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Blondie, 6/15/21

I continue to respect Blondie’s decision to acknowledge the coronavirus pandemic maybe once a month or so, but even with that context Dagwood is right to be confused: we have for the most part stopped doing temperature checks, because it turns out most people early in a coronavirus infection don’t have fevers, so it’s not a particularly good screen, plus Dagwood is coming home to his wife, who he lives with, and it’s not like he’s going to suddenly become infected and infectious in the eight hours he was at work anyway. Based on the narrative turn things seem to take in the final panel, I must regretfully come to the conclusion that this is a sex thing.

Dennis the Menace, 6/15/21

Why on earth would you ostentatiously refer to wife as “boss” so loudly and repeatedly during a phone call that your baffled coworker would interrupt your conversation to remark on it? I must again conclude this is some sort of sex thing, and Henry is attempting to humiliate himself in as many ways as possible during the run-up to the act itself, for sex-thing reasons.

Mary Worth, 6/15/21

Ha ha, wait, did Drew already fill in Ashlee on all the hot gossip vis-à-vis his ex, or do they already know each other somehow, or did their instincts just immediately kick in upon sighting one another and each of them realized she had to do battle to secure her position as the alpha skank? Anyway, I’m sure this is a sex thing for some of you, but please don’t feel obliged to leave the lurid details in the comments.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/15/21

I think we’re all real familiar with how depressing the average day is at Montoni’s for the people who hang out there, so dwell for a minute on the fact that its regular denizens found it even more depressing when the were forbidden to hang out there by the health department. Also, unrelated, but I dearly hope that the final panel isn’t a sex thing for anyone, anywhere.

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Shoe, 6/12/21

OK, first thing’s first: any legacy comics artist convinced they’re going to be on the cutting edge with a cryptocurrency joke has to acknowledge that Snuffy Smith did it first more than six years ago, and, frankly, did it better. Second, if Mort’s new proposed “alternatives for money” aren’t based on distributed computing and the blockchain, then he’s just trading one kind of fiat currency for another! Sure, he could print his own novelty CorpseBux or whatever that customers could trade for funerary services add-ons, but as long as they’re pegged to the dollar, his mortuary business is still under the tyrannical thumb of the Federal Reserve and the Bilderberg Group.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/12/21

For the past week, Harry Dinkle and his wife have been going on and on about his plan to attend a big band directors’ conference in Pasadena. Every day it was annoying, but every day when I was tempted to write about it here, I thought “No, I’m gonna hold out, I bet it gets worse.” Folks, I’m proud that my restraint means I get to present you with … this. Enjoy your weekend!

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/14/21

Just to bring you up to date on what’s happening in Funky Winkerbean: Harry’s attempt to raise money for new choir robes using his traditional band fundraising techniques flopped, so instead the church set up a fundraiser on the in-universe equivalent of GoFundMe, called “MoneyForNothing” in what I assume is a show of contempt for the concept of online fundraising, or maybe for modern life in general. Nevertheless, once pictures of the beloved (?) choir loft cat Bingo were added to the MoneyForNothing page, the fundraiser was wildly successful, leading Harry to utter the sentence “I stand in line!”, which is … not the sort of thing one says in this situation, in my experience with conversational American English. Maybe Harry thinks “I stan,” a thing the Kids Today say when expressing admiration for someone, is short for “I stand in line?” A deeper explanation may lie in the weird Clink! Lillian’s ring produced when rapped against Harry’s chest; perhaps the real Harry died some years, and the “Harry” we’ve seen in the strip since has been a lifelike metallic android, whose English idiom algorithm is not quite up to snuff yet.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/14/21

Oh, so you think there aren’t enough medical plots in Rex Morgan, M.D., huh? Well, what if there were [thinks furiously] a pill that could help someone come up with more medical plots? Sounds pretty medical, huh? Pills? You get them from a doctor?

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Six Chix, 5/6/21

Folks, Six Chix sure loves its cryptids, and I for one am on board! The strip long dwelled on a single subject: “What if Bigfoot were sexually attractive?” But now the strip has started branching out, onto subjects like “What if a human captured a mermaid and she eventually resigned herself to living with him?” and, today, “What if a rat were big?” I think I might like this one the best. Ha ha, look at that rat, everybody! He’s so big! And friendly. Only in New York!

Crock, 5/6/21

Ladies, you know how it is: you come home to find your husband visibly intoxicated and sitting atop a literal pile of garbage. This is such a cliche that in order to make a comic strip about it, you’d need to put a fresh new spin on it. Like, say, what if you were to use the world of computers as a metaphor? Eh? What if your house were some kind of computer system, which would make your drunk, disgusting husband malware of some sort? Eh? That’s how computers work, I think? I’ve never used one, but I’ve met people who have.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/6/21

HARRY DINKLE: [hears the word “mascot”]
HARRY DINKLE: [visualizes the mascot at the school where he used to work]
HARRY DINKLE: “I definitely am familiar with the word ‘mascot’ and its meaning!”

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Judge Parker, 4/26/21

Oh, hey, remember when Sam got kidnapped a couple of years ago? Well, kidnapped might be a kind of strong word for it. Yes, he was taken away at gunpoint by this lady against his will, but that was only to get him to a meeting with April’s dad Norton, so that they could plot out some crimes to get Judge Parker Senior out of jail for the crimes he did, after which time Sam was free to go (to put their crime plan into motion), and technically a normal person would interpret this sequence of events as being kidnapped, especially the part at the beginning with the gun. But Sam is supposed to be the man of action in this strip, responsible for all sorts of derring-do! Remember when Sam’s pal almost got hacked to bits by a chainsaw? That’s the sort of thing that used to happen to him and his friends all the time! Sam should be significantly more chill about that previous encounter with not-April, is what I’m saying.

Slylock Fox, 4/26/21

A thing I really respect about Wanda Witch is her cheerful attitude about everthing, embracing the darkness of her chosen profession/species (?). She seems fun, and who wouldn’t want to hang out with her at home and sing along as she pounds out “Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead” on the piano? And if you think there’s something unusual about a florist delivering roses with the thorns still on them, you have a lot to learn about the courting customs in the positive-vibes goth subculture that Wanda and her paramour Count Weirdly are clearly both members of.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/26/21

Look, Funky’s monologue about how he had it rough during the COVID lockdown was insufferable, of course, but at least it sort of made sense as something you’d talk about at an AA meeting. But now it looks like he’s just gonna launch into a recap of the strips where he gets verbally abused by his personal trainer, and I can’t see any real therapeutic value in that.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/26/21

OK, so we’re on day two of “Jordan and Michelle are about to go nuts all over each other’s hot bods, we must stop watching now,” followed by very pointedly continuing to watch, and I know that there’s a whole thing where the Sunday strips have to stand alone because some people don’t see them and some people only see them, but this is really starting to make me uncomfortable, I have to say.

Dustin, 4/26/21

My initial reaction reading this was, “Wait, why is Dustin getting home in what I assume is the early afternoon? Why isn’t he at work?” And now I have a new worst crime to accuse the comic strip Dustin of: making me briefly think exactly like Dustin’s terrible father.

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/23/21

When I wrote about the many different strategies comic strip artists were taking to address (or not) the coronavirus pandemic, one I definitely didn’t have on my bingo card was “ignore it while it was happening, and then, as it seemed to be on its way out, pretend that it had been happening all along, and reminiscing about what it was like for your characters.” Anyway, today we, and Funky’s hapless AA meeting, learn that Montoni’s was apparently shut down (though presumably not for long, as pizza is a notoriously delivery-friendly food format?) and that Montoni’s also has a liquor license, and that Funky was full of dark thoughts of boozing it up with his imagined version of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, but then remembered “Oh, wait, drinking is bad for me” and didn’t. Anyway, good for him for staying sober in trying circumstances, but too bad for these poor alcoholics that they have to listen to Funky’s loopiest, most rambling monologue since he spent a day muttering to nobody about how Elvis died on the toilet.

Gil Thorp, 4/23/21

Ahh, it’s that beautiful moment in any Gil Thorp storyline, the one where we finally begin to see how all the different characters we’ve been frenetically switching back and forth from kind of relate to each other. Turns out Zane Clark hasn’t been around much because his parents lost their jobs and his family went into a financial spiral and he has a hard time getting to school events because he works nights to help out, and his girlfriend Katy is the daughter of Abel Brito, who found out that tax-funded community services exist a couple weeks ago and is still absolutely furious about it, apparently. How is he going to deal with his daughter dating a [dramatic music sting] poor person? Very excited to find out!

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Judge Parker, 4/20/21

Hey, kids, it’s 4/20, and you know what that means: time to get high (IF THAT’S LEGAL IN YOUR JURISDICTION, CAN’T EMPHASIZE THAT ENOUGH, DEFINITELY NOT ENCOURAGING ANYONE TO DO CRIMES HERE) and think to yourself “Whoa, dude, what’s going on in, like, Judge Parker?” Last we checked in, you might recall that Randy was having a meltdown because his daughter reported to him that she had spotted her mother April (estranged from Randy, ex-assassin on the lam) lurking outside. But now April is in the house, insisting that that other, lurking April isn’t the real April, but their daughter insists that this April, the one in the house yelling at Randy, isn’t her real mother! Who is right? Will we see some red-hot real-April-on-fake-April fisticuffs? If you’re already high and are thinking “Whoa, dude, I can’t follow any of this,” let me reassure you that I’m not high at all and I can’t really follow it either.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/20/21

Speaking of stoners, probably we’re not supposed to think of this kid at Funky’s pandemic-swollen AA meeting as a stoner, I guess? Just dumb, like all of today’s dumb kids who take video games seriously. I honestly kind of love that he’s specifically put here to point out the fact that the first name “Funky” would in fact sound insane to a normal person, but as soon as he was assigned the “knows about video games” attribute he immediately had to be rendered as a slack-jawed dope, those are just the rules of the Funkyverse, maybe go research the differences between Golden and Silver Age Flash comics if you want to better yourself, buddy.

Mary Worth, 4/20/21

Oh hell yes, Dr. Drew is an Instagram influencer and I am extremely here for it! I certainly hope that his handle is “tha__naturedoc” and all the pictures he posts tomorrow consist of a few California wildflowers that you can see here and there if you look to the side of his prominent shirtless torso.

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Mary Worth, 4/19/21

Oh, wow, I don’t think we’ve ever seen Dr. Jeff’s distinguished McMansion before, have we? Generally, Mary prefers her cozy condo to the echoing, (emotionally) empty halls of Chez Cory; she might occasionally stop by with an enormous bowl of brown nutrient goo to ensure that her beau doesn’t starve to death before she deigns to go to the Bum Boat with him ten to fifteen business days hence, but my guess is she tends not to linger.

Anyway, is Dr. Drew also just briefly stopping by to make sure his father hasn’t fallen and broken his hip, or are we meant to understand that he still lives with his dad, despite being well into his 30s? That might explain his dissatisfaction, considering that if he tried to bring home one of the ladies who’s smitten with him for a little action, Dr. Jeff would probably be there in the kitchen, smiling and offering to ladle out some “delicious” “turkey” “stew” for her.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/19/21

Among the other things that the coronavirus pandemic destroyed is the barely comprehensible logic of the time gap between Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft. It’s simple, really: the events in the current Crankshaft strips are definitely taking place ten years before the events of Funky Winkerbean, except that both strips are emerging from the pandemic at the same time. Makes a ton of sense! Maybe we’re meant to understand that Funky Winkerbean takes place ten years from now after an even worse plague that’s displaced coronavirus from our discourse as “the [unnamed] pandemic.” Anyway, whatever’s going on over there, it’s sure making everyone miserable!

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Beetle Bailey, 4/13/21

I’m reasonably sure that Zero’s original one-note Beetle Bailey character definition was “is stupid,” but apparently at some point along the line it was decided he needed more depth or an origin story or something, so now the fact that he grew up on a farm is also part of his gimmick. He’s still a buck-toothed simpleton, though, which seems like it would alienate readers in “real America,” but I guess when you’re an institution as beloved by elite urban intellectuals as Beetle Bailey, you can get away with this stuff.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/13/21

Today’s strip represents the third time that this “Harry Dinkle the choirmaster” storyline has done a hilarious gag where the ladies of the choir are unfamiliar with Harry’s whole shtick from years as the Westview band director/fundraising impresario, and he briefly flies into a rage before managing to ratchet things back. At least he isn’t bleeding from his face this time? Anyway, it occurs to me that the last time anyone saw Harry in regular action in this strip as a band leader was more than 14 years ago, before he went ironically deaf, so honestly only hardcore Funkyheads like [extremely heavy sigh] me even know what he’s going on about; assuming this strip has accrued any new readers over the past generation, all of them are just as befuddled by what’s going on as the choir ladies are. Neat, huh?

Crankshaft, 4/13/21

OK, now I’m back to wishing that Crankshaft hadn’t skipped over the pandemic, since apparently we missed the delightful image of Crankshaft stabbing himself with a meat thermometer, his friends only able to look on in horror over Facetime as he quickly passed out due to blood loss.

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Dennis the Menace, 3/30/21

This is one of those comics where I feel like the joke is convoluted enough that I have to reason it out from first principles. Like, we know Mr. Wilson doesn’t have any friends — we know this with absolute certainty — so I guess the book he’s going through is supposed to be the White Pages, rather than a particularly thick personal address book, even though I’m pretty sure they stopped publishing the White Pages years ago and also the DIRECTORY heading never appeared at the top of the page in the middle of the book for whatever reason. Anyway, who do you think he’s calling? Given that Dennis has upgraded his menacing from “dropping by to annoy Mr. Wilson” to “dropping by with a friend to gawk at Mr. Wilson like he’s an animal at the zoo,” I certainly hope that it’s finally Child Protective Services.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/30/21

I guess the new hilarious “Harry Dinkle has blood running down his face” running gag comes from him biting his tongue when his god-like talent as a band director isn’t recognized by the ladies of this church, who live in a different town from where he taught high school and have literally no reason to know anything about him. That said, the funnier explanation would be that his face is starting to crack due to the pressure put on it by wild swings in expressions like the one we see between panels two and three, and pretty soon it’s going to just slide off the front of his head altogether.

Family Circus, 3/30/21

You may think Big Daddy Keane’s little smile here is cruel, but you have to understand that the minute Billy is large and/or skilled enough to defeat him in single combat, his reign as head of the household — and his life — are over. That day is coming, but it hasn’t come yet, Billy. Not quite yet.

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Dustin, 3/27/21

For a brief moment, I thought today’s Dustin was an example of that lowest form of comic strip humor: a character in a strip being tasked with making a dumb joke more appealing by reacting to it as if it’s funny, which is it isn’t. But then I remembered that Dustin’s dad is a lawyer! Turns out Dustin’s dad isn’t just an asshole; he also hates his son as much as his son hates his children, which is honestly a best case scenario for the next few weeks of this strip as far as I’m concerned. Let’s get beyond passive aggression into pure chaos!

Funky Winkerbean, 3/27/21

You know what would make this strip a lot funnier? If you could see Harry’s face in panel two, and there were, like, tons of blood flowing out of his mouth and down his chin as he cheerfully declared “I got the gig!” And then panel three was cut out entirely. Well, I’m not sure if “funnier” is quite the right word, but I think we can all agree it’d be better.

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Six Chix, 3/24/21

One thing I really respect about Six Chix is that it’s not afraid to “go there” when it comes to cryptid erotica. Usually, of course, we’re talking weird Bigfoot smut, but sure, let’s give mermaids a spin! This strip is frankly pretty grim: our poor mermaid is being encouraged to adorn her perfectly normal and healthy single fluke in a parody of the “sexy” garments worn by the land-dwellers on their doubled lower extremities, and is also simultaneously being taunted with the instrument of her own enslavement.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/24/21

Oh, great, one day after I finally work myself up to write a 500 word essay on how putting Harry Dinkle into the current Crankshaft storyline violates the 10-year separation between the two Funkyverse strips, we find out that in fact despite her protests Lillian has been toiling as church organist for more than a decade and the separation is still in place after all! This is clearly an attack on me personally. Anyway, never forget that Harry had to quit his band teaching job because he went semi-deaf, so hopefully this church will be rewarded with some real sub-par organing.

