Mostly Funky Tuesday
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Funky Winkerbean, 12/3/19
“Hey,” literally nobody asked, “What’s going on with Darrin and Mopey Pete in Funky Winkerbean?” Well, at the doomed comic book publishing venture that they gave up lucrative Hollywood jobs to work at, an artist from the Golden Age of Comics has either been hired in some vague consultant role or is just hanging around the office because he has nowhere to go and nothing better to do (I don’t remember which and if you think I’m going to bother digging through my archives to see if I can figure it out you have wildly overestimated my tolerance for the Comic Book Wankery plots of Funky Winkerbean). Anyway, you want a seasoned professional on your roster for moments like this: when he remembers some long-held grudge against a co-worker who’s almost certainly dead and can’t defend himself, and then just drones on and on all afternoon about what an asshole the guy was.
Crankshaft, 12/3/19
You know, I sort of assume that Crankshaft’s endless malapropism are generated by faulty wiring in his brain, and that he lets loose with them without really thinking about them or even realizing what he’s doing. That’s why I kind of resent the sly smile he’s giving his granddaughter in panel three here. “A ‘napkin,’ get it? What do you think of that one? Just a little something I’m workshopping.”
Six Chix, 12/3/19
Remember Chicken Little, the beloved folk tale protagonist who’s hit in the head with an acorn and believes the sky is falling, convincing his friends of upcoming doom and teaching listeners a valuable lesson about mass hysterias that can arise without much evidence of danger? Well, today’s Six Chix dares to pose the question: what if the sky … were falling? Really makes you think, doesn’t it.
133 replies to “Mostly Funky Tuesday”
Family Squickus: I wish the art work had more detail so we could see Billy’s face on that milk carton. BTW, what’s the expiration date there? 1998?
Fumbling Circus: I’m guessing Bil never went to a grocery store in his life, or that cart would have a child seat built into it.
What The Funky: “Pour me a mug of hot cocoa, boys, and we’ll while away the hours chatting about work ethics!” This approach only works if Flash Freekman leaves the building and reveals himself to be the Lord of the Late. Okay, it doesn’t work so much as slouch around the shop, but it does figure that the LotL would waste his time slowing down the biggest slackers in the Funkyverse.
The Funky Munky: You had a work ethic? Doing what, Sad Sack? Stunt double for Maynard G. Krebs?
Funkenstein: “I know I had a work ethic because everyone called me a real piece of work.”
All Funked Up: I wonder what Turtle Thompson would have to say? “Yeah, us guys called him ‘Flash’ because he worked so fast. But all that Benzedrine didn’t make for good artwork, you know? And the lady artists had their own reasons for calling him ‘Flash.'”
Judge Mental: Neddy has every reason to be happy? What did you just slip into her drink?
Happy Trails To You: Yes, do the interacting thing, Mark! It’s just like talking to the people around you . . . oh.
Merry Dearth: “He said not to worry about it. NOW STOP PLAYING WITH YOUR FOOD AND EAT!”
The Menaced Phantom: “Who are you? Betty and I told Sensual Safaris we wanted a Tarzan fantasy, not some WWF wrestler in gamy purple tights!”
The Phandumb: Keep him busy, Blondie! Give your partner–BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!–time to put a few rounds into his back.
Rex Morbid, Medical Dweeb: “What are we delivering, doc? Pizza? Chinese? Thai?”
Rex Moredumb, Missing Daily: “Whoa! This is quite the sight! Look at all the fancy silverware and napkins!”
MW-Soon the heat flashes and mood swings will come.
MT-“He also wanted to know when you are going to bring Cherry and her bikini with you.”
JP-“This is all going to sink into another massive hole like my garment factory.”
FW-“Turtle Thompson would trace over the people in the pinup and sunbathers magazines.”
FC-Mommy is saying no to what you are doing. You only take candy when it is offered to you by a strange man.
Spiderman-“And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.”
“Hey,” literally nobody asked, “What’s going on with Darrin and Mopey Pete in Funky Winkerbean?”
And we’ve made mathematical history today at the Comics Curmudgeon! While the set of “people who wanted to hear about Darrin and Mopey Pete” is, in fact, zero, the subset of those who wanted to hear about Turtle Thompson and his work ethic is, seemingly impossibly, smaller.
MT: Okay, TRMT, I want to see the story where Mark takes Harvey’s advice, then gets canceled by a Twitter mob when they decide something innocuous he wrote is simultaneously racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic.*
*No, I really don’t want to see that.
I hope Crankshaft’s napkin is sanitary.
FW: The artist Turtle Thompson? No, Turtle Thompson was the building’s janitor.
MW: Hmm, sounds like symptoms of Wilburism. Have you tried singing in the shower?
