April Fool’s Comics
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Family Circus, 4/1/26
Happy April Fool’s day, everybody! As I’ve noted over the last few years, the “trick” the passage of time has played on me is my growing appreciation of the Family Circus’s whole deal, which is that the kids are annoying on purpose, like that’s the whole joke. Look at Ma Keane’s face here! She wants to die, and maybe also to kill!
Crankshaft, 4/1/26
If I’m remembering right, for a long time Lena was a never-seen off-panel character that the other characters at the bus depot would constantly complain about, and then we started seeing her in person and she was always depicted as a perfectly nice woman that everyone is unfathomably cruel to for no reason. Look, in this one she briefly believes they’re being nice to her! That’s the “prank”!
Pluggers, 4/1/26
At least that’s intelligible as a prank, though. Is the prank here … on us? Like we’re supposed to believe that Mr. Whipple sent a letter to Pluggers HQ from beyond the grave encouraging them to do a panel where his successor as Charmin spokesbeing comes into a plugger’s home and takes a huge dump? “Look, pal, you’re in the wrong house,” says the bear-man, in what is becoming less and less what anyone would consider a “prank.” “I don’t get all that excited about toilet paper. I appreciate its utility in keeping my butthole and buttcrack clean of feces, but I’m not really invested in it emotionally.”
Intelligent Life, 4/1/26
Not even going to engage with the prank content on this one. These guys know what movie tickets cost! They see movies in the theater all the time, and talk about box office numbers while they’re there! Instead, I just want to point out that in panel one Skip has responded to “Wow … it’s April Fool’s Day,” with “Woot!”, which is absurd. Nobody’s excited about April Fool’s Day. This is just another example of these losers responding to any cultural reference they recognize with a sort of Pavlovian noise of general approval. It says a lot about society, and it sickens me.
65 replies to “April Fool’s Comics”
Judge Parker: A stranger lurking in the bushes, watching attractive women. Has Bogdan been taking “Ghost Who Walks” lessons? I seriously don’t want to see him in the skin-tight purple spandex and ass-hugging stripey drawers.
Mark Trail: Boy, those security guys are so incompetent: they couldn’t knock those stupid sparkly hats off Mark and his “special friend’s” heads. Man, that’d be the first thing I’d do. Just walk up wordlessly and WHAP! Slap the bejeweled Stetson into the gutter.
Pluggers: I hate to admit I laughed unironically at this strip. As if the Pluggerbearman uses TP. We all know he does that in the woods.
BB – Something is amiss here. Good old classic Beetle Bailey would have put Buxley’s 2nd panel utterance in a thought bubble with the joke being “wimmin be setting their men up to fail, expecting men to read their minds, amirite?” But here Buxley is communicating her wishes directly and clearly, and they are perfectly reasonable for the occasion, so we don’t even have “wimmin’ be gold diggers, amirite?” I came expecting to bristle at the misogyny and left disappointed.
It appears that Andy Bear is just getting home. How long has the Charmin being been in his house waiting to do this bit? And Andy’s porridge? GONE!
FC – We’re supposed to look at Thel’s face, Josh?
C’mon, everybody knows you yell “shazbot!” for April Fool’s Day.
@Baja Gaijin: On JP – worse than that, he’s been taking Wilbur Weston’s ‘How to be a Chick Magnet (wink!)’ course. Also, called it!
RMMD: Doug has completed his transmogrification into a Muppet. ‘It’s the Mae Mae & Fergus Show, with our very special guest Rene Belluso! YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!’
IL: It takes a certain kind of person to wear a shirt with a flashing Sega Dreamcast logo to the premiere of the new Mario movie.
IL: So I guess that thing on the front of his shirt isn’t really a stitched design, but rather some sort of indicator of emotional reaction that disappears during downtime. Interesting. Or at least as interesting as this strip gets.
I don’t know about April Fools’ Day, but some of the commenters here sure do make a sort of Pavlovian approval noise at ostensibly “sexy” (?) drawings, and it’s somewhat concerning. Do they also salivate at parenthesis? Those are also two curved lines. Or maybe seeing an “8” in print? Hubba hubba! Ba-doingy face! Woot!
FC: Billy sits and sees a dish of spinach where his bowl of sugary cereal should be.
“Who’s the fool now, Billy Boy?”
