Soapy emotional rollercoasters
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Gasoline Alley, 4/12/24
It’s not news exactly that conflict is the engine of good stories, but I have to say that Gasoline Alley feels like it’s rediscovering this for the first time in years. When it was just Walt and Sheezix on a quixotic quest to stop Electric Acres from happening? Snoozeville. But now that I know it’s turning brother against brother, and fiancé against fianceée? This is it. I’m all in. I hope it devolves very quickly into graphic and gratuitous violence, while Walt wanders around shouting “What’d you say? What’d she say?” until a hurled piece of debris finally puts him out of his misery. It’ll be the sort of thing where Rod Serling steps out of the shadows and explains that this world may be more like ours than we care to admit, until he too is killed in mid-sentence by a hurled piece of debris.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/12/24
And yeah, sure, that sounds like it would be a lot to process, emotionally, but don’t worry, if the anxiety gets too much you can always turn to Rex Morgan, M.D., which just started a storyline about little kids making brownies. It will be extremely uneventful and last six to fifteen weeks.
Mark Trail, 4/12/24
I don’t know, this doesn’t seem like it requires some kind of big investigation. Horses are big and pretty off-putting — they run fast, they have razor-sharp feet, their teeth are real nightmarish if you look too closely at them, and so forth. They’re nice to watch run around, I admit, but I don’t trust them, so why would I want them near my company? And why would it be bad to ask the Bureau of Land Management to help clear them out? The horses are on the dang land that they’re supposed to manage! What do I pay taxes for?
125 replies to “Soapy emotional rollercoasters”
RMMD:
You just know that Michael and Johnny are going to be the Beavis and Butthead of the Alpha Generation.
MW:
It’s ironic that Estelle is beginning to fashion the Vulcan “Live long and prosper” signage as Wilbur departs, considering that the last time that they encountered one another, she was wishing him exactly the opposite during her revenge karaoke.
MW-Wilbur then goes off to drown his sorrows in fermented mayonnaise and Mary’s muffins.
RMMD-Rex needs to have his sons tested. No way they can be that big and that dumb.
Meanwhile in Mary Worth Weelbur will, may we hope, wander away to Aldo Curve and quietly murder himself.
“I’ll crack the eggs, but you can stir the mix, okay?”
Coming from an adult, this would be the ambiguous sexual come-on of the year.
GA: From the look of her hand, T-Bone gave her a profane Italian gesture.
RMMD: The real tension comes from wondering if they’re going to leave the eggs out of the fridge.
MT: Is it really a mystery? Tad Crass doesn’t pay taxes, so why not get a government agency to do work for him free of charge.
MW: “On second thought, I’ve got one more card-themed karaoke song for you. Can you hear me? Ahem.
“Fabiana was mine
‘Til the time that I found her
Rolled in whim
Lovin’ him
“Then Stell came along, loved me strong
That’s what I fought —
Fleein’ spew
That fried, too
Don’t know that I’m chill, but until I can find me
A girl who’ll stay and won’t lay blame behind meI’ll be what I am
A solitaire-y man
Solitaire-y man
I’ve had it to here
Bein’ where love’s a scrawled word
Part-time fling
Tapering
“I know it’s been done
Havin’ one girl who’ll love you
Trite or wrong
Creak along
“Don’t know that I’m chill, but until I can find me
A girl who’ll stay and won’t lay blame behind me
I’ll be what I am
A solitaire-y man
Solitaire-y man
[bridge]
“Don’t know that I’m chill, but until I can find me
A girl who’ll stay and won’t lay blame behind me
I’ll be what I am
Solitaire-y man
Solitaire-y man, mm mm mm
Solitaire-y man, mm mm mm
Solitaire-y man”
MW – Estelle has completely forgotten that the last time she encountered Wilbur she threatened to take out a retraining order against him for stalking her.
Which doesn’t surprise me at all considering that Estelle is by far the dumbest character in this strip (and that’s a pretty high bar!)
RMMD: Johhny turns the bowl upside-down over Michael’s head.
“‘Duh,’ Yolks on you.”
RMMD:
“You know that great Robert Frost poem about the Luddite protagonist who gets mad at the train, boys? — ‘The next machine that has the power to pass/Will get this plasm in its goggle glass’ !”
“Huh?”
GA: Gonna be straight up here, I really don’t care about the angry entrenched perspectives on what counts as a “silly name” from people called T-Bone and Baleen.
RMMD: Jesus Christ, just why? Can’t we at least skip ahead to the part where all these 50-year-old children slip on the floor and end up having to wear uncomfortable medical boots?
