Elder Sunday
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Crankshaft, 2/23/25
Wait, why does John need Crazy Harry’s help? By Spider-Man logic, if he had been bitten by a radioactive cleaning lady, shouldn’t he have gained the proportional strength and powers of a cleaning lady, including access to common cleaning lady tools like stepladders and the foresight to deploy them? Or are we actually operating on real-world logic, and after suffering a tragic bite he’s just feeling increasingly feeble and woozy, due to radiation poisoning?
Panel from Slylock Fox, 2/23/25
I really love the aside in the last sentence that Slylock can afford the more expensive wand. He makes good money as the Forest Kingdom’s primary enforcer, OK? He absolutely can throw away $8 on a whimsically shaped bubble-making wand if he wants to. In fact, he’s tempted to do so, even though it makes the same normal spherical bubbles the cheap one makes, just to conspicuously display his access to wealth. He’s not poor, got it????
Shoe, 2/23/25
“Also when I say ‘getting married’ I mean ‘making a suicide pact.’ Six of one, half a dozen of the other, amiright? Ha ha!”
64 replies to “Elder Sunday”
Slylock Fox:
Oh, this one’s super-easy, and the kids will get it in a snap. Slylock opts for the lesser-priced wand because he’s heeded the words of veteran investor David Roche, who predicts a bear market in 2025 on account of smaller-than-expected interest rate cuts, a slowing economy and an AI bubble. So Slylock wants to save his investment dollars.
Shoe — Seems to me that old bird needs to register at the local GED English class. . .
Cranky — “OK, how about this? The supervillain Dust Man has deposited a layer of poisonous sediment on top of the shelves and we need to remove it before it can rise into the air and kill us all!
“On it, boss!”
Crankshaft: More to the point, does Spider-Janitor now need to devise a Windex-shooting device to place on his wrist, or will his body create its own super-cleaning fluid?
Slylock Fox: I assume saying “We accept Bitcoin” on the sign is a subtle way of saying that cryptocurrency itself is all one big BUBBLE — which would have been an extremely helpful and prescient thing for this comic strip to have told us two years ago!
Mary Worth: Dawn is the non-dairy ice cream of potential girlfriends — not exactly great, but really not all that bad, and you can feel good about yourself for choosing to take her off the market.
Slylock opts for the cheaper one for Max Mouse because Max isn’t worth it.
The comic implies that Slylock gets a good salary and can afford expensive stuff, while Max is being paid in trinkets and not even the pricey ones. I approve
Shoe: Suicide pact, murder-suicide, death by natural causes, at my age you’re splitting hairs.
Shoe-The Widow Palmer wants to be cremated with a blend of seven herbs and spices.
Blondie-Oh, Dagwood, stop kidding yourself. Dithers will never ever give you a bonus.
Slylock Fox-“Shady Shrew is guilty of false advertising.” That’s all the reason Slylock needs to arrest Shady and to burn his stand to the ground.
MW-“Ice cream makes everything better.” Especially the “toppings” Mary puts on the ice cream.
FC-And Thel just cleaned the floor of black lines from Billy’s return too.
Are they registered at a mortuary because he’s marrying a corpse or because the corpses are the wedding buffet? I could go either way!
CSh: Glad to see that someone is using up the vast reserve of nerd-refernce humor loaf left over from The Big Bang Theory’s run.
SFx I like how Sal just looks sheepish about the whole thing. “Jeez, that’s a pretty good scam. Wish I had thought if it…!”
Shoe On first read I thought that ‘the widow palmer’ was the nickname of some kind of geriatric pick-up artist.
C: “Why did you suddenly decide you don’t want to live in filth anymore? Were you suddenly feminised?” This depiction of a lonely male nerd with poor mental health getting radicalised into misogyny is frightfully realistic and the most accurate insight into politics in Western democracies in the comics page!
JP: so did they see Alan Parker shoot the boyfriend/husband?
RMMD: douchebag is the new Rene Belluso.
Of course this week’s Mary Worth quote is from the musical Les Misérables, rather than the novel by Victor Hugo. I’m not even going to bother quotevestigating that further.
I love that it’s not the bubble wands that are standard, but it’s Sal himself! Ehi Sal, modesty is great but maybe have some self-esteem! Excessive self-vituperation is a sign of depression!
The economics of creating shoe confused me… it now takes two to be this bad when for years Jeff pulled it off as a solo creator.
Marvin: Jenny grabs Marvin by his ankles thereby banging his head on each step as she goes upstairs.
“There! That’s how!”
