I like how he's turned Marmaduke from a dumb, lumbering mutt to a flesh-eating murder machine.

A penny to anyone who can explain this one:



Josh's interpretation, plus a discourse on barrels as attire, here.  I don't know if that's what the artist meant, but I can't think of anything else.

Not only do I love the Comics Curmudgeon, I am happy that he (almost) never features Pearls Before Swine, since it's one of the few newspaper comics that I feel is worth reading at this point. The one time he did give it a mention was because Stephan Pastis mentioned him.

I would make a Pearls Before Swine thread, but I feel like I'm one of the only people in the world who even knows the strip exists, let alone actually enjoys it.

I just read through a PBS collection that my brother lent me and it had its moments.  Pastis is a bit of a curmudgeon himself, making some pretty biting commentary about his own medium and he doesn't shy away from calling out his fellow cartoonists for their relentless mediocrity in parody.  Yet any enjoyment I got from reading it was marred by the smug, self-congratulatory tone that runs throughout.  The art is nothing to write home about and he relies way too heavily on horrible puns for me to ever fully endorse it in good conscience.