FC: Nice to see that Sid is getting Willa extra work in other comics besides Mary Worth. Or is that Stellan? I don’t mean to sound piscist, my parents raised me better than that, but all these soggy gill-breathing finbacks look the same to me.
Luann: What the hell is a “forehead bip?” I’d ask the Trufanns, but they’re all too busy baying for Bets to cave in Stef’s skull with a lamp for using some of her hair conditioner.
BIZARRO: English has 26 letters and dozens of dialects. Looking online Welsh seems to have 29 letters and four dialects. So why is their Scrabble more complicated?
BLISS:. Is stupidity really more dangerous than intelligence? Not in the wrong hands.
DOONESBURY,:. Stupidity is contagious.
Rex Morgan: C’mon, we all know these idiot kids are about to put that big plastic bowl of brownie batter directly into the oven. The next dozen strips will be devoted to them attempting to clean up the kitchen while arguing about who’s most to blame. (Hint: It’s the parents.)
Mark Trail: I’m sorry, but if you’re a business owner named Tad Crass, you know no journalist will ever be writing a “puff piece” about you. If you hear that Martha Stewart wants your help with an article about folding napkins into swans for a dinner party, you should still run it through three PR agents and a private investigator before letting her into your lobby.
Mary Worth: Yikes, this 10-minute encounter with his ex has actually caused Wilbur to become balder. Which I’ll admit is pretty darn satisfying, but also kind of sad.
Frazz: Satchel Paige is rolling in his grave.
Luann: Don’t get my hopes up for a murder in this strip, Evanses. Only the most gullible TruFan will fall for that. The rest of us know you won’t commit to it. At worst, it’ll be like the many episodes of Gilligan’s Island where someone (usually The Skipper) gets hit with a coconut.
CS: No, no, no, no, no! It’s supposed to be:
“…my grandson, Mitch, the last cash register on planet Earth!”
60 years earlier: “These are my daughters, Pammy and Chrissy, and I’m just showing…”
Mary Worth: Does Dr. Ed Harding even remember that bland, boring Wilbur is the “your ex” he’s been talking about day after day?
GA: I guess Eddie Grant is too contemporary an act to book for the big name changing ceremony. I wonder if Al Jolson did any songs about electricity?
GA So wait, has Walt not heard a single word of dialogue since this whole story began? That’s not fair, we should all be that lucky.
RMMD I remember years ago hearing about a Scandinavian trend of ‘slow TV’ where they would just show a woman knitting for like 4 hours straight. I thunk the key to it working was having no dialogue at all. Take note, Rex Morgan…
@jroggs:
#11. LUANN:. Yesterday, a forehead bip from Bets changed Tiff from a confused college student putting off a homework assignment into a professional brander.
Could it also give Stef elightenment in seeing boundaries?
9CL: Today’s double translate is via Mongolian.
“You don’t understand. I would like to give you my most serious and profound consideration…”
“Portly. Yes, portly. Portly is just the ticket. Now, if you need to call me…”
“Sigmoid. Yes, the word sigmoid. You are completely sigmoid.”
“…Is it like an S or a C?”
“S. Of course S.”
No use. If I were C, I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
@jroggs, GA: I’m going with the kids burning themselves. Of course, unsupervised cooking near a hot stove is a Rene scam and it’s going to be his fault.
GA: Someone notice that either the hearing aids are out for Walt, or he’s finally fading into the aether and can’t hear this plane of existence.
Stripey and Son: Kit’s looking forward to castrating the Bad Guys a little too much.
“I’ll crack the eggs, but you can stir the mix, okay?”
Please tell me I’m not the only one that thought of Parappa the Rappa.
Zits: Pssst, Jeremy…there are chemicals that will achieve this much more quickly.
FC: “Because your whore mother sets no boundaries for you. I mean, I just want the place to look nice for you darling children.”
MW: One way you could read this is that Dr. Ed doesn’t want to be humiliated in a karaoke lounge after his inevitable break up with Estelle.
9CL – That’s the pitfall of going to a school with only two students. You basically spend all day every day with the one other kid.
It’s even worse if the other kid is a complete narcissist and expects you to talk about her all the time. Or if the other kid has scoliosis or whatever and walks as if he is always just about to sit down in a reclining chair.
Luann: That’s okay, Bets. Just replace her lube with crazy glue. Dorm Justice.
RMMD: Eagerly awaiting the impending eggshell injury.
MW: Boy, if I had a nickel for every time I had to promise not to have a Karaoke battle with an ex…
H&L: Be careful what you wish for, Hi. If Chip does by the trash can what he does in the shower, he’ll be arrested.
