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Spider-Man
Funky Winkerbean, 4/29/13
Oh, hey, it looks like it’s a long-absent father party at Funky Winkerbean! First Darrin’s bio-dad took up residence in a local motel, determined to ruin everybody’s lives by being a jerk in some ill-defined way, and now Jessica is determine to find her own dad, John Darling. SPOILER: HER DAD IS IN A CEMETERY SOMEWHERE, OR PERHAPS A COLUMBARIUM, BECAUSE HE IS DEAD. He was the main character in a Funkyverse spin-off strip drawn by Marvin creator Tom Armstrong. The title character was a hilariously clueless TV newsman, and, according to Wikipedia, when Tom Batuik got into a dispute with the syndicate over ownership rights to the character, he just had the guy stone cold murdered in the strip’s second-to-last installment! Les later solved the crime in Funky Winkerbean, and last we had heard about the whole thing was two years ago when Jessica said she was making a documentary about him. So I guess Jessica has suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be doing that? Or maybe she’s going to dig up her father’s corpse and reanimate it using dark magic and/or perverse science, so it can defeat Darrin’s bio-dad in single dad-on-dad combat.
Archie, 4/29/13
Is Unbearably Smug Archie a thing in whatever era of Newspaper Comic Strip Archie we’re in the midst of now? Anyway, Archie really is looking unbearably smug in that last panel, presumably because he’s been waiting all day to unleash this terrible pun on somebody. Or maybe multiple somebodies, as the guy in the hat in the foreground of the first panel looks like someone who just heard a terribly pun smugly delivered.
Apartment 3-G, 4/29/13
Governor Pete is determined to bed Lu Ann, so now he’s upped his game to some next-level mind trickery. “Peter, I generally find you distasteful and skeezy, so…” “Stop saying that sentence Lu Ann! What would you say if I asked you to … watch a movie with me?” “THE GOVERNOR GOES TO THE MOVIES LIKE AN ORDINARY HUMAN OH MY GOD THE IMAGE IS SO SURPRISING I LITERALLY CAN’T HOLD ANY OTHER THOUGHTS IN MY BRAIN RIGHT NOW LIKE THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW GROSS AND TRANSPARENT THE GOVERNOR IS ABOUT WANTING TO DO ME”
Spider-Man, 4/29/13
Yes, obviously the cleverest place to hide your secret lair is on a tiny island that’s also a high-profile national park visited by 1.3 million people a year! Probably the best thing you can say about Newspaper Spider-Man as a hero is that he rises to the level of competition provided by his villains.
Rex Morgan, M.D. 4/28/13
I know that the body changes during pregnancy but I’m not really comfortable with the changes to June’s face in the final panel here. Is her mouth getting bigger? Her eyes narrower and more feral? Now that she has absolute confirmation of successful mating, will she devour Rex’s head, praying-mantis-style? Will his last words, “I can live with that,” be exceptionally ironic?
Spider-Man, 4/28/13
BREAKING: BIGAMIST HUSBAND OF FAMOUS ACTRESS MARY JANE PARKER PLANNING WEDDING TO OLD PERSON
FOLLOW-UP: FAMOUS ACTRESS MARY JANE PARKER DOESN’T UNDERSTAND “CALLER ID,” WILL JUST PICK UP PHONE AND START TALKING TO WHOEVER
Spider-Man, 4/23/13
A long-running and beloved franchise like Spider-Man is often caught in a dilemma of its own success: how can it keep topping itself? For instance, Spider-Man, a heroic crime fighter with strength and powers beyond that of ordinary humans, has in the past been disabled by ordinary gangster who hit him in the back of the head with a club and a falling brick that accidentally fell on his head. What storyline could be more exciting, more thrilling than this? Today we have the answer: Spider-Man knocking himself unconscious by accidentally backing into a pipe. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN!!!!! His only weakness is the one weakness he shares with just about everybody: a violent blow to the head.
Judge Parker, 4/23/13
Judge Parker has set up one a though experiment: is there an investment so risky and bone-headed that even a member of the Spencer-Driver clan could lose money on it? Neddy has written a $60,000 check to her new friends, do-gooders who build water filtration systems for developing nations, with the promise that they’ll literally pay her back double as soon as they sign some deal with the U.N. It’s all right there in a contract that one of said friends drew up! Will Neddy finally feel the shame of financial failure? (Haha, of course not, probably they’ll pay her back triple instead of double, just because.)
