Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

Probably just a throw-away panel to the original cartoonist, but SNARK GOLD to mashup folks like me!

Who knew it could be such an easy solution…

…for whiny kids…

…and whiny adults…

Hey! We weren’t the only ones who’ve been wondering!

Maybe it’s not really any more funny (assuming it was funny to start with), but at least it might be more surreal (yes, Zits’ Jeremy text-messaging his mom to shave his butt in a badly-spelled manner was the joke in the 15 September panel):

Then again, maybe it takes a Comics Curmudgeoner (thanks, Sequitur!) and a  musical version:

Unlike this year’s back-to-school repeat, with Jeffy whining about wanting to go and play school, the one trotted out in 6 September 2010 was Jeffy quite happy to be staying at home with Mommy and PJ.

Well, that’s the way I’d mashed it:

Sadly, if you compared last year’s and this year’s back-to-school panels, you’d find less different than in a Slylock Fox “find the six differences.”

…’nuff said.

I hope you read Cul de Sac.  The cartoonist, Richard Thompson, must have kids.  Real kids with strange little imaginations and weird and wonderful ways to look at the world.  Not like a lot of cartoonists who (A) never have had kids; (B) have had kids a gazillion years ago; or (C) “write” kids the way grammas and aunties want to see them, as adorable and passive, something vaguely plastic.

The Comics Curmudgeon‘s bourbon babe, unbuckled recently commented that certain cartoonists (she was looking rather pointedly at Jeff Keane) really ought to take a tip from Richard Thompson, who knows how to work with the child characters in his strip — this is a good thing as Cul de Sac is a family-based strip.

I thought that was a little harsh.  I think way down deep, li’l Jeffy Keane is in those circular panels,  crying to get out and express himself.  Maybe there’s just a big, fat man in front of him.

…no, wait, it doesn’t.  Too bad!

…but it was you and Billy who were so gung-ho on “camping out.”  Maybe next time you’ll think of the potential consequences.

And in the brutal light of morning, was it worth it, Jeffy?  Still, you will always remember Brokeback Backyard.

I swear that while just about everyone who commented on a dirt-covered, mud-pie making PJ referred to dirt or poo or dirt-eating or poo-eating (I think I covered all the bases), this is the first thing that came to my mind.

Yeah, like it’s an improvement…

Meanwhile, Dolly has the Epiphany we’ve dreamed of for so many years:

And Billy has his own Summer of Enlightenment: