Head over to ComicsAlliance today for my latest contribution, a roundup of fifteen newspaper strips that have taken the emphasis off of the “comic” and moved it onto something more closely resembling “soul-crushing despair.”

Yes, unlike the masterful way that Charles Schultz used neurosis and fear as a springboard of comedy in Peanuts–handily reprinted in the beautiful Fantagraphics collections that no reader should be without–these are strips that just cut out the humor altogether and pass the savings on to you! It’s pretty grim, but to be honest, out of all the stuff I’ve done for CA so far, this one’s my favorite.

Not just because I find a few of these strips to actually be hilarious–like that installlment of Funky Winkerbean, which is great because you could can replace that middle panel with virtually anything to make that third-panel pause even more uncomfortable than it already is–but because doing it allowed me to catch up on a two and a half year backlog of the Comics Curmudgeon.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the site, Josh Fruhlinger single-handedly justifies the existence of the comics page with his daily reading and commentary. He’s been going since 2004, and over the past five years, he’s earned one of the most fanatically loyal audiences on the Internet for good reason: he’s hilarious.

So please, check him out, but save it until after you get through the ComicsAlliance piece. You’ll need something to cheer you up after that.