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.
189 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?
@Banana Jr. 6000:
I’m only 53, and I remember who Mr. Whipple was.
I’m 51, and same. I also remember Madge, and “You’re soaking in it”. Which sounds dirty in 2026.
I work with mostly 20-30 year olds, and I feel ancient, so to see “only 53” in writing makes me feel delightfully included. I may be a little depressed – it’s all good. The meds are working. I’m soaking in them.
DtM: Not for nothing, but has Dennis ever been depicted doing something in the strip menacing enough that he deserves to sit in the corner?
I didn’t think so.
Nancy: Caroline Cash really is a terrible artist, and not in a good way.
@Anonymous:
Er…yes that’s the activity Les liked doing with his injured hand. Um…sure, we’ll go with that…. (Also a broken finger would, in fact, impact his ability to play a lot of games. Certainly more than, say, a broke leg would.)
@Hibbleton:
If you keep egging me on with that kind of wordplay, soon my own execrable wordplay will be Spiroing out of control!
Phantom:
“Why are you packing?”
“Because I have a CCW permit — just like everyone in Jungle Patrol!”
@Vice President John Adams:
Troy and Hank came up through the ranks together. Matriculated at Juilliard. Got good notices as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Um, I have it on good authority that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
JP: Say, Bogdan, I would advise you to read the O. Henry short story “The Ransom of Red Chief” before you think of abducting Charlotte.
“Now, note that under infrared light we can see the alien parasite coiled in the chest of this young man. We turn the light off, and all is normal. Light on, and again the horrid visage of the parasite appears. Save him? Oh, no. We intend to witness the emergence of the beast during the 2 o’clock showing of Supergirl. It’s for science.”
FG: I’m not fond of the term “uncanny valley,” but the unannounced switch to Sandy Jarrell as artist is freaking me out. We get a nice Here’s All The Good Guys In One Room scene today, and everyone’s face is recognizable, just a little….different.
FC — Go ahead, do it, Thel. Bash his head in with that gigantic alarm clock. That’s what you have it for, right?
Fudge Packer – I’d wager that people pay quadruple to ride Neddy.
Look, pal, you’re in the wrong house. Pluggers don’t enjoy anything.
@Guillermo el chiclero: After getting a good look at his quarry, Bogdan decides it would be more entertaining to abduct Neddy.
People whose only claim to be a cinephile is often repeating the word “capeshit” forget that mass entertainment is what keeps movie theatres open. You might not like superhero movies (but many do), you might not like the characters of “Intelligent Life” (but none do), but it is good that they pay good dollars for movie tickets!
@richardf8: FC – We’re supposed to look at Thel’s face, Josh?
To quote a soon-to-be retired gynecologist I know, “As long as I have a face, she has a place to sit.”
GT: Is the raucous laughter in the last panel coming from these golfers, or does the strip come with its own laugh track like a TV sitcom?
The Pluggers prank is definitely on us! Pluggers don’t get excited about any of these new TV shows when they have all the classics to watch. They don’t get excited about new restaurants with all this strange, foreign food. They certainly don’t get excited about this so-called intree-net! But damn it, if there is one thing a Plugger is excited about, it’s a nice soft roll of toilet paper.
Somehow today’s Family Circlejerk on Komics Kondom has added in Dennis Mitchell with a disturbing crotch shot.
CURTIS: Clicked on it, looking forward to an April Fool’s Day prank. Instead, it’s a touching drama.
GA: Walt is still not home free. Tradition (not scripture) says there’s a burly bouncer also at heaven’s gate. (Or was this excessively loud alarm really the sound of a resuscitation machine?)
The Plugger‘s reaction is surprisingly sedate, considering there’s a naked fellow beining in his house whose fur is a remarkable shade of blue, offering nothing other than an armload of TP and a catchphrase.
*being
@Liam: MW- “Criminy,” thinks Mary. “The stupid goldfish was bad enough. What do we do this time, flush Har-V’s phone?”
Gasoline Alley-Join us tomorrow as Walt wakes up disappointed that he’s still alive.