Gil Thorp, 3/24/21

Gotta admit that this basketball season plot about Vic and his MC-ing ways didn’t really hold my interest, but now that Doug Guthrie and Corina Karenna, probably two of the top five more interesting characters currently in this strip, are planning to team up and overthrow the government through a series of daring assassinations, I’m back on board!

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/23/21

Real Funkyheads, which include both non-ironic fans of Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft and those of us who feel compelled to read both strips every day, possibly due to a curse placed on one of our ancestors who offended a cave-witch, know that there is one iron law of Funkyverse time, which is that Crankshaft takes place ten years in Funky Winkerbean’s past. It wasn’t always like that, of course, but after Lisa died Funky Winkerbean jumped ahead ten years to allow Les time to come to terms with that, emotionally (lol), whereas Crankshaft didn’t. This time disjunction (disFunktion?) has been exploited for narrative effect multiple times, the most recent being just last summer, when a Crankshaft-era character mused that he’d love to visit the setting of his favorite silent movie, and then simultaneously (but ten years later) did just that over in Funky Winkerbean. (Naturally, achieving this longtime dream almost resulted in his death.)

But wait! Remember a few weeks ago, in Crankshaft, when the organist died and Lillian resisted taking over as her replacement? Well, they put an ad in the classifieds for a new organist, and since virtually nobody reads the classifieds anymore, the only person who answered was … Harry Dinkle! Over in Funky Winkerbean! Which is … not ten years in the future anymore, I guess? Even thought Crankshaft is as full as vim and vigor as ever over in Crankshaft (if occasionally glued to the furniture) but is a wizened husk in Funky Winkerbean? Anyway, they’ve been building this Dinkle crossover up for like a week now and every day I’ve been forced to contemplate the question of whether I care about this flagrant casting aside of established Funkyverse chronology, and I’ve finally decided that I do! I do and I feel compelled to blog about it! This too is no doubt part of that sinister crone’s ancient curse, under which my whole family line has suffered for so many generations.

Dick Tracy, 3/23/22

Speaking of convoluted comics plots, I’ve never quite gotten a handle on what Pouch’s whole deal has been over the course of this current storyline. He’s thought-ballooning a recap for us to kick off the week, and I still don’t understand it, but I do appreciate the effort.

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/13/21

Well, the best we can say about this comical misunderstanding plot is that it at least wrapped up quickly! On the minus side, though, the misunderstanding was that Mopey Pete used “seeing someone” a shorthand for going to an eye doctor and getting glasses, which is … not English as it is generally spoken! I had guessed that the “someone” in question was going to be a psychotherapist, but this is frankly much dumber. They didn’t even commit to the bit and make it wordplay around “seeing”! Also, the upshot of all this is that glasses make Jess horny and she and Darrin are gonna bone, right there in the office, in the middle of teh workday. So I think we can agree that the overall rating of this Funky Winkerbean plotline is negative, just like all the other ones.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/13/21

Conflict? In a Rex Morgan storyline? Maybe Sarah’s imagination is more powerful than I thought.

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Beetle Bailey, 3/10/21

I generally don’t put too much stock into Beetle Bailey facial expressions — like, for instance, today I assume that Private Blips here is sporting Private Blips Clip Art Face #5 and isn’t supposed be expressing any specific emotion. But I would like to think that she’s experiencing a moment of genuine wonder because, after thinking about a question she’d never really dwelled on before, she’s finally realized what sort of person she wants to be: a person who marries and then divorces men for their money. Self-knowledge can be difficult to obtain, but is ultimately rewarding!

Shoe, 3/10/21

Speaking of over-interpreting facial expressions, I’m hoping the Perfesser’s wide, shocked eyes come before Biz’s explanation, because he was briefly worried that the old bird-man was trapped in some kind of time loop, reaching his milestone 100th year each day, then being reset by 24 hours while he sleeps so he can experience it all over again when he wakes up the next morning, like running on an eternal treadmill on the precipice of death.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/10/21

Hey, did you enjoy the Funky Winkerbean plot where Cindy was convinced Mason was cheating on her, for no real reason, because women be jealous, amiright? No? Well, I have some bad news for you about Jess, Darrin, and some sitcom-style misunderstood overheard conversations!

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/6/21

In real life, very few people are annoying on purpose, and the question of whether you think they’re annoying is a subjective one. In fiction, though, even in a world where many discount authorial intent, we can still try to puzzle out the question of whether a character is supposed to be annoying or not. Certainly as a normal human, I’ve found this lady’s endless reference getting insufferable, and have assumed that’s the intended reading of the character; but today we learned that she also got Les’s “kemo sabe” joke, a reference we’ve been told repeatedly in the strip that it’s bad not to get, actually. So is this lady good, because the best thing one can do in life is get references — specifically, whatever references Les is laying down in relation to his dead wife, Lisa? Or is it just true that all of us, reference-getters and reference-non-getters alike, are basically irritating? I fear the latter may be more true to life.

Gasoline Alley, 3/6/21

Today’s Gasoline Alley, meanwhile, has a simpler and more fundamentally joyful message: these two are gonna do iiiiiiiitttttt

Hi and Lois, 3/6/21

Hey, were you interested in maybe seeing the dress that’s at the center of the joke in this comic strip, since comic strips are a visual medium? Well, tough: this is the last daily strip of the week to get through, and all that golf is frankly not going to play itself.

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The Lockhorns, 3/4/21

Man, I genuinely want to know what Leroy is up to on social media. Like, I started writing that sentence as a bit, but now I’m imagining all sorts of possibilities. Is he posting an ill-informed comment on his favorite sports blog? Letting loose a terrible political opinion on Twitter? Going through the entire Instagram feed of a statuesque blonde he met at a party and liking each of her selfies one by one? Uploading a compilation of Loretta’s funniest nags to TikTok? You can tell by his facial expression that he’s extremely pleased with himself, so you know it’s pretty bad.

Crankshaft, 3/4/21

Ha ha, turns out “church organist drops dead mid-service” wasn’t just a funny joke I made earlier this week but a real plot development in a newspaper comic strip, an artistic medium for children (?). Anyway, say what you will about Crankshaft, but unlike certain Funkyverse strips, it’s not sentimental about the dead, you know? That lady’s body isn’t even cold and they’re already browbeating Lillian into being her replacement!

Funky Winkerbean, 3/4/21

LADY NONE OF THESE REFERENCES ARE PARTICULARLY OBSCURE, PLUS HE’S SAYING THE ACTUAL TITLES AND EVERYTHING

LIKE WHAT DO YOU THINK “GETTING” A REFERENCE MEANS

KNOCK IT OFF

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Gasoline Alley, 3/3/21

I am at this point very obviously committed to my specific bit, which is that I comment on every day’s comics right after I read them, having no idea what the future holds for that strip, in order to replicate this website’s origin story, which is that I would make jokes about the comics to my wife every morning over breakfast until she told me to make a blog about it. But sometimes doing things that way means I miss slow-burn developments in the comics. Like, take for instance, Gasoline Alley. Today’s strip involves a man returning a pair of glasses to a woman after they accidentally fell into his shopping basket at the supermarket. Ah, you’re probably thinking, this is the beginning of a romantic meet-cute! In fact, this is latest “twist” in grueling storyline about this lady losing her glasses while shopping that’s been going on for three weeks, and in a sense I’m sorry I haven’t been bringing it to you blow by wildly undramatic blow. Go back and read the last month or so, if you think your heart can handle it!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/3/21

Wow, looks like Rex is going to have to add another entry to his list of “Seemingly anodyne phrases meant that are meant just to fill time but actually end up unpleasantly extending a conversation.” This one is going to result in him having to talk to a second person, so it gets a little red star next to it.

Dennis the Menace, 3/3/21

I’m a big fan of Mr. Wilson’s completely gobsmacked facial expression here. “Did he just try to eat that coin? Is he that stupid? Is my nemesis that stupid? And what does that say about me?”

Funky Winkerbean, 3/3/21

Les isn’t just history’s greatest caregiver; he also watches sports in the correct way, for virtuous reasons, unlike you, you filthy, depraved animal.

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/2/21

Oh, boy, it looks like the early coronavirus pandemic echoes in Funkyverse strips that were probably written a year ago have reached the mothership, everybody! It’s funny that Crankshaft used the opportunity to do some zany jokes about hand sanitizer and whatnot, whereas in Funky Winkerbean itself the key question is “How can we make this global pandemic, which is particularly dangerous to the immunocompromised, all about Les — specifically, how can we show that Les is the real hero in Lisa’s cancer story, and is also unpleasantly neurotic?”

Crankshaft, 3/2/21

Meanwhile, Crankshaft is just riffing on headlines like “How a superspreader at choir practice sickened 52 people with COVID-19” with bits like “Wouldn’t it be funny if in the middle of a choral performance, the old lady playing the organ just straight-up dropped dead? Right there in church? In front of everybody?”

Mary Worth, 3/2/21

Look, it’s all fun and games to claim, without evidence, that your dog is a “champion tracker” when you never go hunting and there are no real stakes to it, especially when your dog is a tiny dachsund with a comically large snout! How much tracking does anyone’s pet dog do on a regular basis, anyway? Hardly none, right? But just know that if you say this sort of thing enough, you might eventually be called upon to render actual tracking services, and that can get real awkward real fast.

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/1/21

What’s the worst thing going on here? Is it that Les thinks it makes him sound sympathetic when he says his first reaction to his wife’s cancer diagnosis was to become the smartest cancer knower that ever lived, rather than attempting to comfort her or whatever? Is it that Les made a joke about Dick Tracy “investigating” things, even though as readers of this blog well know, Dick rarely does any real detailed research and mostly just shoots at weirdos? Is it that this lady thinks that Dick Tracy is some obscure comics character known only to trufans and obsessives, rather than one of the most famous comic strip characters in the world? Is it that, right or wrong about that, she thinks that shouting “Got the reference!” at this reading of a sad cancer book will make her sympathetic? WRONG, TRICK QUESTION: the real answer is that the worst thing going on here is that Les is still, years and years after his wife’s death, doing endless publicity tours for his book about her illness, rather than writing another book or spending time with his daughter and his current wife or, like, doing literally anything else. Anyway, he and “Got the reference!” lady will definitely be having an affair by the end of the week.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/1/21

Oh, did you think we were done with Buck? You fool. You idiot. You sweet summer child. This plotline is going to consist of some very mild failure to adhere to diabetes protocols, some very swift compliance to said protocols in response to extremely minimal consequences to said failure to adhere, and endless, endless praises. All hail Buck! It’s good that your numbers look like that, Buck. Let’s all hear it for Buck!

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Dick Tracy, 2/24/21

A little sniff before she fixes dinner, if you follow her. If you get her drift. Her snow drift. She’s talking about cocaine! I feel like what with all the weird escapades with “Pouch” and his stolen balloon “Blue” that this strip has been going on for the past several weeks, we’ve lost sight of the true star of this storyline: cocaine, and the recreational consumption and illegal distribution thereof.

Blondie, 2/24/21

Look, obviously the Blondie strips where she’s taking notes on the “[Insert Profession/Hobbyist Group To Make Jokes About Here] Group Luncheon” are just excuses to make some easy jokes riffing on widely accepted stereotypes about the profession or hobbyist group in question, and that’s a perfectly valid joke template for a long-running legacy strip like Blondie to have. I’m just saying, though, you really should have your stereotypes correct if you’re going down this road. Like, when I see someone with a sweater tied around their neck like this, I think “leader of the rich kid camp across the lake about to challenge our protagonists to a snobs vs. slobs battle in an ’80s comedy,” not “theater kid.”

Dustin, 2/24/21

I get that this is supposed to be a joke where an adult tells a child about how things used to be, but: Dustin is canonically supposed to be boomerang kid who came home from college and never left, and his younger sister is still in high school, so I don’t think we’re supposed to think of him as much past his mid 20s, meaning he was born in the mid-to-late ’90s; meanwhile, Facebook opened to the general public in 2006 and surpassed MySpace as the most heavily used social networking site in 2008, so “likes” have been a social currency for basically his entire life. On the other hand, Hayden, age seven, probably doesn’t use social media at all and when he starts it will be on some app whose feedback mechanisms are entirely strange and foreign to the rest of us. What I’m trying to say is, if you’re doing an entire strip about generation gaps, you at least need to know what various generations are into.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/24/21

“I think I basically get the urge to have a place where you sleep indoors and spend time when you’re not at work. But why would you want that place to be nice?”

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Dick Tracy, 2/6/21

Ahh yes, it’s Pouch, the beloved ancillary Dick Tracy character/criminal informant/balloon merchant who’s named after the utterly horrifying pendulous curtain of flesh hanging off his chin, which has a pouch with a snap where he can hide things. Anyway, if you’re like me, which is to say extremely normal, after a lot of strips where Pouch is loitering in the park, selling his balloons and/or information about underworld activity, you’ve probably wondered, “Say, what’s Pouch’s home life like?” Well, today’s Dick Tracy is here to report that it is in fact pretty bleak, since his “home” appears to be a seedy hotel and all he has for entertainment is a police scanner disguised as a Star Trek: The Original Series tricorder. His helium tank sitting in the corner is a nice touch though! Something I definitely have never wondered about is what his weird, gross neck pouch would like from the perspective of someone standing over his shoulder, but one of you sickos must’ve thought about this, because today’s strip is forcing us to contemplate it.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/6/21

Mel Brooks once said that “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” That’s the only logic I can discern as the driver to this strip, in which Funky, who lives in a universe of constant misery, illness, and death, has deemed a successful minor surgery that will immediately improve his quality of life a “tragedy.” Anyway, I certainly hope this aide is saying “lucky you” right as he gives Funky a gentle shove into off the curb and into oncoming traffic.

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Six Chix, 2/4/21

Everyone of us, of course, it absolutely goes without saying, is familiar with the phrase “your house is so warm and fuzzy,” the completely normal and indeed beloved English-language idiom that we all know and love. But what if — and stay with me here for this one — what if we took this phrase, whose metaphorical meaning we all understand, and treated it literally? And what literal scenario springs to mind more quickly when you think of a warm, fuzzy house than a nightmarish tangle of enormous caterpillars, writhing in great piles on top of your furniture and yourself! That would indeed be delightfully droll, as their chitinous legs scramble for purchase on your flesh!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 2/4/21

Speaking of taking metaphorical phrases literally, here’s today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, which I actually enjoyed quite a bit. The key, for me, is that Grimm doesn’t live on a farm at all in the everyday world of the strip. It’s as if he was wandering through the countryside, spotted an open barn door, and thought to himself, “Oh ho, the perfect opportunity to really blow some poor farmer’s mind.” Then he leaned up against the barn and waited, sipping from the cup of coffee he brought with him for just such an occasion.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/4/21

Like every character in the strip that bears his name, Funky long ago learned to deal with the utter misery that permeates his world by suppressing all feelings other than smugness and whatever prompts the endless smirks (also smugness, I guess, though occasionally it’s also pun-recognition). But now that he’s about to go under the knife, he needs to experience a real emotion, for what might be the last time. He’s begging everyone to help him, but neither he nor anyone else knows how to even begin.

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Apologies for giving you a double-dose of Funky Winkerbean today, but sadly I need two days’ worth of strips to provide the proper context for today’s commentary. Pretty amazing that I’m a guy who has to provide multi-day context for today’s Funky Winkerbean strip, as a job! Ha ha, a lot of choices have been a made that cannot be undone anymore, much to think about, etc., but the point is that this week’s strips take place at a band teachers’ convention and much of the content has involved band-themed puns on signs that characters gently smile at, as in yesterday’s strip:

Funky Winkerbean, 1/29/21

But not today! No, today’s strip is about band-themed puns on signs that character gently frown at:

Funky Winkerbean, 1/30/21

Why is the first pun smileworthy while the second is frown-inducing? I feel like this is the Rosetta Stone that, if I could just crack it, would allow me to truly and fully understand the Funkyverse. Furthermore, I assume that if I could achieve such a state of Funkyligthenment, I would be free of my compulsion to read and analyze the strip every day. Sadly, full understanding is still beyond my grasp, leaving me doomed to continue to gawk at Funkyworld in half-comprehending rage for the indefinite future.

