NKKKK: Hottest Mom

And we wrap up the qualifying rounds of this year's National Kinkiest Komics Karacter Kontest with the most anticipated category, the running of the MILFs. Comic moms, like CBS sitcom wives, have always been much hotter than their dorky husbands, a wish fulfillment scenario that explains a lot about comic strip writers. Because of the strong field, I have excluded the soap moms (namely June Morgan and Abby Spencer) in hopes of keeping some balance. What makes a mom hot is up to your own fevered imagination, but I will try to handicap the field.


Alice Mitchell
Dennis The Menace
When it comes to the classic Father Knows Best traditional mom, none can top the perfectly coiffed and preternaturally slim Alice Mitchell. This SAHM is also almost always mute in the daily strips alternating between expressions of exasperated exhaustion and bemused affection.




Connie Duncan
Zits
With unconventional good looks, Connie with the inverted ta-tas spends her time keeping her teenage slacker son in line. One has to suspect she has a medicine cabinet of mother's little helpers to help her make it through the day.




Addy Lamarr
Heart of the City
This young single mother is always frazzled. Keeping up with her tutu-ed hellion takes all her energy. Without a man in the household, she needs some adult companionship to keep her out of the sherry. I'm sure she is only two jello shots away from dancing on the table.




Juliette Burber
9 Chickweed Lane
No comic mom has a higher libido than Juliette Burber, mother of the equally hormonal Edda. The leopard print panties alone are enough to pique the imagination. While she recently made an honest man out of her milquetoast boyfriend, one suspects he cannot possibly be man enough for her.




Nancy DeGroot
Luann
Speaking of jungle cats, there is a bit of the cougar in Nancy DeGroot as she probes into TJ's sordid and possibly imaginary past. While not as voluptuous as some of the other entries, those are serious DSL smackers she has on her.



Thelma Keane
Family Circus
Don't be fooled by the overly sensible Mom-Do she sports, those are some serious sweater puppies that Thel is smuggling under her turtleneck. You don't get four kids that close in age to each other without being a little frisky. I'd just be a little wary of getting too close to anything that popped out Billy and Dolly.




Blondie Bumstead
Blondie
Blondie is the only titular mom in the field. If the contest were based on cup size alone, there would be no competition whatsoever. However, despite her penchant for lounging in lacy lingerie, Blondie seems to do little actual parenting, preferring to focus on her catering business.

I'm sure I haven't covered all the many fine comic moms so feel to write in your personal favorite. I expect this category to be the competitive and popular one yet.

Most Desirable Dominatrix

When you talk Kinky Komiks Karacters, everybody likes a little bondage play. And the comics have lots of dominating women willing to mistreat a submissive man. Let's pick the best one to put you in your place.

	Margo Magee Apartment 3-G Nobody doubts that Margo is meanest woman on the funnies page. Her fury is legendary. She has abused and humiliated a long line of suitors. For men that need to have their self-esteem destroyed, an encounter with Margo is just what the doctor ordered.
	June Morgan Rex Morgan, MD It takes a strong woman to keep a closet case like Rex in line. June also runs a tight ship for every orphan and ne'er do well that runs into her life. She has her own lingo for the variety of services she offers bound to confuse any cops trying to decipher her Craigslist ads. And she has the cleanest garage in town.
	Mary Worth Mary Worth The chanteuse of Charterstone always has a few men hanging around the yard. When it comes to dishing out discipline, she has no peer. She must have something magical to keep Jeff on such a short leash for so long. Just don't cross her or you might end up buried next to Aldo.
	Sally Forth Sally Forth Sally rules the roost in both the office and at home. Her recent move to marketing has given her a whole new crowd to boss an bully. Meanwhile, Ted stays in his dungeon playing with his Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots waiting for the chance to please Mistress Smirk.

A good dominatrix whips you into shape and makes come crawling back for more.

NKKKK: Best Bear

Not everybody loves their men lean and sculpted. We are trying to be even-handed here at the Kinkiest Komik Karacter Kontest and have something for everybody. Plenty of fellas (and some gals) like a brawny guy with some meat on his bones. Fortunately the comics have plenty of lovable Gentle Ben types hiding in plain sight. Today we try to find that guy that has that ruggedly handsome outdoorsy look.

	Professor Ian Cameron Mary Worth According to his official King features bio: Beneath his bluster and pomposity this Scottish-born victim of "The Hemingway Complex" is a gentle teddy bear. Ian is the neighborhood "Greeter" and, by his own modest admission, the resident expert on everything. And with that kind of admission, what could he be hiding? His official duties at Charterstone include laying around the pool shirtless and disappearing randomly to go to conferences in other cities.
	Professor Aristotle Papagoras Apartment 3G The other soap comics professor has been mysteriously absent from the strip lately. He has been aging backwards, got a stylin' new goatee and got a really cool mustard suit at a thrift store down in the Village. Clearly he has discovered that hanging around those three bimbos wasn't getting him any action. Even his romance with Gina the actress was just a ruse to have have an excuse to hang around her off-off-off-Broadway theater which just happened to be next to the revival of Naked Boys Singing.
	Professor Cosmo Fishhawk Shoe Our final professor seems like an unlikely stud, but this chicken hawk has taken to popped collar polo shirts instead of his traditional patched elbow tweed to appeal to the twinks that hang around Roz's coffee shop/gay bar/sex toy store.
	Sargeant Snorkel Beetle Bailey Sarge just missed the cut in the Ambiguously Gay Duo category with his frequent BDSM bottom buddy Beetle, but he makes another run at the prize in this solo entry. In the don't ask-don't tell world of Camp Swampy, he is a tortured soul whose sham romance with equally closeted Sgt. Louise Lugg can't make up for the lie of a life he leads.
	Alley Oop Alley Oop A reader nomination, time traveling cave-man Alley Oop is perhaps just a little too buff to be a true bear, but his hirsute visage more than makes up for that shortcoming. He does rock the loin cloth and when he goes clubbing, he really goes clubbing.
	The Bear Pluggers And it wouldn't be right to not feature an actual bear, or at least a bear-human hybrid. And while Bear Guy is married to the odd looking kangaroo/coyote lady, there is nothing more manly than a little Brokeback Mountain bareback bear hugging going on in Pluggertown.

There are enough lovable tubby hairy guys here to fill up an evening of Logo/CBS cross-over sitcoms. Just pick the one that would make the Pride Parade proud.

NKKK: Hottest Comics Barely Legal Babe

When I did Sexiest CILF two years ago I lumped all the female characters together which wasn't particularly fair. So for this year's Kinky Karacter Kompetition I have broken then into the young single ladies and the moms. Oddly, this grouping was the harder bracket to fill-out (so to speak), made all the more difficult by my No High School Students rule. Here are the candidates:

	Toni Daytona Luann Toni ran away with the Hottest CILF last time, but I would hope that in the past two years we have grown tired of her cock-teasing ways. Not that Brad "Box of Rocks" DeGroot has. He still follows her around with those pathetic puppy dog eyes of his. Just remember that despite her hot looks, she is a cold-hearted bee-yotch.
	Alex Doonesbury Doonesbury The only actual college co-ed in this Girls Gone Wild division of the comics competition, Alex is young but knows the landscape, at least in theory. While there is on-going debate about how hawt she really is, who wouldn't like to fondly re-enact those days of dorm room lust? Eagerness to try the waters has to count for something.
	Edda Burber 9 Chickweed Lane Nobody creates as much comics heat as the recently deflowered Edda Burber. What could be a hotter start into the world of passion than doing it on top of a paino while being secretly web-cammed? And regular comic strip readers can pretend she is obtainable because she is clearly smitten by uber-dork Amos. I mean, if he can hit that, any of us could.
	Lila The Meaning of Lila A relative newcomer, Lila is a young woman with dead-end job and an obsession with shoes and meeting cute guys. Think of her as a younger, thinner, hotter Cathy. On the other hand, don't think of Cathy, ever. Lila haunts the bars with her cute gay coworker looking for quick hook-ups and neverending parties. And who couldn't go for a girl like that at the end of the night?
	Miss Buxley Beetle Bailey As the hottest thing at Camp Swampy for the non-don't-ask-don't-tell, Biss Buxley has been around. This fun party girl has gone out with Killer, Zero, and Beetle, so she can't be too fussy. Unfortuntely, she learned her office skills from the Fanne Fox Secretarial School (now there is a vintage pop-cultural reference).

The field is wide open. Pick which young thing does it for you.

NKKKK: Hottest Soap Hunk

Here at my annual Comics Competition, I have been rather unfair to the distaff side and not featured hot guys as a distinct category before. In fairness, the comics pages don't give me much help here. Most comic dudes tend to be Dopey Dads or Alarming Alcoholics. Let's remedy that by featuring some the ruggedly handsome men you can check out over the breakfast table every morning.

