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Crankshaft, 8/1/25

OK, fine, I guess if I’m doing Crankshaft two days in a row, I will explain why Ed and Jeff were in an airport yesterday: It’s because Pam accidentally spilled bleach on Jeff’s inexplicably beloved Winnipeg Blue Bombers shirt, and so to make it up to her husband she bought tickets to an actual Blue Bombers game for him and Ed, and now they’re flying from Cleveland to Winnipeg (a route many in the aviation industry call “the saddest city pair in North America”) to see some red-hot Canadian Football League action. Anyway, today I’m mostly mad about Jeff saying “No pun intended,” for two somewhat contradictory reasons. On the one hand, “passed the quarterback test” is barely wordplay, like homeopathic levels of wordplay, like “pass” and “quarterback” are in the same sentence but they’re not really relating to each other in any kind of grammatical sense applicable to football; and yet, on the other hand, because this is Ed Crankshaft we’re talking about, a pun was absolutely intended. The man hasn’t gone more than three sentences without intending a pun in his entire life.

Beetle Bailey, 8/1/25

Say what you will about Beetle Bailey, but I always respect just how grim the strips about the Halftracks’ failing marriage are. Like, look at the General’s face here. A lesser strip would have him be cheerfully blotto, but he actually looks genuinely distressed, like he spent the entire trip home perseverating about the fact that he’s returning much later than he promised and he knows he’s really going to hurt his wife’s feelings. And for what? Booze? He doesn’t even really enjoy it anymore! He’s got a real problem!

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Mary Worth, 7/31/25

I guess the “Olive uses her psychic powers to save Mary from certain death” moment was just a prelude to the main plot, “Olive gets bullied,” which, as far as I’m concerned, BORING [comically exaggerated snoring noises]. There’s been lots of dark talk about how Olive’s psychic “gifts” come with “challenges,” which I guess means these girls are bullying her because she’s psychic, and I’m sorry, but the kids today have access to both the original Carrie with Sissy Spacek and the 2013 remake with Chloë Grace Moretz, so they should know that you do not want to antagonize the weird psychic girl! You want to be kind to her, so that once she snaps and starts using her powers to explode the heads of her enemies, she’ll accept you as an acolyte! Youths are not prepared for the reality of the modern-day educational landscape!

Crankshaft, 7/31/25

At first I assumed “old people” here was a euphemism for “unadventurous white midwesterners,” but unadventurous white midwesterners will fuckin’ go to town on jalapeño poppers and hot wings, so I genuinely don’t know what Ed’s after here. Can his increasingly rickety digestive system simply no longer handle spice? Does he need some nice lady to cut corn off the cob right there at his table, or possibly chew it up and spit it into his mouth?

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Judge Parker, 7/9/25

Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that the cushy jobs Sophie and Reena got managing Sophie’s boyfriend’s family’s charitable foundation are in rural Norway for some reason, and also forgot to mention that April got a mysterious call from her spy-world frenemies asking her for one last meeting and then she’ll be done with spy stuff forever, they swear, and today we learn that meeting is also taking place in rural Norway, for some reason. Mostly I think it’s funny that April is all tough and prickly about being a badass spy and keeping herself safe from this guy but 100% does not seem to notice that Sophie is standing maybe 10 feet away from her and talking about her in a normal tone of voice? Anyway, the strip colorist is trying to add some visual interest by giving April’s interlocutor a goatee, and I appreciate their efforts.

Family Circus, 7/9/25

“You’re allowed to be whimsical and silly because our mother signed off on it” is one of the saddest punchlines I’ve ever seen in this comic, and since this comic is the Family Circus, that’s really saying something.

Crankshaft, 7/9/25

I guess Pam is gingerly trying to figure out if her dad has dementia? Not sure anyone would sign off on this diagnostic technique, but I understand the impulse.