Main content:
Oh hey, after a week off, it’s a new comment of the week!
“‘I will always be in your debt!’ Translation: Don’t expect any of that money back.” –White Rabbit
And some very funny runners up!
“In the third panel, note that Veronica and Archie are helpfully demonstrating the two extremes of Bipolar II disorder. Even their outfits (Screamin’ Strike Pink and Bowling Bummer Blue, respectively) convey episodes of hypomania and deep depression.” –Joe Blevins
Luann: “Protip: if you live in a world of paper-thin characterizations where most people are defined by one or two traits that are comically exaggerated to substitute for personality, you might want to avoid marrying someone whose single defining trait you find intensely irritating.” –Master Softheart
“Mary says she lived in New York ‘years ago’ and that it’s since lost its old-town charm, which confirms my suspicion that Mary is not ‘perpetually 60,’ but a member of the undead. The last time New York had real old-town charm was in the days of Peter Stuyvesant, of whom Mary has first hand knowledge. Ask her sometime about his ‘Dutch treat.’” –debussy fields
“‘Whoops, this syrup is slippery,’ cried the henchman, ‘and the jar fell right into this basket of deadly cobras!’ And so Old Man Dunlap passed the fresh batch of meth to his distributor right under Mark Trail’s nose.” –Ed Dravecky
“HEATHCLIFF IS ASCENDANT. HEATHCLIFF KNOWS ALL. SEES ALL. CONSUMES ALL. GRAVITY DOES NOT AFFECT HEATHCLIFF. TIME DOES NOT AFFECT HEATHCLIFF. YOU ARE ALREADY IN HIS MOUTH. YOUR FRIENDS ARE HIS TEETH. YOUR HOME IS HIS ESOPHAGUS. YOUR TOMB IS HIS STOMACH. YOU WILL BE BURIED.
it is too late” –bunivasal
“Spider-Man would like to lash back at the jeering children, mocking their own weaknesses and insecurities with a catchy taunt of his own, but he can’t think of anything that rhymes with ‘pencil-thin mustache.’ Or ‘hormonal imbalance.’ Or ‘Don Johnson’s jacket.’” –Shoe Substitutes
“I’m a little disappointed that the newly-liberated rabbit passed up this opportunity to hop on Pop.” –Doctor Handsome
“Say what you want about Leroy’s alcoholism, at least he keeps his bottles neatly organized, largest to smallest. That there is a sign he still takes some small pride in his chosen vocation.” –Robot Quasar
“Perhaps Hagar is going to be this generation’s Conan. First, Hagar the Horrible, which we’ve been enjoying (is that too strong a term?), then Hagar the Conquerer, in which he leads his men south into the civilized lands and plows a trail of fire and gold, and finally Hagar the Emperor, where he broods on this throne of skulls and ponders whether it was worth leaving the thatched hut on the icy shores for the warm pleasures of the South. It will end, tragic and bloody, with a nod to Shakespeare when Eddie, a minor Iago, kills Hagar and takes Helga as his own.” –Voshkod
“For such a great Broadway actor, Ken isn’t able to keep up his ‘Happy to Be With Mary Worth’ face for a couple minutes.” –Baka Gaijin
“Oh god, it’s a team-up with the golden age Crankshaft. I am just 100% not ready for Crisis on Funkyverse One.” –Dan
Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.
Crankshaft, 12/6/13
For literally years, since most recent Funkyverse time-jump, we’ve been granted occasional glimpses of this slumped-over, wheelchair-bound, oxygen-tanked, apparently vegetative old man in a Toledo Mud Hens cap, and it’s been heavily implied, but never stated outright, that this is post-time-jump Crankshaft, as he’ll look in the ten-years-forward Funky Winkerbean half of the universe’s fractured chronology. Except today the two men actually have encountered each other, so … that’s not actually the case at all? Or maybe this horribly depressing death-house sits on some kind of time-tunneling wormhole, and Crankshaft is now being treated to a vision of the awful future that awaits him. It’s like A Christmas Carol, only without any structure or meaning or lessons learned! God, I wish this were all more interesting, given the amount of time I’ve spent thinking about it.