MW: Granted I will always side with Estelle over Wilbur, even if her defining trait is that she’ll lose all her brain cells as the plot demands. I’ll side with anyone over Wilbur. But still, imagine that you run into your ex. She is wearing what looks like a lifeless cat around her chest, and her equally lifeless boyfriend is pushing a cat and a dog in a vintage pram. Despite having previously threatened you with a restraining order if you interacted with her again, she is now acting like it’s great to see you. Possibly because, judging from their eyes, she and her partner have been dipping into his pharmaceuticals. How in the world do you walk away from this encounter feeling like you’re the loser?
Trust Wilbur to always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Next he’ll go to the pharmacy and run into Zak and Iris.
RMMD – So, those eggs are not going to make it back into the fridge?!?! Heart pounding stuff!
Once upon a time, I’d have guessed this Rex Morgan MD storyline would end with the kids learning about salmonella from undercooked eggs. Now I’m pretty sure it’s going to end with them learning about roots country. I can just see Mud Mountain now: “Kids, I need to pretend to shit myself on stage again. You wouldn’t happen to have any convincing-looking brown goo I can pour down my pants, would you?”
DT: Word is, if you write “Word is…” in front of information your characters have no plausible reason to know, you can provide them any knowledge you like. And if that bothers you, word is you can kiss my lazy shortcut-writing behind.
JP: All hope is lost! The Parkers are doomed! …You know, there are a lot of ways Randy and April could confront this contrived conundrum apart from waiting for Helena to show up and fix everything again, but probably the most glaring is this: Pavel, the notorious arms dealer who is being vigorously hunted by the CIA, lives right down the street from the CIA, and the CIA doesn’t know this. Sam, April, and Helena never told them or any other government agency, and they somehow never figured this out themselves. Maybe anonymously rectify that first, and then go back to bewailing your tragic situation if it doesn’t work out. Or just keep doing nothing until reality bends to accommodate your convenience; that, annoyingly, does always seem to work.
MW: Wilbur wanders off whistling “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” An old lady approaches. “Do you need help finding your way back to the group home, young man?”
@astroboy: In fairness to Estelle, she is the one character in this strip who shows occasional flashes of actual human behavior. She wouldn’t tolerate Wilbur acting like a drunken fool until Mary gaslit her into taking him back, she wouldn’t tolerate Wilbur threatening her cat until Mary gaslit her more, she refused Wilbur’s marriage proposal, she refused to immediately forgive his fake death despite Mary’s attempt to gaslight her yet again, she refused to get back together with him, and she threatened him with legal action when he wouldn’t leave her alone. That is the most sane and rational behavior possibly ever seen in this strip.
The problem is that Estelle gets a temporary lobotomy from Moy whenever the plot demands.
Gasoline Alley: “SHE SAID HE’S A DUMB T- BONE HEAD!”
“Oh, am I? Well tell her she’s a bitch.”
GA: It’s no wonder that Walt can”t hear anything that anyone around him is saying. Walt’s resistance to changing the town’s name to “Electric Acres” is so strong that, in protest, he has refused to replace the dead batteries in his hearing aids.
Mark Trail:
I GOT A HORSE ON MY LAND
I GOT A HOUSE ON MY LAND
I GOT A BUCK IN MY HAND
I GOT BLM IN MY HAND
I GOT DIANA ON MY ASS
I GOT MARK TRAIL ON MY ASS
I GOT A PAIN IN MY ASS
I GOT A NAME LIKE TAD CRASS
[Bass break]
Baldo : good job avoiding a lawsuit by calling it your “super power”, but wouldn’t calling it your “sixth sense” work better, despite being closer to the actionable phrase.
************
Crankshaft : “Since we’re closing and all, you interested in buying this priceless antique you value so much?” “WHAT!? ARE YOU CRAZY? Why would I waste my money on buying something useless like that!?” *Returns home, immediately purchases 200 5000$ hoes from Bean’s End*
**************
Hi and Lois : “I don’t take 30 minute showers, dad.” “Huh!?” “I don’t take 30 minute showers. I don’t take showers at all! I never take showers, and all the kids at school bully me for it, because supposedly, I have “B.O.”. I tell you about it all the time, dad.” “Are you implying I don’t really pay attention to my family, … (uh, Louis, right? Which one is this again? Dot? Dawg?)”
************
Rex Morgan M.D : THRILL at the new exciting storyline “a bunch of kids forget to preheat the oven”!
@JamesBont: No, but your comment reminded me of this gem.
Rex Morgan makes a lot more sense once you understand that it’s not about “plot” or “things happening,” it’s just a daily reminder of how things are supposed to work for senile dementia patients.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: …And comics page readers, but I repeat myself.
