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Crankshaft, 5/31/21

So Crankshaft has spent the last month dwelling on the Valentine Theater and how the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t done it any favors, financially, and because this is the Funkyverse, where not just people die but dreams as well, there’s not going to be some magical It’s A Wonderful Life ending where everyone chips in and the theater is saved. Nope, it’s going out of business! And apparently Max and Mindy live there too, oops, maybe in like an apartment upstairs but also maybe they and their baby just sleep in the seats at night and eat popcorn for dinner. A thing that occurs to me about this is that when there was the big Funkyverse LA-burns-to-the-ground crossover event in Funky Winkerbean last summer, one of the threads was that Max’s dad Jeff, ten years older than he is in Crankshaft, was obsessed with finding shooting locations from his favorite silent movie The Phantom Empire, aka Radio Ranch, and you’d think at some point during that whole drama he’d have had time to reflect about how his son’s movie theater had gone out of business a decade earlier, possibly because it apparently showed nothing but that movie all the time, who can say. Anyway, I appreciate that Max’s final act as owner of the movie theater aims to directly spite the neighborhood that quite frankly did not support his business enough for it to survive.

Beetle Bailey, 5/31/21

Speaking of our honored dead, it’s Memorial Day, when America mourns those who died while serving in the military. Today’s Beetle Bailey is here to remind you that this holiday does not just recognize those who were killed in combat. It also honors those who gave their lives to help along their commanding officers’ golf game. Maybe somebody should’ve thought this through? Maybe?

Blondie, 5/31/21

OK, look, I’ve come to accept that Dagwood has a real twisted thing with his boss where they obviously hate each other but also have a parasocial relationship and sometimes hang out outside of work, and in the course of that sometimes their long suffering wives are dragged along to make a double date out of it. But I refuse go along with the idea that somehow this makes Cora Dithers and Blondie friends! Refuse, do you hear me? There’s absolutely nothing about this joke that wouldn’t have worked with Tootsie! This was unnecessary and inappropriate and I resist it!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/31/21

“Also, I mean, have you talked to her? It’s probably pretty boring.”

Six Chix, 5/31/21

Ahh, wouldn’t it be cute to imagine that various dried pasta types are like a family, and they grew up together back at the factory, and they’re having a big reunion on your kitchen counter, right … before you …

oh no

oh no

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Beetle Bailey, 5/29/21

I guess it was probably a colorist’s decision/error, but I am truly tickled by Beetle’s slice of pizza, which appears to be devoid of any toppings or even cheese, just a sad triangle of crust. Truly, Sarge’s insatiable gluttony is ruining everyone’s day at Mama Rosa’s. The saddest thing is Beetle’s big smile: unlike the dude at the next table, he at least gets a little starch for dinner, and he’s grateful for it.

Dick Tracy, 5/29/21

Speaking of sad, Dick Tracy, a comic strip that once depicted a maniac in a gimp suit being eaten alive by rats, can now no longer bring itself to print the word “damn.” Sad!

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Mary Worth, 5/27/21

We all frankly know that the intertwined personal and (aspirationally, on both parts) professional relationship between Drew and Ashlee is going to hilariously unravel into unhinged acrimony at some point. The delicious narrative tension arises from the question of how, exactly, this will go down. Personally, based on panel one here, in which Ashlee’s limbs are splayed in random directions and her mouth twisted into a rictus grin, my bet is that Drew is going to post a bunch of these pictures to his Instagram and they will be terrible, just laughably bad, thoroughly humiliating Ashlee online and producing a ragestorm that will make her public meltdown from a few weeks ago seem like a calm and rational conversation about a misunderstood scheduling conflict.

Anyway, this panel has delighted me like few others in recent memory, and while I’m not sure I have the energy to run a formal contest, per se, along the lines of the ones I did for self-clubbing Tyler in Gil Thorp and Rex and June’s funeral facial contortions, I certainly wouldn’t object if anyone were to attempt to reproduce Ashlee’s pose/outfit/whole vibe here, photograph themselves in the process, and email the results to me at bio@jfruh.com, and I would definitely post any photos I received on this very blog!

Beetle Bailey, 5/27/21

Hey, guess what year the sale of leaded gasoline for personal vehicle use was fully phased out in the United States? 1996! Guess what the average age of a private in the U.S. Army is? Less than 20! If you think those two numbers seem at odds, maybe contemplate what the average age of a Beetle Bailey reader is instead.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/27/21

I am a squeamish indoor kid who does not like bugs, so I am experiencing zero regrets about the fact that I no longer live in Baltimore, which is currently ankle deep in screaming cicadas, according to all my friends there. Anyway, each of those cicadas now befouling lawns across the Mid-Atlantic was laid as an egg 17 years ago, it’s fun to think of them as “teens” to whom you would not loan your car, just like regular teens! That’s because every single neuron in their tiny brains is focused on fucking and then dying, just like regular teens.