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Funky Winkerbean
Crock, 8/30/10
Many comic strips set theoretically in some specific time and place often end up wandering afield from that time and place, either for humorous effect or just out of sheer forgetfulness. Thus, while the action in Crock once was meant to be understood as taking place in North Africa under French colonial rule, today the strip might be happening somewhere where the IRS has authority, or really any time and any place at all. Today’s dialogue, for instance, implies that the action of the strip takes place during the time period described in one of the earlier sections of the book of Genesis, just before the Deluge. This is good news for everyone — including, I assume, all of you — who wants to see every single Crock character killed by an angry God in a world-destroying flood.
Gil Thorp, 8/30/10
Our phoned-in summer golf storyline has finally, mercifully, ended; let the phoned-in fall football storyline begin! It’s just day one and already the characters are starting to ask why we’re even bothering to have a fall football storyline. “Man, what’s the point?” asks a nameless Mudlark. “I mean, my face is melting due to some horrible space alien virus, and you all are just standing around with arms stretched out looking bored! Hello? Melting face? Over here?”
Funky Winkerbean, 8/30/10
There are few things simultaneously sadder and more hilarious than watching Les deliberate over whether to have his book launch party in his home town’s only functioning non-Toxic Taco restaurant with more anxiety and indecision than Hamlet trying to figure out whether he should kill his stepfather. But one of those even sadder and more hilarious things is watching two otherwise attractive and normal-seeming women compete to see who can debase themselves further to win Les’s mopey, self-absorbed affections.
Apartment 3-G, 8/30/10
Holy cats, is Apartment 3-G’s aged core audience about to be introduced to the great advances in hair extension technology that have taken place over the past few decades? Or does Tabitha simply plan to knock Margo out with some kind of sleeping potion, only for her to wake up 20 years later with her hair grown to ludicrous lengths, Rip van Winkle-style?
Slylock Fox, 8/30/10
Ha ha, it’s a trick question! There’s no such thing as “valuable” Kansas City Royals memorabilia.
Gasoline Alley, 8/30/10
I know I haven’t discussed the light-hearted Gasoline Alley strip lately, but in case you’re wondering what’s going on over there, here you go: a group of adorable schoolchildren is about to die in a terrible bus accident.
Mary Worth, 8/29/10
At last we get to this storyline’s dramatic turn: Dr. Mike will learn what a sucker he was to turn away from Jenna, because of the advice from his revenge-haunted drunk old dad, towards whom up to this point Mike has felt nothing but hate. But whatever! Mike will almost certainly now invite Jenna over for some hot sexing, right after he proposes. “What’s all that shouting from upstairs?” Jenna will ask? “Oh, it’s nothing, just my dad going through the DTs. Maybe I should loosen the straps holding him onto the bed?”
Of course, once Jenna learns that Mike has turned forever away from the booze, she’ll have to work overtime to hide her own drink the pain away habit. Oh, but wait, she’s a woman in Mary Worth who’s about to discover true love, so obviously she’ll never be sad again.
Funky Winkerbean, 8/29/10
Ha ha, the looks on Susan and Cayla’s faces in the next to last panel, as they prepare to hear about what they probably imagine will be Les’s plan for a mopey polygamous marriage, are priceless. Silly ladies, did you think your relationships with Les were about you, somehow? No, they’re about Les. They’re always about Les.
Spider-Man, 8/29/10
“I pretty much assumed I would choke to death on a Dorito while watching television, or maybe break my neck falling down a flight of stairs. This is actually kind of exciting!”
Mary Worth, 8/22/10
I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of “most consistently hilarious depiction of drunkenness in a comic strip” Reuben Award, and Mary Worth is gunning for it, hard. Lonnie began his drunken day with a jacket and pants of different colors — obviously, the hard drinking has destroyed the fashion centers of his brain. (That’s why he only wears grey now.) But once he’s got a real bender on, we can see the true horror that booze does to a man. Did Lonnie unbutton and then drunkenly try to rebutton his shirt? Probably! Because that’s what alcohol does. It leaves your wispy stomach hairs visible for the world to see. Is this what you want for yourself? Turn away from the drinking, before it’s too late!