I’d find Walt’s encroaching deafness more believable if we don’t keep seeing him having conversations with no issues. No, I think this is just him playing on his age to be an asshole. Which, to be fair, if you were nigh immortal but still aged appropriately, you’d need to find ways like this to amuse yourself to distract from the horror of living forever in a body that continues to break down.
Rex Morgan, MD – It would qualify as medical drama if the kids are making a batch of pot brownies, and need to be admitted to the ER after getting too high because kids are dumb and don’t know their limits.
In fact, it’d be even funnier if it was the Keene kids as teens doing this.
Mark Trail – Mark is unwittingly finding himself drawn into a fight between libertarian land owners of the West, and the bureaucracy of the federal government demanding to know ever more about citizens activities. This will inevitable break out in senseless violence, with the horses possibly getting killed in the fight. The cost of war to the natural world is underreported in the press, and Mark Trail is going to correct that.
Pluggers:…are banned from most Japanese restaurants.
“And a tip o’ the hat to Cris ‘Toe Cheese’ O’Hern of San Diego, CA”
DtM: “Your mom is going to get her eyes checked.”
“How’s she getting there?”
“She’s driving”
“B..b..but…?”
DtM: Dennis asks his dad; “Why am I carrying a box of road apples which is unrelated to the gag?”
Henry responds; “Just shut up and get in the sack.”
@Lauralot:
@#26: Totally agree. It’s a job to look dumber than Wilbur, but these two managed it beautifully.
Wait until he finds out about her other ex, Artheur.
CS: The maelstrom of the chronodisjunction continues to wreak havoc on the Funkyshaftverse, as Mitch – who is the son of Max, who is the son of Pam, who is the daughter of Ed – has now become Ed’s grandson. Is it really too much to ask cartoonists to keep track of the simple details of their own plots, settings, and characters without accidentally implying generational incest? Sadly, for some, at least one of whom apparently believes that cash registers have almost entirely disappeared from the face of the planet, keeping track of even basic reality is a losing battle.
@taig: Besides, we all know what the last cash register in the Funkyverse was: Lisa Crawford Moore. And Les doesn’t let anyone else touch it.
MT: it’s been quite awhile since I read this strip, and hopefully will be quite awhile before I read it again. It’s painful to look at. The artwork is so ugly, and the plots barely rise to “Superfriends” or even “Wacky Races.” It’s embarrassing to read, and I say this as someone who reads “Luann” on the daily.
@12 Activist 1234: You’ve obviously never been to Wales. They may have only a few letter but they’re not afraid to use ’em all up in each word. The road signs have to be huge to fit the long city names.
@22 taig: Agent Orange?
@41 Hibbleton: Pluggers are banned from Japanese restaurants because they keep asking for the nigiri and maki sushi to be chicken-fried.
@42 Hibbleton: Hey, if it worked for Hanna Dingdong in Santa Royale, certainly it can work for a hot mom in Dennisville.
Was Denorex the name of the jock itch medication that Leo Durocher advertised. I think back to my time at KMSR Radio in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, with the network commercial starting with, “This is Leo Durocher. Even if you shower twice a day, you can still wind up with jock itch.”
Whenever this came on, we’d say, “Men, don’t strike out with foul balls.” (I even wrote a baseball-themed commercial for Funky’s Home Plate restaurant in Melrose that started with “Don’t strike out with foul balls.”)
Anyway, that’s what I thought of when I read Pluggers today. Thanks, Cris O’Hern of San Diego, California.
@Baja Gaijin: Perfect example. From what I understand reading government literature, Agent Orange only destroys plant life and has no detrimental effects on anything else.
MT: Uh, lady, before you go on your big ‘Jules is gonna vicariously bust Elon Musk for hurting the pwetty horsies!’ adventure, you might want to see a doctor about that arm. The angle of that fist pump suggests you’ve broken it.
Crankshaft: Oh get over yourself, Batiuk. ‘Last cash register on planet Earth.’ Criminy!
JP: Your mother is going to destroy us all, April. [hug] Now get out there, you crazy kid, and help her do it! You know you’ll always reget it if you don’t!
Rex Morgan, Mysteriously Disappeared: This month on a very special ‘Rex Morgan’ the kids adorably burn their house down and the Morgans are given a new home by the kindly old Mafia Donna!
SF: Well, this is it. We’re finally going to see how Marculiano handles a Wilbur Weston date. I was hoping and hoping he’d drop the idea, but for naught. I’d caution him once again to tread carefully, but we all know that isn’t happening. Strap in…
Luann: Terrific. Bets murders Stef, Bets goes to jail along with Tiffany as an accessory after the fact, Gunther devotes himself to busting Bets out and everyone dies in the massive prison riot Gunther sparks when the rest of the cast come to curse and jeer at the two jailbirds on Visitor’s Day! Certainly a grim way to wrap up this strip, but I’m sure those ‘masters of misdirection’ are up to the challenge!