Six Chix: So two of the Six Chix just stood by and watched as one was killed? That’s a pretty cold-hearted move, even if one of them really wanted to switch to Thursdays.
FW : Oh great, a week of drawing out the old (paraphrased) saying :
“In the comics industry, it was believed that you could be
A) Talented
B) Always on time
C) A nice person to work with
The best of the industry could check two, most checked one, and somehow a bunch of people who could check none were employed.”
*****
Zits : “Your attitude sucks… JUST LIKE YOUR MUSIC OOOOOOOH!”
9CL Classics: So, just to confirm. These are 12-year-old girls. So when Brooke did this strip (and several following) a couple months prior, about the girls degenerately flaunting their sexy, sexy legs, he was talking about 12-year-old girls.
MT: It probably went down like this:
Camel: “Here are our passports and TIMS cards.”
Officer: “Let’s see…Camel, Harvey Sopwith. Treliano, Marcus…”
Camel: “That’s Mark Trail, the famous nature guy!”
Officer: “Oh, seen any interesting wildlife?”
Camel: “Just an elephant and a rhino. Oh, and some bats. We think there may be others hiding in the foreground.”
Officer: “Bap re Bap! Why our park has 3000 species of plants, 75 of mammals…”
(Hey Sid, can your agency handle a “cast of thousands”?)
You know, I sort of assume that Crankshaft’s endless malapropism are generated by faulty wiring in his brain
Assume instead that they come from a well of pure evil and everything makes sense.
‘The tiny creatures walked through the forest, they were like a cross between elves and mice. They were adept in swordmastery, magic, and other aspects. But one downside to their race was due to their small bodies and rather unique genetics, their entire people were afflicted with rampant narcolepsy. They could fall asleep at any time without warning. This of course, was the curse of the “Napkins” ‘
Family Circus: I’m pretty sure regular supermarkets don’t carry individual, unwrapped lollipops and candy canes. Apparently the family’s fortunes have dropped to the point where they shop at the 99 Cents and Under store, which means they’re having cans of not-quite-expired Star-Kizzed “Tuna” and Hanz Partially Baked Beans for supper again tonight.
Hi and Lois: Yay, the Flagstons are about to get caught up in the college-admissions bribery scandal! Although I’m guessing they think their 25 bucks will take Chip farther than it actually will.
Mary Worth: “Did you tell the doctor that you’re tired, gaining weight and losing hair? Because you should really tell him that you’re tired, gaining weight and losing hair. Not that I’ve noticed that you’re tired, gaining weight and losing hair! No, I haven’t noticed that at all! It’s just that being tired, gaining weight and losing hair is something you should really tell the doctor about! And get it taken care of. Because I’m young and hot, and it’s, like, gross.”
FW – “Wait, did you say ‘the artist “Turtle Thompson”‘? I was thinking of the piano tuner ‘Turtle Thompson’.”
Crankshaft – “No, I was just sitting here wondering what kind of nutjob keeps a sofa pushed right up against a giant credenza.”
Six Chix – Then she drew this cartoon and removed all doubt.
Six Chix – Middle Chicken is psychotic, but Right Chicken is psychic.
MT, meta: After last night, I want TRMT to have Mark and his crew find a Bumble, and discover the Island of Misfit Toys.
Ah, Six Chix always an exercise for both my senses and sensibilities to try and reverse engineer the thought process of the author to arrive at what the joke might have been before they took a pen to it. This is a toughie. Martha Grandisher must know about the Disney movie Chicken Little, right? Where the trailers reveal the sky is literally falling, in hard blue hexagonal blocks. This is the same idea, but it doesn’t look like some riff or homage but rather an attempt to take the conceit it in a different direction. We should probably ignore the movie and just look at what’s going on.
The speaking characters are Left Chicken and Right Chicken. The plot seems to be about how they’re – presumably – sharing the same thought, about believing Chicken Little’s doomsday prophesy to be signs of debilitating mental illness. It’s not that strange. If your choices are to either believe the impossible or believe someone is suffering from medical delusions and merely seeing the impossible, most of us would lean to the latter.
But where it gets weird is they’re both obsessing over the fact they they were “wrong” while the sky is falling down around them. How can that possibly be the thought foremost in their minds at this moment? Well, consider the context. What else is going on that Martha is choosing to show us? And is similarly inexplicable? The shared thought halfway spoken out loud, of course.
I submit the chickens are a hive mind. Their failure to accurately assess the Chicken Little unit’s mental state is more distressing than the natural world literally falling apart. Something was terribly wrong with the hive. Maybe the sky collapsing on top of Chicken Little was just reality bending under the strain of the hive’s malfunction and trying to correct itself. Maybe that sky block is just an antibody of the world’s immune system fighting whatever infection made Chicken Little seem, to the eyes of the hive, to be psychotic. There’s some bold, deep storytelling going on here.