Beetle Bailey, 12/6/13
Ha ha, this is a confusing nightmare-tangle of horrible metaphors or perhaps reality! “Cookie, you’re making garbage for dinner! Or, maybe, your dinner just tastes like garbage, for all of us, every night? I don’t even know what I’m trying to get across here! Anyway, mealtimes are a hellish pukescape for everybody involved.”
Hagar the Horrible, 12/5/13
Like many Vikings, Hagar typically returns from his missions of plunder in the more civilized parts of Europe to his simple thatch-roofed house in Scandinavia. But now it appears that, just as Rurik led his followers to settle permanently in Russia and Rollo led his to Normandy, Hagar is turning his back on his desolate homeland and is setting up shop further south. It’s not clear whether he purchased this castle from some impoverished and presumably terrified minor aristocrat with loot he plundered elsewhere or if he just killed everyone inside and is going to move his family in without even bothering to wash the blood off the walls, but one thing’s certain: as far as Helga’s concerned, these are just temporary digs, a defensible base for their clan to occupy while Hagar steals more treasure and gathers more followers until he’s ready to conquer a truly grand palace where she can live in style. Haha, barbarian women, amiright fellas?
The Lockhorns, 12/5/13
One way that Loretta keeps herself entertained is by coming up with increasingly convoluted ways to say that her husband is a desperate alcoholic.
Slylock Fox, 12/4/13
Oh, goodie, it’s another Slylock panel that gives us a glimpse of the moment when humans lost control of the planet. Today’s installment is particularly eerie. There is no violence, we hear no screams of terror — that all would come later. No, today we just see a group of animals who have quite abruptly awoken into sapience, and realize that they could just walk out of this pet store any time they wanted. And so they do. “Come, come outside and join us,” say the frog and the parrot, who have already made it to freedom. “Come join us and take the dominion that is our due.”
Crankshaft, 12/4/13
I’m very excited that every single interaction during our visit to the nursing home is going to be super-depressing. “It’s a nursing home … we’re way past festive! We’re dying, don’t you get it? You’re wasting your time!”
Spider-Man, 12/4/13
After being yelled at by J. Jonah Jameson on the local morning show, Spider-Man is now being taunted by children, so I’m in a pretty good mood so far this week.
Heathcliff, 12/3/13
Well, congratulations, Heathcliff: you did a panel where the whole joke is that Heathcliff is about to cannonball into a fishbowl barely bigger than he is, and the fish in the bowl can see him and know they’re about to die gasping on the carpet after their whole world is obliterated in a flurry of yowls and shattered glass, and so one of them, as presumably his last act on this earth, just says “Fuck.” Oh, I mean, “fudge,” obviously, except in my experience “fudge” as a minced oath only ever means “I almost said ‘fuck’ but then realized I was in a context where that was inadvisable, like, say, a nationally syndicated newspaper comic.” It seems appropriate, anyway, given the gravity of the situation from the fish’s perspective, although there’s a pretty good chance that Heathcliff might miss the bowl entirely from this distance.
Mark Trail, 12/3/13
The great thing about being a villain in Mark Trail is that when you’re a villain in Mark Trail you’re a villain, by God. None of this “likable antihero” or “moral ambiguity” nonsense, which is for college professors and other sissies. It can take a little while for the humans to figure it out, but Andy has these guys’ number and is already trying to attack. Even Mr. Dunlap’s delicious homemade syrup (or, as I like to call it, “flapjack juice”) physically leaps out of Jared’s hand, refusing to grant its power of deliciousness to such a ne’er-do-well.