DT: I’ve got something of a confession to make. I’ve liked Dick Tracy since I was a kid. I remember watching the cheesy UPA cartoons in reruns around the time the 1990 feature came out, and I had the action figures and ‘2-way wristwatch’ of same. I actually bought the compendiums of the original Gould strips so I could finally read the original stories for myself and enjoyed tracing the character’s origins in 1930 all the way to just before the Moon Maid era began in the early 60s. I certainly wouldn’t say it represented the reality of police attitudes towards the populace any more than Mark Trail represented the true reality of environmental conservation, but I would say Gould must be spinning in his grave at how his characters are being treated today.
Does Crankshaft always refer to Mitch as his “grandson,” even though Mitch is really his great-grandson? I’m just wondering if there’s some quiet retcon going on to make Crankshaft seem younger than he is. It would be a particularly brutal version of comic book time if Crankshaft always stays the same age while his descendants age in more or less normal time and produce new generations, then generations of his descendants disappear to maintain a plausible illusion that Crankshaft is 60ish and not a 100-year-old WWII vet with great-grandchildren.
MT: Ummm, didn’t we do at least a week on how wild horses are an invasive species and need to be managed? And now we’re angry because the Bureau of Land Management is doing said managing? This just feels like an excuse for Jules Rivera to indulge her hatred for wealthy self-important tech bros, which come on Jules, everybody hates wealthy self-important tech bros. They’re like the Crankshafts of the real world.
RMMD: “Okay, now go get mom’s ‘special herbs’…”
MT: I expected this remake of The Misfits to be on AppleTV, or maybe Tubi.
RMMD – You say “uneventful.” I say “trip to the ER.”
Rex Morgan: With any hope this is actually the start of a horror story about the mutant freak Sarah poisoning her parents with brownies filled with rat poison as retaliation for their lobotomizing her to stifle her unnatural intelligence. “Magento was right” young Sarah says as she watches Rex choke on his own blood.
Mark Trail: “It’s suspicious, I tell you. What kind of person doesn’t want wild animals running around his property and destroying everything in sight? Criminals that’s who!”
RexMo – Eggs, plural?!?! That means she’s following the instructions for cake-like brownies. CAKE-LIKE! Why not just make cake? This child is evil and must be stopped!
C’shaft: “That’s right, I haven’t updated my payment methods since the 1950s. None of them newfangled Diners’ Club cards for me; it’s either cash or check with two forms of ID. Can’t imagine why I’m going out of business.”
DT: “At least until we need an excuse to violate his civil rights on trumped-up charges.”
Dustin: Look, I’ll be the first person to admit Dustfriend is not the sharpest wedge of cheddar, but this one isn’t entirely on him. Those things are always kicking your out on pretexts like “Oops, you didn’t click on this one square that has two pixels of the fire hydrant in it” and “Sorry, the letter you thought was a wobbly ‘p’ is in fact a wobbly thorn, you lose you get nothing I SAID GOOD DAY SIR.”
JP: Far be it from me to tell Pavel how to run his international black market weapons syndicate, but wouldn’t it have been easier to kidnap Charlotte and use her as leverage? That’s like Getting Your Enemies To Do Your Dirty Work 101 right there.
Luann: Clan Evans knows just enough to understand that Black hair care products are A Thing, but not enough to know what exactly they do, or why a woman with 1a hair probably wouldn’t find them overly beneficial.
MW: “Hell, just being on the same street with him is making me throw up in my mouth a little.”
Phantom: I’m really not comfortable with the design on this latest thug. He looks like he was lifted from illustrations for La Libre Parole.
@Rita Lake: that’s something that has always bugged me. Jeff is Mitch’s grandfather not Crankshaft but Jeff has nothing to do with the boy.
@Baja Gaijin: Here you go, Baja, how about some delicious Ham and Bananas Hollandaise.
@TheDiva: You can’t have “tone deaf views” without “evans.” Or…something like that.
@59 Old School Allie Cat: Sarah got the recipe from the “Mary Worth’s Not Quite Right Recipes Collection.”
@60 TheDiva: on Luann: The authors don’t know a topic they’ve integrated into their comic strip? Are you sure? They’re talking out of their asses? If anyone needs me, I just swooned onto to my fainting couch in shock.
@62 Lord Flatulence: I’ve actually featured this recipe in the Late Thread Cuisine in the past. A classic if there ever was one. Easy to prepare, looks like someone barfed on it.
