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Curtis, 2/4/15

This week’s Curtis has features Curtis’s dad going on and on about this collection of music “I grew up with” as performed by extremely non-specific “legendary” artists, who, we learn today, are not rappers. One assumes that these legendary artists are never named so that this plotline can be trotted out every few years while keeping Greg the same age, but the whole thing already seems on the edge of believability: with a couple of pre-teen kids and a wife not notably younger than him, it seems unrealistic to have Greg be much older than his mid-40s, which would mean he hit his musical stride right as hip-hop was starting to enter the musical mainstream. Ten years from now, it will be actively strange if he grew up not listening to rap, although who knows, maybe it’ll be just as strange if Curtis is listening to it.

Pluggers, 2/4/15

See, Curtis? Even Pluggers is admitting that most people in the plugger demographic in 2015 were filthy hippies in their youth. Just admit that Curtis’s dad likes old-school rap already.

Judge Parker, 2/4/15

Any chance that this angry fellow, who claimed earlier to have some pull with important politicians, might actually have pull with important politicians has just gone out the window as he used “the fed” to refer to some random non-Federal Reserve government agency. Sam, whose returns on capital vary between the staggering and the completely flabbergasting based on Fed decisions on interest rates and quantitative easing and such, is very much not impressed. It would be fun if this guy really were talking about the actual Fed, though. “We need the Fed working on this! Do you think fiat money can clear that road? Only a strong gold-based currency can restore our nation’s highways!”

Crankshaft, 2/4/15

In today’s fractured media landscape, there are still specialized audiences who aren’t being catered to — fans of watching angry, unsympathetic old men being sexually humiliated in public, for instance. One bold comic strip aims to meet this need.

Momma, 2/4/15

For a brief moment, Francis catches a glimpse of what it might be like to feel real human joy — and sees just enough to know that the experience is completely beyond him.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/29/15

I’m not sure which I find more jarring here: the fact that Jughaid has used the flatlander term “spoiler alert” (in Hootin’ Holler, as in many traditional cultures, entertainment takes the form of bards putting their own spin on endless variations of well-known narratives, so the very idea of a novel, linear plot with a surprising ending would be foreign to these children), or the fact that the normally raven-haired Miz Prunelly is suddenly a blonde.

Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, 1/29/15

Well, the Dick Tracy-Funky Winkerbean crossover is over, but the Funkyverse still has CROSSOVER FEVER!!!!! With nobody currently willing to cross over with it, though, it’s been forced to mingle timelines with … itself. Yes, there’s now a cross-decade Funky Winkerbean–Crankshaft narrative confluence in progress, about Crankshaft driving beloved (?) band leader Harry Dinkle and the band to some band championship or something. Funky’s installments are using Old Timey Photo Album Frame panels, the strip’s sign for Things That Happened Long Ago, which is confusing since both strips take place more or less in the present. All this timestream mucking about mainly serves to sadly let us know that, since Crankshaft’s life continues beyond this adventure, Harry will never make good on his promise to slide that baton straight through Crankshaft’s leathery old flesh and right into his black, shriveled heart.

Six Chix, 1/29/15

One good thing about having a nationally syndicated comic strip: when you experience some minor irritation in your daily life, the rapidly aging and declining comics-reading demographic will get to hear about it, by God.

Pluggers, 1/29/15

The only time pluggers will be addressed with the slightest glimmer of dignity is when they are already in the grave.

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Crankshaft, 1/6/15

Let us contemplate, just for a moment, the financial aspects of Crankshaft’s existence. I’m pretty sure that he’s lived with his daughter and son-in-law over the whole course of the strip. Because he has a job operating a large vehicle full of school children, I have to assume that this isn’t because of any decline in his physical or mental capacities due to age, but rather because he can’t afford to live on his own. (It could, I suppose, be because of the warm, close, loving relationship he has with his familhahahaha I can’t even finish that sentence.) There was a whole plotline years ago revolving around some bad kids on his bus known as the “rough riders”; Crankshaft, presumably in a fit of pique, promised to pay for their college education if they actually shaped up and graduated from high school, and then when they did it turned out he had forgotten to save any money to back up this boast, so he tapped into his retirement savings. But even before that incident he was living crabbily with his descendents, so he’s probably always been kind of hard up. Anyway, this is a long way of me wondering if Crankshaft is following these kids around and offering to outbid them just to be a dick, or if he’s genuinely so desperate for cash that he’s literally willing to undercut child labor. He’s ripe for recruitment for one of Neddy Spencer’s old-person labor camps!

Judge Parker, 1/6/15

Speaking of the beloved Spencer-Driver clan, they’re discovering they only have twelve bottles of wine to last two adults for three or four days, so things could get dicey! Seriously, Sophie is getting way worked up about this baby squirrel business. Nobody should be sober for that.

B.C., 1/6/15

Meanwhile, the cavemen of B.C. are suggesting novel sexual activities to one another. It’s sad to see that even so early in the development of our species, some of us were very set in our ways.