Time for a spooktacular Halloween comics roundup!

These people are not trick-or-treaters! Do not open your door to them!

The frost is on the pumpkin, the leaves are on the ground, and the kids are all back in school having their spirits broken. That's right, fall is underway! And I have such a limited imagination that I can't think of a better way to celebrate autumn than with another comics roundup! So let's rake some comics into a big pile and then dive in!

Sure, let's do a comics roundup! What's the worst that could happen?

Let's just jump into it.

As another summer fades into autumn, blah blah blah... here are some comics. Is it mostly Mary Worth again? Yeah, probably.

We all feel a little like Ronan, The Accuser sometimes

Try to imagine Ronan, The Accuser talking like Charlie Brown.

In his newspaper incarnation, Spider-Man has been doing battle with an intergalactic baddie named Ronan, The Accuser lately. It's a dumb Guardians of the Galaxy crossover. Don't worry about it. Anyway, in Thursday's installment, Ronan called on the services of a giant automaton called a Kree Sentry. Presumably, said Sentry will start wailing on Spidey tomorrow, but I thought it would be funny-ish if the big guy didn't obey. I mean, why should he? I went to some trouble to make Ronan hang his head in defeat, but it barely reads at this size.

As long as I have you here, this is another recent comics parody of mine. I made Hi & Lois and Mary Worth swap dialogue. I think both strips are improved.

See, it's funny because the dad in the first one is abandoning his family.

And no one specifically asked for a super depressing Beetle Bailey remix, but here's one anyway.

Gen. Halftrack has seen some stuff, man. He has seen some stuff.

'Hi And Lois' turns into a drama so easily

Filmed in Depress-O-Vision.

  
Autumn is a time of death and decay, but that idea is rarely reflected in newspaper comics, with their gaudy colors and cheap punchlines. Fortunately, the darkness is lurking just below the surface and can easily be brought to the forefront. It takes very little to turn this Hi and Lois Sunday strip into a tense domestic drama similar to Robert Redford's Ordinary People. Just tweak the dialogue a hair, erase the phony smiles from the characters' faces, and desaturate the colors. Boom. Instant Oscar bait. I think the idea here is that Lois Flagston is trying to create the "perfect" jack-o'-lantern because she cannot attain perfection in her own life. And she makes her husband and children suffer because of this. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The Funday Sunnies! Comics for the terminally depressed!

Celebrating America's richest vein of laughter and despair: Newspaper comics!

Hello, everybody!

My main man, Zomby, has been on a vision quest in Nepal these past few weeks, which explains his near-total absence from the blog. When (or if) he gets back, I'll be happy to bring you his further exploits. In the meantime, I thought I'd bring you a variety of Sunday comics, each one with the subtly dispiriting, downbeat antihumor of Zomby!

Enjoyment is not the proper reaction to these comics, per se. You really should be shaking your head and sighing deeply after each one.

Capitalist Cut-Ups

Ruprecht, The One-Armed Cat

Dennis the Fundamentalist

Only One Punchline!

The Dullards

Suburban Ennui

Creepy Love