I haven’t followed the folding of Funky Winkerbean characters into Crankshaft, how long after FW ended did it take Batiuk to begin physically shaking from silver-age-comic-reference withdrawal?
Crankshaft : Maybe Crazy Harry is operating under NEWSPAPER SPIDER-MAN logic, where the person who was bitten by a radioactive entity would spend all day lazing around watching TV while making their spouse do all the hard work.
…Which means that, if we’re lucky, Skunkhead John is going to get knocked unconscious by a randomly falling brick.
************
Slylock Fox : the biggest problem with this strip is that I *THINK* they only have, roughly, 78 different ‘mysteries’, but since they have to run two a week, they burn through all of them really quick, and have to constantly rerun a couple of them.
Can’t wait for yet another variation on “The bad guy put the sleeping potion IN THE ICE”… Or maybe we’ll get lucky, and get the ever-amusing “Doctor Weirdly has locked Slylock Fox and Max Mouse in a room with an open refridgerator so they’ll freeze solid, but when he came back to see his handiwork, the room wasn’t any colder!” one.
Crankshaft: I was confused because I thought the Iron Man figure was a robot that could be told to do the cleaning.
I guess if you’re named “Mort,” you’re pretty much destined for some death-related field.
@Dan: I don’t read Crankshaft, but from what I’ve seen online the FW takeover of the Crankshaft strip was swift and brutal. If these two losers are now in it, I’m sure Les has been clotting up its storylines.
JP: Odd. I’ve watched every episode of Slow Horses and I can’t remember a single scene where Gary Oldman walks towards the camera eating an ice cream cone.
CS: No, if we were operating in real world logic, middle-aged Skunkhead would not expect geriatric Crazy Harry to be able to reach shelves that he couldn’t. Harry doesn’t seem to have any height advantage, and will file for workman’s comp if he falls off a ladder.
SFx: If I were Max Mouse, I would be very annoyed that Slylock felt free to restrain me by the tail willy-nilly, instead of just using his words.
And, of course, the helpless and hopeless milennial who runs garbage of this blog has to make sone long-winded statements of the elderly, when he could just say “ok, boomer” and think that was original and never get old.
FC: Thel watches Jeffy stride casually into the house and thinks; “All those goose stepping lessons went for nichts.”
@MKay: Also, I’m near certain that in an “realistic” animal society, pulling one’s tail would be considered rude at best, assault at worst.
“Where are you registered?”
“Let’s just say we cannot hold the ceremony close to a school!”
@Card: Sick burn, dude!
(Not!)
Batiuk advances the radical eugenic proposition that if you are not tall enough to reach the high shelves you should not be allowed to own a shop
Pretty sure it’s to inform children that Sky isn’t a broke boy thereby not the answer to the question posed but we’ll go with what you said because it’s curmudgeonly
SlyF – So close, but just narrowly missed the opportunity to name Pascal’s law!
@Pozzo: Well, it’s a buzzard thing. You get named “Mort” or “Todd” or something like that.
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
Slylock Fox: Years ago, I saw an episode of Arthur in which the title character and his family were in I think a gift shop, which sold square balloons. Arthur’s little sister DW asked the clerk how they got square balloons, to which the clerk responded, “Blow square breaths.” All I can think of looking at today’s strip.
Long-time lurker: So, today’s Popeye was pretty eye-opening for me. I did not know about the Bluto/Brutus weirdness, and I definitely did not know that they had an older brother Bruto, much less that Bruto was gay married. And Bluto seems pretty cool with that (except recommending violence over love). I’ve always thought Bluto would, if he weren’t such a rage-maniac jerk, get a lot of attention if he showed up in a gay bar. Wild. Is this Bruto stuff new, or is it canon?
JP: So now Sam has to travel all the way back to New York from wherever the hell Cavelton is to retrieve the drone and the recording device, and then put it all back together so it does not look like it was tampered with, and then present it to the police as maybe perhaps possibly evidence that might clear Ann. Is that the plan?
If I was cuddling up with Abby like that, there’s not a chance in hell that I’d be going anywhere.
Shoe – I hope necrophilia is not part of the wedding.
Crankshaft – He’s got a radioactive bug up his ass….
SFx – (upside down) He’s a cheap bastard….
