side of his business practices. Whatever the reason, the best he can manage is crap like this clunky little double entendre' concerning a device called an "accelerator stick", a hitherto unknown bit of automotive technology that Buddy simply dreamt up because he doesn't know what a "throttle" is. As in:

"Your throttle is stuck worse than a recalled Toyota's."

See? It's almost funny when you say it in English...if your idea of funny begins and ends with reruns of "Mama's House".

2-10-10: Oh, thank Jebus!

After five long, painful, excruciating days Buddy finally re-used an old cartoon! I couldn't be happier if Jessica Alba herself coverered her lithesome torso in mashed potatoes and jumped into my trousers.

Seriously, I've been sawing at my wrists over here with leftover pizza crusts from the mental anguish of having to read and critique the putrescent fertilizer Buddy's been pooping out as an excuse for comic material the past week.

All I can say is, "Yay, Buddy! Thanks for going back to your lazy-ass ways you fucking dork! Yah-hooo!"

Regurgitation Report: If you like eleven-year-olds, you came to the right place.

2-11-10: Hey, Buddy! This cartoon's hardly stupid at all!

(Did you see what I did there? I gave Buddy a backhanded compliment. I mean a REAL back-handed compliment, not this miserable excuse for a visual metaphor he crapped out between trips to the Quik-E-Mart for more Ephedra-fortified baba ghanoush.)

2-12-10: Little fishy is also in a standing, talking, arguing, grabbing mood, too. But just forget about those peculiarly un-piscene behaviors. They are not the droids you are looking for, if ya know what I mean.

Sloth Alert: Gag written by then cockholster du jour circa 2004, the Awesome Angela Szyszka. Hope it was worth it, Angie.

2-13-10: When American military forces invaded Iraq so that its massive oil reserves could be forever after safeguarded by American oil interests there were a fair number of people who had a big laugh at the 100,000 Iraqi men, women and children who perished over the past seven years as a result.

Those are the kind of people who think this cartoon is funny.

Way to go, Buddy, you ham-handed hack.

Regurgitation Report: This cartoon sucks twice. It sucked when it first showed up in 2002 and it sucks again when Buddy thought it was the best Valentine's Day cartoon he could offer in 2010.

Strangely, he was probably right. Though that definitely makes this cartoon the thinnest kid in fat camp.

2-15-10: This is not really a joke. This is just a set-up for a joke, a joke which explains why the Geico gecko is driving without insurance. I could write that joke with one parietal lobe strapped behind my back but that's not my purpose here.

Also, the gecko is only a foot long in the commercials, so why is he six feet tall here? The gag would have even been more humorous, such as it is, had he been drawn original size.

Buddy Hickerson... worst cartoonist in the world.

2-16-10: Buddy is such a dim-bulb he actually made all these people look crazed, even though the medical facility is obviously in the hair treatment business.

This is, sad to say, just another sterling example of Buddy making fun of the sanity challenged. But what would you expect of a cartoonist whose motto is apparantly "No scab left unpicked".

Regurgitation Report: When this cartoon last appeared back in 2004 the caption was just a wee bit longer:

"It's highly unusual, doctor ... they all steadfastly refuse to switch shampoos."

The original version made more prosaic sense, though it's still about as funny as stomach cancer.

2-17-10: This is just melancholy depressing.

In case you didn't know, the original Quigmans family consisted of Bob Quigman, his brother Moe, his girlfriend Shirley and his dog, Jowles. Say what you will about the current devolution of Buddy's cartooning skills, back then each character had real character.

However, what you see above is a pseudo-Bob (in fact, the first time Buddy has bothered to draw him in years), some generic kid and a vague female-like substance.

Yes, Buddy doesn't have enough pride in his own creations to even bother drawing them for a joke SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THEM. He might as well change the title of the strip to "The Generics" and be done with it. If you ever needed actual proof that Buddy just doesn't give a shit about cartooning anymore, this is it.

Sloth Alert: This is "Thornton's" second shot at the limelight, his first Quigmans gag having seen the light of day last December. I can't believe it took him three months to cough up this dismal spectacle.

2-18-10: What Buddy really means by "intimate entanglement" is, in this particular instance, rug-munching/muff-diving/bobbing for clams/French-kissing the Wookie/yodeling in the gully/parting the pink sea/romancing the stone/slurping the blurch/whistling in the weeds/worshiping at the bearded altar/taking the canoe downriver/pining for the fjord/lapping at the lint trap/guest-lecturing at Beaver College or any of a zillion other zany euphemisms for that, uh, thing women do to each other's, uh, thingy.