MW-“Ian, Wilbur, I need you two to take care of Harv. Don’t make it look like an accident. I need to send a message to the scammers.”
@Anonymous: “or Crankshaft is just leading the other drivers into being abominable assholes”
This is pretty much true, one arc had Crankshaft seeing what life would be like if he had died, and the others are apologizing to Lena for insulting her brownies saying that they were just going along with Crankshaft, and that her brownies are pretty good.
Although seeing as that was a dream(?) it’s all up in the air really.
@Banana Jr. 6000: 51- Was his first name Wilbur?
Don Abundio, translated:
“You might as well give up on that chick”
“Why should I? My suave moves will win her over!”
“You were so suave with her yesterday…”
“That she qualified for police protection!”
Mary Worth – “Make a few calls.” Mary has a network of meddlers in her contacts file. She’ll start with Meddlers of America, but she might have to go to the next step, Meddlers International.
JP – I do not like novels or movies that feature a child in physical danger. I don’t want to see a child being harmed. However, I’ll make an exception for that raspberry haired brat. Bogdan can take Caulfield while he’s at it.
Rex Morgan – Okay, they’ve been jawin’ about growin’ up in the same town for a while now. This is turnin’ into bee grindin’.
FC – Thel gets her revenge after school, when she offers Billy some candy – chocolate covered Brussels sprouts.
When a naked stranger comes into my house, rubbing my toilet paper across his body, I wouldn’t casually say “you’re in the wrong house” I would be calling the police.
@Chance, @richardf8: Just to throw in my two cents as one of the pervs here, I think Thel’s face is what really makes the drawing today. That’s the face of a woman who was so horny last night, she didn’t even take her earrings off before she jumped into bed. (Yeah, maybe those dots are supposed to be earlobes, but they don’t look like it.) No wonder Bil’s so exhausted that all this ruckus doesn’t wake him up.
MW- “The KKK took my Trixie away…”
The Charmin bear’s name is Leonard, and if there’s one site where I’d expect the writer and most of the commenters to know that, it’s this one. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but let’s be real: we looked from Pluggers to ourselves, and from ourselves to Pluggers, and from Pluggers to ourselves again; but already it’s impossible to say which was which.
Pluggers: although the lawyers had to admit that the Castle Doctrine had not been written to apply to teeth and claws, the trial was short and Bear Plugger was found not guilty on all charges.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
April Fool, I guess.
GT, JUMP START, PHANTOM: Three more “April Fool Jokes” (along with CS) that don’t pass the smell test. Rudeness is NOT the same thing as a joke
@Activist: What’s the April Fool’s joke in Phantom? The other women telling Han she “looks good?”
”How do I look?”
”Like you always do, hon, like a fourteen year old boy. Have you ever considered a push-up brassiere?”
@Ukulele Ike:
I’m disappointed that she has already gone this path when it hasn’t even been a full year of strips.
Perhaps she is using too much black ink? Or is it all done on a computer? I was going to blame the fumes. I’ve seen Olivia James and she is tall.
@Old School Allie Cat: I like to think we’re “old enough to be interesting, but not old enough to be truly old.” Younger people seem to enjoy hearing about the strange things from our own youth. My Galaga machine says hello.
I’ll give you another one: “Where’s The Beef?” Remember how huge that campaign was? Remember when Wendy’s was a viable alternative to Burger King? Remember when Burger King was a viable alternative to McDonald’s? Remember when McDonald’s was a viable food option?
Also, Spuds McKenzie, but it got immortalized in Bloom County. “Look! I’m Bullwinkle!”
FC: “What if … what if I told my own son, right now, that he’s fat? What if I said, ‘Damn, Billy, you’re fat! Starting today, you’re on a diet”? And then let him think about it the rest of the day while he’s at school? Would that be suitable payback for this prank?”
‘shaft: You’re pathetic, Ed. When it was your turn to go, you just shouted out an old Lay’s potato chip slogan. Presumably because you couldn’t improvise for shit.