RM – For quite a few years, I made my living in part by baking with small children. I know what kind of questions they ask, and what level of understanding can be expected for various ages. By that measurement, those boys are young threes. However, they look like they are in their thirties.
How old are they supposed to be?
GA – Opinions are like assholes…that is all….
RMMD – This is a real Algonquin Round Table….
MT – Huh – photographed with a hidden agenda – most people would have used a camera….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@65 agony: Biological age or visual age? It doesn’t matter; both change as time passes though their ages don’t progress in a linear manner.
Pluggers: Pluggers have abominable personal hygiene # 1674.
Pluggers: Pluggers are banned from every mosque and Hindu temple for obvious reasons.
Pluggers: Plugger beastman once sent an entire room full of people to the hospital when he tried playing Twister in his stocking feet.
Gasoline Alley: I do NOT want to think about T-Bone t-boning Baleen.
@68 Guillermo el chiclero: on Pluggers #3: Are you sure that’s because of the stank coming from his stank shoes? Could have come from his stank ass?
@Baja Gaijin: Woo gosh! If only he had been using Lume Deodorant.
@71 taig: Pluggers would see how expensive Lume Deodorant is and say, “WOO GOSH! I’ll just stink.”
GA – I have experience with the situation depicted in the last panel. Being forced to try to explain, at excruciating length and volume, an inconsequential bit of lame wordplay to an elderly person who can’t hear is the perfect metaphor for reading Gasoline Alley. When it’s all over, a great deal of effort has been expended on a joke that was never worth it in the first place, and everyone is sullen and grumpy.
Don Abundio, translated:
“I get everywhere I want to go by sailing”
“I guess that’s appropriate for an admiral”
“So you don’t have to worry about the price of gas?”
“Nope. All I need is a deckhand…”
“Trim the mainsail!”
@Baja Gaijin: I knew I couldn’t surprise you. I fould a whole web page of this stuff. Mostly jello and aspic molds. Yum.
Which Doggo twin is going to suggest they eat the batter raw?
@Garrison Skunk: As long as they leave the pitcher alone…
George Constanza is Baleen’s boyfriend? Can Rufus lick the envelopes?
FC – Those shelves look awfully flimsy. If PJ stumbles into them, all those tchotchkes will crash to the floor.
However, the most alarming thing is that HTT Grandma better hide Stellan in another room before Jeffy eats him.
Rex Morgan – Weeks learning about boots as medical treatment. Now begins weeks of learning that eggs are messy.
Seriously, an adult should be supervising this baking adventure. A hot oven is involved, and it appears that there aren’t a lot of working brain cells among the three cooks.
Brewster Rockit – Did I see this same setup in another comic this week, or did I dream it?
Frazz – It’s bad enough that the insufferable little asshole disrupts the class with this inane blather and prevents the other kids from learning. It’s worse that Frazz encourages it. It’s way past time to tell Caulfield to keep his fucking mouth shut so the rest of the class can learn.
@75 Lord Flatulence: That’s my source for the Late Thread Cuisine.
@Old School Allie Cat: You are so right. Brownies must be fudgy! I refuse to recognize the existence of cake like brownies.
@Rita Lake: Does Crankshaft always refer to Mitch as his “grandson,” even though Mitch is really his great-grandson? I’m just wondering if there’s some quiet retcon going on to make Crankshaft seem younger than he is.
That’s a great question. I’ve never seen Crankshaft call Mitch that before, but I have seen other possible attempts to de-age Crankshaft. One week had Ed reminiscing about his childhood fandom of late-1950s players like Rocky Colavito, despite Ed himself having been an player on much older professional teams. Early baseball integration (late 1940s), pre-revolution Cuba (no later than 1959), and a 1940 exhibition game were all major stories in Crankshaft. And if that last one is true, Ed is at least 104 years old.
The bigger problem is that Funkyverse time is wildly inconsistent to start with. And Tom Batiuk washed his hands of the whole thing when he created a character who can “nudge time” at the end of Funky Winkerbean. He called this an “elegant solution.”
Even if this is an intentional attempt to redefine Ed’s age, it will never be done with any consistentcy.
@82 Banana Jr. 6000: Doesn’t matter what the question is, the answer is always, “Crankshaft is an uncaring selfish asshole.”
@TheDiva:
On JP: At first I was going to defend the strip not doing that because we already had the ‘kidnapped little girl’ plot point in the first Pavel story. Then I remembered we’ve been in an endless cycle of ‘April wants a normal life but cruel fate keeps dragging her back to the CIA fold’ for years now.
Actually, while I’ve been writing this I realized you’ve most like accurately predicted where this story is going to go. ‘Full circle’ and all that.