But if this is the case we’re left to wonder once again, Six Chix.
What is the damn joke?
SC: Middle Chicken: “Heads up!”
MW: Sounds like someone’s getting their girlfriend a Peleton for Christmas! And some Propecia.
Funky Winkerbean: “This was the 1950s, you see, and it wasn’t all that unusual for a fellow like me to have . . . wait a minute. Did I say ‘ethic’? I meant ‘ethnic .'”
Murky Tail:
And how many of all those thousands of species were called the yeti?
Wary Morth:
“So the doctor told you that you’re just going to get fatter and tireder and balder, Irish? Well, been nice knowing you!”
Luann:
That Tiffany deserves it for being an evil sluttyslutslut who wouldn’t look at Greg Evans twice in high school! Deserves it, I tell you!
@Cloudbuster:
I think Mark’s Twitter account will get deleted the moment he writes about a white rhinoceros or a black mamba or a rainbow trout.
CS: This is how I read this comic.
DT: “We got a call from Tulza, our murderous nemesis who despises us. He told us to meet him here and said he broke out of his asylum for the criminally insane so that he could surrender to the custody of my tabloid magazine. How were we supposed to know it was a trap?”
Oh, so you are going through menopause. Great. We can forget the condoms, by the family size KY, and I can use you until something better comes along.
Sweet.
@Little Guy: #19: Now that you mention it, Dr. Camel does look a lot like Yukon Cornelius. “Didn’t I tell you? Yetis bounce! Waahhoooo!”
MW: “Don’t worry? And leave me with a fat bald girlfriend whose too tired for sex? I’m calling the Mayo Clinic right now. Hello, Wilbur? What have you done to Iris?”
I can’t tell because the art is terrible, but has that piece of sky fallen on a chicken? With it’s feet poking out either side and blood and viscera flying in different directions? This is more brutal than an old-school Dick Tracy death.
Mark Trail: OK, let me get this straight. The Nepalese “official” heard of Mark Trail and didn’t immediately catapult him into Bangladesh before Mount Everest blows up? Cheah, right.
Zits: Jeremy’s Barney Rubble eyes (center panel) are creeping me out.
@Amelie: Amazing comment. One for the ages. :)
@Baja Gaijin:
Re MT:
He did. The Bangladeshis didn’t want the Sunderbans river delta blown to pieces so they trebucheted him right back.
Six Chix: The anatomy of that rightmost chicken is messing with me. Does she have two left wings, with the rightmost one resting on her head, or does she have an enormous ass with a huge row of feathers leading up to her head? I’m not even going to get into her apparent psychic powers, I would just like to know how many asses she has.
FW: Darrin and Mopey Pete sure look happy that they managed to get the old guy to dredge up bad memories. “The topic clearly upsets him! Score!”
6C: I’m just wondering why the chicken on the right is thinking the conclusion of the sentence rather than speaking it (or why the chicken on the left couldn’t have just said the whole thing).
C’shaft: It’s worse than we thought. Crankshaft actually thinks he’s clever.
FW: Tom Batiuk must be watching a lot of C-Span when he works and assumes this is how people normally ask questions.
When I was a kid, I had the book The Stinky Cheese Man And Other Fairly Stupid Tales, a collection of parodies that I’m pretty sure won either a Caldecott or Newberry. The first story was a riff on Chicken Little, where Chicken Licken is hit on the head with a letter (or number?), decides that the sky is falling and that he must tell the President, and gathers friends. The twist at the end is that it wasn’t the sky that was falling – it was the Table of Contents, which “fell and squashed everybody.” What I’m saying is, a kids’ book did it first, and better.
@32 Jihadi Colin: BWAH HA HA and HA!
@36 Austria: Everyone did it better than 6 Chix.
9CL: Great, we’re in repeats again. I guess spending all that time drawing Other Chedda in heat must have exhausted Brooke, in more ways than one.
Luann: Unsurprisingly, I’m with Tiffany here. Assuming that thing is gently used she should be able to get a couple hundred for it on eBay, or more if she can “upcycle” it and set it out at an antique shop or flea market. But I suppose she must continue to be punished while she still insists on having some dignity.
MT: “Official” my eye; you just did it online and looked at the tourism board’s website, didn’t you?
MW: “Well, I AM worried about it! If I wanted to date Wilbur I could just ask him.”
Pluggers have nothing of value except birdseed.
“I had a work ethic. Of course, my work ethic was to half-ass my drawings, make my characters unlikable, and come up with boring plots involving cancer, old grudges, or science fiction movies no one cared about. What? No, you’re wrong. An ethic doesn’t have to be positive, it just has to be a set of moral principles. Hell, boy, Stalin had an ethic. Didn’t mean you had to like it. Now get me a bottle of bourbon. It’s part of my work ethic.”
