MemeMachineGo!

=v= "Funny Paper" is a column that ran on the Baltimore City Paper's website some years back, and I've mentioned it here once or twice. It snarked at its local paper's comic strips, and at times it had a tagline, "We read the comics so you don't have to."

The column went on hiatus, and the blog "Josh Reads the Comics So You Don't Have To" popped up a few months later. Josh, who also lives in Baltimore, was unaware of the previous effort and its tagline, but the "Funny Paper" columnists griped and Josh changed his blog's name to The Comics Curmudgeon.

This blog is going gangbusters these days. Josh is somewhat kinder than his predecessors and snarks hilariously, and he's attracted a community of readers who are similarly-inclined. A cottage industry has sprung up, selling T-shirts and coffee mugs based mostly on in-jokes, and Josh himself has won some sort of prestigious "Blogger of the Year" award. Unfortunately it's had a terrible effect on some readers, myself included, in that we've started to read some of the worst offerings of the funny pages in Baltimore. By which I mean Mary Worth.

If you follow the funny pages you might know that the strip For Better or For Worse is coming to a nice tidy conclusion this September. Too tidy, in the minds of some readers, and thanks to Josh I stumbled upon a world of people who apparently have nothing to do but snark, snarl, blog, and even write foefic about happenings in that strip. One gem stand out, though: April's Real Blog appears to be written by the strip's remaining sympathetic character, and she (or one of her siblings) summarizes what happens in the strip. So you don't have to.

If you're looking to get sucked into a strange world beyond comic strips, and want to know the meaning of Margo! Boxcar! Saturn!, I can highly recommend these two blogs. Enjoy.