Archive: Crankshaft

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Marvin, 3/8/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because Marvin holds his grandmother and her affection for him in contempt, but pretends he loves her because he wants cookies! You know what, maybe go back to the poop jokes, they’re less grim.

Dennis the Menace, 3/8/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because Dennis almost got this baby killed! The real menace is whoever just dropped this toddler off at the Mitchells’ house and then took off into the night, along with Dennis’s parents.

Crankshaft, 3/8/15

This is the kind of Daylight Savings Crankshaft enjoys! The other kind, the kind that the U.N. cooked up to weaken American vitality and sap our precious bodily fluids — that kind he’s not a big fan of.

Hagar the Horrible, 3/8/15

Ha ha, environmentalists, amiright? Always trying to save nature, despite the fact that nature is evil and must be destroyed!

Panel from the Lockorns, 3/8/15

If there’s one thing Leroy has learned from his many years on this Earth, it’s that life is terrible and death is preferable in every way.

Panels from Judge Parker, 3/8/15

Are you guys ready for the Erotic Education of Neddy Spencer? Because it’s definitely happening.

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Mark Trail, 2/12/15

Hey, guys, remember back in October when Mark and Cherry got in some weird out-of-context longbow practice? Well, consider today to be context: provided. You could say there’ve been two Chekov’s Bow and Arrow Sets in this storyline: the first one placed on the metaphorical wall when Mark and Cherry did a little target practice back in October, and the second in panel one, when there turned out to be a bow and arrow just neatly propped up on this boat’s deck for no reason anyone has bothered or will bother to explain.

Momma, 2/12/15

How long has Abe Lincoln’s reanimated corpse been shambling among the living? At least since 1928, which was the last time he was able to pour liquid down his rotting gullet. Since then, anyone encountering this terrifying presidential zombie has presumably fled from him, screaming, in those few times when he stumbled into the light. Only Francis and his mother are caring — or foolish — enough to offer this unnatural history-golem their hospitality.

Crankshaft, 2/12/15

I’ve spent the maximum amount of time my own sense of dignity allows me to spend trying to parse a joke out of this Crankshaft and have concluded that … there really isn’t one? That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, though. If you don’t like seeing a slouching, sad-faced Ed Crankshaft admitting to his daughter that he’s slowly dying, you and I are very different people.

Marvin, 2/12/15

I know what the joke in this strip is, though! I guessed it right away! The joke is that Marvin smells like feces, all the time, and everybody knows it.

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Mary Worth, 2/6/15

For a character whose whole schtick is giving advice, Mary Worth’s given some pretty bad advice over the years. There was the time one of Mary’s friends confessed she still had feelings for a now-married old flame whom she hadn’t seen in years, and Mary told her to go ahead and contact him and pretend it was all “platonic”, because what could possibly go wrong. There was also the time that she told a woman haunted by memories of being stood up at the altar that you can fix sadness by choosing to remember events differently from what actually happened. And these are just the first two instances that leapt to mind, so what I’m saying is that it’d probably be premature to call today’s strip the worst advice Mary’s ever given anyone. But still, telling someone that “this thing you’re about to do will probably anger your daughter, so rather than talking to her about it you should just do it and then she’ll have literally no choice but to accept it and your relationship is gonna be great” isn’t really a good idea, you know?

Pluggers, 2/6/15

Speaking of all-time lows, this panel can’t match the sheer awful concentrated sadness of 2006’s classic “Rhino-Man hocks his TV”, but you have to admit that “physical pain is a plugger’s constant companion, one he eventually learns to rely on for his sense of self” is pretty darn grim.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/6/15

For those of you who are fortunate enough to not be up on the terminology used by scholars of fan fiction, “Mary Sue” is a term deployed to criticize a fanfic character seen as being a poorly fleshed out and idealized stand-in for the author. I guess the point of this strip is to somehow prove that Les surely isn’t a Mary Sue character, because if he were, people would actually recognize him (“him” being either Les or Tom Batuik, I guess) in public! I’m not sure what a weird high-school-era flashback panel contributes to this message, structurally, but the important part is that total strangers feel absolutely no connection with or desire to speak to Les. None whatsoever.

Apartment 3-G, 2/6/15

At last, we’re meeting the psychic scam artist who’s gotten Margo’s mother into her clutches! Who had “vaguely dowdy brunette with boring hair wearing a pastel turtleneck” in the pool? Oh, everybody? OK!

Crankshaft, 2/6/15

Crankshaft’s been doing a pretty terrible series of Airport Indignity Laffs this week, but they, and the strip as a whole, have now ended abruptly as Crankshaft crawls into the baggage-handling mechanism and is crushed to death.