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B.C. and Herb and Jamaal, 9/20/13

Well, congratulations, B.C., you have done the impossible! You have created a strip that made a technology joke in Herb and Jamaal look hip and with-it by comparison. Sure, Jamaal, still adds a weird, awkward “and tons of other means” to his list of social media services in panel one; but at least that list consists entirely of real, actual websites that exist and are popular right now, on the day the strip was published. And the punchline to the joke actually reflects a reasonable observation about how social media affects our day-to-day relationships with other humans! Another way that social media affects us is of course that sometimes we find it so overwhelming that we fly into a panic and then write a cartoon in which a bunch of ants spout gibberish at one another.

Crankshaft, 9/20/13

The entire plot of Crankshaft for the past two weeks has been that there is a new bus driver who is a lady, and who is nice, and who actually cares about being good at her job and nice to her co-workers and to the children who ride her bus. Naturally, she’s viewed with suspicion and loathing by the monstrous assholes who are the ostensible protagonists of this strip. Today their long national nightmare is about to come to end, though, because Crankshaft is clearly relishing the thought of murdering her by running her over with his bus.

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Mark Trail, 9/11/13

MYSTERY SOLVED, everyone! “Senator Mason” is just the evil senator from the last senator storyline wearing an extremely clever disguise (i.e., a fake mustache). He clearly worries that Mark will eventually see through it, though, which is why in panel two he keeps a tight grip on his daughter to keep her between him and Mark’s fists at all times, while she further distracts him with rambling nonsense. How old in Anne Marie supposed to be, exactly? 40? 14? Whatever, she remembers good ol’ Andy. Why didn’t Mark bring Andy to meet with the senator? I genuinely want to know the answer to this question. There isn’t a rapacious politician in the pocket of the oil industry alive who can’t be charmed into environmentalism by a lovable big dog!

Crankshaft, 9/11/13

Last week’s Crankshaft, which featured a pleasant person discomfiting the unpleasant main characters in the strip, was downright cheery, and we can’t let that stand in the Funkyverse. This week: innocent children ask an old lady a series of increasingly rude and awkward questions! By Friday, we’ll get to “So nobody’s ever loved you? What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you sad that you’re going to die alone?”

Heathcliff, 9/11/13

Sure, it’s pretty disturbing that Heathcliff is putting up giant portraits of himself everywhere in order to inculcate a Mao-style cult of personality, but it’s a step up from forcing his minions to carve idols of him out of food and worship him as an actual god.

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Mary Worth, 9/6/13

THANK GOODNESS SHANNON ISN’T GOING TO BE FIRED!!! It seemed that the odds were stacked against her, with the only sliver of hope she had to hold onto being the fact that any threat to her job seemed existed only in her and Mary’s panicked imaginations. My guess is that Aggie only got all this sweet free stuff because Shannon went to beg desperately for her job and her boss, in between the heaving sobs, managed to discern that maybe one of the customers got bent out of shape about dumb crap, let’s waive their bill or something, ugh, get this crying lady out of here, fine, fine, you can keep your job, whatever, just go.

“They’ll most likely caution participants that sharing at open talks may lead to feedback!” is probably the most hilarious sentence you’ll read for the entire month of September, by the way.

Better Half, 9/6/13

The thing I like about this strip is that Stanley is wearing a shirt and tie, which means that it isn’t casual Friday at all, and he’s desperately improvising to excuse whatever horrifying biological noise he just unleashed on the poor client on the other end of the line. This seems much, much more like something you’d get fired for than for providing feedback to someone sharing at open talk.

Crankshaft, 9/6/13

Today’s strip will be Exhibit A in Mary’s multimillion dollar “conspiracy to create a hostile work environment” lawsuit against the school district.