Shoe – Oh…if you mean that online sex offender thing, she doesn’t seem to mind….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
SFx: Despite ample examples from their human forebears, the Glorious Animal Regime is still trying to figure out this marketing thing. Shady, for example, leans into false advertising to justify his overly inflated wand cost, when he could simply market the star-shaped ones as “fairy wands” to little girls, lower the cost to about $2.50, and still come out ahead. Standard Sal, meanwhile, has the advantage of being able to sell in bulk at a lower cost but rather than promoting his low prices has cultivated an air of quiet desperation, his awkward smile conveying both an overeager hope for a sale and an acknowledgement that he doesn’t deserve his customer’s patronage. He’s basically Willy Loman with floppy ears.
Shoe: I want to look up “are there any birds that kill the male after mating” but Shoe is such a black hole for interest that even my trivia-obsessed mind can’t be stirred down that rabbit hole.
Mara Llave, Marker of Time returns after a stasis of six weeks! Mara breaks the third wall to explain that the story will continue, after the creators “retool” one more time to determine how they are going to deliver the story!
I want Alex and Nickolej (definitely a couple of tools) to come over to my place dressed in a pantomime horse costume and act it out through interpretative modern dance!
I’ve always wondered how someone would be so offended by a snarky comment about their favorite strip, that they would create an account just to ride to the defense of said strip.
Did the paperboy not come today?
CS: Skunkhead gets aroused while polishing Iron Man, asks Harry to leave, and closes up shop for about an hour.
RMMD: “Well hellooooo there. Hey, ebony and ivory! Whataya say the three of us blow this pop stand and get better acquainted at my place. You won’t regret it ladies. . . . HEY, GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME! YOU CAN’T THROW ME OUT. I’M AN AMERICAN CITIZEN! I’LL HAVE YOUR JOB FOR THIS!”
SFx – I love Standard Sal’s name and facial expression. Yup, that’s me, I’m just a regular ol’ pig, down here at the market, selling my three common bubble wands so I can take my four fifty back home to my wife, Conventional Connie, and my kids, Common, Normal, Meh and Standard, Jr. in good ol’ suburban Typical Town.
Zits: In the Battle of the Bands, Jeremy’s group is going to kick Chip’s group’s ass. Jeremy Scott and Jim Borgman have achieved a verisimilitude of rock and roll, which the Walker Browne Entertainment Group cannot aspire to.
Mary Worth cannot bring herself to say the sentence “Non-dairy ice cream makes everything better!” Her honesty is refreshing.
RMMD: Summer, he’s obviously a mental health patient*. Tell him there’s no jumping the line and he needs to apply for the clinic’s services like anyone else. (*I’ve known some MSWs and can see how this arc ends.)
BG&SS: Miz Prunelly is doing the best anyone can but Jughaid and all his friends will be back for their fourth year of third grade in September.
RM MD How long will it take for the guy to come back and torch the clinic? I hope they have security cameras, although that might violate patients’ right to privacy.
9CL: After years on the brink of evaporation, Amos’s chin vanishes completely today.
DT: The missing watch is reasonable; everyone carries a phone these days so a watch is more of an ornament/status symbol than a necessity. “Missing rings” mystifies me. How many rings are they accustomed to find on a park corpse? What about bells on the toes?
FG: Schkrade really has a personal fetish for the Veronica Lake look — Dale Arden, current sexy barmaid, and several other female characters all sport the “Cyclops style,” long hair dangling over one eye. What with the lack of depth perception, you’d think the girls in this strip would spend a lot more time walking into walls and falling down staircases.
@Ukulele Ike: Mara Llave: At this point, who really cares anymore? They had a promising idea and couldn’t deliver.
Shoe – Don’t look so surprised, Roz. They’re vultures, so obviously corpses make the perfect gift!
DT: Great, RFK Jr. has taken to hunting the Most Dangerous Game.
Dustin: Unsurprisingly, Dustdad is only able to be nice by accident.
JP: “I mean it, this is absolutely, positively the VERY LAST TIME I will go out of my way to help you!”
MW: I understand that there probably wasn’t enough space in the panel for “Alain Boubil, translated by Herbert Kretzmer, inspired by the work of Victor Hugo,” but this is a highly misleading truncation to say the least. Next Karen Moy will be insisting “History has its eyes on you” is an actual George Washington quote.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don Abundio, your sales director is here to see you”
“Not now. Just tell him to keep his eye on the ball…”
“aim to hit singles and be sure to cover all the bases”
@matt w: “This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far.”
— Cervantes
MW: [Pulls string] Now let’s forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream!
Luann: John Krasinski? Zac Efron? Not saying those gentlemen haven’t aged gracefully, but this “19-year old” considers them ‘hotties’ in this wretched year of 2025? Did the Evansii miss deadline and this is a rerun from circa 2007?