Phoebe and Her Heavenly Nostrils: Loving the soliloquy.
Crankshaft: “It was either that or ‘sleep napnea’; which do you prefer?”
FW: Your ability to be enraged by proxy for all the injustices suffered by Jack Kirby should be directly proportional to the fraction of Jack Kirby’s talent you possess. What I’m saying is, shut up Batiuk
C: Crankshaft’s relatives regularly check whether he is finally dead, but, as usual, he always disappoint them.
CS: “She was psychotic?!” They made a female version of Chicken Little! After Ghostbusters and Captain Marvel! How could you?! Think of the (man)children?!
@Little Guy: There’s always tomorrow for dreams to come true…
SxChx: Splat! That’s terrible. Man, I hope the sky didn’t crush any of the chickens that can draw like it killed the ones good at conveying humor.
6C: A common belief held by many Flat Earthers is that outer space does not exist, and that the celestial bodies known to astronomy are not what we have been taught. Beyond this there is much disagreement among Flat Earthers, but the notion of falling blocks of sky would not be considered too incredible for this community. After all, *something* has to hold back the masses of water mentioned in the Book of Genesis.
So perhaps the other chickens are thinking something along the lines of, “Oh no, if Chicken Little was right about the sky, then maybe the earth really is flat, biblical fundamentalism is true, and we are all going to hell.”
@Pozzo: Nice.
@Zla’od: re MT: “….can your agency handle a cast of thousands?”
Luckily that’s Plant-Agent guy’s problem. heh heh heh… we only gotta worry about the 75 mammals and 440 birds. Which is bad enough on short notice – they wait til NOW to tell us? But don’t worry – we’ve been workin’ overtime to find talent.
Waitaminute … no reptiles? Larry the Croc was countin’ on another appearance. Better call and give him the bad news … why don’t YOU do that, Intern…
The most logical and current story line that they should pursue would be for Zak and Wilbur to hook up and be lovers and get rid of the menopausal women from their lives and just live in the hedonistic and mayo filled present.
Estelle and Iris can become a couple of post menopausal women who move in together and just enjoy each other’s company. They could sit around watching Downtown Abbey, with a pint or two of Ben and Jerry’s, and a nice old slice of hair pie.
Everyone would be happy.
FW: I don’t feel like searching the archives either, Josh, but if memory serves correct I believe Flash just manifested himself out of the woodwork because Chester felt the plot required a deus ex machina and was most likely storing him in the broom closet awaiting the right moment for the big reveal.
Six Chix feels like a strip designed to make me angry at how many of my talented artist friends don’t receive enough recognition for their work.
FW – Too Smunky. Smug + Funky….
Crank – More like wanting’…BtW, have you got one of those napkins. It doesn’t have to be sanitary or anything….
6-C – Is that one of those chunks of shit- ice that commercial jet liners are supposed to jettison from time to time? Just remember – when you point a feather, a feather duster is pointing back at you….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Six Chix: “The sky really is falling” goes back to James Thurber, who wrote a fable with that punchline.
LUANN: Ha, ha, every idea Tiffany has to improve her lot doesn’t work out!
@Decima Dewey:
Tiffany should have gone down the virginal path like Luann and Bernice. By being a slut, she has ruined her chances of anything good happening in her life. Everyone else is going to get successful jobs, an adoptive family, a chaste existence, and an existence beyond compare. Tiff will be a prostitute on the street corner to be pitied. .
“The real problem is not that Chicken Little is dead – I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s sad, but she was scheduled to be the farmer’s dinner tomorrow anyway – but that everything we know about reality is false. The sky is a physical object that can be damaged. It’s not an atmosphere of air and gas, slowly leaking out into an uncaring void, but is something that can fall and kill us. Everything is wrong. Nothing is wrong. God must be dead, if God ever existed. There’s no need for morals. The sky is falling. I don’t have to pretend to like any of you anymore. The farmer’s axe is there, so sharp, so deadly. The sky is falling. Better to die on my feet then die under the falling sky. No gods, no men, no kings, nothing! To hell with all of you, let’s kill!”
Crankshaft: Well, it’s no wonder Crankshaft nodded off. He’s watching an old analog console television and all he gets is a screen of static. Very sleep inducing.
Question – Is Crankshaft a plugger?
FW: At first glance, I thought I’d forgotten a subplot in which several of the supporting characters were sent to prison. Then I remembered that, no, this is supposed to be a “fun” work environment. It just looks like Shawshank.
‘shaft: Speaking of that granddaughter, though, there’s a fine line between a smirk and a Joker-like rictus that nearly bisects your head.