Beetle Bailey, 4/23/13
Oh, look, Beetle Bailey is taking a day off from its usual semi-senile military antics to present you with the most horrifying thing you’ve ever seen! Haha, are you tired of dry, lifeless hamburgers, Sarge? Why not enjoy this burger? It’s made up of flesh that’s been shredded into innumerable tendrils by an enormous industrial meat grinder; yet somehow, impossibly, that flesh is still alive, still moving, those tendrils writhing and squirming. The abomination has no eyes, so it cannot see, yet somehow it still senses the presence of another living thing, and so it drags itself impossibly across the plate, leaving an oozing trail of blood behind. It moves ever so slowly, and Sarge is paralyzed in terror as it twitches towards him. It hungers, he knows; it hungers for revenge, and to feed. He feels the clammy touch as the leading edge of this pulsating meat-mass touches his hand. He wants to run, wants to scream. But he cannot.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/19/13
So Rex strong-armed Milton into canceling an 8 am business meeting to go get some tests to find out whether or not he’s going to die at any moment. But Milton didn’t get to be a highly strung business asshole by letting so-called “doctors” push him around just in order to stave off so-called “death,” so he had to pull the little power play you see here, to make sure Rex is kept in his place. Basically, Rex, those tests better come back with answers that allow Milton to “enjoy” his current soul-killing lifestyle … or your pregnant wife gets it, capisce?
Heathcliff, 4/19/13
You guys, today’s Heathcliff features Heathcliff suspended in mid-air, a là Bullet Time from the Matrix, as his angry owner-lady informs her doomed guests that hot furry death is about to descend on their faces, all yowling and slashing claws. It is honestly amazing.
Panel from Spider-Man, 4/19/13
Oh, look, here’s the most erotic Spidey-Daredevil panel to date! ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND, EVERYBODY.
Mary Worth, 4/18/13
Well, it looks like fate did indeed have other plans for Beth — plans that she would meet her crush in the parking lot on the way to the grocery store! It should be smooth sailing to love for these two … but wait! Why is Tom’s face obscured by shadow? Is something sinister afoot? Is Beth not headed to Food Team? Is she a devoted customer of Shop4Food, Food Team’s hated rival? Will she refuse to go grocery shopping with Tom because she’s only 16 FoodPoints away from earning a 20-cent-per-gallon discount on gas when she swipes her 4Food4Points card at participating Exxon and Mobil stations? CAN THIS LOVE BE SAVED???
Funky Winkerbean, 4/18/13
Finally, Les’s smug happiness is going to be crushed! About time, too, it’s taken a whole week. First Funky blabbed to his newscaster ex-wife, and now this information is getting to … someone … sinister. Someone who can’t afford a nice couch or functioning Venetian blinds. Someone drinking a beer. Could this be the dude who knocked up Lisa, lo those many years ago, resulting in the birth of Darrin? Could he ruin the entire project by being a dick, somehow? Probably, since nothing in the Funkyverse really makes sense, except to induce more misery!
Apartment 3-G, 4/18/13
Ha, it seems that despite the governor’s transparent macking on Lu Ann, her project still didn’t win. “Let’s hear it for helping kids with special needs! It sure is better than helping the kids of veterans, am I right? Teaching art to vets’ kids is garbage, basically.”
Mark Trail, 4/18/13
Shelly sure is mad about this fishing business! It’s almost as if she said that she didn’t enjoy the outdoors, and nobody listened and made her go on a camping trip anyway. I absolutely love her furious face in the final panel. It looks like she’s decided that if the boys insist on her killing an animal this afternoon, she’s going to just go find one and strangle it.
Spider-Man, 4/18/13
Busy CEO Kingpin doesn’t have time to just sit around and watch his newly enslaved minion beat up Spider-Man! He has important things to do on the other side of the room. That’s why he has his assistant keep tabs on things for him, so that Kingpin will be alerted in the extremely likely case that Spider-Man starts running away like a coward.
Blondie, 4/18/13
The characters in and/or the creators of Blondie have a sadly tame idea of how students on spring break act.
B.C., 4/12/13
Poetry is in essence an auditory medium, meant to be heard, and if that means that sometimes you have to sacrifice ease of comprehension to euphony, so be it! In unrelated news, the poem that Wiley is writing in today’s B.C. is confusing and also sounds stupid when you read it aloud. Anyway, ladies, don’t look get all uppity and dress too sexy at the gym, or you’re a whore who’ll lose your boyfriend, I guess? You don’t want to lose your boyfriend! He sounds like a real prize, what with all his opinions about your sexy gymwear.
Shoe, 4/12/13
See, because “carbon footprint” is a thing, but what if it were … carbon buttprint, eh? Wouldn’t that be funnier? Because of butts? I actually am enjoying Shoe’s violent temper tantrum, so it pains me to point out that any joke about “carbon buttprints” that doesn’t involve farts is garbage.
Spider-Man, 4/12/13
Kingpin is a busy CEO who doesn’t have time to travel to every dark alley in the city to personally taunt every superhero dosed with his terrifying mind-control gas. That’s why he turned to Cisco’s range of innovative telepresence solutions! Cisco’s Autonomous Hovering TerrorScreen® will navigate city streets along with your henchmen, beaming video and audio over encrypted private networks to your office/lair. You’ll be able to issue commands to your new willing slave and then get back to managing the rest of your diverse enterprise — all without stepping outside. Cisco: Tomorrow Starts Here™!
Funky Winkerbean, 4/12/13
Ha ha, Les got a big check because his sad book about his dead wife is going to be turned into a movie on basic cable, and then he got a boner! This plot is already so much more traumatizing than I could have possibly imagined.