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Six Chix, 8/23/14

Pluggers Arise

Slowly, weighed down by the unfamiliar clothing, Betsy rose to stand on her hind legs … on her … legs. Powerful thoughts rose unbidden in her awakening mind. No more would she beg or heel for an “owner” or any other mistress: she would destroy them, and assume their place. She would have foibles … and, and, squalor, and resentments. And sweet prescription medications. Betsy’s time — her age — had come. She was next, and the world would tremble.

Her owner’s last shriek echoed in the gathering darkness: “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty plugger!”

Crankshaft, 8/23/14

The authors of Crankshaft wish their readers to know that they are perfectly capable of crafting a serviceable pun in English. It is their hateful main character, Ed Crankshaft himself, who alone butchers our language, out of spite.

Dennis the Menace, 8/23/14

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires Alice Mitchell to carry a Ionizing Radiation Hazard symbol with her at all times, because she is just that hot!

Edge City, 8/23/14

Obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin’s neurotic obsessions are approaching some sort of vanishing point.

Family Circus, 8/23/14

“All except the Oxy, Jeffy – I get those from Duwayne.”

Phantom, 8/23/14

Illegally imprisoned in a Deep Woods cage by a masked enforcer on trumped-up “terrorism” charges, Wambesi freedom-fighter Chatu is kept alive as bait to trick his followers into revealing their loyalties. When President Lamada Luaga can no longer tolerate the human-rights abuses carried out in his name, the Phantom subjects Chatu to a savage beat-down to show Luaga that his precious “Rule of Law” is no match for the Phantom’s own Law of the Jungle, so watch your step, pal. The terrified Luaga surrenders his principles and his rival’s fate to the sinister forces that underpin his regime, abandoning his citizen to a forgotten, hopeless future. Democracy’s heroes, ladies and gentlemen!

Spider-Man, 8/23/14

This would be nothing more than Spider-Man getting shamed by a real superhero yet again, except for the delightful rhyming onomatopoeia in the final panel: “Thok, Doc Ock! Btok! Sock, Pok! That’s a lock; off the clock — you rock!

Hey! I’m minding the store while Josh pulls up stakes and starts a new life in the City of Angels. Look for travel updates, old-timey postcards, and more ahead.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Family Circus, 8/22/14

Sure, we’ve always joked about the way the Keane Kids are drawn in this strip, with their hugely spherical noggins. Called ’em “melonheads.” It’s always been in good fun. We just figured it was a quirk of the artists’ style. But what if we’ve been wrong? What if these children are an intermediary stage in a selective breeding program with the goal of producing a monstrous post-human superbeing with the largest, roundest head possible? “No, PJ,” Dolly admonishes. “That chair is not for you. It is not for any of us. We are mere forerunners of He who is to come. That chair is a throne for the megacraniumed God who will eventually arrive to rule humankind. He will place it atop a pyramid of his enemies’ skulls. Their puny, puny skulls.”

Crankshaft, 8/22/14

Never forget that the central “joke” of Crankshaft, the “fun” Funkyverse strip, is that Ed Crankshaft is so terrible at his job that all the parents in town actively seek out information on school district transportation staffing decisions that in most jurisdictions would be of interest to nobody, because they fear for their children’s lives. Today we see that his reign of awful bus driving terror has concrete and negative economic impacts on this poor city’s real estate market.

Dick Tracy, 8/22/14

SORRY PROFESSIONAL CRIME-SOLVERS BUT I THINK YOU FIND THAT IF YOU TAKE AWAY SOME OF THESE LETTERS AND RE-ARRANGE THE REST YOU GET THE NAME OF SOMEONE WE ALREADY DISLIKE WELP GUESS WE’RE DONE HERE

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Crankshaft, 8/8/14

Good news, everybody! Despite the grim foreboding, this week’s Crankshaft food truck storyline has ended with smiles all around. Weird, blissed out smiles from everyone emerging from a fenced off zone in which the fully tricked out food trucks, each of which contains expensive kitchen equipment and represents somebody’s entire small business, rammed into each other repeatedly for the crowd’s amusement, until only one was still (barely) functional. “Pure carnage,” says Crankshaft, as if that were a … joke, or bit of wordplay, or something? Maybe one of the trucks was full of meat, meat that could have fed dozens of happy customers, meat that instead was ground into the muddy, oily earth. Or maybe just lots of drivers died in the conflagration. Who knows? Everyone sure seems happy, though!

Shoe, 8/8/14

Man, for someone who literally reads the comics every day for a living, there sure is some stuff I don’t pick up on. When I read today’s Shoe, for instance, I immediately thought, “Hey, how long has Shoe’s desk just been an overturned trashcan? Is that some commentary on the poor financial state of print newspapers?” Well, jokes on me, because Shoe’s trashcan-desk has been around for at least seven years. And really, how badly can the The Treetops Tattler-Tribune be doing, considering it operates in a market where people still call into the newspaper to find out what the weather is going to be like?

Six Chix, 8/8/14

Well, I guess you could have asked! Or maybe going to a restaurant so dedicated to meat consumption that they trot out live cows to your table is something noteworthy enough to be brought up in advance, I dunno. Certainly if your relationship has advanced to the point where you’re basically sitting in each other’s lap at dinner, you’d think the topic of dietary preferences would’ve come up.