In all honesty, I don’t really care that much about whatever harebrained artifact-napping schemes Jeff and Jared have cooked up. All I want is for Mr. Dunlap to wander around spouting off declarative sentences for as long as possible. “He’s staying at the museum! Homemade syrup is great on flapjacks! Suspenders hold my pants up! I like saying things!”
Crankshaft, 12/3/13
Ha ha, it’s the Funkyverse so even the puns are horribly depressing. “There’s no therapy dog? But … I’ve been waiting all week for this! It’s the only thing I’ve had to look forward to! I love dogs, I had dogs my whole life, but I can’t keep one in here. My family never visits me. I just want something warm and friendly and good that will touch me and love me unconditionally. What am I supposed to do with a bunch of fucking flowers?”
Family Circus, 12/3/13
Years later, when Billy was on trial for the various crimes he had committed as leader of the notorious Real Presence of the Manifest Messiah cult, and he took the stand in his own defense, ranting and raving that he was the son of God and no Earthly court could judge or punish him, this moment at the table came rushing back to his mother with terrible clarity.
Mary Worth, 12/2/13
As Mary Worth whines to Broadway has-been Ken Kensington about how she misses New York’s “former charm,” let’s do a little age-math, shall we? I have a strong memory (though I can’t find it now) of some official or semi-official King Features source describing Mary as “perpetually 60.” Maybe she’s a little older, but surely not past her mid-60s. Mary has said earlier in this storyline that she used to live in New York when she was a young woman; again the dates are fuzzy, but we can say with relatively certainty that this period in her life was somewhere between 30 and 40 years years ago. The years from 1973 to 1983 were, of course, the Taxi Driver/Bernie Goetz era in New York City, so you probably need to rethink whatever you were imagining when Mary wistfully recalled the city’s “former charm.” Presumably she’s one of those people who can’t go through Times Square without muttering about how it looks like a God-damn mall now that that asshole Giuliani shut down all the porn theaters. “After your experience with that mugger, it may be hard for you to agree!” “I’ll be okay, Ken. I’m shaken … shaken by how half-assed that mugging was. What self-respecting New York City thug would just give up when confronted by a portly actor? Why aren’t I lying dead in a puddle of my own blood right now?”
Heathcliff, 12/2/13
How exactly are those lids staying on the trash cans as the Garbage Ape swings them to and fro? Don’t those owls look like they were just cut and pasted from another drawing and plopped onto a picture of a pine tree without regards for what exactly might be holding them up? I hate to say it, but rampant Garbage Ape mania has upped the demand for this lovable/mysterious character so much that the strip is churning out some slapdash art to keep up.
Beetle Bailey, 12/2/13
Article 115 of the U.S. Military Code of Justice, “Malingering,” says that “Any person subject to this chapter who for the purpose of avoiding work, duty, or service feigns illness, physical disablement, mental lapse or derangement … shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.” So, good news for everyone who ever wanted to see Beetle Bailey locked up in a military prison. Camp Swampy is clearly not a “hostile fire pay zone” but I’m guessing that the military still considers us to be living “in time of war” for legal purposes, so he’s looking at three years of hard time!
Marmaduke, 12/2/13
Ha ha, look at how terrified that little blonde child is! “He’s heavy! So heavy! Heavier than anything alive from our space-time continuum has any right to be! You’ll die in agony, your bones crushed to powder under a pile of impossibly dense meat, all while he sleeps his ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep!”
Judge Parker, 12/2/13
“I don’t think it matters that we live in a world where mysterious, incredibly skilled black ops troops with no obvious allegiance to any nation-state can swoop into anywhere in the world, with tactical data gained from omnipresent and near-omniscient surveillance tech, and snatch up anyone they want, killing dozens of insurgents, criminals, and terrified bystanders in the process! Just don’t worry your pretty little head over the fact that unimaginable military power will protect you, so long as some member of the ultra-rich mega-elite takes a shine to you and orders your rescue on a whim! The important thing is that Ross is safe! You know, for now.”