Mary Worth, 1/30/21

Oh, it turns out the source of Eve’s anxiety attacks is PTSD from an abusive marriage, which isn’t very much fun at all! We’ll let you know when this strip returns to a more enjoyable level of wacky interpersonal drama.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/30/21

“I decided that risk was a lot of trouble for not a lot of payoff for me personally, so I stopped taking it. Guess you’ll be seeing a lot more of me around the office than you probably want to, ha ha!”

Crock, 1/30/21

They could’ve just ended this strip after the first panel. Get it? Because Crock sucks ass and is never funny! I alone have the guts to say this, no matter how much abuse I take for daring to speak the truth!

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Funky Winkerbean, 1/26/21

“Man,” thought Harry Dinkle, “I remember back in the day, these conferences used to be fun! People had a sense of humor, liked to joke around. Now they’re a bunch of stick-in-the-muds who’ll bite your head off for no reason. Also, totally unrelated, it used to be a lot easier to find someone who had cocaine.”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 1/26/21

Strips like Mother Goose and Grimm really veer back and forth between “These characters are basically humans who happen to look like animals” and “These characters are animals with animal-like traits,” and I want to make clear that I fully recognize that this is in fact part of the fun of the strip, not a “goof” or a “mistake” or whatever. Still, I think the veering back and forth can sometimes veer into unintentionally awkward territory, like today, when the joke is supposed to be “Ha ha, Attila is a character in this strip who talks and thinks like a person but is also a cat,” but the execution, especially the whisper and look of panic on the sales lady’s face, really gives off a strong “please help me escape from this abusive relationship” vibe.

Dennis the Menace, 1/26/21

Speaking of which, I don’t usually look at a Dennis the Menace punchline and say “Jeez, I hope this is a sex thing,” but for the sake of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, I sincerely hope this is a sex thing.

Pluggers, 1/26/21

Fun fact for those of us rapidly aging into the plugger demographic: the “More Cowbell” sketch first aired in 2000! Can you imagine! Anyway, a better caption here would be “It’s been about 20 years since pluggers have been able to stay awake late enough to watch SNL.”

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 1/17/21

Here it is, folks: an extremely rare Slylock Fox mystery where the accused isn’t guilty. Having proven her innocence with a little elementary ratiocination, Slylock can now move on to more difficult questions, like what exactly the shop manager’s deal is, making wild accusations against a random woman who just stepped through the door to dry off. Is the shop failing financially and he’s hoping to sue this aristocrat to plug the hole? Do he and Lady Lynx have some bad blood or ugly romantic history? Is he just psychologically damaged and lashing out for kicks, looking to use Slylock’s usual laser-focus on finding people guilty as a tool in his sick game? Whatever the answer, we’ll need more advanced tools than raindrop-noticing to figure it out.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/17/21

Oh, you say you can’t handle any more terrible wordplay punchlines in Funkyverse strips, huh? Well, what if we did a strip … without any wordplay at all, and also without a punchline? Would you like that better? Oh, you would? You’d find it kind of confusing but still preferable overall? Well, uh, we’ll take a note of that, thanks for the feedback. Anyway, enjoy today’s strip, it really seems like it’d be up your alley!

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Funky Winkerbean, 1/14/21

Hey, everyone, remember this baffling Funky Winkerbean joke from August of 2019? Well, I do! Because I’ve been doing this blog for fifteen plus years and that’s just how my brain functions now. When it comes to people I’ve been introduced to several times, I am definitely not going to remember their names, and when it comes to keys or the case for my glasses or my glasses themselves or any number of other small objects necessary for my everyday life, I am definitely not going to remember where exactly in the house I left them. But Funky Winkerbean, the title character of Funky Winkerbean, doing a wildly inappropriate and context-free Captain Kirk imitation at his hapless optometrist? Instant and immediate recall, folks! Anyway, clearly the optometrist hasn’t forgotten this either, and good on him for fighting back. Maybe Funky can be defeated after all, if we all just stand up to him!

Dick Tracy, 1/14/21

I regret to inform you that this hippie-driven, drug-crazed Dick Tracy storyline has devolved into a low-speed footchase for possession of a set of balloons, for reasons that are not clear to me but also not compelling enough for me to seek out more information about the matter. I’ll bring you more details on how this situation develops if events warrant, which they almost certainly won’t.

Gil Thorp, 1/14/21

“It’s inspiring how he half-asses two things simultaneously. Coach Thorp can only half-ass one thing at any given time!”

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Dennis the Menace, 1/8/21

I feel like over the years Dennis the Menace has spent less time on Dennis’s actual menacing more on everyone’s second-order reactions to said menacing, or their perceptions of him as a menace, which may or may not be based in reality. Like, be honest: who’s the real menace here? The kid who’s playing fetch with his dog? Or the guy who’s buttonholed a total stranger and appears to be deep into a conversation along the lines of “You’d think with a nightmare specimen like this you’d be dealing with a deeply tainted bloodline, just generation after generation of idiots and defectives, but no! I guess it turns out that true evil can arise from the seemingly innocent! Sinister horror lurks below the surface of our every day life, and indeed inside each one of us!”

Marvin, 1/8/21

I guess maybe this joke would’ve landed better if the Miller household weren’t a largely featureless void consisting mostly of a blue rug and a enormous expanse of white wall. But even so, it’s still a little off! Marvin refused to sit in the corner, so here he is sitting … not in the corner, ha ha? It’s like someone’s been told that they can’t do poop jokes anymore, and so they’re trying to reason out what other kinds of jokes might look like from first principles, and this was their first stab at it.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/8/21

We saw a glimpse of the exterior of Chez Winkerbean in a strip just before Christmas, and I was too busy focusing on the negative to take note of the frankly enormous house that Funky and Holly live in. This is curious, considering that their income derives from managing a perpetually failing small-town pizza parlor for its fickle absentee owner, and not long ago Funky sunk his savings into a failed attempt to franchise Montoni’s shitty pizza in New York City, a metropolis noted for its pizza-snobbery. Admittedly, the real estate market in Northeastern Ohio is not exactly booming, so maybe my radar on what a 5,000-square-foot suburban McMansion would go for is off, but today we learn that the Winkerbean family has the means to drop on the order of four grand on a TV without that even being noteworthy enough for Funky to remember. What I’m trying to say here is that managing a perpetually failing small-town pizza parlor may actually be actually pretty lucrative, in the sense that it makes a great front for money laundering for organized crime.

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What’s that, you say? You worried that somehow the idea of making fun of newspaper comics had gotten old to me, your Comics Curmudgeon? That I would quietly slip away from it as the new year began? WELL GUESS AGAIN, BUDDY! Like the holidays we just endured, comics-mocking is a cherished tradition around these parts, one that will keep on happening indefinitely. Speaking of cherished traditions, how did our favorite comics characters spend their Christmases?

Mary Worth, 12/25/20

Mary and Jeff spent the holiday as they usually do: staring down in smug, silent satisfaction at the mound of presents under sort of in front of Mary’s Christmas tree. Presumably these are gifts from Mary’s many admirers and meddlees. She hasn’t and won’t open any of them, as it’s the act of submission that counts, not whatever no doubt tawdry trinket lies beneath the wrapping paper.

Gil Thorp, 12/25/20

Meanwhile, Gil and Mimi Thorp are spending their Christmas according to their own tradition: partying on a double date with Coach Kaz and his girlfriend Kelly, and hoping that nobody brings up their children, who we haven’t seen in years, and are probably dead at the bottom of a shallow grave while Gil and Mimi enjoy the benefits of their kid-free lifestyle (the aforementioned Christmas Day partying) instead of watching kids unwrap presents or whatever.

Rex Morgan, M.D., and Mary Worth, 12/26/20

On Boxing Day, meanwhile, Mary and Rex gave their partners the gift of their annual allotted erotic encounter (restricted to hand stuff for the Morgans and a good, healthy hair sniff for Dr. Jeff).

Dick Tracy, 12/27/20

We’ve known for a while now that Dick and the MCU gang were going to be tangling with hippies … but a whole commune full of them? I think I speak for both hippies and squares everywhere when I say this conflict will be “far out, man.”

Gasoline Alley, 12/27/20

Did you imagine that Walt Wallet, the protagonist of a strip that ages its characters more or less in real time but also has been running for more than a century, might finally be allowed to achieve the sweet release of death this year? Well, bad news: he’ll be burdened by another year of life, symbolized by this grinning, needy baby.

Dick Tracy, 12/28/20

Dick Tracy has decided that in order to catch a hippie, he needs to think like a hippie, by which I mean, as Sam’s heavy-lidded floating head in panel two makes clear, that he’s dropped some acid that he found in the evidence room.

Mary Worth, 12/28/20

“Saul could use the human companionship,” thinks Mary, quickly drawing her curtains so Saul can’t make eye contact with her.

Gasoline Alley, 12/29/20

Hey, have you ever wondered what kind of pervy facial expression Slim would make if he contemplated dabbling with the nudist lifestyle? Well, I guess this horrifying strip is your fault, then, you sicko.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/1/21

Hey, I’m not the only one pledging a full recommitment to my bit in 2021! Funky Winkerbean is doing the same thing. In this case, the “bit” it’s recommitting to is “wildly maudlin self-indulgence.”

Mark Trail, 1/1/21

Oh, man, I have not been keeping you update on the retconned lore being spooled out in Mark Trail, but here’s the gist: Mark/Cherry/Rusty/Doc are a self-contained little family pod in Lost Forest because they’re estranged from their Florida-based families (Cherry/Doc fled from her trailer-park-based, borderline personality disorder-afflicted mom and Mark turne his back on his dad who conned (?) Mark’s childhood friend’s family out of their farm). But I thought it was important to tell you, as 2021 begins, what Mark wants you to know: speedboats hurt manatees. They hurt manatees, damn it.

The Phantom, 1/1/21

Our hero the Phantom has completed his rhino-assisted beatdown and was about to do a few extrajudicial murders until his luchador comrade got cold feet about it, so now he has to be like “Ha ha, this was just a comical misunderstanding! I was going to take them out … to lunch, where I was going to explain to them that crime was bad, that’s all.”

Dick Tracy, 1/2/21

Wow, it turns out these modern hippies have put down their reefer cigarettes long enough to read the Fourth Amendment! Looks like this case is gonna be tougher to crack than Dick thought!

Gil Thorp, 1/2/21

I’m sure the basketball-season Gil Thorp storyline will get wacky at some point in the near future, but it would be kind of funny if instead of the usual teen antics the whole plot this year was just “the boys basketball team sucks ass at playing basketball.” Gil has dipped deep into his bag of coaching tricks to try to turn things around, and apparently the best thing he could find in there was passive-aggression.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/3/21

I do find it genuinely amusing that Buck has become the repository of All Things Bad (But Not Too Bad) That Happen To Rex Morgan Characters. Like, couldn’t the dude have gotten the sad news that he definitely has the diabeetus after he enjoyed one final giant fast food meal? Apparently this strip withholds small pleasures from its characters just as it withholds them from us.

Curtis, 12/26/20

AND! ALSO! If you need more evidence that 2021 is starting right, this holiday season featured the return of another beloved tradition: The Curtis Kwanzaa Storyline! Curtis used to do this annually, and it used to be extremely nutty, with bat-winged bears and telepathic otters and such; more recently these stories got more intermittent and a lot more lame, with plots about social media and this thing with the mask, I don’t even remember what that turned out to be about. But what will this year hold for us, and Mr. Arthur Skritch?

Curtis, 12/29/20

Oh, hey, is it a trunkless elephant? Heck yeah, that’s the sort of nightmare beast that I’ve been lead to believe by previous Curtis Kwanzaa storylines that Kwanzaa is all about!

Curtis, 12/30/20

Arthur sees this magic talking animal and immediately assumes it’s going to grant wishes of some kind. If there’s one thing I know about magic wish-granting animals in folklore, it’s this: those wishes are going produce some ironic results, which might also be fatal!

Curtis, 1/2/21

Huh, I guess the wishes are just going to be fulfilled by … good advice on interacting with your fellow human beings, maybe?

Curtis, 1/4/21

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT MY DUDE YOU’RE AN ELEPHANT WHO DOESN’T HAVE A TRUNK BUT CAN SPEAK ENGLISH AND ALSO LIVES IN NEW YORK, I THINK THAT’S PRETTY DARN MAGICAL!!!!!

Anyway, more on this plot as it develops for the weird, I promise! I hope you all had a good holiday season and are ready for more comics fun in 2021, because I’m gonna deliver it whether you like it or not!

Oh, and one more note: if you missed your chance to vote in the annual Worthy Awards, good news: voting in the coveted Panel of the Year Award was so close it’s come down to a run-off election! Check out the rest of the winners and help determine if 2020’s panel of the year goes to Tommy’s onion ring proposal or Greta slurping up Madi’s sweet tears!

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Funky Winkerbean, 12/24/20

It’s Christmas Eve, everybody! What do you need to make your holiday complete? Is it the return of the storyline about Funky’s senile and sexually aggressive father?

Pardon My Planet, 12/24/20

Is it a vision of Santa and his elves, conducting unspeakable medical experiments on innocent people for no reason you can fathom?

Six Chix, 12/23/20

Wrong! What you need to make your holiday complete is this comic strip about a teddy bear yelling at a little girl that she needs to learn about self-soothing! Simultaneously baffling and repellent, it’s everything we love about this wonderful season. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

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Curtis, 12/23/20

Good news, everyone! Curtis’s parents are going to cure coronavirus!

Funky Winkerbean, 12/23/20

Good news, everyone! Thanks to the internet, you no longer have to worry about the whole Funky Winkerbean gang showing up outside your house uninvited!

Crock, 12/23/20

Good news, everyone! Women have finally invented a beer mug with a hidden microchip in it!

Mary Worth, 12/23/20

Good news, everyone! Tommy has gotten a part-time job as a school monitor! I’m not sure what a “school monitor” is — is it a euphemism for an in-school cop like “resource officer,” or maybe someone who’s supposed to kind of act like an in-school cop but doesn’t have any actual legal police authority? — but if there’s one thing I know about teens and/or tweens, it’s that if the guy who used to give cringe-y anti-drug talks to their class suddenly popped up as a vaguely defined authority figure without much actual authority, the cruelty and bullying would be relentless. Excited to see Tommy go into a downward emotional spiral that brings him back to the pill bottle/meth pipe!

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Dennis the Menace, 12/22/20

Which interpretation of this scene do you find more menacing? That Henry and Alice put Dennis up to this, thinking “Ha ha, here’s this mall Santa probably hasn’t heard before! 2020, amiright?” Or that they put Dennis up to this, thinking “Well, we’ve tried everything else. Maybe that guy down at the mall really is Santa, or maybe he can talk to the real Santa, like he always tells Dennis. It’s worth a shot, right? Anything’s worth a shot at this point! Haha, 2020, amiright?”

Funky Winkerbean, 12/22/20

When Harry Dinkle finally, inevitably, dies — an event that will no doubt be equal parts mawkish, ironic, and ham-handed — I certainly hope that Becky stalks into his room at the hospice and hisses “Whatever else I’ve done, old man, at least I was never a Hitler to your Bismark,” to the confusion and consternation of his assembled family and loved ones.

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The Lockhorns, 12/18/20

A question that often bothers me about the Lockhorns: are the titular couples weird tiny gnomish people within the universe of the strip? Or are they of ordinary stature and drawn that way for comic effect? Evidence for both interpretations can be found in the strip, depending on the day! Today, we learn that Leroy, at least, is considered short, and is sensitive about it, and also that Loretta is willing to craft meals out of entirely incompatible foodstuffs just to irritate Leroy, which I deeply respect.

The Phantom, 12/18/20

PHANTOM RHINO UPDATE: I love that the Phantom’s rhino ally, having burst dramatically through the window, is now just casually standing around while the humans dispatch their enemies, lucha libre style. He’s ready to lumber into action in case a rhino-level adversary appears, but for now? He’s just keeping an eye on things.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/18/20

“And so we used the action figures as replacements for the band members. Huh. Well, it turns out this isn’t a very long story at all. Or an interesting one, for that matter!”