Troy and Hank came up through the ranks together. Matriculated at Juilliard. Got good notices as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They had big dreams when they began auditioning. But ya gotta work, and sometimes you take the gig that’s offered. Now Troy gets sweet residuals off all those toilet paper commercials, while Hank is scraping by as a regular on a one-panel strip, where he dons heavy makeup to play old and his character is married to a chicken or a kangaroo or something. They don’t have much in common anymore, and they’ll never be the friends they once were. Sad, really.
I know Thel’s face. That’s a Half Pint Of Vodka Screwdriver Face. Mommy’s having her angry juice, kids!
In a dramatic turn, Bogdan is revealed as Santa Claus, and when his surveillance is complete the Parkers are headed straight for the Naughty List.
Pluggers:
“What message or mood are you trying to impart with that negative comment, Mister?”
” ‘Don’t charm the squeezin’ ‘!”
“The brownies are full of Ex Lax! April Fools! Seriously, enjoy shitting yourselves.”
Pluggers – The Charmin bear is a plugger who has burst into our universe to hawk toilet paper. I think that the joke is that to us he’s a cute bear mascot, but to Andy he’s just another bear in his territory and the castle doctrine and any applicable stand your ground laws are definitely in play.
Pluggers: Did the Charmin bear engage in a poo-flinging contest with some primates at the zoo, either the anthropomorphic kind or the ones on display? It seems he has soiled both himself and the copious rolls of TP. Amazingly, he kept his white fur pristine.
Pluggers: “Look, Pal. You’re in the wrong house —and take that bidet with you!“
Intelligent Life:
I’ll bet that the repartee wasn’t nearly as arch and clever at Gertrude Stein’s and Alice B. Toklas’ place.
MW: “Please, dear. Your hair pomade is getting all over my face.”
GT: Wow, I’d like to say that Gil’s turned into a real cut-up, except that he doesn’t make sense and he’s not funny.
PLUGGERS: So, we’re to infer that there’s an age group that DOES get excited about toilet paper? And it’s a good thing?
The Pluggers prank is pretending that Pluggers don’t get all that excited about toilet paper. They get very excited about toilet paper. Pluggers are obsessed with their excretory functions, which they have various difficulties with on account of being old. Why do you think they’re called “Pluggers”?
FC “April fool! I can’t tell time…”
CSh “Ha, we totally got her!” they said, shoving food in their faces they find absolutely disgusting.
Pluggers In case this scene wasnt weird enough, just remember, following the logic of the Pluggerverse, that bear is completely nude.
It’s not really Pluggers‘s fault but this is the first time I’ve heard the slogan “Enjoy the Go” and what the hell. Have fun pooping to you too, multimillion dollar branding consultants.
Pluggers:
You know you’re a plugger when you always wear a cap and a light jacket while inside the house, because you never know when the furnace just might decide to malfunction.
Poor Thel. She retracted the headboard for nothing.
JP: Bogdan Monster stalks from the woods. “C is for creeping, that’s good enough for me! Oh, creeping creeping creeping starts with C!”
Pluggers: I never noticed before how long the Charmin Bear’s torso is.
FC:
“Of course you did, you cretinous little guttersnipe. It’s Spring Break Week. There is no bus.”
Pluggers: “enjoy the go!”? What? When I left the US 15 years ago that was not an intelligible phrase to native English speakers, and I refuse to believe it is now.
@Pozzo: My guess is that it’s got a flashing LED. That’s exactly the kind of t-shirt that this guy would go for.
Lio – The cunnilingus jokes write themselves and I don’t think Tatulli intended that.
I’m not going that far out on a limb by assuming everyone here is at the advanced age to know who Mr. Whipple is
Crankshaft:
With a brisk turn to the sorcerous arts, Lena visits diverticulitis on each member of the derisive foursome.
PLUGGERS: Yes, Virginia, there IS a Bath, Maine. With a burgeoning population of 8,000 fine wipers.
I don’t know if Mr. Whipple owns a dry goods store there, but I do thank him for leading me to watch the old ad on YouTube
Intelligent Life: There are a lot of things I hate about modern nerd fandom culture, but I’ll say this for it: at least no-one says “WOOT!” any more. The Intelligent Life guys should get back into their mint condition 1:87 scale Delorean and fly back to the TV Tropes forum circa 2007 where they clearly belong. Movie tickets are cheaper there too.
Pluggers:
“Listen, you nattering nabob of negativism! — all I’m trying to do here is to ‘ply‘ my trade!”