	Randy Parker Judge Parker While not THE Judge Parker, this newly minted magistrate is known for his lantern jaw and his many adventures with the fairer sex but he never seems to quite close the deal. He knows how to work it like a claw which would be smuttier if there were any hope of him getting to second base. While he often takes the backseat to longtime partner Sam Driver, this barrister is a versatile player.
	Sam Driver Judge Parker This strip is blessed with not one, but two handsome brunettes. So handsome that they are almost indistinguishable. Sam is the more adventurous one whose primary activity is avoiding sex with his incredibly hot wife so he can solve mysteries with other preternaturally attractive women and not have sex with them either.
	Rex Morgan, MD When it comes to not having sex with his wife, nobody tops Rex Morgan who stretches the bounds of ambiguously closetedness even by comic soap standards. His true proclivities are less of a subtextual theme than a running joke that everybody except June seems to be in on. I've never quite figured out what Rex actually DOES other than pose provocatively and come-on to cabin boys. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
	Mark Trail Soap strips tend to eponymous, but not more so than Mark Trail, forest ranger, nature writer, and backwoods vigilante. No hirsute evil doer is safe from his Right Fist of Justice®. He also manages to tease two women with his arboreal cluelessness; his long suffering wife Cherry and indefatigable outdoorsy fag-hag Kelly Welly. While no side of this triangle has ever been consummated, there is still hope for a Cherry-Kelly hot-springs party someday.
	The Phantom The Ghost Who Walks In Purple Spandex wins the token superhero slot mostly because he doesn't shoot white fluids out of his body as a superpower. Just what is his superpower anyways? Other than an uncanny ability to be a fashion disaster in any age, he mostly just shoots and punches his enemies and drugs his friends/victims. His fondness for cheek-clenching fabrics makes him the most fan-servicey of the nominees. Since he frequently cavorts lasciviously with PhantomSpouse Diane, he is the most arguably heterosexual hunk in this field despite his fondness for young boys in diapers.

This category is tough call. All the guys are hot, but they each seem to come with some baggage. While their true proclivities stay family-friendly perhaps they can inspire some truly lurid slash fiction. Let the best man win.

NKKKK: Kinkiest Kouple

We kick off my version of March Madness, the National Kinkiest Komics Karacter Kontest, with the equivalent of a first round 1-seed/16-seed match-up. But while there is a clear favorite, don't discount the scrappy upstarts who are just happy to get a chance in the spotlight.

	Arlo and Janis Arlo and Janis This category really should be called the Arlo Award but CIDU Bill beat me to that gimmick. No strip more consistently sneaks the double (or single) entendres past the censors. These frisky minxes have a healthy active sex life, but does it rise to the level of kinky? Who hasn't occasionally lost the handcuff keys? Anyone?
	Ted and Sally Forth Sally Forth Much like how Will and Grace is now seen as no big deal, some day this strip will be marked as a milestone in the acceptance of transgendered couples. The brilliantly subversive idea to pair both a MtF and a FtM transsexual as loving, devoted parents has gone a long way to promote tolerance and understanding.
	Wanda and Darryl MacPherson Baby Blues Wanda and Darryl are so frisky that they can't even to make it to the bedroom and instead make-out on the couch to the disbelief of their lightly sleeping spawn. That is matrimonial lust at its most neurosis forming. Let's hope those kids have good therapists. As proof of their fecundity, unlike many comic characters, the MacPhersons have had two kids since the comic started. That's tough to do with all those readers always watching.
	Hi and Lois Flagston Hi And Lois Often mocked as the archetype of bland boring suburban based strips, this comic is best read as subtext. Beneath this vignette of stale ennui is a seething 9-1/2 Weeks style food fetish scene about to play out. Behind the white picket facade, the Flagstons are flying their freak flag with key swaps, erotic toy parties, and basement bondage dungeons.
	Pete and Peggy Daddy's Home While not as famous as the other entrants, this strip about a stay-at-home dad and his corporate wife has a level of smirking not found elsewhere. In case you are unfamiliar with the strip, I offer a couple of sample full strips. If those two aren't getting the most action on the funny pages, I don't know who is.

We had some great write-in candidates. I purposely left out the soap couples to keep the playing field level. The Mitchells just missed the bubble, but they could have been contenders if there were any real evidence they have been using the Wilson's as babysitters while they run their couples sex surrogate therapy sessions. Juliet Burber and Elliot didn't make the cut because Elliot just isn't an equal partner, but don't worry, we'll see plenty of the Burber ladies later in the tournament.

Out of tradition (and laziness) I've kept the same polling software as in other years, which lags terribly. Your vote is being counted, just not very quickly. So go ahead and vote and lets hope for a Cinderella upset.