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Six Chix, 12/11/20

We’ve pretty well established at this point that the coloring of the non-Sunday strips as published online is not actually directed by the original artist, right? Because I am fascinated by what’s happening on the face of our depressed castaway here:

Computer … enhance:

It seems pretty clear that the beard is entirely drawn in by the colorist, yes? There are no solid lines that would define it in black and white. I’m not even wholly sure what the gender of this character was originally intended to be, but it seems like a colorist saw this and thought to themselves “People stranded on tiny cartoon desert islands with a couple random palm trees who have long hair also have scraggly beards! Please honor our most sacred traditions! I have to take matters into my own hands now!”

Funky Winkerbean, 12/11/20

Hey, remember how Les and his dead wife Lisa have a daughter, Summer, and also he has an alive wife who also has a daughter, Keisha, and they’ve been off at college together for a while? Well, they came home for the winter break and got seasonal jobs at the mall wrapping presents dressed as elves! What I like is that it’s only December 11th but the strip’s narrative has already jumped ahead to Christmas Eve. I assume the next two weeks are going to be a blow-by-blow of the kids’ next few hours, and we’ll see how frantic, angry holiday shoppers yelling at them will ruin their feelings about Christmas for the rest of their lives.

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Funky Winkerbean, 12/6/20

“What if we had a character make a bad joke and then other characters point out that it’s a bad joke? That makes a good joke, right?” is of course a classic Funky Winkerbean bit, but I have to admit I don’t fully understand how it’s playing out here. Is the non-Mindy portion of the gang divided into rival “Mopey Pete is funny” and “Mopey Pete is not funny” factions? Is the simultaneous “HA! HA! HA!” meant to be read as sarcastic, mocking barks? Or is Darrin the only one here willing to speak truth to power? (Or, since everyone here works at a failing comics company, I guess that should be “speak truth to utter powerlessness.”)

Mary Worth, 12/6/20

Sure, the resolution of this plot seems to indicate that Brandy and Tommy’s love is strong, but that Billie Holiday quote sure undermines that, doesn’t it? I guess Brandy can just turn her love on and off like a faucet, based on what her therapist tells her! You better tread carefully, Tommy.

Dick Tracy, 12/6/20

Welp, I guess the spider plot is over, folks! I’m now very excited at the prospect of seeing Dick Tracy shoot some hippies, though probably not as excited as Dick is at the prospect of shooting some hippies.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/6/20

GOSH, YEAH, IMAGINE IF YOU DIDN’T LIKE BUCK BUT STILL HAD TO SEE HIS DUMB FACE IN, SAY, THE NEWSPAPER ALL THE TIME

JUST IMAGINE IT

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Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, 12/2/20

It’s December, which means we’re barreling headlong into the Christmas season, and how do the damned residents of our our twin hellscapes of Westview and Centerville celebrate the season? Well, in Funky Winkerbean, we’re reminded that life is just a grinding stretch of continual suffering that can only be alleviated by focusing on some future date when the pain might end, no matter how far away it might be. In Crankshaft, meanwhile, we learn that every totem you cling to as a reminder of a more joyful past will eventually crumble to dust and you’ll be left with nothing. Real grim stuff!

Mary Worth, 12/2/20

December in Santa Royale, meanwhile, is just like every other month in Santa Royale, which is to say a God-damned delight. “Thank God! Did you read my emails?” is probably the funniest thing an ex-junkie who’s gotten his first glimpse of hope that his girlfriend might take him back could say, and I for one feel very blessed to be alive the day that Tommy said it.

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/29/20

Hey, remember when our heroes went to Los Angeles for entertainment industry reasons a few months back and significant portions of the city burned to the ground? Well, at least Mopey Pete got something out of it: he encountered the obscure street name “Sunset Boulevard,” generally only known to LA locals, and he got some comics ideas out of it! Either that or the whole experience made him want to kill himself.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/29/20

Speaking of killing yourself, I guess today’s Mother Goose and Grimm is supposed to feature Mother Goose levitating in shock at the sight of a rat, but that is, uh, not the first thing I thought of when I saw this strip, let’s just say that.

Panels from Blondie, 11/29/20

If you worked at it, you could probably think of a grosser and more sexual sounding euphemism for eating leftovers out of the fridge than “I need another session with our turkey,” but honestly, why bother? “I need another session with our turkey” is already pretty bad.

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Mark Trail, 11/23/20

You know, Allen-era Mark Trail already upgraded Rusty from “ward” to “son” so I was wondering if he’d be retconned into a biological child of Mark and Cherry under the new regime, but with all this talk of dark secrets and Mark’s cloned lineage, and now new-look biker dude Doc wondering how Rusty will think about their relationship going forward … well, I’m just going to assume they’re all clones, and now they’ll just address each other respectfully as “pod-mate”.

Beetle Bailey, 11/23/20

I’m assuming that “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” is in quotes here because Rocky’s just using it as a general stand-in for “I used to have fun and/or cool,” not because he’s had sex. Nobody in Beetle Bailey has ever had sex. Please, I desperately need to hold onto that notion to stay sane. NO SEX IN BEETLE BAILEY, I FORBID IT.

Dick Tracy, 11/23/20

This pair of criminal masterminds hasn’t exactly set the world on fire with their crime skills, so I think it’d be pretty fitting if Daisy slipped and fell back onto Yeti and they both fell into the sewer and drowned. Dick never spots anything on the drone cam, the meteorite goes unmolested, everyone just kind of moves on with their lives. “Hey, we ever figure out what was up with those people who fell into comas?” Chief Patton asks. “I don’t think so, chief,” says Dick. “I guess it was just one of those things.”

Funky Winkerbean, 11/23/20

If you, like me, find Harry Dinkle intensely unlikeable, I’m happy to inform you that he spends his nights writing in agony, thinking of his past failures.

Pluggers, 11/23/20

Damn it, pluggers. Do you … do you really think you’re the only ones who like ice cream. Come on. Come on now. Give us some pluggers-specific content in the Pluggers syndicated newspaper strip or give it the fuck up

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Hi and Lois, 11/22/20

Hey, I get where Hi is coming from here! All of these strips have their gimmicks: wacky relatable Vikings, a sassy cat, children let loose in a world without any apparent adult intervention. Even Blondie and Family Circus, which are both more grounded “family” strips, feature heightened, exaggerated characters, each with their own set of recognizable tics. But Hi, and Hi’s world? Well, he’s just a regular middle-class guy living with regular people in regular American suburbia. There are no strict limits on his behavior but no simple prompts to action either — in other words, he can do pretty much anything, but has to choose on his own to do it, which is terrifying. In that sense, his dilemma is the most relatable on the comics page.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/22/20

Sorry, did that get a little Too Real? Well, here are some unlikeable Funky Winkerbean characters (BUT I REPEAT MYSELF! [rimshot]) making puns at each other. The throwaway panels at the top are actually crucial to today’s strip: without them, it looks like Harry is the only one doing irritating wordplay, but when we see the full picture we understand that we’re witnessing interlocked acts of mutual ongoing passive aggression.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/10/20

Oh, hey, remember Red? Red was a guy who tried, in an extremely pathetic and non-threatening way, to mug Jordan and Michelle, but then it turned out he was an old high school classmate of Jordan’s, and was also a veteran suffering from both PTSD and hallucinations brought on by kidney disease, so he was reunited with his family and got a kidney transplant, which was, as I probably don’t have to tell you as it took place in Rex Morgan, M.D., boring. Jordan promised to take Red on as a cook in his new restaurant, and honestly the most interesting thing about the whole story is that Red’s drama somehow took the focus off the fact that Jordan had engaged in a little light stolen valor, so my tenuous hope was that Red and Jordan would start trading some (literal) war stories and this would all come out, but instead there’s just going to be a lot of healthy diet talk, zzzzzzzz.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/10/20

I had assumed Harry had taken up teaching music again because he loved it so much that he couldn’t bear the thought of stepping away forever, despite his hearing loss, but no, it actually appears he’s as miserable about this situation as his poor student is. So is he doing it for … money? Does he need money? Honestly, it’s a real relief to learn that he doesn’t get paid for all the time he spends hanging around Westview High irritating the actual band teacher.

Slylock Fox, 11/10/20

Fellas! Are you looking for a chore to do that will beautify the neighborhood and have the ladies swooning? Think about painting a fence!

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Shoe, 11/9/20

One of the whole reasons this blog exists is to make you actually think about the longstanding institution of the newspaper comics and really appreciate how weird they are. Like, take Shoe, which is about bird-people who live in a treetop town, which sounds like a recipe for either gentle whimsy or manic antics, except for the fact that these bird-people are just miserable all the time. Often they’re depressed to the point of near-catatonia but sometimes they can rouse themselves to go out into the world and be merely unreasonably irritable. How long do you think Shoe’s been sitting there, listening in on other people’s conversations, waiting for any possible opportunity to jump in and gratuitously insult Roz, at whose restaurant he eats every day? It can sometimes be hard to parse the sequence of actions in a comic strip, but I’m interpreting the appearance of a stogie in panel two as meaning that he delivered his jibe, then pulled out and lit up a cigar right there in the restaurant, as if to emphasize all the different kinds of asshole he can be.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/9/20

Hey, remember when Harry Dinkle learned he suffered from hearing loss and had to quit as Westview’s band director? Well, he’s apparently nevertheless still teaching music to children, who are ungrateful little brats who would rather dick around on their phone than learn how to play an instrument they hate from a guy who can’t hear very well.

Dennis the Menace, 11/9/20

I truly, sincerely hope that Mr. Wilson is saying this because Dennis is in the middle of his front lawn, shouting about demons in Latin at the top of his lungs.

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/25/20

OK, so, just to make sure we have the sequence clear, these ICE dudes arrested Adeela (who, just to emphasize, is in the United States legally) due to a bureaucratic fuckup (one that didn’t make a ton of narrative sense, but still), fast-tracked her for near-immediate deportation, resisted any attempt by her lawyer to make them re-examine the dodgy evidence that led them to their decision, and released her not because they realized they were wrong or because they reassessed their obviously broken internal processes, but because of political intervention at the highest levels. But anyway, they’re returning the Montoni’s bag, so they’re good now! No hard feelings, right? [Backslapping and laughter all around]

Daddy Daze, 10/25/20

Wow, the Daddy Daze daddy’s goth friend sure is getting extra goth today, isn’t he, moaning about how parenting makes time stretch on infinitely, such that we’re all either rapidly aging or cursed with eternal life or maybe both. Anyway, it absolutely makes sense that the Daddy Daze daddy has chosen to sit several seats away from him.

Blondie, 10/25/20

Not to brag or anything, but if I wanted to spend an evening out with a pal and possibly get home long after my wife went to sleep, I would just tell her that’s what I had planned, and if that made her uncomfortable in some way, we’d have an open and honest discussion about it. Maybe that’s weird, maybe the rest of you are all promising your spouses you’ll be home by 1 am and coming home at 3 am and getting in trouble for it, I dunno, but you know what’s a hell of a lot weirder? Dagwood thinking that only wearing his undershirt makes him quieter, somehow.

Baby Blues, 10/25/20

It’s also never occurred to me to casually ask my wife “Hey, babe, you ever fuck Spider-Man?” so maybe I just need to admit that everyone’s marriage is unique and none of us have any real idea what anybody else is doing.

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The Phantom, 10/24/20

Next week: NEW ADVENTURE!!!! Hopefully its climax will be as exciting as this one: The Phantom dozing off while his wife natters on about the romantic destiny of her teen son and their daughter’s friend.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/24/20

Good news! Adeela was about to have her life destroyed by a terrible combination of bureaucratic incompetence and institutional cruelty, but then one of the formerly most powerful people in the world was convinced to make a phone call and it solved all her problems! Everyone who’s more than one degree of separation from a current or former political leader can go fuck themselves, though.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/24/20

I am not a parent, but I know enough parents to sometimes get a glimpse of why the Family Circus has historically been beloved among parents, and I truly admire today’s panel, which features Daddy having been pushed to a place in his life where he’s attempting to earnestly reason with a pre-verbal toddler.

Mary Worth, 10/24/20

[cackling evilly] YES … YES! … IT’S A THREE’S COMPANY-STYLE MISUNDERSTANDING … BUT WITH CRACK AND/OR METH!

Mark Trail, 10/24/20

Mark’s new assignment is sending him to Happy Trail Farms, and based on the last two panels here, my guess is that he escaped from there years ago after being grown there in a vat.

Crock, 10/24/20

Like, a significant portion of the time the jokes in Crock are pretty difficult to parse, and normally I’d complain, but today? When the joke is about how beloved character “Maggot” got horny at the movies? I appreciate this protective layer of obfuscation.

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Funky Winkerbean, 9/18/20

Wow, if the Funkyverse gang thinks that Bill Clinton has the influence to convince the current U.S. government to think twice about deporting someone, I have some extremely bad news for them. Not only is this not going to work, but Montoni’s is probably going to displace Comet Ping Pong at the center of fevered #pizzagate conspiracy theorizing on various unsettling Facebook groups.

Marvin, 9/18/20

Normally I complain about Marvin doing poop jokes, but today’s Marvin is about how these two fish are stuck in this bowl together and one of them wants to be friends and the other one very much does not. It’s depressing and I hate it! At least the poop jokes don’t make me actively sad!

Family Circus, 9/18/20

What’s your favorite image in today’s Family Circus? I’m a fan of Daddy’s football fantasy, a key part of which is the pile of crockery on the table next to him. He’s enjoying a beer now, but we can tell he’s already had some coffee and at least two meals and he’s still not getting out of that chair. My second favorite is the scene of Daddy keeping his kids entertained by reading what appears to be a menu.

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/13/20

Those of us fated by the gods to read Funky Winkerbean daily just have to accept the fact that there was a brief window at the very beginning of the strip’s history when it was actually fun and wacky, and understand that character names like “Funky Winkerbean,” “Bull Bushka” (RIP), and “Les Moore” are relics from that earlier, zanier time, even though now we have to somehow deal with sentences like “Funky Winkerbean is slowly dying of prostate cancer” or “Bull Bushka had CTE and committed suicide by driving off a cliff.” But if you’re going to do grim-ass plots like “Adeela is going to be deported due to a bureaucratic mixup,” for the love of Christ do not introduce a brand new character with an on-the-nose punny name like “Amicus Breef.” Get it, because he’s a lawyer! Ha ha!

Pluggers, 10/13/20

I’m sorry this plugger subscribes to a sad newspaper that can’t even afford wire service stock photos of celebs for its celebrity birthday list, but I also sincerely believe that lots of pluggers everywhere are the last ones left making Borat voice “MY WIFE” jokes.

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/5/20

Hey, remember beloved (?) Funkyverse supporting character Adeela, an Iraqi (?) immigrant who forged an unlikely bond with Wally because they both have PTSD from the same (?) war? Welp, she’s getting deported now, because of a clerical error! Please, my sides just stopped aching from the time you burned down half of Los Angeles, you’ve got to give me some time to relax before you bring this level of laffs back to the newspaper.

Gil Thorp, 10/5/20

I’m woefully underqualified to judge the sports action in Gil Thorp, but … Curtis Charles and his Ballard opponent aren’t so much fighting for position as a potential touchdown pass is heaved their way as just kind of standing there and thinking “Huh, he threw the ball, whaddya know,” right? This really fits in with my firmly held belief that all the games within the Thorpiverse are in fact pretty boring to watch.

Dennis the Menace, 10/5/20

I’m really enjoying how much room Henry and Alice are putting between Dennis and themselves here. “This kid? The one who doesn’t seem to know even the basics of the religion we supposedly profess? Never seen him before, padre.”

The Lockhorns, 10/5/20

I say this with all due respect to The Lockhorns: you may be a longstanding comics page institution, but you do not occupy the same place in the comics world as Garfield and definitely do not have the resources necessary to survive a legal battle with Paws, Inc. I beg you to step back from this before it’s too late.

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Hello everyone! I’m back and very grateful to Uncle Lumpy for his guest-blogging prowess … and extremely grateful for everyone who donated to the Comics Curmudgeon fundraiser! Individual thank-yous are, per usual, coming your way in the next week or so. And now, tanned, rested, and ready to take on … Dick Tracy? Sure, why not.