@Chance:
Shots fired
@Chance: ‘Badoingy face?’ You do R.Crumb proud.
MW: Recognizing her elderly tenant as an easy mark, Mary accomplishes a successful stick-up merely by holding out her right hand in a mute demand for Harv’s cash.
@richardf8:
#16 PLIGGERS: Read Baja’s comment #1. I too totally enjoyed the joke without even thinking of the “where do bears shit” angle. Deepest, most finessed tp comic ever.
FC: I enjoyed the implied joke that none of the kids expect their Dad to handle any responsibility.
CS: I hope Lena watched The Help before she gathered her ingredients together.
@Dick Wilson: Don’t squeeze the Charmin!
Pibgorn: Brooke updated…. and it looks like it’s wrapping up and heading to a new story line.
pause
You went over and looked, didn’t you.
Pluggers: “This isn’t 2020. We have plenty of toilet paper.”
GT The real joke’s on the writer who actually thinks the typical reader will pay enough attention to remember yesterday’s strip and even understand what Gil’s fakeout was
Pluggers: Joke’s on Andy — he’s going to need all that toilet paper. (Also, the Charmin bear is a dangerous lunatic who’s broken into Andy’s house and will shortly maul him without mercy.)
The Family Circus: Then a voice came to her saying “Arise, Thel; kill and eat.” But Thel said, “No, Lord; for I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” The voice replied “Look at those little melonshitheads! You know you want to!”
“Oh god, your husband’s home early. What’re we gonna do?”
“Don’t worry; just run into the bathroom and grab a bunch of toilet paper!”
“Should I take off this blue bear fursuit?”
“Nope.”
@MKay: (In Comic-Book-Guy cadence) Um…Hel-LO? I take it someone didn’t read Pandemic-era Blondie!
Pluggers hallucinate about bowel movements.
@Bob Tice:
“Listen, you nattering nabob of negativism! — all I’m trying to do here is to ‘ply‘ my trade!”
Or Safire the consequences!
@Dick Wilson: I’m only 53, and I remember who Mr. Whipple was.
Pluggers-“Look at how clean my ass is. There’s no toilet paper on it.”
Crankshaft-Moments later they are all dead from being poisoned.
MW-“Oh great,” Mary thinks to herself, “Do I have to host a funeral for a fake girlfriend?”
Blondie-The only raises Dithers gives Dagwood is through the ceiling.
Because of Family Circus‘s split-screen layout-and-captions combo, I read today’s strip as “Mommy, wake up! April Fool’s!” followed by an offhand “We missed the bus,” probably from Billy but maybe from Thel?
Anyhow, I thought the gag was “The kid doesn’t understand how April Fool’s jokes work, and also the crisis is real,” and… yeah, let’s do that joke! It’s pretty good!
Crankshaft : Whether or not Lena’s brownies and coffee are actually THAT bad, or Crankshaft is just leading the other drivers into being abominable assholes
*is not consistent, but what IS consistent is that as Crankshaft’s employer, the implication is that she condones, if not outright encourages, his purposefully being terrible at his job while being as destructive as possible. So save the sympathy, Lena’s evil too.*Even MARY is in on it NOW!?****************
Frazz : “I mean, that was REALLY weak April Fools’ game there, Caufield. Interrupting Mrs Olsen’s class by yelling, and then pointing at her laughing? You do that every day!”
“No, Frazz, you don’t understand, I mean, I thought SHE was doing an April Fools by giving us a pop quiz!”
****************
Intelligent Life : the characters are in an empty theater because every other patron left when they
smelledsaw them coming.****************
Luann :
1. There’s lot of stuff I thought were bigger in today’s comic; I thought a broken finger was a bigger deal (for the person who has it, for the rock climbing place where it happens, for the people helping the injured person), and I thought jeeps were bigger than that.
2. Les’ injury he got as “punishment” for lying about being a rock climber is a broken finger because that way his injury prevents him from doing what he ACTUALLY likes doing, playing video games.
3. Can’t Gunther, Bets, Mr Gray or Gunther’s mom drive? Don’t they live with Les? Can’t Tara just pick one of ’em up and have THEM drive Les’ car back to his place?