Six: What’s the most confusing possible way we could tell this joke? Well, first, we’ll have one chicken on the left start the joke in a word balloon, then we’ll have another one on the right finish it in a thought balloon. And in between those two chickens, we’ll put an indecipherable wall of chaos. That ought to do it.
MT: Mark Trail hurling some blowhard off of 27,000ft Makalu for pestering him to be more involved in social media will make Mark’s first Periscope epic.
FW: The way things are going, Batom will file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy soon.
Ziggy: Smith and Jones will impeach Zig for failing to… “PUT ON SOME PANTS AND SHOES!”
6C: Did the cartoonist ever see the Disney Chicken Little movie?
A “napkin”? Come on, Batuik “enjoying a preview of death” was right there!
6C: I see over at Comics Kingdom that the one-panel version has the second chicken saying her line. Which asks the question: Do they have two teams drawing the same joke? Did they do it right the first time, drank a Slushie, and suffered brain freeze drawing the second one? Or did they do it wrong the first, realized their mistake, drew it right in the one-panel, considered going back and fixing it, then thought, “It’s ‘Six Chix’ no one will read it.”
Marvin: Dad leaps out front in the Dickishness Derby. Of course, it’ll take a lot more effort to swap out the toilets (and you get to stick your face near that sweet, sweet, fungus), than to dump a ton of bleach and Bon Ami and swirl the brush around. But it’s this kind of forward, cutting-edge thinking that makes you wonder if the writer was scripting this while huffing paint fumes.
6ix Chix: Somebody flushed the toilet inside a passing commercial airliner, and this is the result. “The sky is falling! It’s blue, after all. And there appears to be tissue paper encased in the sky. We’ll call that White Cloud.”
Crankshaft: “More like a napkin. Or maybe a Wet-nap, because I’m pretty sure I piddled myself a bit. Go get Gramps a towel, will ya?”
Funky Winkerbean: “It was a personality clash. He had one.”
Crankshaft: Strange, I was thinking diaper.
Crankshaft: “Were you napping, Gramps? In that case, I’m sorry, because I was hoping you were dead.”
Oh God, did Chicken Little get hit with a chunk of “blue ice”? Is Six Chix trying to outdo Marvin in having an actual death from shit?
Mary Worth: “Did you tell him you’re tired, gaining weight, losing hair, and consequently getting dumped by your younger boyfriend if he doesn’t prescribe you some pills that fixes you pronto?”
Pluggers: In two days the squirrels will have chewed that plastic to shreds. If you don’t want squirrels going after your bird feeder, don’t put up a bird feeder.
MW: Unfortunately, Iris round a doctor less competent than Rex Morgan and Lisa’s oncologist combined.
@Sequitur:
Ed applied for Plugger membership but was summarily rejected. Even Pluggers have standards.
Six Chix: I like the way the word “psychotic” is written on a slightly different line in the thought bubble, creating an actual psychotic break in the chicken’s mind as it were. I don’t quite know what but it seems very suggestive of something, creating an impression that there really is a joke that makes sense here – I mean, maybe the author just mixed up psychosis and telekinesis or something, but now how can we say for sure?
@Sequitur: The question is really what species Brookins would draw him as. I think he lioks a bit like a manatee.
Why did the “dialogue” in Six Chix require both a speech bubble and a thought bubble from two different characters? Spreading one sentence between the two of them adds nothing but confusion. In fact, I’d say it would better (if only marginally) if the second part had been left out entirely. I’d suspect that an editor had walked by, complained that the “joke” needed to be spelled out and insisted that the second half be added at the end but nothing that I’ve ever seen from Six Chix indicates that an editor or any other human mind looks at them before publication.
Funky Winkerbean: “I had exactly one work ethics. ‘Turtle’ Thompson had all the rest, curse him!”
Rex – man, they really are drawing out this whole “Kill Mindy for Christmas” plot.
@Richardf8: Pretty sure Wilbur from “Mary Worth” would be the manatee. A drunken manatee.
6 Cx: We’ve put way too much thought into this so-called “comic” today. Someday we’ll wish those brain cells were still fresh and unused.
@Richardf8: If Ed Crankshaft were a Plugger, he’d be a skunk. And not a charming one like Pepe Le Pew. An irritable, smelly one.
Pluggers: In this Pluggers Classic, why isn’t the dog-man barking his head off at the squirrel? That’s what literally every dog would actually do. Or did Dr. Moreau add “not to bark at squirrels” to the law?
Q: Are we not men? A: We are Pluggers!
FW: Panel 2… wow. Such… droopiness… on that guy’s face. This leads to a potential insight: maybe Funky Winkerbean is actually funny if you imagine all the characters speaking as Droopy Dog. Nah…
MW: “Did you also tell that doctor that I have a dangerously high sex drive, and if we don’t have sex several times a day, I will explode?”