Pluggers: Some poor intern in the vast Pluggers organization spent hours looking through maps of the United States before landing on an appropriate city for this joke. And when they finally presented their bosses with Bath, Maine, they were rewarded with a halfhearted “Eh, it’ll do.”
IL: “Why, I can remember when a picture show only cost a nickel! And for that price, you’d get two features, a cartoon, a newsreel, and 20 minutes of Uncle Sam kicking Hitler in the butt while the ‘Stars & Stripes Forever’ played on a loop. Ah, the 2010s! How I miss them!”
Intelligent life: I assume that when this guy says “Woot!,” he’s referring to Woot.com, the discount-merchandise site connected to Amazon. He meant, “We’re not getting a discount? I just assumed no one would see Solo Mio at full price. Did we really just shell out $20 each to watch Kevin James scooter around Italy and fall in love? It turns out he’s not even a mall cop in this one!”
Family Circus: Mommy Keane isn’t so much annoyed at Billy, but at the fact that Daddy Keane sleeps through everything. It’s been like that since they were all babies! She’s has to knock him awake when it’s his turn to take care of a crying kid — and she’s getting worried that one day she’ll reach past the Nerf bat and pick up a real one. That’ll be an “April fools” to remember!
Crankshaft: “Thanks for going to all the trouble to make us homemade brownies every week for two decades. By the way, they suck! Ha-ha, April fools! — we’re just kidding! About thanking you, that is. They really are awful, and so are we.”
@Hibbleton: As their April Fools joke, King Features has been inserting Dennis in random panels of their other strips, or at least the online editions. Did that lead to a great payoff in Dennis’s main strip? Nope, just the old “timeout corner” panel. I swear this holiday is getting drearier each year.
I think the only “April Fool’s joke” in Pluggers is on Rich McKee, who thought he was making fun of Charmin’s ad campaign but was actually just spreading it to the comic pages.
IL: Seeing this strip is like having a flashback to the Aughts when every other webcomic was a mediocre, badly drawn “geek humor” strip where making references to movies, TV shows, video games, RPGs, comics was supposed to be funny in and of itself and they were either somewhat successful for a while or more fortunately, dropped off the internet after a few months because the creators (and a lot of these had both an artist and a writer, a whole duo needed to crank out such inanity) were upset that their strip wasn’t an instant monster hit and thus abandoned it where it became a husk of a Keenspace or other webcomic-host site, left to drift through the Google webspace before eventual deletion.
Phantom: “Too bad you have to go, we were about to have the usual midnight pillow fight, and then we were going to sneak out and peek in the boys’ barracks.”
Pluggers: Maybe the TP bear is “in the wrong house” because Pluggers are pretty much non-stop constipated?
At first I read the Family Circus panel as “Mommy wake up, April Fool, we missed the bus!” and thought the prank was that they turned off the alarm and ditched school, which is both a better prank and also creates a cadence like they’re a mischievous goblin.
@treetown: I’m disappointed that she has already gone this path when it hasn’t even been a full year of strips.
It seems surprisingly common. “Wow, I’ve been entrusted with carrying forward this hundred-year-old tradition. I guess I’ll just do whatever the hell I want.”
Pluggers: We drive US One through Bath whenever we go to Downeast Maine in the summer, always in a hurry to get further Downeast where stuff gets nicer. There’s interesting things to see in Bath, but I’ve never considered stopping, and I’ve never considered that the locals would be offended by tourists making “bathroom” insults about their hometown.
Next year I’m going to make an advance appointment with the Mayor of Bath and spend twenty minutes standing in his office reeling off toilet jokes.
@Ukulele Ike:
#102 PHANTOM: It’s Kit’s “joke”– assert your power and omnipresence over Patrol by scaring them (Han) half to death. Let her think she’s fired only to actually commend her and give her a promotion. Ha, ha, fooled ‘cha.
Unlike the talking bear whose diet includes healthy portions of nuts and berries, and as a result is very regular, the bear-man who only eats meat, potatoes, and eggs hasn’t taken a dump in a week so who’s the real fool?