4. Revisit Les’ romance with Pru. Why yes, this collection does gloss over the fact that the money Les used to pay for the extravagant gifts he was given her were collected thru charity fraud, why do you ask? (I like the part where Mr Gray is like “You should just pocket all this money you’re stealing, son.” I also like how Les was actually giving some of the money back under the guise of him donating his OWN money to the cause (“Look at how generous I am, Pru!”))
…Always too many words about friggin’ Luann…****************
Pluggers : this reminds me of that time someone just randomly dropped “I think the Charmin Bears are the most disgusting, repulsive advertisement campaign ever made” in a conversation, and I didn’t know how to react because even though I had no idea why they suddenly brought it up, I didn’t disagree?
****************
Safe Havens : Are those players in the final panel being sucked up, or falling out of that portal? Because the former doesn’t make sense with how they’ve established that every player on the team SUCKS except for Gill (while the latter makes perfect sense; this team sucks because all the good teams are dumping their dead weight on it!)
I guess my April Fools is this overly long comment…MW: I said a couple of days ago that the Mary/Harv “It’s a scam”/”No it’s not” had worn out its welcome, and that was when it was only happening once a day. I hope the rest of the week isn’t going to be the same thing over and over — it’s April Fools, not Groundhog Day.
Pluggers: “I knew Mister Whipple. I worked with George Whipple. George Whipple defended our nation from excessive toilet paper squeezing for decades. And you, sir, are no George Whipple.”
MW: Mary calls up her favorite Patton cosplayer. “Can you come right over? I got a face that needs slappin'”
Pluggers: I give today’s strip my “actually pretty funny” seal of approval. Bonus points for knowing its audience well enough to know that they’d get a Mr. Whipple reference.
Luann: This should be an April Fools joke, but isn’t. At least it made sense when Tara was calling Les’ bluff about being a rock climber. Now it’s a meet cute? Or at least a meet awkward, which is the closest this world can produce.
Mary Worth: This should also be an April Fools joke, but isn’t. Mary Worth acknowledging that a problem is too big for her meddling? Especially a simple problem like this? She should turn to the camera and say “Need backup? Me? April Fools!”
MW: Compare the size of Mary’s head in panel one to the size of Hart’s. That is all.
PLUGGERS: The “gag” here is that this strip thinks everyone at Comics Curmugeon is a Plugger (I know I’ve made a joke about ol’ Andy secretly being one of the Charmin Bears on this site.) Unless the real joke here is that they finally ran out of letters and are just scouring through various internet forums for submissions. So y’know don’t be surprised if we see entries that say things like ” Pluggers don’t understand why Gearhead Gertie strips keep appearing on the blog” in the future.
Pluggers are surprisingly unbothered to find naked strangers in their home. That’s how I know I’m not a plugger, I’d need at least that armful of toilet paper to clean up after myself once I stop running and screaming.
***
They hate Lena’s brownies but still they eat them? Is she bringing in edibles to try and calm down Crankshaft’s driving?
@Anonymous #54: “(someone said) I think the Charmin Bears are the most disgusting, repulsive advertisement campaign ever made”
I think this is a great example of what Josh meant when he said “recognize with a sort of Pavlovian noise of general approval.” I also think this commercial is unseemly at best, and there are a lot of other ones like it. But day after day, they continue to interrupt our TV programs, to tell their disgusting stories at the highest allowable volume. And as a society, we just tolerate it, with a sort of Pavlovian compliance. Our society requires us to tolerate too many aggressive messages that at least rise to the level of “dude, not cool.”
C’shaft: Today’s strip combines the worst aspect of Crankshaft (tired running that pass off complete disregard for others as a charming quirk) with the worst aspect of April Fool’s Day (cruelly toying with the emotions of others for the sake of a prank). So, congratulations on achievements in repulsiveness, I guess.
IL: Skip and Skip’s Friend Whose Name I Don’t Care to Remember, meanwhile, should be engaging in one of the better aspects of April Fool’s Day, namely jokey patches from video game companies. That they’re sitting around going “movie ticket prices, amirite?” is yet more proof that this strip is written by seventy-year-olds who have never done a nerdy thing in their lives.
Charmin Bear: So you’re not going to fill all your closet space with toilet paper your family is going to clear out when you die?
Andy Bear: Whoa, now, I never said that.
Dustin: “Also, I have never actually been anywhere or done anything.”
JP: Wow, sure didn’t take Bogdan long to track Charlotte down. Maybe someone should have warned Neddy about the big Russian guy with unknown motives who’s looking for her charge?