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Funky Winkerbean, 6/25/14

Here’s where I am with Funky Winkerbean, emotionally: I like it when the characters suffer. I mean, it’s going to happen whether I enjoy it or not, and for whatever reason I’m not going to stop reading the strip, so why not go along for the ride? It certainly helps that most of the characters are thoroughly unlikable anyway and therefore seem to deserve their fate; there tends not to be a direct connection between jerkwad behavior and suffering, but it’s nice to see everyone getting their karmic comeuppance.

What I don’t like is a particular and pernicious subset of Funkyverse suffering, which is when one of the characters suffers because he or she is simply too good, too righteous, for this fallen world. More often than not it’s the insufferably smug Les who earns this sort of martyrdom, which just serves to make him simultaneously more depressive and more self-satisfied. In this current plotline, Les is learning that when he sold the story of his wife’s painful death to a basic cable network for a substantial sum of money, he was expected to tailor the script to the conventions that the network’s audience has come to expect. Today, this sad-sack basic cable executive is explaining that, while Les is of course a great artist — perhaps the greatest artist who ever lived, though that’s a question for another time — everyone who runs and watches the cable network is a low-class garbage person who won’t be able to appreciate Les’s artistry. Les suffers, you see, but he suffers because he’s so much better than everybody else.

This plot would be enraging enough even if we hadn’t actually gotten a glimpse of Les’s script, which, it turns out, isn’t a beautiful work of art at all but rather a clunky tear-jerking slab of treacle with which he is far, far too pleased. But still, the important question remains: why aren’t people giving Les fat checks to write exactly the strain of sentimental death-porn that he wants to write, and then leaving it untouched, out of respect, even though everyone will hate it?

Beetle Bailey, 6/25/14

Interesting theory, Miss Blips, but that’s actually a crude depiction of Hexastom, the six-mawed hell-beast to whom you’ll be sacrificed at tonight’s coven.

Crock, 6/25/14

Kids today, refusing to die for nothing in some pointless colonial war! Whatta bunch of losers!

Heathcliff, 6/25/14

Heathcliff’s owner-lady just looks miffed over a fun family outing ruined. But his owner-man and owner-kid — well, that’s the stare of people who’ve seen some things. The bellowing of the majestic sea giants, the fast-moving fork with its razor-sharp tines, the violations of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling and basic decency, the blood, so much blood…

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Mary Worth, 6/18/14

Oh, hey, here’s a real thing that’s happening in Mary Worth: neglected little Olive is, we are told in the words of the omniscient narration box, literally receiving a revelation from a shining angel of the Lord. I mean, sure, we could’ve dismissed the pagan vision of flower fairies as just being a product of an overactive imagination, but this seems pretty straightforward: Olive is the instrument of God on Earth, come to deliver us His message. The main drama of this storyline will thus be Mary’s seething resentment over not being the Chosen One. One assumes that she will eventually take on the role of St. Paul to Olive’s Jesus, doing the work to found an organization and massaging the original message to her liking once the Prophet has been conveniently taken out of the picture.

Beetle Bailey, 6/18/14

On first reading this thoroughly baffling strip, I guessed that “Queen of Hurleyburg” was some kind of archaic idiomatic phrase describing a stuck-up person, like “Queen of Sheba,” that would be familiar to the 70-and-up crowd that makes up Beetle Bailey’s core readership. But “Queen of Hurleyburg” resulted in zero Google hits; instead, it seems (according to this four-year-old Usenet discussion thread) that Hurleyburg is the town that is immediately outside the gates of Camp Swampy, and, though I would have thought it was under the jurisdiction of the United States, it has apparently set itself up as an independent monarchy. General Halftrack is now on foreign soil, and without a status of forces agreement in place between the U.S. and Hurleyburg, he may find himself quickly tried and summarily executed for lèse-majesté.

Apartment 3-G, 6/18/14

Because I read the comics so you don’t have to, I went back and checked: we haven’t seen Tommie since June 6, haven’t seen Margo since May 10, and haven’t seen Lu Ann since April 29. Will any of the inhabitants of the titular Apartment 3-G ever appear again? Will they eventually fade into the strip’s history, making occasional appearances like Barney Google in the strip that still bears his name, while the main drama focuses entirely on Carol, and her love for absent Jack, and her sidekick Freddy who is a … possum? Let’s say possum.

B.C., 6/18/14

Unlike Mary Worth, B.C. does not see employee-employer relationships as mutually beneficial.

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Pluggers, 6/13/14

Boy, pluggers sure are getting in touch with their own inevitable and rapidly approaching death, aren’t they? I certainly hope that the first draft of this panel featured our dog-man hero holding up the suit in question and giving it a good, long stare; maybe there was a thought balloon in which he visualized this last good suit on his embalmed corpse, while well-wishers stood around, not looking at him, telling each other in hushed tones that it was better this way, that he was done suffering and in a better place. This panel was of course sent back to Pluggers HQ by the syndicate with “WAY TOO GRIM DUDE” scrawled across it, but I like to imagine it’s still hanging up over the drafting board, as a reminder.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/13/14

Oh hey Wally and Rachel got married this week, everybody! As you can see, the God of the Funkyverse cannot allow any happy occasion to emerge unscathed, so their outdoor wedding has been disrupted by a sudden freak thunderstorm. They tried their best to finish the ceremony, but as panel two reveals, their friends and loved ones gave up on the event a while ago.

Beetle Bailey, 6/13/14

Beetle’s primary and defining characteristics are that he’s extremely lazy and does a half-assed job at everything, so I refuse to believe that whatever desultory, fumbling, fully-clothed sex act just happened in that parked jeep merited any kind of souvenir.

Edge City, 6/13/14

There are plenty of off-putting running gags in Edge City, but obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin’s occasional attempts to get her husband interested in BDSM are among the off-puttingest.

Wizard of Id, 6/13/14

At last, it’s the Wizard of Id–B.C. crossover strip you’ve been waiting for! It’s a golf joke about getting hit in the nuts.