@The Quiet Man: Heck, since a Charlotte-napping is surely in the offing, why not have Charlotte and Pavel’s little girl (and maybe Lil’ Dunk for good measure) team up to defeat Pavel? Makes as much sense as anything else.
“Lady, you just lied to Mark Trail. If you had a beard, it would so be punching time right now!”
@Banana Jr. 6000: Thanks for the info. I hope they don’t disappear one of the middle generations between Crankshaft and Mitch. If we have to lose a generation, far better Crankshaft than anyone else. Pam and Jeff and Max and Mindy aren’t particularly interesting, but Crankshaft is a bottomless abyss of spite and the world is better of without him.
To Professor Well Actually, I agree and would add that Crankshaft wouldn’t be spending time with Mitch, since (a) Crankshaft has a day job and would probably be busy when Mitch needs to be cared for, (unlike Jeff? I’ve certainly never seen Jeff at work) and (b) Crankshaft obviously hates children, just as he hates everyone else on earth, and no reasonable parent would leave their children alone with Crankshaft.
You’re giving Rex Morgan too little credit, and those kids too much. They are so (almost) going to burn the house down.
Did Woo garsh make COTW? Asking for Goofy.
@Banana Jr. 6000: #82: Don’t forget that Ed’s daughter and son-in-law were depicted as Woodstock era college students who were eyewitnesses to the Kent State shootings. That would make them 72 at the youngest.
@Peanut Gallery: #73
That is the best summation of Gasoline Alley I’ve ever read. Thank you!
Hi and Lois Spanish to English.
Six Chex And A Cat Named Mike Wallace In Search Of A Punchline blows the lid off the Black Market Baby Business.
“We’re through ASKING for a baby, we’re ready to pay for one!”
@Sequitur:
Hi and Lois Spanish to English.
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Ah, The infamous H&L /Barney Miller crossover…. “Inspector Lugar was helping me straighten up, but got lost in my closet while talking about Stoner and Brownie.”
MT: I intend to indulge in one rant about this story when/as it draws to a close. But with events moving at this pace, I may not have to think about details for another month or so. Woo gosh.
Aunty Acid: The Curmudgeon mantra.
GA: Thanks to his father’s unsurprising-for-a-supercentenarian but inconveniently timed deafness, Skeezix now has to hear the story twice.
MT: Not sure this “we need to know why” merits a fist in the air, fingerless gloves or no fingerless gloves.
RMMD: When you don’t have an actual redheaded stepchild you have to make do with a blond.
Today on Sex Organ VD: Making brownies the Mutt Barker way! Don’t have enough eggs? Just add water!
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“EGGS AREN’T WATER!”- Templeton “Temp” Ferret, “Funday Pawpet Show”
@agony: I think the boys should maybe officially be about six. However, like Shannon in LUANN, they are weird little age-changers, though Shannon has them beat in terms of wild behavioral inconsistencies that keep her shifting from about three to about ten.
I’ll bet your job was interesting and (I hope) enjoyable. Did you see any general shifts in behavior over the years, or are small children always pretty much the same?
@98 Garrison Skunk:
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
BB: So if the men of Camp Swampy ever want to, oh, rid themselves of a tyrannical and abusive sergeant, Plato is the one with most plausible deniability. Something to keep in mind for if/when the time ever comes.
C-Shaft: Flashback appearance by Chris Crankshaft, who’s been missing for about as long as, say, Delta from Luann.
Dustin: I know the joke is supposed to be “Fitch is an idiot” but it at least wouldn’t be any less funny if he switched to taking the Voight-Kampff test.
JP: Oh, stop inflating your mother-in-law’s ego. We all know this is going to be resolved by Yelich wandering around, somehow.
Luann: “We need a test client for a beta run,” she said, very definitely knowing what she was talking about.
MW: Rookie error from Dr. Ed in implying he’d be okay with seeing some other kind of sing-off between the other two. He should have made Stell promise that he’d never be in the same room as Wilbur and a karaoke machine. Or the same room as Wilbur for that matter.
MW -That distant look that says “Angry sing-off? No. Angry sex? Maybe….”
@Guillermo el chiclero: Good point. Also, Ed (and his attitudes) were depicted as the generation prior to that, which would make his year of birth about 1920.
Meme alert!
Attention, Josh, Baja Gaijin and others with editing skills.
“Prickly City”.
Usable in sooooo many ways.
@104 UncleJeff: Noted.
DT: “Strictly speaking, Blowtop is prohibited from meeting with convicted felons in case they plan crimes together. But I think we can cut him some slack with his sister, who he just informed me he used to plan crimes with.” It feels really weird for me to be complaining that Dick Tracy is soft on crime, rather than the reverse, but apparently that’s where we are.