@Chance: 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!
Finally! Someone here “gets” it, if I may indulge in a bit of the vernacular. The tribe of perverts taking over this site, who believe they are expressing what Dorothy Parker might have said if she were a bonobo, has gone beyond all comprehension. Surely there’s nothing interesting about a woman’s private areas being exposed to view. I’ll admit that trends come and go, and perhaps during the Roaring Twenties or the Go-Go Sixties sex was in a heightened state, and it arose again briefly during Covid when people couldn’t think of anything more productive to do with their genitals. But let’s face it, sex isn’t sexy anymore, if it ever was. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Family Circus – What won’t be a joke is that since Billy spent all week planning this April Fool’s, he forgot to do an important homework project, and he’ll have to be held back a year.
Crankshaft – As much of an asshole Ed is, if her coworkers continuously tell her that her brownies suck, and she continue to fail at making them (Because she doesn’t know the difference between baking soda and baking powder), it falls on Lena to change her behavior.
Pluggers – Many Pluggers reuse their newspaper as toilet paper, especially the comics page. Andy Bear has literally seen some shit, Charmin Bear.
Intelligent Life – “Culture is becoming increasingly monopolized, with lower quality and higher prices. April Fools?”
Intelligent Life: I only say “Woot!” ironically, it’s my birthright as an aging Gen-Xer.
Beetle Bailey-Ms.Buxley, if you want dinner reservations you’ll have to Sarge with you.
Frazzhole : “Why, in my childhood I was hooked on Chocolate Covered Sugar Bombs™”
IL: He’s not addressing his friend by name; he’s expressing the idea that April Fools Day should just be skipped. His friend, however, is responding with “Woot!” simply because he heard his name, like a dog.
Luann: Les could just take an Uber back for his car after the clinic. Tarra presumably wants to take him home, however, so she can bang him. That will change once she sees his home and the other person in it.
Lena gets the last laugh with the Ex-Lax™ brownie filling.
Nancy: It’s way too early in her tenure for the new artist to be doing a riff about how she’s out of ideas.
@Ukulele Ike:
Gotta go slightly misdirection. Like, ask to see the spot Elvis died.
Pluggers: All I can think of is the story of the bear asking the bunny rabbit: “Do you have a problem with shit sticking to your fur?”
@Hibbleton: I don’t know, but the way Dennis shit-talks his mother’s cooking would’ve gotten me a lot worse!
Ahem, Pluggers get desperately excited about toilet paper. As their bowels gradually break down with age, they store doomsday-prepped quantities of the rolls. The armful that the Charming bear is carrying wouldn’t last them the weekend.
Comics Kingdom in general: If I were the creators of the strips that had random Dennises crudely pasted over them, I think I’d be a touch miffed. I mean, it’s made the Holbrook strips slightly more incomprehensible than normal!
Crank: Hey, remember when Mary’s thing was she was the “nice” bus driver who was baffled and maybe a bit uncomfortable regarding the unfathomable cruelty of her collegues? Well, someone remind Batty, wouldja?
I realise you could argue that this raises the question “If she’s so nice, why is she dating Ed Crankshaft, history’s greatest monster?” But honestly, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that anyone would date or even tolerate the company of Ed Crankshaft, fellow asshole or not.
JP: How did Bogdan go from being told Charlotte was away on a school trip to lurking in the bushes outside Spencer Ranch, a place nobody has ever mentioned to him? He followed the big dotted line on the ground labelled “PLOT”, of course!
MW: I am genuinely hoping that Moy is about to reach way back in the archives and give us the return of TERRY BRYSON, INTERNET SECURITY OPERATIVE! Remember? She explained to Toby how not to fall for basic phishing scams, and then she got stalked by her former Secret Service partner but their romance was rekindled by how much they loved punching criminals together? She’ll explain everything to Har-V, and then brutally beat up John Long just as he’s tasting freedom!
