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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/22/12

See, it’s just like the 1914 Flanders Christmas Truce, but with colorful accents, obesity, and th’ diabetuss.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/22/12

Bull, dear, you were scouted by the St. Louis Cardinals, not “the then” St. Louis Cardinals. Believe it or not, they were called “the St. Louis Cardinals” only during their years in St. Louis (1960 – 1987), so there’s no risk of confusion with any “before” or “after” St. Louis Cardinals. If you need to rule out the baseball team, just add “NFL” or “football.” But otherwise, please — it’s a language; people use it to communicate. Show some care with it.

Now if Les were a real friend, he’d help Bull relive his glory days by pointing out his error at great length — with helpful examples, a diagram or two, and maybe a condescending little smirk. Then Bull could pound his ass like back in the day, go home, bang Linda, and enjoy his best night’s sleep in twenty-five years.

Spider-Man, 3/22/12

Utterly ineffective against Loki and now immobilized, Spider-Man’s gonna spectate the hell out of this battle. It’s like a dream come true!

Marvin, 3/22/12

If he’s sitting on the comics page, I dread tomorrow’s strip.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Gil Thorp, 3/8/12

Having finished with his winter job duties (i.e., losing the boy’s basketball championship), Gil finally has time to follow up on some of his personal projects (i.e., shutting down a wholly legal tattoo parlor with a minor sideline in selling bootleg DVDs). Ransom Hale may actually be named Rupert and may not be from New Zealand, but the good look at his tonsure that we get in panel three shows us the real scandal here: he’s a monk who’s forsaken his vows poverty, obedience, and possibly chastity! Boy, wait until the abbot hears about this!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/8/12

Snuffy, Uriah can’t hear your recounting of your corrupt relationship with the town’s only law enforcement authority; as his ghostly, colorless face in panel two indicates, he actually dropped dead from shock upon hearing about the Post Office’s troubled finances, and has now crossed over into the spirit realm. Since ghosts no longer think in ordinary language the way we do on this plane of existence, “?” is the closest we can get to transcribing the sense of wonder and amazement Uriah is experiencing as he begins to understand his newly transcendent state.

Judge Parker, 3/8/12

I’m not even going to try to explain what’s going on here; I’m just going to point out that today’s first panel, in which a chesty blonde cradles a shotgun while having a boring, confusing conversation with someone on the phone, is Judge Parker distilled down to its very essence.

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Crankshaft, 3/4/12

I’m always intrigued by the precise relationship between Crankshaft and its mother strip, Funky Winkerbean — not so much in terms of characters in common or mismatched chronology, but in tone. What thematic elements do they share, and what distinguishes them? Take this Sunday installment. All the old people are sitting around, talking in terms of mounting panic about the death of everyone they know, a fate that will find them soon enough. That’s basic Funkyverse fare. Then you get a dumb and tactless pun about the situation — also Funky-standard. But Crankshaft being a sullen, humorless jerk when he gets his pun taken away from him? That’s the Crankshaft value-add!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/4/12

Sorry, boys, nobody’s allowed to leave Hootin’ Holler! Loweezy’s doing you a favor: if you had managed to pilot your makeshift aircraft over the barbed wire fence, you just would have been shot by the guards.