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Gil Thorp, 5/9/14

Yeah, what’s with the hand? Or the hands plural, for that matter? Why is one of them all turned around at a weird, unnatural angle? Why is the other one flapping in the direction of the first one, fingers splayed, as if that’s a gesture that’s used by humans to convey information of some kind? What’s with the hands? It’s what we’ve wondered for years about this strip, so I’m glad someone’s finally worked up the nerve to ask.

Apartment 3-G, 5/9/14

Speaking as someone who writes dumb jokes about newspaper comics on the Internet for a living, I do sort of understand the appeal of “real work” that Tommie’s talking about here — not enough to actually do any of it, you understand, but I can sort of see it. But it’s worth pointing out that before she came out to the country to shovel horse poop in exchange for room and board, Tommie was a nurse, which strikes me as pretty real? You’re not supposed to get your hands dirty, though, what with the danger of deadly infections. Maybe Tommie was just tired of the relentlessly sanitary hospital environment?

Crankshaft, 5/9/14

This week Crankshaft has been poking a little light-hearted fun at golf by explaining the emotions a golfer experiences after a whiff in terms of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief one goes through after suffering the death of a loved one or other serious life trauma. Today we reach the Funkyverse’s natural level with stage four: depression. What’s more depressing than contemplating killing yourself? Why, contemplating what it’d be like to fail at killing yourself, just like you always fail at golf and everything else, of course!

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Crankshaft, 5/4/14

Sure, Crankshaft’s relentless punning is irritating, but I think his forced little joke here has some solace for Keisterman. It’s true that his body is failing and that there’s nothing he can really do to permanently ease the pain of his bum shoulder; but at least he can take solace in the fact that his shoulder won’t literally die before he does, that he won’t be forced to go through his last years toting around a mass of necrotizing flesh and bone. This is the Funkyverse, Keisterman: The pain means you’re alive.

Heathcliff, 5/4/14

We interrupt this fiesta of filth to point out the unsettling fuzzy green figure in panel five, whom I assume to be beloved Sesame Street muppet and trash-can dweller Oscar the Grouch. As a quick Google Image Search will show you, even on the rare occasions when we see Oscar’s feet, they’re protruding from the bottom of his aluminum home. I’ve always assumed that he was like a hermit crab, with a borrowed exoskeleton necessary for survival during the adult phase of the life-cycle of his species, and so seeing him naked and unprotected like this is extremely disturbing to me.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/19/14

Mary Beth announces her plans t’ butcher and wed Jughaid based on wildly inaccurate folk anatomy. Upside: plenty of sausage t’ serve at th’ reception!

Crankshaft, 3/19/14

Hey, remember that one summer we rented a lake cottage but it rained all week so we scoured the bookstores and sat at the kitchen table passing around Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks and eating popcorn? And I had to explain to my sister how Ice-9 worked, and felt vaguely uncomfortable watching my Mom read Welcome to the Monkey House?

You DON’T? You mean it wasn’t part of your experience, and hearing some jackass narrate his private recollections isn’t compelling entertainment? Wow, somebody explain that to Jeff here, wouldja?

Mary Worth, 3/19/14

Or maybe these three things are actually just one thing? Hey, I know! Tell him if he had a job he could buy one of those adorable flat cars with the greywall tires!

Funky Winkerbean, 3/19/14

In Westview, smoking is an aspirational vice — the stylish path to a miserable death. The losers who can’t afford $5.67 a pack have to chug contaminated groundwater or huff radon.

Curtis, 3/19/14

Sorry, Greg — once those quotes go up on your “cool,” they never come down.

Edge City, 3/19/14

Hey, Len — that’s pretty “cool”!

Words to live by: “Life is just too damn short to go around carrying store-brand tote bags.”

— Uncle Lumpy