Phantom: Look, we all know the Unknown Commander is going to tell Han orders are for losers and she did good. You know it, I know it, deep down Woburu probably knows it and hates it, and DePaul definitely knows it. Can we get on with it?
FC-Then Mommy throws the clock at Billy.
@Baja Gaijin:
JP-Is it Wilbur?
@A Grave Mind: Hell, Lupe Velez.
It’s always so gratifying to watch historian heads ‘splode when you recount the “she drowned in her own toilet!” urban legend.
As the current Mayor of Bath, Aaron Park is probably very sensitive about famous movie stars and rock n’ roll legends who drown in their toilets. Probably gets phone calls from journalists across the country. Goes with the territory, I’m afraid.
Is anyone else having issues with comments not appearing?
Pluggers: I’ve just remembered April Fool’s Day 2024, and the hilarious jape of Smokey Bear as a Plugger. I thought that was a one off moment of madness (last year went for a Shoe crossover) but I guess not. Join us in 2027 when R. Kipling of Calcutta, Ohio suggests “A Plugger knows the bear necessities will come to him.”
@Violet: Are you using the name of the man who got scammed in Mary Worth? Unfortunately he shares it with a troll around these parts, so the H-word sends comments into the void.
@Ukulele Ike:
True. But Elvis DID die in the bathroom. Just not on the toilet. NEXT to the toilet (I see my obituary here). Lupe actually died in bed, no?
Jokerfied Lena took a cue from Mike and Skip and poisoned them all. April Fool’s!
“You’re in the wrong house! We’re Pluggers we don’t waste money on fancy shmancy toilet paper! We tear out pages of the Bear’s End catalogs we get in the mail!”
@Horace Broon: Nah, ten bucks says Mary’s just going to get Wilbur.
@A Grave Mind: Yeah, she had taken so much Seconal on top of so much liquor there was no way she could have crawled as far as the bathroom. The drowned in the toilet story was concocted in 1959 by Kenneth Anger for his Hollywood Babylon book. (He also said the Gish sisters were lesbian lovers. Uh, no)
Dirk Twacy Hollistic Defective: Is Solly Tare turning Mumbles into Toastface?
@Ukulele Ike: And that Clara Bow was a gangbang enthusiast. And so on and so on…
Pluggers: Next April Fools Day it will be one of Claude Manx pummeling the shit out of Morris the Cat yelling, “Little Friskies your ass! I’m a Meow Mix man!”
Pluggers: Then the following April Fools Day will feature Earl Houndstooth coming home to see a shotgun wielding Henrietta standing over the corpse of a Holstein cow. “Can you believe it! This shit had the chutzpah to spray paint eat more chikin on the side of our house.
@Victor Von: Oh good. It wasn’t just me!
Luann: Nice jeep, for someone who was introduced as being so destitute she had to rob vending machines and sleep in a storeroom. I guess those nude modeling gigs at Professor Zs art classes are really raking it in.
Luann: I’m more inclined to believe a lot of mudges theory that Tara is just a poser and really doesn’t do any of those adventurous activities she boasts of. That jeep of hers is more a weekend warrior’s occasional fishing trip ride and not a serious off-road rig. Where’s the bash plates, headlight protectors, roof-mounted fog lamps, rollbar, carry racks? Where’s the jacked-up suspension and extra large all terrain tires? Notice too the bodywork is pristine and free of scratches, dings, and dents.
Low and Hi-less: “March Mudness” is a perfectly good pun,Lois!
@Ken: That’s a problem endemic to the entire entertainment industry. People are given creative involvement in a franchise and then proceed to turn it into what they want rather than what has worked for it in the past. See: James Gunn and Zack Snyder in the DC Universe.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Mary’s just going to get Wilbur.
_______________________________
“Get Wilbur”, the Elmore Leonard novel no-one ever talks about.
LUANN: Oh Les, I certainly got a “finger” for you all right.
LUANN (2): Tara, girlfriend, I’d cut that man loose now if I were you, because I’m pretty sure that sprained finger isn’t the only limp dangling extremity attached to Les.