Gaiman On Colbert

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Neil Gaiman

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Political Humor

Rap Battle
NASA Name Contest

I'm such a bad Irishman. I don't have some sort of shamrock encrusted post today. Fortunatately, Mo MoDo (who is much more Irish than I am) does. But last night, Neil Gaiman (Goth Comic Writer Rock Star) was on Colbert last night plugging his Newbery award winning book which is rather generically titled The Graveyard Book. Since I'm three chapters in, I gave it a watch only to have two mini-spoilers revealed. Here there are in yellow on white text (which means you may be out of luck depending on your feedreader):

SPOILERS BELOW

Despite three people being slashed to death just before the book starts, nobody else gets killed by a knife. That's disappointing. It's a good thing so many people in the book are dead already.

The character that can leave the graveyard and only comes out at night is really a vampire. Duh. I already had that figured out.

/END SPOILERS

Oh, and I saw Watchmen in IMax last night. No spoiler to say that plenty of people die. On screen and rather bloodily. For fuller reviews of both Watchmen and Graveyard Book wait until the BooksFirst post in two weeks.

National Kinkiest Komic Karacter Kick-Off

With March Madness upon us, it is time for the signature event here at Foma Central, our fourth annual comics competition. For this year, we go back to some well-trod territory, the sexiest/hottest comics character. And yes, it has been done before. In 2007 we did Hottest CILF Soap Division which ended in a dead heat between Abbey Spenser and June Morgan as well as Hottest CILF Comics Division where Toni Daytona ran away from the pack.

Other websites have even gotten into the act. Michael Cavna at the Washington Post's Comic Riffs is also taking nominees for his 2009 sexiest comics character contest (mostly to deafening silence). So to keep it fresh, we are upping the ante and sexy is not enough for this year's National Kinkiest Komics Karacter Kompetition aka NKKKK. We are searching for the ones with the most shocking secret life.

The selection committee has already made a list of automatic bids, but I'm looking for some at-large entries. Feel free to nominate your favorites in any of this year's categories which are:

Hottest Mom: Let's put the M into CILF. Which comic mother is baking cookies in the kitchen but swinging from the chandelier in the bedroom? This category promises to be the most crowded. Let the arguing begin.

Hunkiest Soap Guy: In the past we've neglected the men in our competitions out of some subliminal homophobia, but no more. And in this category ambiguous sexuality is not a detriment, it's a plus.

Best Bear: And we aren't talking Pluggers here. Which hirsute hunk raises the blood pressure of the chubby chasers?

Kinkiest Couple: Another crowded category. Of all the couples in the comics, who flies the freak flag the highest once the bedroom door is closed?

Barely Legal: For this grouping, the girl must be out of high school (we just are NOT going there) but arguably under thirty. Yeah, I got a rather elastic definition of 'barely.'

Most Dutiful Dominatrix: Who brings the discipline and knows their way around a dungeon?

The rules are just as they have always been: The character must be from a newspaper comic strip currently in syndication. No webcomics which are easily an order of magnitude kinkier than anything that must pass muster with the bluehairs that edit the comics pages.

The "current" requirement is also known as The Brandy Rule since it prevents the fanboys with all their stuck-together copies of Liberty Meadows from stuffing the ballot box, to coin a euphemism. I'm also instituting a No Foobs rider on the rule. The Pattersons are dead to me. We must never speak of them again.

Now get nominating.

Great Minds

This syndicated cartoon by Jeff Danziger is dated March 12 and appeared online and in the Washington Post yesterday:

It looks familiar. Where have I seen it before? Oh, yeah. On the March 8 post of Dowd Report:


Note that Danziger didn't have the gumption to draw the iconic red polka-dotted bandanna that appears in the original poster onto Michelle.

Now I'm not accusing Danziger of plagiarism because the idea is too obvious. Unbeknowst to me, at least one commenter on a political blog made the suggestion (without executing the idea) before I had posted my version. Besides, based on the number of views Dowd Report gets, it's unlikely that he was one of the couple of hundred people to even see that post even though, thanks to some third party links from commenters on HuffPo and DailyKos, it was one of the most popular posts in the history of the blog.

Still, I'm amused that I had the same concept as a famous syndicated cartoonist a week ahead of him. Great minds think alike. I don't know what my excuse is.

Pi Day Party

Today is March 14, or 3/14, which is also known as Pi Day. In honor of the event, I have baked two pies, one chocolate and one apple that I am going to take to a Pi Day party. Because that is how I roll (the pie dough). And I like that Blogger allows me to adjust the time stamp of my post. Figure out why.