Dick Tracy, 9/14/20

Brenda Starr and Little Orphan Annie, two iconic long-running continuity strips, sadly came to an end in the last decade, but that hasn’t stopped Dick Tracy from still plugging along (because America likes violent cops more than it likes newspapers or orphans!) and gathering up its syndicate’s intellectual property into a Tribune Content Agency Cinematic Universe. Now Brenda is going to teach Annie and Dick’s half-alien granddaughter Honeymoon to write a journalistically rigorous feature article on … vampires? Sure, why not. I’m honestly surprised that the head of the University of Neo-Chicago’s Department of Ghouls and Draculas they’re interviewing isn’t named “Professor Stakes,” as that’s the sort of on-the-nose nomenclature this feature specializes in.

Crankshaft, 9/14/20

It’s a difficult environment out there for indie booksellers — especially when they have to compete against nice old ladies who operate unlicensed bookstores over their garage, flouting the ADA and any number of fire safety codes and just daring the city’s toothless permitting apparatus to shut them down.

The Lockhorns, 9/14/20

A lot about The Lockhorns, especially the fact that they spend most of their time in a semi-featureless void space, can be explained if you imagine that they’re kept captive in some kind of containment field, possibly floating in a sphere high above the earth, and the rest of the world watches a livestream of their dysfunctional antics for entertainment and/or as a cautionary example. In this alternate universe, journalists like Jake Tapper (?) comment on major milestones in their lives, and presumably everyone’s focus on them brings us together as a nation.

Mary Worth, 9/14/20

I was pretty dubious about Saul Helps A Tween Heal, but I am cautiously optimistic about Saul Woos A Giantess!

Funky Winkerbean, 9/14/20

Honey, just because you’re saying it louder doesn’t make it true

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The 2020 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser has ended — thank you, generous readers!

Well, pretty much all the newspaper comics have caught up with social distancing, personal protective equipment, and the whole shebang. No more escape from reality for us!

Six Chix 9/12/20

In this Slylock Fox prequel, it is only the animals’ disciplined hygiene that protects them against the plague that wipes out careless, inconsiderate humanity.

Zits 9/12/20

It’s ironic: the cheerleaders conceal their hotness to ensure that only the hot survive. Also, those outfits look hot, though not in a hot way.

Sherman’s Lagoon 9/12/20

Too grim? Then let’s all come together as a nation to tell this chirpy usurper that the one and only NOAA mascot is always and forever Mark Trail.

Funky Winkerbean 9/12/20

Nah, he’s still right behind you.

Phantom, 9/12/20

Charles Darwin once inferred the existence of a moth with an 11-inch proboscis from an orchid with an 11-inch nectary. By that same principle of complementarity, I infer that the 22^nd Phantom will be [trumpets] Heloise Walker. Well that and the fact that I’ve been ‘shipping her for this for fourteen years.

A legendary hero/ine must have a nemesis, and Kadia Sahara is clearly emerging as Heloise’s. Kadia has:

• Terrorist DNA from her father, Eric THE NOMAD Sahara.
• Profound Daddy issues — Eric tried to murder Heloise, her college BFF/roomie.
• A complex backstory and relationship with the hero/ine — Heloise is Kadia’s BFF, but beat up her Dad and put him in Gitmo.
• As Imara announces here, Kadia now has access to global resources and connections that allow her to usurp her father’s role and carry out his mission

A couple of details need to be worked out, not least of which is there are now TWO terrorist masterminds imprisoned by the Walkers: Chatu in Wambesiland and Eric THE NOMAD in Gitmo. But it’s easily resolved: The Elder Phantom frees them both to “let them settle it” or some such nonsense; they fight it out for control of the organization; Chatu wins (have you SEEN that guy?); Kadia sneaks up and kills him in her supervillainess-defining moment, and takes over. Then Kadia knocks off Elder Phantom, Heloise swears a blood oath, young Kit takes another bong hit, yadda yadda yadda. All hail Kadia, THE NEWMAD.

An earlier, incomplete version of this post appeared early yesterday morning because I scheduled it to the wrong date. That’s right, I literally forgot about 9/11.

— Uncle Lumpy, America’s Worst American

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Six Chix, 9/11/20

Hmm. Is this a “guys don’t do dishes” joke? Is Blondie there a guy? Are these two in fact pretentious artists, and that’s a legit installation? If so, what’s the joke? Are the flies in on it? Hey, that lady’s wearing a beret! Maybe these are pretentious French artists washing down the last of their beautifully-prepared meal with a well-chosen wine, but they can’t be bothered to clean up or even bathe?

Funky Winkerbean 9/11/20

This is one of those conversations where the participants aren’t so much listening to one another as waiting for their own turn to talk. Or, in Funky’s case, whine. It’s not clear why a guy who avoids exercise and is a notorious jerk at the gym expects a medal, but hey, these guys.

And have you ever wondered why we don’t ever see Les Moore smile — I mean not just squeeze out one of those little sideways triangular smirky moue things, but really smile? Well now we know.

Mark Trail, 9/11/20

I’ll admit to being a real sissy when it comes to child- or animal-in-danger movies, stories, you name it. I’m glad this strip is a rerun because that way I know Andy will make it, and I won’t have to avert my eyes or even leave the theater the way I had to back when there were movies. On the other hand, I could watch “Mark runs briskly in place” all day long.

Mary Worth 9/11/20

Greta watches them approach. Yes, he’s “a big one,” all right — they both are, and their matching neckwear tells her all she needs to know. About Saul’s neediness, and her own role as bait in this sick charade.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Dennis the Menace, 9/10/20

Well to be honest does anybody actually read Blondie, 9 Chickweed Lane, or Judge Parker?

Judge Parker, 9/10/20

Oops, I guess somebody does! Ahem so it looks like Ronnie Huerta is headed back to L.A. without Neddy, who has rediscovered the charms of room and board on Abby’s dime in rustic Cavelton. But I’m torn. On the one hand, Ronnie was the sassy gf who called Neddy on her copious B.S. — an endless, unpleasant, and valuable public service. But on the other, she’s one of a class of characters in Judge Parker and Sally Forth who daily undermine, hijack, or derail everything the main characters say. You never really finish a conversation with her, Norton, Toni Bowen, Sally’s team at the office, or Ted Forth without them steering it off into some metanarrative, stunt, non sequitur, distraction, hallucination, or wisecrack. Look, she’s doing it right up there! It’s annoying, and it mucks up the pace, which in the case of Judge Parker is legendarily slow to begin with.

So c’mon, Ronnie! Let Neddy gush about Cavelton for a few insincere minutes before you shut her down and hug it out. It’s probably the last thing you’ll do before you flicker out of existence forever, so make it a good one! Say hi to Aria, Chad Duncan, and the Thorp kids!

Gasoline Alley, 9/10/20

Idiot rustics attempt some extremely low-stakes con, part XXVII.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/10/20

With any luck, your corpse will be Board certified!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Curtis, 9/5/20

Classic misdirection — the weed is under the mattress. And he probably smokes the banana peels, too.

Dennis the Menace, 9/5/20

Using his media platform to trash a hallowed American brand: pretty menacing! You can almost hear him growl, “You’re next, Sara Lee.”

9 Chickweed Lane, 9/5/20

In the sex-based economy of 9 Chickweed Lane, the unit of currency is the Boink. But after 12 years’ relentless overcopulation of the money supply, that currency has become utterly debased.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/5/20

And by, “the planet,” I mean, “whatever is in my field of vision right now.” [To self] “I wonder where people go when I turn my head.”

Judge Parker, 9/5/20

Still more useless word-gunk. If this Producer gig doesn’t work out, Ellen can get a job in Corporate HR anywhere in the World.

Phantom, 9/5/20

I am totally asking Aunt Lumpy’s stylist to give her some of that awesome sea-hair!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/1/20

Here’s a fun “lockdown story” for you: for pretty much the whole time my wife and I have been married, she’s been prone to minor colds — nothing serious, but maybe a few days every other month or so — in a way that I’m not, which has resulted in a certain amount of good natured teasing about which one of us has a superior immune system. But a few weeks ago, she realized that she hasn’t had a cold since March, which is when her job had her start working at home, like I do all the time. In other words, it’s not that my immune system is any tougher than hers; it’s that I, like Harwood père, have been quarantining for the last twenty years, pretty much. Anyway, I’m glad that this strip has wrapped up the story of the flamboyant con artist so we can really focus on the guy who’s exactly as boring as me, a guy who blogs about newspaper comic strips for a living.

Crankshaft, 9/1/20

It took me years of reading this strip to realize that Keesterman, the guy whose mailbox Crankshaft annihilates on a daily basis due to some combination of incompetence and spite, is also one of Crankshaft’s only two non-work friends. Anyway, you might at first glance think that Keesterman (who it’s also just occurred to me has a name that means “Ass Man,” which is neither here nor there) is honoring his late friend Crankshaft, who passed away peacefully last night, in a uniquely appropriate way. But of course, that’s not true; Crankshaft will never die, due to the aforementioned spite, and Keesterman is just being extremely passive aggressive.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/1/20

Speaking of hateful Funkyverse characters who will never die, I feel like it’s been years since we’ve seen any sustained Les-Cayla interaction, so I’m excited to see them snipe at each other about the heady melange of danger and sexual attraction to a young actress playing Les’s dead first wife he’s been experiencing in Los Angeles, city of dreams!

Marvin, 9/1/20

I guess “reckless” is supposed to imply something … sexy, maybe? … but look, I’ve read enough columns in celebrity tabloids by “body language experts” to know that these two — sitting next to each other on the couch, facing forward, arms crossed — now only stimulate each other via taunts and cruel misdirection.

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Hi and Lois, 8/21/20

Not sure how long the time gap is between these two panels, but I’m guessing it’s not very long, and I’m pretty amused by how quickly Ditto went from “Chip’s walks around the neighborhood are a fun big-kid thing that I want to be a part of!” and “Jesus Christ, these walks are intolerably boring, why does he do this, what’s the point.” Anyway, your brother’s horny, kid, you’ll understand someday.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/21/20

Oh, god, I take it back, I’d welcome sex stuff rather than this, rather than “I think my dead wife would’ve wanted the lady I hired to make a movie about how she died to watch the videos she recorded for her widower and daughter.” “Thank you,” says Marianne, who is way, way too rapturously grateful for this. By the way, have we established whether they’re done filming this movie? I had assumed not, but there have been hints that they are, which would make this all the funnier! She needs to see these videos now, after the role is over, in case they do a … sequel? Oh no, they’re going to do a sequel, aren’t they.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/20/20

Oh no oh no oh no is Les telling Marianne about the sex stuff? I think that’s what we’re supposed to understand by the lacuna in his dialogue in the second panel? She already had to endure saying this dialogue, hasn’t she suffered enough? And is he … hitting on her? By doing this? Since Funky Winkerbean is fixated on classic Hollywood, it’ll be just like the classic Hollywood film Vertigo where Jimmy Stewart tries to remake some poor woman into his dead beloved; in Vertigo it was sad, gross, and ironic because the poor woman secretly is his dead beloved, whereas here it will just be sad and gross. Anyway, I’m really looking forward to years of strips covering Les’s divorce. “Blessed Lisa would never have left me for trying to mold an actress in her image and then have sex with her,” Les will fume silently to himself.

Mary Worth, 8/20/20

“I mean, at first I was sad about being separated from my dad, but it turns out that he’s a real asshole who just dumped me on a stranger and fled the country, so it turns out that it’s actually pretty easy for other people to be better caregivers than him!”

The Phantom, 8/20/20

Yes, Bangalla is a thriving post-colonial democracy, with a vibrant economy in which all it takes to get a good-paying job is [checks notes] a personal relationship with the head of the local government-backed paramilitary force!

Dennis the Menace, 8/20/20

Sad news: Henry Mitchell passed away peacefully in his sleep today at the age of 35. Rest in power, Henry, you’ll always be in our hearts.

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Crock, 8/18/20

Crock is in perpetual reruns now, and it’s hard to tell when exactly any given strip was composed, which is fine when they’re making light-hearted jokes about the grueling century-long French colonial occupation of Algeria, but can get wonky when the strip tries to grapple with “current events.” Like, I guess this dates from the period (the ’90s, I think?) where Wal-Mart’s rapid expansion to retail dominance was noteworthy instead of just a historical footnote to the transition to Amazon’s stranglehold on all commerce. Anyway, I’m not quite sure what the joke here is supposed to be. Is Grossie waiting by the sign with her cart a “women be shopping” gag, which misses the fact that the gag is specifically about shopping as a high-end indulgence and doesn’t really work if it’s “women be shopping for low-priced daily necessities”? Or is her knowing grin just supposed to convey something like “Eh? Eh? Capitalism? Eh?”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/18/20

This massive wildfire may have displaced hundreds of thousands of people, but at least it’s giving Marianne a chance to really understand what it was like to be married to Les, an opportunity that she surely regrets so, so much.

Daddy Daze, 8/18/20

Is he … is he afraid his son will eventually want to have sex with a brain? Is that the joke here?

The Phantom, 8/18/20

Did … did the Phantom murder or terrorize a couple of waitresses so his daughter and her friend could have a job that earned them a little pocket money? Is that the joke here?

Marvin, 8/18/20

Ha ha, it’s funny because Marvin’s poops are more deadly than a unprecedented worldwide pandemic!

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Hi and Lois, 8/16/20

I know it’s a typical problem with throwaway panels, but I’m really being thrown for a loop by the narrative bump between “Oh, you know, husband duty” and “Are we gonna play golf today?” Like, what does Thirsty think “husband duty” is, exactly. Is it just leaving the house and getting out your wife’s sight? Does his own wife hate him so much that the only nice thing he can think of a husband doing is making himself absent?

Funky Winkerbean, 8/16/20

Ah, I see the giant firestorm has reached Griffith Park, and, uh, guys, I’m not even going to bother making a map for this one. But I will point out that this is all part of a larger Funkyverse crossover event that I don’t think I’ve really discussed here: ‘Shaft-son-in-law Jeff mused that he’s love to see the filming location of the The Phantom Empire ten years ago, in Crankshaft, and now finally gets to do so, in Funky Winkerbean, except it’s going to kill him. Of course, in that Crankshaft strip, Jeff said he wanted to “visit Murania one day” and Pam said “You do understand that this is made up, don’t you?”, which probably means that Jeff will flee into the canyon with his … grandson, I think? I assume this is Max’s son, the one who was taken in to see the movie, as an infant? … anyway, Jeff and the kid are going to go into the canyon and discover a whimsical silent movie world of robots and high-tech underground dwellers! Then we’ll learn that actually this was just the last feeble flickerings in their brains, as they died of smoke inhalation.

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Mary Worth, 8/14/20

Wait, are they really not going to tell us what the secret ingredient is that Madi whispered to Toby? I’m outraged that there’s a single thing that Toby knows that I don’t! Whatever it is, it must have some intense regenerative powers, as the remains of the loaf of banana bread is almost twice as big in panel two as it is in panel one, though that might be due to the divine intercession of Gram, to whom Madi is ostentatiously praying.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/14/20

Damn it, Funky Winkerbean, are you gonna make me do this? Because I can do this!

You keep not making sense and I will absolutely keep making maps, I swear to God

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/14/20

Ha ha, it’s funny because … the hovels in which the desperately poor characters in this comic live are infested with vermin?

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/13/20

Oh, look, everyone! Les is saving Lisa twice! The “Montoni’s Burns Down” plot happened during the gap when I wasn’t reading Funky Winkerbean, but has anyone ever suggested that maybe Lisa got cancer because of breathing in the hazardous fumes formed when Montoni’s truly noxious pizza sauce caught flame? Just spitballing here! Probably Marianne will end up dying of cancer too for similar reasons not long after finishing filming Lisa’s Story (Mason’s hair product cabinet caught on fire, maybe?) and Les will accept her Best Actress Oscar. His sad yet smug self-importance will blot out the sun.

Beetle Bailey, 8/13/20

I was going to get absolutely enraged that this furry is clearly a wolf and yet his briefcase says “Grizz & Assoc.”, but then I realized he’s probably the “associates” and “Grizz” is his boss (a bear furry, obviously). Anyway, what’s your favorite thing about his outfit? When you answer, keep in mind that his outfit consists of a vest, a suit jacket, a bow tie, and nothing else.