@Myrtle: Probably some criminal skunk in Slylock Fox – not to worry though – Slylock will sniff him out….
@GeoGreg: FW: Panel 2… wow. Such… droopiness… on that guy’s face. This leads to a potential insight: maybe Funky Winkerbean is actually funny if you imagine all the characters speaking as Droopy Dog. Nah…
Funky turns to the audience, breaking whatever remaining dramatic wall exists, and states slowly and marble-mouthedly: “You know what? I’m the hero.”
Nope. You’re right. Forget it. That was believable coming from Droopy. Not from Funky, nor any of Batuik’s cast.
@ld: LUANN: Which is funny considering Tiffany has less sexual experience than either Luann or Bernice. She’s never had a boyfriend or even properly kissed a guy. Yet she’s portrayed as this huge slut because she winks at dudes and wears makeup.
6C: I realise nobody comes to this feature looking for “professionalism” or whatever, but when a character is not only thought ballooning the end of another character’s sentence, but is doing so in a different font and with the words on two different levels, my immediate thought is “What was the original version of this strip, and why was it vetoed?” However, I can’t think of any punchline that might make “Two chickens disinterestedly observe that their friend was killed by something they didn’t believe in” any worse. Maybe this is like Blankety Blank (Match Game in the States) and we can look forward to seeing how the other Chix would complete this sentence in the days to come. In which case, sign me up for the next chunk of sky.
JP: “Neddy has every reason to be happy right now. But it’s like she expects everything to go exactly the way she wants so much that she can’t enjoy the things that do go her way.”
“O-kaay? Anyway, I’ve just learned that the B&B I’m building in a stable to deal with the huge demand for this business I set up on a whim needs electricity, and the builders can’t make that happen instantly, so I’m having a bad day.”
“Oh my god, is your whole family like this?”
MT: “Wait, someone on the other side of the world has heard of me and you still think I need to expand my audience?”
“I think you need to expand your audience to people who aren’t incredibly boring! I don’t know if he listed every one of those plants and animals, but it sure felt like it!”
“Yeah, that sounds like my core demographic all right!”
Phantom: “Basic laws of physics do not apply to the Phantom” – Old Jungle Saying.
Pluggers: The squirrel is pretending to be angry to lull Dog Man into a false sense of security. As soon as he’s back in the house, it’ll be a swift leap from that tree onto the feeder, and the plastic bottle will be entirely irrelevant.
@Bryan: I guess that once or twice she has been portrayed as being willing to have sex, but the dudes in the strip are too dense to pick up on hints. (Like her shoving her naked hootchie cootchie in their face.)
But yeah, having a “slut” in a strip where premarital sex literally doesn’t exist is an odd concept.
@Bill Peschel: I see over at Comics Kingdom that the one-panel version
The what now?
(Goes to Comics Kingdom website)
Okay. And they do this every day? The same strip in two different formats, one appears on newspaper websites, the other on the main site?
Why?
Resurfacing from a long hiatus from posting. Five or six years maybe? But today’s Six Chix—and an inability to focus on my thesis—drove me to it.
There is so much high-octane insanity fuel in today’s Six Chix, I hardly know where to start. Left chicken utters an incomplete statement, portrayed in normal font with appropriate spacing, only to be completed by Right chicken—in a thought bubble, represented in a totally different font and skewed line spacing! And Right chicken’s punchline, in its childish, uneven lettering—”she was psychotic”—brings to mind a Lord of the Flies/Beyond Thunderdome-Esque epitaph. The final remembrances authored by children burying a child, a tribute to, a condemnation of, and an honest portrayal of the deceased’s state of mind and reason for execution, hastily scrawled by terrified children, desperately clinging to echoes of barely recalled civilized norms.
Oh—and the piece of heavenly firmament crushing Chicken Little? The one that’s night-sky black on its underside, and sky-blue on its outward-facing side, IN DIRECT CONTRAST TO HOLE DESCRIBED ABOVE IT? And Center chicken pointing heavenward a la St. Michael defeating Lucifer, allegorical of the Church demonstrating the heretical preposterousness of Gallio’s meanderings? All normal by Six Chix standards. It’s the childlike justification, “she was psychotic” that will haunt me the rest of my days.
@Alison#Y152 – You don’t know about 9 Chickweed Lane? Several years ago Edda had a pregnancy scare, and instead of doing a pregnancy test, she immediately hopped on a plane and flew to Vienna to talk to her loathsome grandmother.
So you don’t know about Nazi boinking Grandma? Or Bill and Psychotic Martine’s romp across Normandy, which alternated between boinking and shooting Nazis? There’s much, much more, and all of it involves unpleasant couples who spend all of their time either boinking or leading up to boinking.