@Rube: The USC football team will be very sorry to hear that.
@2+2=7:
1) “As you can see, that is no ‘thumb’.” (old Bloom County flashback)
2) She already cut him loose — that’s how Les fell from the wall to begin with.
Crankshaft – April Fools!
Hash brownies! You’ll be high as a kite in no time.
@Anonymous:
“Barney, Barney, Barney, is your mother from Killarney?”
“What do you say we guys go down to the beach, and shoot some clams?”
C-Shaft: “That’s right. April 1st is the day I decided to lay out a bunch of fent-laced brownies. Good luck, assholes.”
Pluggers: You don’t appreciate the fact that bears in Pluggers aren’t CGI abominations always talking about their rectums until this happens.
So is “Enjoy the Go” a real Charmin slogan, because if so, it sucks.
DT: So it’s not the White Sox? I guess that’s one point where Neo-Chicago parts ways with the real thing.
Dustin: Dennis hightails it as quickly as he came in because he already knows a doughy aging grump more interesting than this one.
GT: Ah, so Barajas set up both Gil’s April Fool’s gag and his nervous breakdown on March 31.
JP: Congratulations to Bogdan on hiding in the trees. Turns out you can teach an old tundra dweller new tricks.
Luann: The clinic will give Les something strong to deal with the pain. They do know he lives with Gunther, right?
MW: Never mind Trixie, what happened to America’s WASP elite? Judging by HH’s example there has to have been a fair amount of royal inbreeding, no?
RMMD: “And I, um, didn’t leave to seek fame and fortune. Nope, never been even a little famous. Sure never kissed Jason Statham in a movie or anything.”
Shoe: Yeah, yeah, Shoe. You can tell the Perfesser is way ahead of you from the way he’s dressed. Some people claim there’s a woman to blame, but he knows it’s his own damn fault. Also there’s probably something funny in the salt shaker.
@JeffMcm: Sadly, yes.
@Horace Broon: Re the hilarious Comics Kingdom running theme: Curtis has to take the cake, though. Mrs. Nelson tells the heartbreaking story of her mother’s dementia while some kaiju-size white kid is doing handstands outside the school.
Intelligent Life’s two nerds seem to be stoned out of their gourds today, which honestly provides a compelling explanation for basically everything they say
FC; C’mon, Jeff Keane. Tease us with Thel in a spaghetti strap nightie but no cleavage?
FG: Oh, and I just remembered. Ming also has the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the singing Von Trapp Family on his side.
@A Grave Mind: 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
______________________________________
“I ate your porridge and squeezed your wife, and by ‘squeezed’, I mean ‘had mad passionate meaningless roo-sex’ with.”
“Hey Skip! The paternity test came back and….you ARE Peter Griffin’s illegitimate son.” “Whoot?”
@JeffMcm: So is “Enjoy the Go” a real Charmin slogan, because if so, it sucks.
_________________________________________
It is and it does.
Mary’s Worst: “By the way, H@rv, Dr Jeffy and I consider forehead to cheek contact first base,so excuse me as I blow this whistle in your good ear.”
@GarrisonSkunk: Don’t usually waste much energy thinking about commercials, but my wife and I refuse to buy Charmin ™ . We hate those damn bears that much.
IL: the first joke here is that no one in the nerd sphere says “w00t” anymore. The second joke is that he didn’t even do it right. The lowercase w and the zeroes are non-negotiable, Husky Nerd! NON-NEGOTIABLE!!
Pluggers: Sensible chuckle. Darn it, John Pluggers, for an April Fools joke, this is solid.
@Lord Flatulence:
I agree but that seems to be the one thing he gets away with.
Late Thread Cuisine: Is this a delicious parfait or is it a faux parfait made of mashed potatoes and tofu?
@Baja Gaijin:
Hate strawberries. Love cheese sticks. This is EXACTLY like Sophie’s Choice, when you think on it.
@Baja Gaijin: Since it’s April Fools Day, I’m going to believe this is actually as good as it looks.