Mark Trail, 8/13/20

Hey man, I was pretty sanguine about Tabby’s abandonment because I was 100% sure she would find a safe home with the Trails, but I am not cool with how cavalier Mark’s being about the packs of rabid feral dogs roaming the area! Sure, Rusty’s had his shots, so the worst that could happen to him is that he gets lightly-to-mediumly mauled, but we don’t want Tabby’s story ending in an Old Yeller scenario, or, worse, a Cujo situation, so let’s get moving on that rabies vaccination, shall we?

Crankshaft, 8/13/20

I really hope they get through to Jeff Bezos, and I hope he takes them seriously! I hope he pulls out all the stops and uses all the power that’s accrued to his trillion-dollar megacorporation to just absolutely crush this streetside lemonade stand, the illegal, unpermitted bookstore it’s attached to, and the entire Centerville economy, just to be on the safe side.

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Mark Trail, 8/11/20

So as anyone would’ve predicted, this abandoned cat was befriended by Andy, brought into the Trail household/menagerie, and dubbed “Tabby.” Mostly I’m showing you today’s strip because it seems wild to me that Cherry, whose father is literally a veterinarian, is shocked to learn that sometimes people abandon their pets. But if Doc has indeed sheltered his daughter, who I’m reasonably sure is now in her 30s, from the more sordid aspects of the life of domesticated animals, it could also explain how she apparently doesn’t really know what sex is, either. (Remember, this is what Cherry thinks sex is.)

Funky Winkerbean, 8/11/20

You know, I’ve always had a sort of unreasoning hatred of Tom Cruise as an actor, to the extent that sometimes I avoid movies he’s in that I otherwise might enjoy. But when Vanilla Sky came out in 2001, its marketing campaign teased that Cruise’s character would become hideously deformed over the course of the movie, and I was like “Tom Cruise? Hideously deformed? Hell yeah” but it turned out I hated that even more, somehow! What I’m trying to say is that Funky Winkerbean is trying to stop me from doing more rants about how this isn’t the way urban wildfires or LA geography works (are they driving from … Burbank? Hollywood? NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE) by at least teasing me with the prospect of Les and Mason becoming terribly burned, like maybe their whole faces will get burned off, but sorry, you’re not going to fool me again! I still hate it!

Pluggers, 8/11/20

I was going to complain that the whole point of pluggers is that they hold down honest, solid jobs in factories and on construction sites where literal equipment malfunctions are actually a workplace hazard, but then I realized that this is probably a half-remembered reference to “wardrobe malfunctions” and I think it means that we as a nation are finally, finally getting over the time where we almost but not quite saw Janet Jackson’s nipple during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/9/20

Oh, God, sorry to be the insufferable Los Angeles geography knower but a week ago we were told this fire was called the Point Dume fire, presumably because it had started around Point Dume in Malibu, and today we’re told it’s reached the “Hills of West Hollywood,” by which I guess they mean the hills just north of West Hollywood, there are no actual hilly neighborhoods in the city of West Hollywood proper but never mind that. Anyway, there’s really only one problem with this, which is that if a fire had spread from Malibu to West Hollywood, probably no newscaster would be standing just feet away from it because it would be a thirty-mile wall of flame that managed to jump two freeways, destroy the Getty Center and several extremely wealthy neighborhoods, and just generally be an insane catastrophe that would send literally millions of people fleeing pell-mell from the destruction!

Anyway, this post is mostly for my mom, who’s very convinced every time there’s a fire in LA that our house is on the verge of burning down. Our house isn’t gonna burn down, mom! We’re way too far from any natural vegetation for that to happen. The way LA’s gonna kill us is from the car exhaust from the massive freeway interchange half a mile away, which is not as dramatic.

Curtis, 8/9/20

You know what filled me with absolute, unalloyed delight in today’s comics? Bugsy, the fly who understands what you say! This is insane and kind of out of character for this strip and I love all of it — the big cute eyes on Bugsy, the way he he gestures with all six of his limbs, the overwrought reactions from all his victims! I’d actually argue that he doesn’t just understand when you’re talking about killing him: he also knows what you value most, which is honestly much creepier.

Gasoline Alley, 8/9/20

As far as strips in today’s comics where the characters watch a deranged commercial go, Gasoline Alley is sadly a distant second to Curtis. What exactly is the implication of the exchange in the final panel? Is Rufus planning on shitting in the cans? Is that it?

Panels from Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/9/20

Oh, finally, America’s #1 medical soap opera comic is going to actually grapple with the biggest medical crisis in the last century! Unfortunately, based on the “Lockdown Stories” title, I suspect we’ll be seeing less of Rex telling nurses from across the room to turn patients over onto their stomach and being given 10,000 doses of remdesivir without asking for or really needing them, and more Buck working from home trying to sell music and art from guys who were famous 30 years ago over the internet while his wife takes care of his newborn son and very quickly comes to loathe him.

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Beetle Bailey, 8/4/20

It’s bad new for the General that the “Halftracks hate each other” bits seems to have fully detached from their usual scheduled weekend slot and are now just popping up on any old day. It’s great news for me, though, because I’m a black-hearted sadist who can’t get enough of these gags! Anyway, today’s joke is that even sleep cannot free General Halftrack from the all-consuming psychic pain that his marriage causes him; only alcohol’s consciousness-obliterating powers can do that, and only briefly.

The Lockhorns, 8/4/20

Speaking of marital misanthropy, the rather abstract Lockhorns art style makes it difficult to really convey the sort of grunge you actually want a cleaning person to take care of — does anyone actually pay someone to pick a couch cushion off the floor? — but honestly I’m reasonably sure the Lockhorns don’t have a cleaning lady, and that the “cleaning lady” is like George and Martha’s fake son in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Loretta bringing her up every time the papers start piling up.

Funk Winkerbean, 8/4/20

[clapping excitedly] EVERYBODY’S GONNA DIE

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/2/20

Man, Funky Winkerbean is really going for it with this fire, huh? This strip strongly reminds me of one from 2009 (note to self: embark on a rigorous journey of self-discovery to learn why I have instant recall of eleven-year-old Funky Winkerbeans) where Funky gets a text from his doctor about his cancerous prostate while a TV in the background drones on about the collapse of the economy. Today’s strip has a different vibe, though, in that the foreground action is actually upbeat for once. I’m assuming that everyone’s happiness is going to be upended when the fire destroys, you know, everything, but it would be kind of funny if we never hear about it again, but we should just keep in mind that it was there during a happy moment, like a skull hidden in the corner of a painting from one of the Dutch Masters to remind us of our own looming mortality.

Judge Parker, 8/2/20

I’m not really sure if calling the wife of one of your opponent’s primary backers is the “obvious angle,” actually, but I guess I’m only beginning to appreciate how byzantine and vicious the politics are of a small suburban town in Connecticut (?), where I assume the primary job of the municipal government is to negotiate contracts for snowplowing services.

Mary Worth, 8/2/20

Aww, despite her initial hostility, Madi has finally made friends with both Mary and Greta. Will she also bond with Saul? I hope not! I hope she keeps leaving her clothes all over his condo for the next three months, until her CIA assassin dad comes back to collect her!

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/1/20

So earlier this week in Funky Winkerbean, a bunch of characters we’ve never seen before were playing golf, which I did not comment on because (a) golf, snooze and (b) how can I hate these people I barely know and what’s the point of discussing Funky Winkerbean anymore if isn’t about how much I hate someone in the strip? But anyway there was a panel where someone hit a ball from the rough and caused a few sparks, then we cut away for some Starbuck Jones film talk (SNOOZE) and now … there’s a fire? A big fire. It’s gonna burn everything. All of Hollywood? Will both the new Starbucks Jones movie and Lisa’s Story be delayed, or cancelled, by the conflagration? You have my attention, cleansing flame. You have my attention.

Crock, 8/1/20

Huh, we all thought that Crock took place during the French colonial occupation of Algeria, but maybe it’s … actually in Iraq in the early ’00s? Sad that the conflict has so isolated Grossie and Maggot from the outside world that their only source of news is a bunch of 8 by 11 sheets of paper tacked up on a wall somewhere.

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Mark Trail, 7/24/20

Oh, Rusty, we all know that you have somehow come to love Jeremy Cartwright despite the fact that there’s no TV in your rustic cabin home and Mark doesn’t ever take you to the movies. Then again, Mark doesn’t take you fishing, either, but that isn’t stopping you from telling Jeremy Cartwright a bunch of lies about that to try to make yourself look cooler in his eyes. Would your hero, Jeremy Cartwright, tell a lie like that? He’s clearly not lying about needing a drink. Looks like he needs a drink right now or his face his gonna melt clean off.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/24/20

Les has been offered a brief cameo in his biopic Lisa’s biopic, this is all about Lisa, where would you even get the idea that this is some kind of enormous ego trip for the dead lady’s husband, but anyway Les has been offered a brief cameo as a waiter in this movie, which is usually a kind of fun thing movie producers might do, for fun, except that Les both hates it and is genuinely bad at it. He could’ve said no, of course. He could’ve easily said no! Instead he’s ruining everybody’s day, so I guess he’s getting something out of it.

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Mark Trail, 7/21/20

Oh no, if these guys have to spend too much time around Rusty, the promised “action movie” will become a stomach-turning body horror flick rated NC-17 for extreme, nightmarish imagery.

Hi and Lois, 7/21/20

Speaking of which, shoutout to Hi and Lois for coming up with an absolutely terrifying cartoon character that Dot and Ditto are watching on TV. Dot appears to be levitating, presumably because she’s possessed by the figure on the screen, who is clearly a demon straight from hell.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/21/20

Honestly, it’s a relief to know that, deep down inside, Les hates himself almost as much as we do.

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Six Chix, 7/19/20

OK, I’m saying this as a writer: everything a writer produces comes, at some level, from themselves. You can only interpret ideas and events through your own lens, and honestly much of what you come up with will inevitably draw from your own immediate experiences. It’s just that, well, sometimes the inciting incident that produces a work of art is more obvious than others, you know?

Funky Winkerbean, 7/19/20

Man, if there’s one thing Les knows how to do, it’s tell someone how to act like they’re in love with Les, right? Anyway, this movie looks terrible, I assume everyone in the final panel looks so happy because there’s a carbon monoxide leak that’s addling their brains.

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Mark Trail, 7/14/20

Oh, say, it looks like Hollywood Bad Boy Jeremy Cartwright is going to get more than he bargained for in his ridealong with Mark Trail, because instead of seeing Mark natter on about nature or whatever, which he’d snicker about in between bouts of surreptitiously doing lines of cocaine, he’s gonna get to see Mark punch out some evil bighorn poachers, which he’ll deeply respect because the only people he’s ever punched out have been his fellow actors under the careful guidance of an on-set fight choreographer and a paparazzo that one time, when he was on a lot of cocaine. I don’t think the guy in the first panel is meant to be against the highly illegal bighorn sheep trade, by the way; I’m pretty sure he loves crimes and his face just looks like that.

Dennis the Menace, 7/14/20

The real menace here is not how dumb Dennis is, how painfully dumb he is, just dumb as a box of rocks, but rather that the library, knowing that today’s youth is shallow and obsessed with celebrities, has a book called Famous People that they hand out to the little shits to keep them quiet. It didn’t work in this particular case, but you should see what a mess it’d be there without it.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/14/20

If just seeing an actress in a Lisa wig has sent Les into a state of catatonia, then seeing Mason wearing a Les 1.0 hair prosthesis will kill him, just strike him dead where he stands. I honestly would like to think that this was the plan all along. They’ll all finally be free of him.

Pluggers, 7/14/20

The “you” in this caption really sent a chill down my spine. You think pluggers don’t affect your life? Wrong. You’re trapped here with them, and their screwups are your problem and there’s nothing you can do about it, so get ready to chow down.

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/13/20

Hey, remember how this is the second attempt to make a movie out of Lisa’s Story, and the first one actually got to the point where filming had started and everything, and Les somehow managed to both derail the production and get paid for doing so? And the only reason Mason managed to talk Les into signing off on another go-round was to promise to do it the “right way“? Well, now we know what “the right way” means, because unlike last time, Mason’s production has bothered to fit the actress playing Lisa with a Lisa-like wig, and it has utterly blown Les’s mind. I certainly hope he goes into a complete meltdown like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, becomes convinced that Marianne is Lisa, and begs her to come home with him, leading him to be ejected from the set, and, ultimately, committed to a mental hospital. The ensuing publicity makes Lisa’s Story an unexpected hit as everyone wants to see the movie that drove its own screenwriter mad, and Mason dedicates his Best Actor Oscar to Les, but he’s not allowed to watch the ceremony.

Gil Thorp, 7/13/20

You know what used to be a tradition around here is that Gil Thorp would do a completely bonkers summer storyline, but in recent years instead there’s just been boring bullshit about golf, so I certainly hope Gil is going to “shake things up” by ditching this new, dumb tradition in favor of the older, better one.

Dick Tracy, 7/13/20

Oh, he doesn’t have two heads? He’s just a guy whose shtick is that he likes ice cream cones, and his name is Coney? BOOOOOOOOO

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Mary Worth, 7/7/20

Oh wow, it turns out that Madi might have been acting out because she lost her mother (some indeterminate time ago) and her grandmother (recently, to whom she was close), and then her father dropped her off at a total stranger’s house before immediately peacing out to Venezuela, WHO COULD’VE POSSIBLY PREDICTED. Fortunately her predilection to feel warmly towards old ladies will result in her imprinting on Mary like a baby duck!

Mark Trail, 7/7/20

“Settle down, Rusty — Cartwright may be your favorite action hero, but he’s just a person! Someday the technology will exist to completely replace human actors with some combination of CGI and mechanical humanoids, so we’ll be able to enjoy seeing Al Pacino and Joe Pesci play gangsters long after they’re dead. But until then, Cartwright’s just another dumb bag of meat, like you or me.”

Gil Thorp, 7/7/20

Hey, remember the beardo literature teacher who spotted Mike “The Mayor”‘s harmless butter knife and had him expelled from school, which resulted in Mike losing his athletic scholarship and probably seriously derailed his life? Well, he dropped a couple coolers of off-brand soda off at the feel-good snobs vs. slobs game, so, uh, probably they’re even now, right?

Funky Winkerbean, 7/7/20

ALERT ALERT LISA’S STORY PRODUCTION HAS NOW BEGUN THEY’RE REALLY DOING THIS THEY’RE REALLY SPENDING THE MONEY THIS IS NOT A DRILL REPEAT NOT A DRILL THREAT LEVEL ALPHA

Crock, 7/7/20

Oh, you ladies think you’re so cool because you got an all-female Ghostbusters reboot, huh? Well, wait till you see my reboot of Jane Campion’s The Piano … but with guys.

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/5/20

“And that he was extremely forgetful! Everyone talks about freeing the slaves, and winning the Civil War, but they’re all too ‘politically correct’ to talk about the forgetfulness! This comic book is gonna dispense with polite fictions and get to the truth.”

Judge Parker, 7/5/20

Good news, everyone! The entire cast of Judge Parker is gonna die, finally!

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Blondie, 7/1/20

Today is a day when we get a particularly good look at Dagwood’s flesh-turtlenecky, which is a thing I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about over the years, like wondering if Dagwood has skinned another human being and turned their flesh into a ritual garment, or if this is a Portrait of Dorian Gray situation except instead of a painting aging it’s Dagwood’s torso that becomes increasingly wrinkled and leathery while his face and arms remain smooth and youthful. Anyway, the whole conversation in today’s strip seems really unlikely — why wouldn’t Dagwood say the actual name of the sportscaster he supposedly resembles, for one thing — and it seems more realistic to me to imagine that what’s really bothering him is that someone asked him “Hey, what’s up with your fuckin’ neck, man?”

Funky Winkerbean, 7/1/20

“Also, I’m not really retired! I mean, people say I am but I keep showing up to work so I must not be? So I don’t think I’m the right guy to answer this question for you.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 6/26/20

The thing about Les Moore is that at any given moment he’s always going to be a dick to someone, but you can never quite be sure who.

Mark Trail, 6/26/20

“He’s my only friend!”