@Rusty: Interestingly, I don’t think Les has even appeared in Crankshaft since FW was blessed cancell- er, I mean respectfully retired. I’m sure that’s only because in Batiuk’s mind Les is too pure and holy to appear in the ‘lesser’ comic.
@Cleveland Mocks: I would if I were Abby. Look at that pissy face Sam’s got on. He looks like he’s holding in a massive bowel movement that no turtleneck can contain!
It’d be nice if this was Sophie’s way of writing herself out of not just this story but the strip as a whole, but we should be so lucky.
Also, we’re NEVER going to see what the damn footage showed, are we? It’s called ‘WRITING’!!
So how does Slylock make money? Does he extort “finders fees” from the rich victims every time he tracks down a homing pigeon that is part of a jewel heist? Under the table payments from Count Weirdly to look the other way every time the count gets the urge to cross-breed snakes, bats, and robots? Or is he just on salary with Animaltopia as their designated boot grinding on the neck of the few remaining humans?
It’s all of those, isn’t it?
@Lord Flatulence: Oh, I don’t care about the story or any of the characters. At this point I’m running on morbid fascination, like staring at a blazing automobile crash.
In a world where perfectly good and amusing comic strips like My Cage and The Hots stick around for a year or two and then disappear, along with a creator’s note explains that “it just isn’t working out” and how they need to get a job driving cab or lifting cement blocks to order to “provide common groats and lentils to feed their starving family,” Mara Llave is currently re-starting itself for the FOURTH TIME IN THREE YEARS.
Schkrade rebooted Flash Gordon less than two years ago and in that time has become the most admired/respected adventure comic guy in the funny papers.
MW:
“I deserve better!
“No, you want better. You deserve a kick in the ass!“
“I deserve better!” If anything, Dawn, you deserve a lot worse.
Zits: Man, you gotta hand it to this comic – their buyin’ that Rhino package will cover our overhead costs for a month! Well, we gotta account for transportation, Rhino chow, and clean-up costs, but we’re still coming out ahead. Just look at that synchronized stomping! Poetry in motion… And yes, that’s Rompin’ Rhino in the lead position. He’s still got it.
B. Bailey throw away panels: Sarge thinks better of interrupting Beetle and Killer wrestling with a featureless cube.
Mary Worth – There’s so much that’s off with this, but I can’t get past Dawn’s half assed commitment to a vegan diet. When Dirk ordered steak for her and ordered her to eat it, she shrugged it off and ate it. Now she’s back on the vegan train. I don’t think that eating vegan works that way.
Rex Morgan – Thanks to HIPAA, Summer and Michelle can only use his first name when they throw him out of the office. Unfortunately, we still don’t know what his name is. I guess “Get out, asshole!” works.
9CL – Let me see if I understand this. Lolly is around twenty, and Alistair is either sixteen or twenty. They’re both world class musicians. They interrupt their performance to make out. Lolly’s mother smiles approvingly. Alistair is the only one who has a chin.
Get help, Brooke.
@Rusty: Les hasn’t shown up as much as Harry Dinkle, who is just as horrible.
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: I loved the Flamingos in Andertoons today. Nice work!
Crankshaft: “Atomik Komix”, gad what a pretentious effort at being…? Its not quite a phonetic conversion as C makes the same phonetic sound as K. So “Atomic Comix” makes far more sense. But no, they have to get cute with changing the Cs to Ks for no good reason! The two words juxataposed already have assonance AND consonance-for pity’s sake is that not enough?? And then they eschew parallelism by mixing “x” with “k” rather than “ks”, which is an infuriating faux rhyme. “Atomic Comics”: is there a rival shop by that name, far superior to their shady business, that they are luring illiterate customers (who buy comics for their pictures of busty heroines: “Something-X? What have we here?”) away from? Damn them and their flippant consonant swapping! I refuse to ever set foot in these miscreants’ proprietorship!
Slylock buys a wand from Sal, and then bends it into the shape of Shady Shrew. Then he arrests Shady on the charge of fraudulently pretending to make bubbles that look like himself. It’s always Shady Shrew.
I appreciate that the bird refers to his fiancée as “the Widow Palmer” instead of “Betty-Lou” or whatever her first name is and I hope this continues throughout their marriage because I can’t think of anything funnier to cry out in orgasmic joy.
Shoe: Biz’s use of the phrase “Widow Palmer” is because he’s embarrassed to admit it’s really Rosie Palmer and her five sisters. Or however many sisters a bird’s palm has. Hm, maybe Rosie is enough by herself, given that it’s a cloaca we’re talking about here.