@GarrisonSkunk:
There’s a lot of mayo involved.
But are those cheese sticks? I think they must be nougat or marzipan or meringue and so sickeningly sweet as to tip the strawberries and cream from “pleasant” to “please pass the insulin.”
Strawberries and ice cream is not my favorite either. Insipid. Unless you chose your ice cream flavor creatively. Coffee or Mocha would be interesting.
@Ukulele Ike: They look more like chalk sticks. If it weren’t for the strawberries and whipped cream looking so very, very real, I’d think this was a plastic display food model.
@Anonymous: Hash brownies! You’ll be high as a kite in no time.
___________________________________________
“First time in 50 years I feel really good, and it has to be illegal!” -Det. Phillip K. Fish
@Baja Gaijin: Cuisine – My first thought is that it looks appealing. However, I’ll reserve judgment until I learn what the white part is. White chocolate? Marshmallow? This is April Fool’s Day, after all.
Did anyone fall for an April Fool’s joke or story? I’m suspicious of the cuisine because I did fall for a story today, that the TSA is going to require travelers to use see through carry-ons to speed up the security process. There was a photo of one that had already “sold out.”
I believed it because I’ve gone to Hershey Entertainment events, and their security requirements are a pain in the ass.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: I loved that episode.
@GarrisonSkunk: Abe Vigoda is alive and well and living in New Jersey and enjoying legal recreational weed this very day, bless his kindly old soul.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Nah, ten bucks says Mary’s just going to get Wilbur.
I’m now imagine Mary shouting “Look at him! Is that what you want to become, Harv?”
Today’s April Fool xkcd is pretty funny. Probably works best in Chrome-type browsers.
@168 A Grave Mind: Oooh, I hadn’t thought of that.
@169 taig: It is.
@171 Ukulele Ike: I’m not sure what the sticks are. It’s a fancy strawberry parfait.
@Rube: @Ukulele Ike: Edison?
@172 CanuckDownSouth: Restaurants in Japan have plastic models of food that look real. Really real. So real Wilbur’d be halfway through a bowl of ramen before realizing it’s plastic.
@174 I speak Jive: I don’t know what the white sticks are. The white layer is whipped cream.
MT: I wish this entire story were an April Fool’s joke that ended today. No such luck.
JP: If Bogdan really just has to kidnap a child, I believe many of us, meaning me, would urge him to choose Shannon The Irritating Age-Shifting Brat in LUANN.
MW: Waaaait a minute, “make some CALLS”??? Is Mary going to contact H@rvey’s daughter NOW, long after $200,000 was already in the wind? And is the daughter going to be insanely grateful? Madness. Madness.
@LGM: Edison, New Jersey, is the PLACE to BE, all you hep cats and kittens!
Visit computer scam slave camps! Visit historic Stelton Baptist Church, the SECOND oldest Baptist church in New Jersey! Visit 105-year-old Abe Vigoda! On SHROOMS!
@A Grave Mind: As the Bard wrote: Out! Out damned spot! Who knew the old man had so much mayo in him?
@Ukulele Ike: Abe Vigoda is alive and well
Wikipedia begs to differ. Perhaps I’m missing a 5-dimensional chess board April Fools joke here.
@Poteet: Or that kid from Crankshaft who seemed to be aging backwards?
One comic had him just slouching around playing a videogame, then later on he is toddling around saying one word at at time.
“IT’S CALLED WRITING…”
~Tom Batiuk
Pluggers:
You’re a plugger if the autobiography that inspires you to be imitative of the person who writes it is Mr. Whipple’s My Story in Words.
FC: Not a single person has called attention to what a pair of bodacious tits Thel is showing off? I remember as a kid being very embarrassed by Thel’s voluptuous figure and wondering how Bil Keane thought he could get away with revealing how specifically and intentionally he’d thought about breasts as he drew them. I am now older and wiser, of course, but I still think Thel deserves a full-on slow clap in this strip, or at least an enthusiastic double-thumbs-up.