FC – What are the candy bars? Lone Ranger bars? Hopalong Cassidy bars?
I do like that Thel’s not pushing one of those enormous carts with a little car in the front for kids to sit in, or that the kids aren’t pushing kid sized “customer in training” carts. I hate both of those things. If course , there were only plain shopping carts when this originally ran.
@Bryan:
There is a lot of innuendo with Tiffany and sex. And to the Evansi, if is not vaginal, it is not sex.
@Just John: #82: If anyone needs to reassure the readers that he’s actually the hero, in Droopy Dog or any other voice, is Phantom/Walker. If someone who was totally unfamiliar with his trope were to suddenly start following the story this week they’d think it’s about a woman fighting off a sexual assault by some costumed creep.
@ld: #53: “Tiffany will be a prostitute on a street corner to be pitied.”
Plus all of her teeth will be rotted out from meth. Let’s not forget that.
I’ve got a feeling that Karen Moy and Greg Evans are in a contest as to whose character can hit rock bottom the fastest, Wilbur or Tiffany.
C-Shaft: “No, seriously, could you get me a napkin? I seem to have wet myself.”
6C: My deep-running love of Monty Python makes me hope that a Sousa march was playing when Chicken Little got crushed by that heavy chunk of sky.
FW-“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean ethics. I meant ethnics. He was an Irish-Jew.”
Beetle Bailey-Sarge will find his shoes up Beetle’s ass when he puts his foot up there.
Hagar the Horrible-“That ain’t the hair on my head!”
FC: What Dolly hasn’t yet learned is that when mommy throws her head back and yells “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” at the heavens, it’s kinda supposed to cover everyone.
Luann: I wonder if this heartwarming Holiday season will end with Tiffany selling her internal organs for shampoo money or turning tricks on the street. Maybe the Evansii will treat us to both.
MW: Zak’s condescension is still way better than what Wilbur’s got going on, but it seems like he should be aiming a little higher, even if as a zillionaire he doesn’t necessarily have to.
Phantom: “I have many names, but ‘Big Purple Asshole’ is the one that seems to have stuck for some reason.”
RMMD: Wait, is there another one of him now? Because two Bucks is something I like to find in my jeans pocket, not in an operating room.
S&S: While no one takes credit for writing and drawing this one anymore, today’s does have a 2019 ©opyright date, which ain’t really good.
Love Is-Taking her from behind. https://www.artfulaspreycartoons.co.uk/love-is-color-tuesday-3-december-2019/
Six Chix: That “she was psychotic” is left unspoken really puts a sinister spin on the proceedings. The chickenfolk understandably feel bad about doubting her, but what is it that makes mention of their mistake so dread? Are we to take it that Ms. Little is languishing in an asylum somewhere, her wit ravaged by the malpractical ministrations of those to whom she was entrusted? Surely, it cannot be mere disbelief that engenders such guilt. Whatever they did to her was clearly a persistent source of doubt and anxiety, soothed only by the certainty that “It was for her own good”. Doubtless she had seemed quite sane in most respects, but the insanity of her belief was beyond all question. And so they thought, until one day…
Funky Winkerbean: “Lazy bastard spent about a month moping around and moaning about a dead wife or something like that. The whole time, I was thinking ‘nobody cares loser, now ink those 20 pages of Twinkie ads we gave you”
Mark Trail: Really hung up on “claimed to be aware”. Is Dr. Camel gatekeeping woods and wildlife readership, like a 42 year old man getting upset about 15 year olds wearing Nirvana t-shirts, or does the man who Haw-Haws suspect there are no Mark Trail articles to be aware of?
Phantom: Big purple apparently not concerned with the history of male violence against women, or ensuring he doesn’t look like he’s about to commit a sex crime. He should probably be worried her traveling companion is making a call to SVU: Fictional African Nations
Six Chix: These chickens are pretty focused on just that part of the sky fell, rather than the incontrovertible evidence that they live in a simulation. Especially since the chunk of reality that collapsed is between us and the center chicken. They should probably be hoping they are in the holodeck, rather than some sort of strange Popeye’s chicken Roko’s Basilisk situation
@mw: That’s…not a bad idea. Iris divorces Zak for refusing to support her through menopause (does California recognize common law marriage?), and takes all his money. He and Wilbur move in together–kind of like the Odd Couple (one’s a Boomer! the other’s a Millennial!), but they do bond over Red Pill . MRA philosophy. Think Brad and Les from “Luann,” but with Mary playing the part of Mr. Gray.
@Mikey: I predict that Camel will film the yeti, but later have to edit him out, because YouTube demonetizes that conspiracy type shit now.
