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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.

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Momma, 1/3/15

For my money, panel three of today’s Momma is definitely the most heartbreaking! The whole strip is an emotional rollercoaster, really: the aggravation at being passive-aggressively invited to dinner, followed by seeming eagerness to get in on that pot roast action, and then — what’s that, Francis? What’s bothering you? The inevitable knowledge that any extended time spent alone with your mother comes at a terrible, terrible emotional price? I mean, he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up. She’s been his mother for his whole life. He’s not very bright. But he does have feelings.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/3/15

“You know exactly what it means, Kelly! It means driving around for fun in a car that you steal, which won’t apply in any way to your situation because the whole point of this is that we’re giving you a car! Also, no ‘cruising’ or ‘showing off’! It’s very clear! Those two phrases are extremely clear and there are no possible misinterpretations of them! Do we understand each other?”

Crankshaft, 1/3/15

Yes, because if this were a real tree, it would’ve been totally reasonable for Crankshaft to take it out to the yard, stand it upright, douse it in gasoline, set on fire, and then just stand there five feet away with a hand on his hip and watch it burn.

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Gil Thorp, 12/15/14

Guys, the Mudlarks have won its first state championship in years, so I guess it’s OK if we let the strip revel in it for another week or so instead of moving along to basketball season or whatever’s next. We may not have actually gotten to see Gil and Kaz triumphantly driving their banged up late-’90s Nissans behind the Milford Fire Departments most expendable vehicles, but at least we’re being treated to a long, hard look at the incredibly phallic state championship trophy. Go ahead, nameless Milford students! Stroke the trophy’s golden shaft, from its bulbous football-head down to its helmet-balls! You know you want to!

(If you’d like to celebrate the Mudlark’s championship season in style, the cool kids at the This Week In Milford blog have a t-shirt you might be interested in!)

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/15/14

I think it’s a pretty safe bet that nobody involved in the current iteration of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (or, for that matter, any of the previous iterations) actually lives in an isolated, impoverished hamlet in the Appalachians and/or Ozarks. So strips like today are interesting because I guess they’re supposed to represent what a flatlander would think a hillbilly’s idea of a flatlander would look like? Backpacks are the key, apparently. Anyway, these effete poverty tourists are looking pretty smug for people who are about to get murdered.

Family Circus, 12/15/14

Oh, man, there are so many great things about this Family Circus. There’s Billy’s look of shame and fear as he realizes that his usual goof-off attitude towards life and school assignments has finally resulted in something unpleasant happening to him, and his teacher’s similarly stricken appearance as she realizes the magnitude of her mistake in giving her most sullen student stage time. Then there’s the way Big Daddy Keane stares blankly at his failing son, while his wife glares at him, thinking “I’m going to go ahead and blame you for this.” But the best, the absolute best, is little Jeffy pointing and grinning, as if to say “Look! I’m not the one fucking up, for once!”

Crankshaft, 12/15/14

Crankshaft isn’t what you’d call sentimental, but he knows one thing for sure: if you don’t lure a white-bearded drifter to your home with the promise of a hot meal and then force him to wear a dirty old Santa suit and stand on your lawn for the entire month of December, it’s not really Christmas.