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Hey, it’s Spring, and May, and Sunday … and from the look of things, everybody’s feeling pretty darn good about themselves.

Crankshaft, 5/1/16

Here, Team Crankshaft congratulates itself for its tortured “blacksmith/booksmith” wordplay by showing in-strip proxies Lillian and Jeff gushing over it. But adopting Crankshaft’s sloppy malapropism will doom Lillian’s fledgling used-book business.

Sure, throngs of would-be readers will stream through Lillian’s quiet residential neighborhood, walk past her second-floor shop, and glance up at her sign. But being literary folk who know full well that a booksmith is a person who makes books, they’ll pass on the chance to climb all those stairs only to find an author, a publisher, or a bookbinder shooing them away.

Perhaps they’ll mutter as they pass by, “If only this town had a decent bookmonger — somebody could make a lot of money!”

The authors also missed the obvious opportunity to call the place “Mom’s attic” and sell old comic books. It’s like they lost track of the strip’s core mission.

Phantom, 5/1/16

Appearances aside, that’s not Disco John Belushi. It’s Hojo, recently destereotyped and crossing over from Lee Falk’s other creation, Mandrake the Magician. Hojo is fluent in six languages, head of global crimefighting outfit Inter-Intel, and a 10^th-degree black belt in some martial art or other. But here, he’s just pleased as cheese to be out in the Seven Nations working together with his good buddy Phantom to suppress political opposition to Lothar’s brother. Lucky we can’t see his face when he learns they whupped the wrong guy; poor fella must be shattered.

But hey, why is that Phantom-cam shot of Otanko taken from the perspective of someone flat on his back? That can’t be good!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/1/16

June squicks out Rex as a form of bedtime recreation; it’s the only kind she gets. “Because you’re a doctor and she respects your judgment — despite your hilarious discomfort with anything even remotely biological. You think reproduction is icky, ‘doc,’ take a whiff of this guy.”

– Uncle Lumpy

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Six Chix, 4/30/16

Sure, “Kids Today” and “Technology Bad” are two of the classic themes, but if you want to go full plugger, Mom, you gotta grow the tail.

Archie, 4/30/16

Even the folks at Team Archie know this joke would be unpublishable with the roles reversed. Hey panel-2 Veronica: his eyes are down there!

Curtis, 4/30/16

Oh man, I was all set to go off on newish tertiary character “Heart-throb” for what I thought was a transparently false boast about an obviously impossible YouTube video. But then I checked and learned that kids all over the world post School Fight videos faster than Google can knock ’em down, and of course some of the fights are staged specifically for the videos.

What I’m saying is kids today are terrible, and technology makes everything worse.

(Checks behind for tail; still OK whew)

Judge Parker, 4/30/16

Hey, remember when Derek tried to go to a party with his real girlfriend Honey Ballenger and it made Sophie want to get all trained up at military school and flat-out murder everybody? But then Honey got grounded so Sophie dropped the idea and resumed her campaign to stalk/purchase Derek?

Well, those slick brochures from the military school kept coming, and they’re like porn to poor Marie here. Look at her caress that embossed coat of arms, dreaming of the sweet barracks pleasures she’d enjoy if only she could escape her hated employer/tormentors.

“Did you know they have a separate school for aerospace studies?” she coos. It’s her ultimate fantasy, to slip the surly bonds of Spencer Farms and fly, alone and free, into a brand-new life. Well, maybe one little strafing run first.

Hello there, faithful reader! I’m sitting in for Josh through Sunday, May 8 while he wraps up his book tour and recovers from same. Drop me a line at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if you need any admin help, for example if one of your comments gets hoovered up by the site’s new and voracious spam filter.

– Uncle Lumpy

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/28/15

Well, finally! Lisa Crawford (décédé Moore), Funky Winkerbean‘s axis, muse, and paragon — and the only remotely plausible justification for this tedious time-travel story — puts in her appearance, and her friends handle it with their usual grace.

Lisa became quite the saucy gamine in the runup to her miserable death, but this is Original Lisa — mousy, hunched over, and perpetually chilly despite her enormous shapeless cardigan. After all, the Funky Winkerbean audience can easily buy into a high-school locker time travel story, but a hot chick going for Les crosses a line.

Judge Parker, 7/28/15

Of course Dalton has something for Sam — because no Judge Parker story can end before the Bestowing of the Gifts.

Archie, 7/28/15

Say, is that Jughead’s Dad, Jones père? I don’t believe we’ve seen him before! Anyway, Mr. Jones is a dead-eyed drone who wants to crush his son’s youthful exuberance and joy in a beautiful summer day!

That’s it for me — Josh will be back tomorrow with the very latest in newspaper comics mockery. Thanks for a fun time!

— Uncle Lumpy