“Mary Worth”: I’m confused about the ages of these people. I only know there’s a big gap between them. Originally I thought Iris was maybe 55 and Zak maybe 32. But if Iris really is pregnant (and things seem to be pointing that way), I assume she’s more like 45 and Zak is more like 22? Meanwhile, Wilbur looks about 80, so he was awfully old for Iris!
“Luann”: If Tiffany paid $2,000 for a table and Ed offers her $7, I’d kick him out too. I’m sure she’s supposed to be acting “difficult” but come on. Of course if this was Luann selling a table Ed would probably offer her $5,000 for it! Cuz of inner beauty.
And when money comes innuendo, love flies out de do’.
@ld: Innuendos alone don’t make someone a slut; the correct term would be “flirt”. And she doesn’t really do it all that much (at least not anymore). Sure, she threw herself at Aaron Hill back in the day, but no more than Luann did.
I’m just saying, her reputation as the town bicycle is completely undeserved.
FW – I thought of Droopy Dog, too, when I read this. I was so distracted by Turtle’s hangdog expression that I didn’t notice Darrin’s gentle smirk on the last panel. Comics wankery, smirking – the only thing missing is cancer.
Heart of the City: It seems Mark Tatulli has opened up a new can of fresh hell.
How to Cat: YEA! for the cat!
Lio: And now Mark Tatulli has made things unsafe for Baja Gaijin.
Nancy: I really hate this kid.
Peanuts Begins: The problem with letting comics nerds do a paper drive.
Pluggers: You would think that steamed squirrel will tear that plastic to shreads but no. The squirrel will attack the plugger. He’ll go right for the nuts.
The only squirrels that might be deterred by this flimsy token effort would be plugger squirrels, who, upon seeing it, would shuffle sadly away to their home and half-heartedly munch stale birdseed from the cupboard while peering dimly at their small black and white TVs.
@Old Man Muffaroo: …okay, and maybe the squirrels in Rose Gumbo‘s circle of Hell, because they’re used to humans feeding them by hand, throwing little picnics for them, and sometimes giving them manicures.
Spider-Man– Harry’s been through this one before. This is the part of the cycle where his mask is pulled off, and he pretends he doesn’t know what just happened. Normally at this point, Pete shrugs and lets him go. We’ll see if Natasha is the character we saw in the movie, or if she’s been bitten by a radioactive slug and just wants to be finished so she can go relax in a tub with some candles around.
Crankshaft– “Well, actually, more of a nappie! You know, like the one I’m supposed to be wearing. Oops!”
@I speak Jive:
Those customer in training carts should banned. Not because they are training young minds to become unquestioning consumers, but because the damn little bastards whacking people in the back of the legs with them.
@Artist formerly known as Ben:
Wouldn’t turning tricks on the street be a form of selling her internal organs, or at the very least renting one out?
Love is…: Shoving a gift up her yap because she’s been bugging you for it.
One Big Happy: Ruthie knows her cows. Too much so.
@ZeroWolf: Yeah, that’s pretty much why I hate them. Plus, when the grocery store is crowded, the aisles can be hard enough to get through without the enormous carts and the unnecessary kiddy carts blocking the way.
6Chx: Comes a point when it’s better to just shudder and look away.
@119 Poteet:
Just don’t look up.
CS: That smug pun actually made me close my eyes and think of Crankshaft as the barely-verbal husk slumped in a wheelchair. It made me feel better. This is the kind of person that Crankshaft has turned me into.
@Sequitur: Har! Good advice. If a cloud took a dump, that’s what it would look like.
Crankshaft: Also, it’s hard to nap when your legs are pinned under a chest of drawers like this.
@122 Poteet:
I think it’s more a case of Marvin, passing through a chicken yard and emptying his diaper. That would make any chicken psychotic.
Wednesday’s Early Comment
Family Circus: I’m pretty sure neither Whirlpool nor Bosch make a dishwasher that’ll rid crockery of Jeffy cooties.
Wednesday
MW: “Check on Tommy…”?
“Hi Tommy, even though we’re about the same age, I figure that since I’ve been boinking your mother, that makes me kind of like your father.”
Wednesday!
Six Chix: That’s a stupid joke but for Six Chic it’s not too bad.
That cat is drawn well though.
9 Chickweed Lane: Is she playing “Hair on a G String” by Breck?
That’s a different way to depict cussing.
Luann: Uh, the unkempt junkman saying, “You had me at ‘buttload'” makes me think this is the beginning of some weird porno.
Luann: “You had me at buttload.”
Junk guy realizes Tiffany is a load of crap.
@Sequitur: A bit off the point, but if you’re in prison and brag that you’ve got a butt load of money, you probably literally have a butt load of money….
@131 Dennis Jimenez:
Figurative speaking. Literally speaking it’s just cum.
MW – “Are you kidding me? You’re already too busy to shave.”