Good thing your kids don't understand that, eh?

Regurgitation Report: Hi Kimber! Yes, he's running this stupid cartoon again.

2-19-10: "It did. You're stupid and so is this cartoon."

Regurgitation Report: Seven years ago it was a dumb gag. That makes it twice as dumb today.

2-20-10: I wonder if, ohhhhh, I dunno, after drawing this cartoon Buddy then scanned the artwork, added the text using Photoshop and then emailed it off to the syndicate.

That wouldn't be hypocritical, would it? Nahh, that would just be stupid.

BTW, as near as I can figure, this is the first Quigmans cartoon that ever used the word "software". Let that sink in for a minute.

Technical note: The use of the name "Hordin" is an allusion to a friend of Buddy's, one who has in past written a handful of really dreadful Quigmans gags. Buddy's simply sucking up to her because, well, that's what suck-up's do.

2-22-10: Why does this cartoon suck?

Two words: Dog wig.

That is the lazy cartoonist's way to make a non-human character look female. It's the Hickerson Way.

Hey, genius, how about making one of the dogs a French poodle and the other a bulldog? How about a bow on one's tail, or a spiked collar on the other's neck?

A dog wig is what you draw when you're either incapable of creating character or you just don't give a shit about the art.

In this case, it's both reasons.

Regurgitation Report: This one was actually a trifle difficult to determine if it had been previously syndicated as the caption uses the vocabulary of an eight-year-old.

2-23-10: According to Buddy "Comic Geee-nyuss" Hickerson, animals don't wear pants but they wear shoes and eyeglasses, live in tract homes, read newspapers, keep pets and style their hair with a lovely pomade.

Way to think this one through, Idiot Boy.

Sloth Alert: The punchline of this cartoon is the word "pants". Seriously. As lame as it is, Buddy actually credits someone else for the gag, his pal Scott Parkin. It's not really Scott's fault as Buddy evidently will take any scrap of perceived humor he can find and funnel it to the syndicate in lieu of anything funny. It beats working.

Regurgitation Report: When this cartoon originally appeared back in 2003 Buddy was re-using only 10% of his old cartoons.

In 2009, he was up to almost 70% recycled material.

Just sayin'.

2-24-10: Right up front I want you all to know that I love you people. I love each and every last one of you schadenfreud-starved visitors who come to this site and gleefully wallow in the vent of my spleen.

I say that because it's the only way I can continue to read and critique a comic strip as wretchedly, punishably, ungloriously bloody awful as this woeful attempt.

I would dearly love to give this cartoon a well-deserved truncheon to the cerebral cortex but all ability to care has been sapped out of me by this singularly juvenile shard of comedic jetsam. As intellectual pursuits go it's barely one step above the webcam images of teenaged boys groping themselves on Chatroulette. (Note to teenaged boys on Chatroulette: Stop it! It's your sisters I want to see groping themselves, not you, you little sniggering shits!)

There is one miniscule ray of hope and that is that this cartoon, as retardedly topical as it is, will never, EVER see the light of photons again.

Now please excuse me while I go sterilize my retinas.

2-25-10: The above image is of today's Quigmans cartoon. The following remarkable spectacle is that of a prolapsed rectum:



I perceive no discernible difference between the two images.

2-26-10: While it's true that his creature, or a much more well-crafted facsimile, used to grace the front of boxes of cereal in the 80s it's just too damn bad a good joke didn't accompany it. Surrrre would've come in handy since Buddy's brain has apparantly withered to the size of a Grape Nut.

As Tony the Tiger would say: "IiiiiiiiIITTT SUCKS!"

2-27-10: Do you drink wine? Do you know the difference between a beaujolais nouveau and a cabernet sauvignon? Then you know that wine does not really mellow as it ages. It instead becomes more complicated, its fruitiness diminished until eventually you have, after many years, vinegar with the sultry aftertaste of moldy cork.

It's possible that Buddy was actually thinking about whiskey but that's giving Buddy credit for actually thinking at all.

Sloth Alert: Another leftover from the Angela Szyszka period.

Regurgitation Report: This is not a classic kept in temperature-controlled cellars until it has reached the peak of its enjoyment. This is a dried pudding cup that's been left in the back of the fridge for seven years where it not only has absorbed the taste of the Spanish onions in the crisper but has actually pulled away from the edges of the container by about three inches all the way around.

Bon appetit'.