MT: This is why I gave up on Mark Trail. I totally understand not trusting the government, especially on environmental issues, but at least be coherent about it. Back in February, Sunday Mark told us the wild mustang was an invasive species, and the Bureau of Land Management was doing its best to protect the unspoilt wilderness from these feral beasts. But the Bureau of Land Management is a government organisation, and therefore Weekday Mark needs to discover the sinister reason they’re really doing this, which will make less sense than a Judge Parker storyline.
Phantom: Maybe they’re just padlock salesmen, Kit! You don’t know!
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: OMG — I’ve only seen LazyTown in Spanish! It blows my mind to see it in English.
Robbie Rotten is my kind of bad guy!
@Hibbleton: Reminds me back in the 1970s where my grandfather drove himself to the hospital to have cataracts removed from both eyes. Turns out he was more than half-blind at the time, thus why he was willing to undergo the surgery.
@108 Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: Wait a minute. Did grandad drive a big Cadillac convertible? Did he end up in a ditch? Oh. Nevermind; I’m thinking of The Count in Rex Morgan.
@Horace Broon: I’m guessing the MT story won’t talk about this. “It costs the government roughly $27,500 to care for each wild horse and burro over its lifetime in a holding ranch. That cost is expected to increase by nearly a third in 2023.”
MW: When you think about it, Estelle being polite and respectful to Wilbur despite his actions towards her in the past can be interpreted in two different ways.
1. The constant gaslighting and harassment caused a PTSD response that has her forget about what Wilbur and Mary did to her
2. She’s taking a passive aggressive approach and deciding to hit Wilbur where it hurts while not making eye contact with him
@Baja Gaijin: Sorry, it was traditional Filipino Jeepney in Cebu City PI. Not quite as safe, but twice as terrifying.
Think more about my grandfather (and I don’t know why I am, but I’ll share anyway), this is the transcript of my mother’s last conversation with my grandfather, on his deathbed:
GF: Woman, get me my pants. Your mother’s waiting for me downstairs.
M: Father, momma has been dead for 30 years.
GF: Dammit, you think I don’t know that?
Grandfather was sharp as a tack to the very end, so yes I do believe in ghosts.
@112 Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: His predeceased wife is a better usher to the afterlife than Masky McDeath, I would think.
RMMD:
P3: “PORKCHOP SANDWICHES!!!!”
A few notes:
In Gasoline Alley, the character’s name is “Skeezix”, not “Sheezix” (the gender-swapped mirror-universe version).
In Rex Morgan, a lengthy series of strips about kids making brownies makes this less of a “comic strip” and more of a “money laundering operation”.
In Mark Trail, I’m pretty sure the things on horses that could be considered to be razor-sharp are their teeth, not their feet. This doesn’t stop their teeth from being “real nightmarish” but I’m guessing this wasn’t exactly well copy-edited. (Also, big Star Trek: Lower Decks vibes from this combination of a confused white guy with purple in his hair and an alarmingly enthusiastic black woman).
Late Thread Cuisine: In honor of the culinary efforts in today’s Rex Morgan…
@Baja Gaijin: Man, I’m tongue-tied.
FC: “Dolly, the last time you were here, the house looked WORSE than the time when I babysat Dennis Mitchell, Lucy Van Pelt and Beaver Cleaver. Just sayin'”
@116 Baja Gaijin:
Baja, you could use a good tongue lashing.
I LIKE tongue. I salivate every time Tia Carmen makes lengua in Baldo.
@Ukulele Ike:Tongue is a traditional treat that for some reason has received a bad rap in recent years. I love it, too.
Well, dahlngs, I am finally able to post my feelings here after being *appalled* by Josh’s Equine-shaming remarks regarding Mark Trail this morning! “Off-putting”, “razor-sharp feet”, “nightmarish teeth” … Is there no limit to his insensitivity? There’s a need for more acceptance of traits that define one as a species. Horses don’t make fun of two-leggers small, pointy heads, or those strange eyes set together right in the middle of the face, or those spindly arms and legs. We even let you sit on our backs, for heaven’s sake!
I’m glad I could get that off my chest. Now I’ll call groom service to come brush my (perfect) teeth, and get ready to hit the hay…
@agony:
I understand Jonathan Swift has some good recipes for that.
(Can’t believe I’m the first smart-aleck here making this joke!)
Would Dr. Tongue leave his 3-D House of Stewardesses for this recipe? Would it be served at Dr. Tongue’s Evil House of Pancakes?
@Ukulele Ike: #120: Down here in the Houston area about every mom and pop Mexican eatery has lengua soft tacos. You can also get them made with tripe, brains, and fried cactus tenders.