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Funky Winkerbean, 6/25/19

I got some feedback on my joke about Sunday’s Funky Winkerbean and was about to write something whiny along the lines of “Ugh, Funky Winkerbean made me learn things,” but honestly? I love learning things, and telling other people about those things! So here we go: the most famous version of the Buster Keaton house-falling gag is from 1928’s Steamboat Bill, Jr., but Keaton had done an earlier version in 1920’s One Week — and, more relevant to this storyline, Fatty Arbuckle, for whom Butter Brinkel is pretty transparently a stand-in, did the original version of it 1919’s Back Stage, which Buster Keaton also appeared in. As the name implies, Back Stage was a comedy that took place behind the scenes of a play, and so the house-falling stunt was much smaller scale and actually involved a small facade used as part of the play’s set dressing, rather than an actual house as in the Steamboat Bill version; the depiction of Brinkel’s stunt (which you can see better in Sunday’s strip) more closely matches what happened in Back Stage.

There’s one big difference, of course: Arbuckle’s Back Stage stunt, like both of Keaton’s, went off safely; but Brinkel is an inhabitant of the Funkyverse, so his version was botched and left him in agony for years afterwards. That’s the special twist on history we’ve come to expect from this feature, folks!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/25/19

I sort of assumed I pretty much knew the lay of the land in the small, insular world of Hootin’ Holler, but apparently not? Apparently there’s a high-stakes card game in town that Snuffy has decided he’s ready for? Or maybe Snuffy, unfamiliar with the geography of the flatland world, assumes that “Las Vegas,” a city he’s heard about occasionally from Parson Tuttle’s television, is only a few more hours’ walk past whatever economically imploding mining town of 25,000 people or so is the closest metropolis to Hootin’ Holler. Anyway, we shouldn’t let this speculation distract us from the important point here, which is that Snuffy has gambled away his family’s meager resources and now they’re starving to death.

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Beetle Bailey, 6/22/19

Maybe I’m getting old and my brain is turning to pudding or whatever, but I genuinely enjoyed today’s Beetle Bailey! Mostly I like the contrast between Sarge and Otto’s faces. What exactly went down at this dog show? What did Otto think would go down? The phrase “Sarge took Otto to the dog show” doesn’t make it sound like Otto was formally entered in the competition, but perhaps Otto secretly hoped that he would be spotted in the stands by one of the judges, who would say “Who’s that? Why, it’s a dog in an army uniform! What a good boy! What a very good boy, indeed!” Instead a truly zany series of events occurred that left Otto furious and Sarge confused and a little sad.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/22/19

Wow, there’s a lot going on here when it comes to perceptions of the powers, purpose, and very nature of political authority. In the first panel, Snuffy bluntly demands that Sheriff Tait use his monopoly on legitimate violence in the Holler to expel outsiders: to our hillbilly, the demos to which the sheriff answers has the absolute right to control access to local territory and resources in favor of natives if competition for those resources gets too intense. The sheriff’s initial response might at first seem to indicate his loyalty to a code of abstract law — the outsiders have a right to be there, and nothing can be done unless they’ve actually committed a crime. But then, we see the cash in his hand and we learn the truth: Tait doesn’t truck with either modern legalism or traditional community-based exercises of power. He just sees the law and the state as a vehicle for his personal enrichment. Snuffy can’t help but be impressed.

Mark Trail, 6/22/19

Good news, everyone! Mark, Leola, and Doc are close to the mine! I guess they don’t need to find JJ and pull the map out from under his waterlogged corpse after all, and can just let the desert scavengers do their thing uninterrupted.

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Mary Worth, 6/18/19

Oh, hey kids, in case you were wondering, the Mary Worth Estelle Gets Grifted storyline is still happening this week, and presumably will be until the heat death of the universe. Today I want to point out that if you knew Wilbur, and if Mary called you up and said “I have some news about Wilbur…“, you’d definitely assume it was bad news, right? Like he had cried himself to death, or went on a tour of the mayonnaise factor and “accidentally” got locked into the mayonnaise factory overnight and just when he was going to enjoy a single spoonful of mayonnaise fresh from the vat he slipped (on mayonnaise) and suffered massive head trauma? I guess Dr. Jeff is in for a pleasant (?) surprise.

Judge Parker, 6/18/19

Over in Judge Parker, the traditional social hierarchy is all upside down: Judge Parker Senior is super duper going to jail, but Marie, who you might recall decided to quit her job as the Spencer-Driver maidservant and take her chances in the outside world despite the gangsters who want her dead, is living her best life, in case you were worried about her! This time she’s relaxing at a tropical resort with a hunk who won’t fake his death, probably.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/18/19

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, drunk with power now that it got other syndicated newspaper strips to acknowledge its existence for a single day, is returning to a task it attempted and failed at back in 2014: making Bizzy Buzz Buzz, the manic Smif niece who loves to clean, happen. Folks, I gotta tell ya: Bizzy Buzz Buzz is not gonna happen!