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Before the comics begin, a note on last week’s fundraiser! Please read if you contributed! First of all, another huge thanks to all of you! I’ve already written to everyone thanking you, and asking which reward you’re interested in and double-checking to make sure your mailing address is correct. Unfortunately, about 20% of you never got back to me! So, if you haven’t heard from me, because your Paypal account is connected to an old email address or my message went into a spam folder or something, please email me at bio@jfruh.com. If I don’t hear from you by the end of the week, you’ll get a magnet mailed to whatever mailing address is attached to your Paypal account (unless I don’t have a mailing address for you either, in which case you won’t get anything). So please, get in touch!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/29/13

You know, after close to nine years of making fun of newspaper comic strips, I still sometimes discover that I have optimism that can be dashed. For instance, I figured Funky Winkerbean would be able to squeeze a week out of Darrin and Jessica indignantly refusing to participate in Darrin’s bio-dad’s terrible reality show, tops. And yet here we are on the next Wednesday and it’s still happening. Most FW “punchlines” contain at least some token bit of wordplay, no matter how grim, but I have to say that “reality” -> “really stinks” doesn’t quite do it for me. Here, here’s a better version: “The only reality about reality TV is that it stinks almost as badly as the fetid, choking air in the terrible, cruel reality that we are forever trapped in, like flies in a spider’s web.” Too … too long maybe? Not enough room in the word balloon?

Archie, 5/29/13

Man, forget the multiple half-assed jokes in this strip; the dramatic arc I’m interested in is the dog’s. He pushes his head around the corner, spots Archie and Jughead, then takes a deep whiff of Jughead’s pants and instantly falls in love despite the fact that his presence has not been acknowledged at all. Is this li’l lost pup so starved for affection that he’s latched onto the first person who doesn’t threaten or flee from him? Or, more likely, does every single item of clothing owned by notorious glutton Jughead Jones smell strongly of ham and/or barbecue sauce?

Momma, 5/29/13

I know it can be hard to tell sometimes, but Momma is still being produced afresh daily in the current Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Thirteen, as today’s strip makes very explicit. I like the way Momma and Marylou look directly at the reader as they announce this fact. “We can’t believe we’re around in this far-off future era either. Death is coming for us all!”

Hi and Lois, 5/29/13

Little known but important motivation for attaining verbal skills: they’re needed to demand constant reassurance that we aren’t completely unlovable.

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/29/13

Oh, hey, it looks like it’s a long-absent father party at Funky Winkerbean! First Darrin’s bio-dad took up residence in a local motel, determined to ruin everybody’s lives by being a jerk in some ill-defined way, and now Jessica is determine to find her own dad, John Darling. SPOILER: HER DAD IS IN A CEMETERY SOMEWHERE, OR PERHAPS A COLUMBARIUM, BECAUSE HE IS DEAD. He was the main character in a Funkyverse spin-off strip drawn by Marvin creator Tom Armstrong. The title character was a hilariously clueless TV newsman, and, according to Wikipedia, when Tom Batuik got into a dispute with the syndicate over ownership rights to the character, he just had the guy stone cold murdered in the strip’s second-to-last installment! Les later solved the crime in Funky Winkerbean, and last we had heard about the whole thing was two years ago when Jessica said she was making a documentary about him. So I guess Jessica has suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be doing that? Or maybe she’s going to dig up her father’s corpse and reanimate it using dark magic and/or perverse science, so it can defeat Darrin’s bio-dad in single dad-on-dad combat.

Archie, 4/29/13

Is Unbearably Smug Archie a thing in whatever era of Newspaper Comic Strip Archie we’re in the midst of now? Anyway, Archie really is looking unbearably smug in that last panel, presumably because he’s been waiting all day to unleash this terrible pun on somebody. Or maybe multiple somebodies, as the guy in the hat in the foreground of the first panel looks like someone who just heard a terribly pun smugly delivered.

Apartment 3-G, 4/29/13

Governor Pete is determined to bed Lu Ann, so now he’s upped his game to some next-level mind trickery. “Peter, I generally find you distasteful and skeezy, so…” “Stop saying that sentence Lu Ann! What would you say if I asked you to … watch a movie with me?” “THE GOVERNOR GOES TO THE MOVIES LIKE AN ORDINARY HUMAN OH MY GOD THE IMAGE IS SO SURPRISING I LITERALLY CAN’T HOLD ANY OTHER THOUGHTS IN MY BRAIN RIGHT NOW LIKE THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW GROSS AND TRANSPARENT THE GOVERNOR IS ABOUT WANTING TO DO ME”

Spider-Man, 4/29/13

Yes, obviously the cleverest place to hide your secret lair is on a tiny island that’s also a high-profile national park visited by 1.3 million people a year! Probably the best thing you can say about Newspaper Spider-Man as a hero is that he rises to the level of competition provided by his villains.

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Hi and Lois, 4/26/13

Man, I have never seen Hi looking as soul-dead as he does in the first panel. “Yeah, driver’s ed, whatever, why don’t you just ease your foot off the brake, Chip, why don’t you just let the car drift into the intersection, God, I’m exhausted. Or just gun it, just gun it right into traffic. Let me feel something, let me feel something one last time, even if it’s a thousand pounds of steel and glass crashing into me, at least it’s something, at least I can feel it.”

Archie, 4/26/13

I honestly don’t get the impression that Veronica is critical about Archie’s clothes — Society Lady Of Indeterminate Age isn’t being particularly judge-y about them or anything — as she is just generally embarrassed by his whole deal. Or maybe she’s specifically upset by how smug he looks in panel two. “Why yes, Veronica Lodge does occasionally tolerate my presence, pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

Funky Winkerbean, 4/26/13

“Don’t worry, Dad, we know you and mom were too horrified at the very thought of sex to try to give me any useful advice, so we talked to my dying birth mother instead. Or did you figure it was just dumb luck that we’d managed to be together since high school and never have a baby? On an unrelated note, Jess and I have watched insane amounts of Internet pornography since the time we were teenagers. Enjoy thinking about that, trapped in your immobile body-prison!”

Mary Worth, 4/26/13

Okay okay Tom don’t tell her that you spend all day alone in your apartment aching for human contact any human contact but afraid to talk to anybody don’t tell don’t tell don’t tell THANKS FOR GOING TO THE GROCERY STORE IN MY CAR WE USED LESS GAS THAT WAY yeah that went well I think that went really really well