Mary Worth, 6/26/20

Hell yeah Greta fuck her shit up

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Gil Thorp, 6/24/20

Just as it’s easy for a fish to forget that it lives in water, it’s easy for readers of Gil Thorp to forget that Gil Thorp takes place in a community/universe where interest in high school athletics is unusually intense. Like, an unsanctioned baseball game between the local high school and the local alternative school? I can see families and maybe friends showing up for this. But sun-seekers? The idle curious? Watching teens play baseball? There actually could have been a whole plot about Mike “The Mayor” using his extreme extroversion to promote interest in this game amongst the citizenry, but there hasn’t been and without it I feel like my ability to suspend disbelief has been stretched to its breaking point, no matter how much admire the new spiffy t-shirts.

Mary Worth, 6/24/20

If you want a strip that shits on millennials, you of course have Dustin. But Mary Worth is proving itself on the cutting edge by taking on the scourge of zoomers, the next up-and-coming generation of terrible young people. We all of course remember the brazen Jannie, the college student who heartlessly took advantage of Ian’s kind nature by trying to flirt her way out of an assignment and then reacting with vile profanity when he refused to play along. Now we have Madi, who’s younger (and therefore worse), and she not only cusses like a sailor herself but she left her clothes strewn all over Saul’s apartment. Man, this whole generation is a lost cause! We didn’t even know how good we had it with the millennials, even though we made fun of them for looking at their phones all the time. I wish Madi were looking at her phone, instead of rolling her eyes in that extremely aggresive way!

Mark Trail, 6/24/20

Most Hollywood celebs with lousy personalities have bad reputations in private, but their teams of managers and publicists work hard to make sure their public reputation is at least neutral or “exciting bad boy who doesn’t play by the Man’s rules.” If this Jeremy Cartwright is unable to be contained by such professional image-scrubbing then I am very excited to see the sparks fly when he and Mark meet up in LoFo! Will we finally get to see Mark punch … himself, or at least his Hollywood doppelgänger?

Funky Winkerbean, 6/24/20

Oh, haha, were you tired of “no actress is good enough to play Les’s blessed dead wife Lisa“? Well, good news, because we’re going to start alternating with “Cindy gets extremely jealous when her husband, an actor, kisses a lady in an acting role.” You know, a little something for the ladies (?).

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Funky Winkerbean, 6/21/20

Imagine you’re a relatively normal person, who only has as context to assess today’s Funky Winkerbean the last couple days of strips where Les is worried that the actresses being tested for Lisa are too young and sexy. Maybe you even remember that there was an earlier, abortive stab at making this movie, where it was going to be called Lust for Lisa, and Les only agreed to sign on for this version because Mason agreed to tell the story “the right way,” and even then he was dubious. With that as background, your read on the absolutely insane dialogue from the script that we see in today’s strip would probably be that in fact the entire project is clearly going off the rails.

But you’re not a normal person! You’re a dedicated reader of the Comics Curmudgeon, and “once the chemo starts, this playground will be closed for repairs” has been permanently burned into your brain for the last 14 years, ever since the dialogue from today’s strip played out in Les and Lisa’s real, actual life.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/25/06

I’m not really sure why Les felt compelled to change “Summer’s in bed” to “Summer’s at her grandma’s”; I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to have sex when your kid is in the same house as you! But the important thing is that, yes, this dialogue we’re seeing is the story being told the right way. If only we could find an actress who can satisfy Les’s exacting specifications, which I assume are “can say this dialogue without visibly recoiling in disgust.”

Mark Trail, 6/21/20

It really makes Mark, who’s nattering on about larvae and fresh scabs while Cherry grimaces silently at him over her morning coffee, seem like husband of the year, doesn’t it?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/21/20

God damn it, Snuffy Smith, I thought talk of “all these father’s day cards” was setting up the long-awaited big reveal of where Jughaid’s real father has been all this time! But nope, it’s just another joke about the notorious laziness of Hootin’ Holler’s residents.

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Family Circus, 6/20/20

One of the Secrets of the Family Circus is that there was an original, different Big Daddy Keane, with an entirely different attitude and body plan, in the early days of the strip. While mostly he’s forgotten now, you can still see hints of him in certain panels, like today’s, which implies heavily that the Keane patriarch doesn’t really like his kids and doesn’t want to spend any time with them.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/20/20

Look, there’s plenty to say about how roles for women are cast in Hollywood, with fairly transparent sexualization and an obsession with youth, but if you’re looking to make that point in the most off-putting and unpleasant way possible, then sure, just have Les seething through the whole process about these dumb sluts who dare to play my precious Lisa. Despite hanging around his hip Hollywood pals, Les seems unfamiliar with the concept of hair and makeup professionals who’ll be able to make whatever actress is chosen look just like Lisa, changing her hair color from … oh, look, how convenient, the syndicate colorists have done it for them.

Judge Parker, 6/20/20

OH MY GOD THE SPENCER-DRIVERS ARE EXPERIENCING FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES FROM THEIR ACTIONS????? THIS IS INSANE AND UNPRECEDENTED

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Gil Thorp, 6/19/20

Good news from Gil Thorp, everyone! Mike “The Mayor” didn’t just slink off to the bad kid school and give up on his hopes and dreams after being expelled for bringing a butter knife into class; instead, he’s training the other bad kids at his bad kid school for an epic slobs vs. snobs baseball battle against his old Mudlark teammates. And he just found his secret weapon Corina Karenna (named, I assume, after the beloved (?) 1994 Ray Liotta/Whoopi Goldberg vehicle Corrina, Corrina), who’s very good at baseball and is a total anarchist. The infield fly rule? The “unwritten rules of baseball”? Corina will be ignoring all of them as the misfits roll over the Mudlarks in an unauthorized game played “thunderdome-style,” i.e., with no umpires, parents, or sense of decency.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/19/20

Today’s Funky Winkerbean made me realize that despite having read about the glory and pageantry of Lisa’s Story for years and years and years, I don’t actually … know what exactly Lisa’s Story is about? I mean, I know Lisa’s actual life story, but does the book/movie treatment cover the whole arc of her life, or just the cancer stuff or what? And, like, she died pretty young — Darrin, who was born when she was in high school, was in high school when she passed away, so she couldn’t have been older than her mid-30s. And she had two cancer bouts, over several years! I have no idea how young or old this actress is who Les just hate-masturbated to on the plane, and it’s true that Hollywood casts actresses young, but I’m pretty sure Les would only be satisfied without someone the age he is now, and here’s the thing, Les: Lisa stopped aging when she died.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/19/20

Ha ha, that got kind of dark, didn’t it? Well, suck it up, times are dark. Look, here’s the grimmest, realest Hagar the Horrible ever written!

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Mary Worth, 6/17/20

OK, so here’s what’s happened since we last checked in with Mary Worth: Lyle showed up with Madi, who predictably refused to make eye contact with Saul and just kept staring at her phone, and Saul suggested they all have dinner or something, but Lyle was like, no, sorry, gotta run, Venezuela’s not gonna coup itself! Anyway, I am absolutely loving — loving — Saul’s attempt to do a tough-guy face in panel one here. “Welp, I guess you’re just going to leave your daughter [I assume she’s his daughter? I actually don’t think they’ve made that explicit] with me for three months, after having spent less than five minutes here and made no attempt to ease the process of us getting to know each other or giving me, a man who’s never raised children, any kind of advice on what she’ll need or want, and it sounds like you’re not even going to be calling her while you’re away, but know this, Lyle: I will absolutely hold you to your vague promise to come back and collect your daughter [?], eventually.”

Mark Trail, 6/17/20

Good news, everyone! Andy smelled his way home! Also, did you know that Mark lives immediately next door to a whole different compound? Like my parents in suburban Buffalo have more space between their house and their neighbor’s than Mark does with his, and Mark is a weird hermit who lives in a national forest!

Funky Winkerbean, 6/17/20

More than 15 years ago, in a different, gentler age, this blog was called “I Read The Comics So You Don’t Have To.” And for years afterwards, I still saw that as my mission statement. But now, as the open-heartedness of youth has given way to the sourness of middle age, I have revised my thinking, and can best describe this blog’s mission as “If I Have To Think About The Sex Lives Of Funky Winkerbean Characters, Then So Do You.”

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Folks, before we jump into me making fun of today’s comics, I wanted point you to an article I wrote about comics elsewhere! I talked to a bunch of comics artists about their decision to acknowledge — or ignore — the coronvirus pandemic’s effect on our everday lives, and it turned into a meditation on how time and history intersect with the ephemeral medium of newspaper comics. Check it out over on Polygon!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/11/20

We’re fully a week and a half into this “Rex tells Sarah about how he and June met” storyline and June hasn’t even shown up yet, and are you feeling, bored, huh? Do you think this storyline, and Rex Morgan, M.D., storylines in general, move too slowly? Do you wish they’d just get to the point already? Well, it sounds like you’re a big whiny baby, and not a cool supergenius baby who can figure out how to blackmail people, but a dumb baby who had amnesia and now doesn’t know anything anymore. Do you want to be a dumb baby? Do you? No? Then shut up and let this strip set up “context” for the next six to eight weeks, buddy.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/11/20

OK, there are kids of suffering that awful characters in Funky Winkerbean endure that I like and kinds of suffering that I don’t, and I’ve decided that this is the first kind. Do it, Mason! Watch the special secret tapes that were emotionally intimate and only for Les! Strip-mine his personal agony to make a virtuous but unwatchable movie, which is worse than Les strip-mining it himself to produce three virtuous but unreadable books, for some reason! Use Lisa’s corpse to burnish your millionaire action hero status with some indie cred and further your career! Take no prisoners!

Beetle Bailey, 6/11/20

Plato’s “Science Facts” pamphlet is four pages long, including the cover, which is an otherwise blank page that just has “Science Facts” written on it. This is one the saddest things I’ve ever seen.

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Curtis, 6/9/20

Obviously strips like Curtis where the focus is more on the kids’ lives tend to give short shrift to the parents, but it’s 100% true that we never see Greg interacting with any adults other than his wife in a non-work context. At least Diane has her church group friends to occasionally have meetings with so Curtis can disrupt them! It’s absolutely heartbreaking for Greg to say, without hesitation, that what he misses most is his friends, as he closes his eyes and smiles wistfully, contemplating another, better world where he was emotionally fulfilled.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/9/20

It’s funny because we’ve seen Mason Jarr play exactly two roles in his time in the Funkyverse: Starbuck Jones, in the big-budget Starbuck Jones production, who is some kind of superhero spaceman and thus could not be the subject of this kind of “get in his head” exercise, and Les Moore, in the first abortive attempt to film Lisa’s Story, at which point Mason wasn’t even aware that the guy he was playing was same guy as the screenwriter! But I don’t want to dwell too much on that, because I’m too busy dwelling on the image of a second, smaller Les Moore, possibly implanted in Mason’s digestive tract by some sort of facehugger creature who rammed its ovipositor down his throat while he was unconscious, bursting out of Mason’s ribcage during dinner, leaving Les and Cayla’s dining room a mess of blood and viscera. Would the pleasure we’d all derive from this gruesome scenario be mitigated by the fact that, at the end of the process, we’d have two Les Moores?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/9/20

Rex is telling Sarah the story of how he and June met, which mostly seems to be the story of how back when he first started his medical career he had to deal with a lot of patients and their illnesses and their human problems, gross. Now he runs his own clinic and he doesn’t have to do shit! It’s great!

Judge Parker, 6/9/20

“The honest truth is that I probably would’ve lost the mayoral race, and badly, but this mug? They can never take this mug away from me. Not without a warrant.”

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So today a lot of comics artists have inserted some symbols into their strips to pay tribute to essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic. And, naturally, there was a range of approaches to this!

Dustin, 6/7/20

You could, for instance, take the Dustin route, where the symbols are explicitly explained in text, and then used in the comic itself to further the cause of recognizing various heroes, sung and unsung!

Baby Blues, 6/7/20

Or you could take the Baby Blues technique, which is to integrate the symbols naturalistically into the comic itself, on the assumption that readers will pick up news stories about this campaign and understand what they’re looking at.

Six Chix, 6/7/20

Or — hear me out — you could do it the Six Chix way, by which I of course mean the most half-assed way imaginable, wedging symbols into a joke that’s already terrible by itself so as to make them fully incomprehensible. What’s the most insultingly placed of the icons here? Lotta people are gonna say the steering wheel at the bottom left corner, held by disembodied human hands, but don’t sleep on the picture (?) of the microscope that the pigeon is wearing (?) on its chest.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/7/20

Funky Winkerbean, of course, can not accomodate any misery that is not Funky Winkerbean, so it will not be acknowledging the coronavirus pandemic nor any of the essential workers ameliorating it, but I did enjoy today’s strip, in which Cayla desperately begs Mason not to try to get inside the mind of a madman, it’s too late for her, but he can still save himself, there’s still time, there’s still time.

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The Lockhorns, 6/6/20

Probably most people reading this blog know that syndicated newspaper strips have to be submitted some time in advance of publication; generally the minimum is four weeks but some prefer to work months in advance. And so it can be a fun game to play: how long ago was this drawn? That especially applies in These Troubled Times, with history happening so quickly. Can you imagine that just a few short months ago, we thought that we’d be enjoying ourselves this summer by heading down to the cineplex to enjoy Scoob! (which was released straight to streaming) or the live-action Little Mermaid (the filming of which was delayed)? I guess in the Lockhornsverse, the COVID-19 pandemic never broke out, possibly because Leroy and Loretta’s powerful rage-radiation has antiviral effects that scientists don’t yet fully understand.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/6/20

Longtime Funkyverse trufans know about Frankie, Darrin’s biological father, who in the original long-ago storyline had a consensual sexual relationship with Lisa that got later retconned to sexual assault. Frankie makes occasional appearances for no real obvious reason beyond causing misery, and Les seemed to think that he had come back and was stalking him, but it turns out it was [comical BOI-OI-OI-OING sound] Mason??? As yet it’s unclear whether he was trying to “go method” by observing Les in his natural habitat so he could really bring Les’s brand of depressing unpleasantness to the screen, or whether he was just planning to murder Les before Les decided to once again tank the movie project that Mason has inexplicably become extremely passionate about.

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Dennis the Menace, 6/4/20

This is definitely the most erotic Dennis the Menace panel I can remember seeing in some time! I guess the joke is that Alice is exhausted because she has no access to childcare, which is why she’s been on her feet all day and also why Dennis is sitting there staring at her while she’s in the dentist chair, but the way she and the dentist are gazing into each other’s eyes definitely seems like things are about to get real romantic real fast, which is why it’s so unsettling that Dennis is sitting there staring at her. Couldn’t she have just left him at the Wilsons’ house? Like, he clearly spends several hours a day there anyway.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/4/20

Ha ha, Les did forget that his own wife works at the same school where he works, probably, but honestly, did she even need some sort of inside information to know that Les is having a bad day? Bad days are the only kind of days Les has. He needs them, to live.

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UPDATE ON MY LIVE COMEDY SHOW THAT WAS SCHEDULED TO HAPPEN TOMORROW: We the comics who were going to be in that show do not feel like it’s a particularly “funny” time to be in America right now! We’re postponing it to a later date. If you’ve written to me asking for the Zoom URL for the show, I have your email and I’ll send it when I have a new date/and time! And if you want to be on that list, email me at jfruh@jfruh.com.

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Mary Worth, 6/1/20

Finally, our long national nightmare is over! No, not that nightmare. Not the other one either. No, I’m talking about the interminable Dawn love story plot, which has finally wrapped up (for now [ominous music sting]) so we can move on to something important, like … a Toby plot? Sure. Absolutely. I will accept a Toby plot, fine. She’s going to fail at something, right? Baking, this time? I will definitely accept a Toby plot where she fails at baking.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/1/20

Newspaper comics are a weird medium — at once ephemeral but also in many ways demanding years of accumulated reading to truly understand the characters. For instance, you know and I know that Les is supposed to be the sympathetic protagonist of this strip, but … how would you expect anyone else to know? How is this not the beginning of a story where the wife murders her husband and all the readers at home root for her to get away with it?

Blondie, 6/1/20

Ha ha, that sure is a topical joke! I guess you two have given up on trying to not to give coronavirus to each other, though, huh? Just breathing droplets onto each other’s faces and whatnot. Anyway, is someone going to explain why the bird is wearing fuckin sunglasses or what.