Apartment 3-G, 8/22/10
I’m pretty sure that Lu Ann’s stylist is supposed to be some sort of sassy gay artiste. Unfortunately, as depicted, he looks more like the answer to the question “What if Mr. Clean were a supervillain who was also a resurrected undead king from ancient Sumer?” This is a question that I’m pretty sure has never been asked, ever, and even if it were I would hope that the character so described would not be saddled with the name “Mister Mojo.”
Funky Winkerbean, 8/22/10
Ha ha! It’s funny because Funky can’t feel joy, due to his crippling emotional problems.
Funky Winkerbean, 8/8/10
The best sadness in today’s Funky Winkerbean (because that is how one should evaluate any day’s Funky Winkerbean, by determining which of its many sadnesses is the best) is not Funky’s failure to recognize how his own unquenchable anger has infected every aspect of his life; that’s a theme that’s been harped on a bit too much of late to be fresh. No, my favorite is Crazy Harry’s rage at Funky for selecting a private service for parcel delivery, choosing reliable tracking capabilities over long-standing friendship. One assumes that Harry’s hangdog expression in the next to last panel is due to this betrayal, and not over the psychological implications of the new t-shirt design.
Panel from Marvin, 8/8/10
Unfortunately, this panel does not depict Marvin’s parents watching with bored detachment as their son is carried away by hungry rodents, with Jeff responding to his wife’s earlier question, “What kind of hungry rodents are those, carrying Marvin away to eat?” But I’ve put isolated it here like this, so you can pretend that it does.
Funky Winkerbean, 7/25/10
It seems my earlier suspicions — that this strip’s implacable torment has shifted from Les to Funky — has now been confirmed. Thus Les’s sheepish smirk in the final panel: he knows that every car accident or cancer diagnosis Funky is involved in means one less pregnant daughter or dead spouse for him. Holly is grinning like a maniac mostly because she knows Funky will be dead soon, and then she’ll be free, free.
Family Circus, 7/25/10
I think my favorite of the “Ma Keane is irritated by her children” panels here is the one at the lower right. In most of the other ones, she’s just intervening in momentary crises so as to prevent her arrest for child neglect and/or public nudity ordinances. But it’s when she’s forced to play some stupid ball-toss game with her feeble little daughter that the rage lines really begin to radiate from her head. “Damn it,” she thinks, “Does she never get bored with this inanity? I’ve been trying to work my way through this damn novel for the last eight years!”
Slylock Fox, 7/25/10
I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ever seen Slylock mediate in a human vs. human dispute. It goes to show how low the status of H. sapiens has fallen in this nightmare world of bipedal talking animals that the Josh family would be willing to turn to a canid law enforcement. If I were Slick Smitty, my defense would be that I was trying to protect the boy’s delicate mental health, as waking up every morning to find that piggy bank grinning at you like that is a guarantee of nightmares and insanity.
Meanwhile, in the six differences, a little boy has extorted some free cake out of the local diner by bashing one of the counter’s stools with a baseball bat. “Hand over the cake or this clown in the hat is next,” he growls.
Beetle Bailey, 7/25/10
As part of its atonement for years of making light of sexual harassment, Beetle Bailey has begun putting out a series of PSA pamphlets on social and relationship issues. This one is called “How to tell when you’re in an abusive relationship.”
Funky Winkerbean, 7/19/10
Well, Funky has left the light-hearted whimsy of his coma-dream trip to the past behind and must, like all of us, return to the grim present, where, by iron law, no joy will happen, ever. If you just saw this exchange between Funky and his doctor written out, you might think that they were sharing a light-hearted little joke to break up the mood, but their numb, expressionless faces indicate that neither of them have even heard of these so-called “jokes” of which you speak. So Funky will be deep-throating an enormous plastic dildo twice daily for a reason nobody can or will explain, and he’s just going to have accept that.
Archie, 7/19/10
Archie’s laid-back attitude seems to be irritating his angry, tightly wound boss, but then he probably should have expected this sort of personality clash when he went to work for G. Gordon Liddy. Anyone who forces his employees to wear on their hats the severed heads of the chickens they serve up to their customers definitely has some rage issues.