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Crankshaft, 8/10/26

You know how when you’ve been experiencing pain for a while so it’s become just kind of background radiation in your life, when it abates the absence of sensation feels actively pleasurable? That’s what I’m assuming is happening here: Pam had instinctively steeled herself to receive some gibberish pun-like utterance from her father, but then he just said some mostly coherent dribble of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and now she’s positively beaming about it. Obviously this is even less of a “punchline” than you usually get in this strip, but maybe reading one of the only Funkyverse strips ever where everybody involved is more or less happy is its own reward.

Alice, 8/10/26

I’m assuming we’re supposed to understand “The Marketplace” as Amazon or eBay or Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or something, but maybe Alice’s boyfriend is talking about, like, the marketplace as an abstract concept? Maybe Alice has crafted the perfect computer virus that’s going to destroy capitalism, and she just has to do “one more thing” to end all forms of buying and selling, forever.

Mary Worth, 8/10/26

Here’s a thing about Wilbur: he could’ve been fucking your mom for years and that wouldn’t make you his friend. You’ve got to go out for ice cream with him and conspicuously not mention the fact that he got a triple scoop and it’s melting all over everything to earn that status!

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Crankshaft, 7/24/26

Boy, these multiverse stories sure get complicated! Like when Barry Allen Flash teamed up in the past with Jay Garrick Flash to battle The Thinker, The Fiddler, and Shade so Barry could persuade real-world writer Gardner Fox to write a comic book about their adventures! Or when Spider-Men Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire team up to defeat Electro, Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man: No Way Home to keep the hordes of people who know Spidey’s not-so-secret identity from overrunning our world. Or here, where transparent authorial self-insert character “Batton Thomas” teams up with opaque actual author self-insert character Tom Batiuk, presumably to Fight Crime. I don’t know, but if I were Lillian Mackenzie, Harry Dinkle, or Ed Crankshaft, I’d watch my back—these guys are cartoonists—they have erasers and they know how to use them.

Bizarro, 7/24/26

Whoops, looks like the stress finally got to our guy. Forget what I said yesterday.

Crock, 7/24/26

“At last! Our comic strip is saved!”

Phantom, 7/24/26

Chatu “The Python” has surrendered and put on the AI-enabled “Tokoloshe” control anklet, and I’m frankly a little disappointed in him. I mean, this is the guy who tried to Ebolify the whole world through an infected fruit-bat scheme, and blew up half of downtown Mawitaan just to get back at his nemesis the Phantom. He may or may not be a coward, but there is no way he’s gonna let some rich upstart out-evil him! All those years in that cage must’ve softened him up, or maybe he went mad from that interminable drum solo. Either way, get ready for an epic supervillain match-up and battle—now enhanced with AI!

No Comments of the Week on my watch; last week’s victor Victor Von gets a twofer.

—Uncle Lumpy

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Beetle Bailey, 7/11/26

The thing about the daily comics is that they’re still drawn as if the black and white version is canonical, even though probably most people who read them now see them online, in color. That means that if you want your imagined audience to know that Sgt. Luggs really dolled herself up for this date only to be humiliated by Sarge’s combo gluttony/cheapness, you have to draw her lipstick in black, even though you’ll give online readers the impression that she’s “gone goth” in an attempt to distract Sarge from his pathological need for food (it didn’t work).

Hi and Lois, 7/11/26

Genuinely love that Lois just had the Flagston home inkjet printer spit “NO JUNK FOOD” in 490 point font out and handed it to Hi on his way to the supermarket. I assume he doesn’t even have a list beyond this. “Just follow your instincts and then buy the opposite,” she said.

Crankshaft, 7/11/26

Real talk: I have zero idea who these people are supposed to be. Is it Mopey Pete and Mindy, and he’s put on a lot of weight in the last year and she’s caught whatever he has that causes the visible eyebags? Or are they day players, hired because everyone in the regular cast steadfastly refused to deliver the line “I’m glad we went with Harry to that abandoned amusement park today”?