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/31/20

It would take too long for me to explain in detail and it would be boring if I bothered to try, but this week’s Funky Winkerbean began with Mopey Pete learning about the existence of Hoagy Carmichael and then going through a series of free associations that passed through this before producing the inspiration for a new Atomic Komix title. Most I’m posting this because I think it would be very, very funny if Pete did in fact credit Hoagy Carmichael, and then Hoagy Carmichael’s estate sued Atomic Komix into bankruptcy.

Shoe, 5/31/20

“I mean, I guess you could say he’s a coworker … I’m a bird, he’s a dog, we’re both cops, there’s no real hierarchy there. ‘Pet’ is more of a sex thing, really (we’re also lovers).”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/31/20

It’s funny because Snuffy and Loweezy are very poor and seeking even basic medical care is ruinous to them financially! Ha … ha?

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/29/20

The thing you really have to respect about Funky Winkerbean is how it’s just always, always upping its game. Like, can you imagine a scenario where someone responds to the inspirational, soul-affirming phrase “We’re all made of stardust” with “And mister wet blanket strikes again”? Funky Winkerbean could. Funky Winkerbean could, and it delivered.

Family Circus, 5/29/20

WELP HERE’S JEFFY COVERED IN DOG BOOGERS, ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND EVERYBODY

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Mark Trail, 5/24/20

Hey, kids, you might think that Communism in general, and longtime Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party General Secretary János Kádár in particular, are pretty cool. But would any just political system have made these adorable fuzzy pigs into an endangered species? Say what you will about the authoritarian tendencies of current Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, but the mangalitsa is back, baby!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/24/20

The current story of Hollywood is that mid-budget movies have essentially ceased to exist, which means that directors usually leap directly from tiny indies to huge comic-book blockbusters; this has been the trajectory of Taika Waititi (who went from twee, offbeat New Zealand comedies to Thor: Ragnarok) and Colin Trevorrow (who made Safety Not Guaranteed for $750,000 and then did Jurassic World and almost got to do a Star Wars). But in the Funkyverse, where everything is backwards and people apparently find Les Moore not just likable but admirable, Mason is going to convince his pal to go the other way, from making millions from Starbuck Jones, an exciting movie that apparently many people enjoyed, to directing the maudlin, unwatchable Lisa’s Story, sure, why not!

Dennis the Menace, 5/24/20

Guys, today’s Dennis the Menace, in which Dennis never appears and his parents are the real dog-neglecting menace, tantalizes us with the vision of a version of this strip that’s just day after day of Mr. Wilson coming up with petty acts of revenge on everyone who’s ever wronged him, and honestly? I’ve never wanted anything more.

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Family Circus, 5/21/20

Real talk: I was originally going to do a bit here about Jeffy thinking his grandmother was ordering him to strangle PJ, but decided that was too dark even for me, then though about spinning a scenario where Jeffy and PJ were going to “play jail” (PJ clearly being in a prison jumpsuit) with Jeffy giving him advice on which gangs to join and which guards were corruptible and such. But then I decided that nothing could be more hilariously grim than the actually intended reading of this panel, which is that Jeffy is such a dull-eyed literalist that he believes that his grandma really wants him to find some ropes and show them to his little brother, for no reason he can fathom but honestly, how much reason can Jeffy ever really extract from his world, anyway?

Funky Winkerbean, 5/21/20

Funky Winkerbean has been taking a break this week from “Les is simultaneously morose and smug while sabotaging his Hollywood career” to bring us an episode where Funky has some kind of heat stroke hallucination while running and thinks he’s talking to a weird robot, who is instantly the most likable character in this strip. I for one am very excited to watch the strip change its name over the next few years from Funky Winkerbean to Funky and the ‘Bot to Everyone Loves The ‘Bot! (Featuring Funky Winkerbean And Pals) to All Hail The ‘Bot.

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Beetle Bailey, 5/13/20

Literally every single one of Beetle Bailey’s running bits has been repeatedly done to death over the strip’s decades in print, with all possible variations mined for even trace amounts of humor, so I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that today’s edition of “Let’s crap on Lt. Fuzz” focuses on the fact that he gets more information via sound than smell. What a nerd, amiright?

Funky Winkerbean, 5/13/20

Look, Les, I do have a certain amount sympathy with … well, not with you, per se, but with anyone who finds themselves in the position of needing to perform some version of their genuine grief for professional reasons. But I guess you should’ve seen that coming when you decided to build your entire creative career and indeed your entire personality on the foundation of “I lost my young wife to cancer.” Now dance for the nice lady, Les! Dance! Weep real emotionally genuine tears if you want that sweet, sweet Hollywood cash!

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Gasoline Alley, 5/11/20

A problem with any kind of narrative is distinguishing between the things individual characters know and ways they interact with each other on the one hand, and ways the creator of the narrative intends to interact with their audience on the other. What I’m trying to say is that it would be very likely in-universe that this shambolic event would eventually devolve into a speaker telling the audience specifically to Google some 36-year-old Don Henley lyrics, rather than, say, actually listening to the song on Spotify or something, but it’s just as likely that Gasoline Alley sincerely intends this to be a helpful suggestion for the comic’s audience itself. Anyway, check out this long-haired young fella’s thoughts on the farming crisis, he’s got some good ideas!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/11/20

Wow, Les, act like you’ve been here before, will ya? Because you have. During your last ill-fated trip to LA to try to turn Lisa’s Story into something people might actually enjoy, the studio actually put you up at the Chateau Marmont, so you’d think you would gotten all that actress-leering out of your system! Anyway, I certainly hope that ‘Pink Entertainment’ is the newly founded studio arm of the Susan B. Komen Foundation, set up solely to create entertainment products that raise awareness of breast cancer, because that will make it all the sweeter when they reject Les’s little graphic novel as unfilmable schlock.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/10/20

Hey, everyone! Were you worried that Buck was going to be inconvenienced, even briefly, by Truck’s illness? Well, good news: he won’t be! Also, it’s very sporting of you to pretend that you actually were worried about Buck. I know for a fact that nobody is worried about Buck. Anyway, a good way to enjoy your Sunday is to imagine that Buck is saying “Autographs. Always with the autographs” the same way Martin Sheen says “Saigon. Shit, I’m still only in Saigon” in the opening scene of Apocalypse Now.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/10/20

There are a lot of Mother’s Day comics out there today that depict moms getting appreciated by their kids and partners, but that frankly isn’t the thing that satisfies my twisted reasons for reading the funny pages, so here, here’s a strip where Les calls his wife and just monologues for five panels about how everything sucks.

Dennis the Menace, 5/10/20

Ha ha, it’s funny because Dennis was going to kill his best friend, but now he’s just going to kill his dog!

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/7/20

OK, I am ashamed to admit this, but: I genuinely do not have a handle on what is happening in Funky Winkerbean today. On the one hand, what we know most about this quixotic second-time-around attempt to turn Les’s maudlin book about his dead wife into a movie is that Les, whom the strip assumes is good and noble, is afraid that Hollywood is going to bastardize it in some way, probably by making it interesting or watchable, and so far his meetings have confirmed his darkest suspicions. Today, he and Mason are talking to a personified cluster of Rich Hollywood Asshole Signifiers, with the giant desk and the smug face and the “Amaze me!” and such, and the dude reacts to their pitch by saying “Creating art isn’t a business model,” which one might expect to mean “I’m in the business of greenlighting profitable entertainment products, and creating art — beautiful, tragic art like Lisa’s Story — isn’t how you do that.”

BUT! HOWEVER! Mason’s pitch isn’t about making some intimate, art-house film that can be made on a Netflix budget and maybe get limited theatrical distribution. He’s throwing all sorts of business-y jargon out there. Box-office appeal! High-concept four-quadrant movie! Maybe the big twist is supposed to be that our Rich Hollywood Asshole has a soul after all. Why are you coming to us with business models, Mason? Creating art isn’t a business model, and we thought you wanted to create art. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Between Friends, 5/7/20

Meanwhile, let’s check in on the gently neurotic middle-aged Canadian antics of Between Friends. There, uh, seems to be a gas leak of some sort? More on this situation as it develops.

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Gil Thorp, 5/6/20

Finally, the engine of this baseball season plot has been revealed: Mike “The Mayor”‘s wacky on-the-go-meal lifestyle has fallen afoul of Milford High’s dumb zero-tolerance-on-“weapons” policy. The hard lesson: kids either need to get up early enough to enjoy a leisurely balanced breakfast at home, or only eat nutrient-units small enough to hold in one hand and soft enough that they don’t need to be cut or, ideally, chewed.

Arctic Circle, 5/6/20

The funny pages are reacting to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic in all sorts of crazy ways, but I definitely did not see “jokes about penguin Zoom sex” coming.

Crock, 5/6/20

Ha ha, it’s funny because … Captain Preppie wants the men under his command to be outfitted with uniforms well suited for the climate?

Funky Winkerbean, 5/6/20

Yes, panel three, right there: this is exactly the amount of revulsion and contempt you should feel when Les Moore leans towards you and attempt to make physical contact.

Marvin, 5/6/20

Toddlers who are too young to be potty trained speaking in complete sentences and being capable of adult-level cognition: totally normal, not even worth remarking on

Newborn infants capable of same: OH MY GOD SO WACKY A SUREFIRE PUNCHLINE BABY

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Crankshaft, 5/5/20

So yesterday’s Crankshaft featured our protagonist hitting his head on an airplane overheard compartment and making a bit of wordplay about it, and obviously it wasn’t nearly interesting enough to talk about it here. Today’s Crankshaft, however, involves Ed continuing to churn out sub-puns as a result of the same incident, and that has my attention. Can this strip keep up this pace all week? If anyone can make six distinct malaprops about an extremely minor irritation, Ed Crankshaft can!

Dick Tracy, 5/5/20

Wow, Dennis DeYoung seems very certain that any threat from Mr. Roboto is gone forever, doesn’t he? New theory of why he’s in this strip: Dick Tracy’s Neo-Chicago is, of course, a cryptofascist state in which brutal punishments are mandated for any and all crimes. For instance, if you violate someone’s intellectual property, the rights holder gets to kill you with their bare hands.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/5/20

It’s funny because America’s health care system, which tightly connects insurance coverage with one’s employer, does a poor job of accommodating gig workers and those in industries where continuous employment isn’t the norm, forcing people to make choices they wouldn’t under other systems! Ha … ha?

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/2/20

Ha ha ha, a sequel? Do these crass Hollywood schlockmeisters want Les to taint the precious, pure story of his dead wife Lisa with a [shudder of disgust] sequel? What would such a sequel even be about? Maybe finding a new love and a new life with his second wife? Absurd. Lisa is the only one worthy of installments in this series, and once Lisa’s dead, there’s nobody else a movie in the world Les is conjuring could be about. So, in other words: does Les have any other ideas for these guys? Anything else new or interesting to say, other than what he’s been saying for the past twenty years? The answer is a very, very hard no.

Mary Worth, 5/2/20

The thing to remember about Jared’s first storyline with Dawn from a couple years ago was that he’s a clumsy, self-loathing dork who absolutely seethes with resentment whenever anyone socially skilled or attractive talks to Dawn, so he’s gonna fuckin’ hate it when Dawn announces that they’re going to take a trip to France together in the summer to hang out with Hugo and his new girlfriend, and that’s even before Hugo inevitably suggests a partner swap.

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Beetle Bailey, 5/1/20

What’s your favorite incredibly wrong-headed aspect of this strip? For many, it will be the misguided implication that the cultural triumph of “nerd”-focused media like superhero franchises has upended society’s assessment of what is and isn’t sexually desirable. But I personally am a big fan of Killer wearing a v-neck sweater that somehow also has a shirt pocket on it.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/20

Speaking of the triumph of nerd-focused media, the Chinese market’s appetite for action flicks has definitely distorted the American film industry’s incentives in all sorts of troubling ways, but if that results in the new, gritty and realistic version of Lisa’s Story never getting off the ground, I for one am willing to forgive a lot.

Crock, 5/1/20

You know, sometimes you can actually forget that Crock is about a sadistic military officer who rules his colonial outpost as an unaccountable dictator, but then you get to a strip like today, when he forces one of his least favorite soldiers to eat a bowl full of rat meat.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/25/20

I think we’ve hit the uncanny valley segment of “comics do coronavirus,” where strips start throwing in catchphrases increasingly prevalent in public discourse to generate “ah ha, I recognize that” laugh-like reactions without actually trying to grapple with actual context these phrases come from. Thus you get Snuffy joking about the “stimulus package” the U.S. government is putting together to counteract the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic without anyone in Hootin’ Holler actually changing their behavior in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, Snuffy and his neighbors are the last people you’d expect to submit to the revenooers’ orders on how they should live their lives, but it’s also possible that they’re safe because the government long ago simply walled Hootin’ Holler off from the rest of the country, for their protection and for ours.

Daddy Daze, 4/25/20

I know I’ve already discussed my theory that the Daddy Daze coffeeshop strips are just updated versions of the bar strips in every other syndicated newspaper comic. Today’s offering features a very despondent Daddy Daze Daddy’s Goth Twin, guzzling his coffee as he contemplates a parenting style that, it seems clear, has already ruined his child’s life, and I’m basically assuming at this point that these strips were all drawn to take place in a bar and then forcibly changed to a coffee shop by editorial intervention.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/25/20

“Finally! White people are back on top in this town! White people with normal names, like ‘Mason Jarre!’”

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Mark Trail, 4/24/20

Oh, hey, sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on what’s been up with Rusty and Kevin’s big walk in the woods. What’s happening is this: the woods are on fire! You can tell how pure of hearts these two lads are because they’re worried about how everyone else is doing as they run through the flames. Isn’t that cute? They’re all gonna die!

Funky Winkerbean, 4/24/20

I’ve been staring at this strip for a while now, growing increasingly upset both at it, for not having having any joke in it, and at myself, for either somehow missing an obvious joke or spending too much time staring at a strip that doesn’t have a joke in it and trying to will one into existence, with my mind. I feel like it has the rhythm of wordplay — like, “close to the action” should have one obvious, straightforward meaning, and then also have some punny double entendre implication, but it doesn’t have either. It’s not even a single-entendre. It’s a zero-entendre. Plus nobody refers to the Hollywood ‘Hills’ with some kind of implied quote marks around them. THEY’RE LITERALLY HILLS ARGH ARGH ARGH

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/20/20

Oh, look, we’re back at what is somehow my least favorite Funky Winkerbean storyline: Les agreed to have his sad comic book about his dead wife, Lisa, turned into a movie, again, which is a potentially lucrative arrangement for him, except for whatever reason he loathes the idea but instead of just saying no he’s decided to be as sullen a dick about it as humanly possible. Anyway, maybe I’m prejudiced as a cheerful Angeleno convert, but I find it extremely funny that Les has chosen a picture of palm trees for Mason’s profile pic on his phone, which most people usually find to be symbolic of the great weather and fun lifestyle out here, but to Les it clearly indicates that he’s about to get a call that he’s going to hate.

Slylock Fox, 4/20/20

You know, if you wanted to make a point that the purpose of police isn’t to stop crime or even serve the general public but is rather to protect the property interests of the wealthy and politically powerful, I would say that doing a cartoon where the Animal Kingdom’s chief investigator was put to work just finding the monarch’s lost jewelry would be a little on the nose, honestly.

The Lockhorns, 4/20/20

“You can’t see it because everything below your waist is just an inky, undifferentiated black shadow without texture or even a third dimension. Honestly, for years I thought you were wearing ballet tights.”

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Kevin and Kell, 4/9/20

Welp, it turns out that I started reading Kevin and Kell, a strip about horny furries who kill and eat each other, more than a year ago, but then almost immediately lost interest in it. But rest assured, gentle readers, I am always going to let you know when a comic strip that I have to assume appears in a certain number of family newspapers features gaily skipping animals festooning a maypole with long strings made up of the viscera of (I think we have to assume) sapient squirrels.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/9/20

I think she’s probably more incredulous about you trying to put the moves on your friend’s widow just a few weeks after he killed himself by driving off a cliff! I think it’s a pretty safe bet! I’m pretty incredulous about it myself!

Mary Worth, 4/9/20

I mean … do you have to tell him? You definitely haven’t told Hugo about Jared! Why do you feel like you have to start telling your various boyfriends the truth about things now?