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Crankshaft, 3/6/12

Despite my (too many) years of reading Crankshaft, I’ve only just at this moment realized that Keesterman, the guy whose mailbox Crankshaft is constantly destroying due to his dangerous inability to operate a schoolbus, is also one of the guys who meets Crankshaft and some other old dudes at a sad chain diner where they drink coffee and pun sullenly and probably leave stingy tips. The endless mailbox-annihilation incidents might explain why Keesterman has finally snapped, looking in panel three like he’s going to react to Crankshaft’s mild ribbing with a punch to the face, something I dearly hope we get to see over the remainder of the week, from several different angles.

Hi and Lois, 3/6/12

We’ve seen some intermittent attempts to make Hi and Lois’ marriage interesting, but frankly I think there’s much more drama to be wrung from the lives of the Flagstons’ next-door neighbors. Check out Irma’s disgruntled look in the final panel: not only is her family mired in debt, but that means that she can’t even have a nice party without it devolving into recriminations and violence, which to her is the worst indignity.

Beetle Bailey, 3/6/12

There are occasional Beetle Baileys in which our heroes (?) are fighting something called the “Red Army,” and while it’s usually clear from context that these are training exercises, it would be fun to believe that today’s strip takes place in an alternate universe where the men of Camp Swampy have been deployed into combat against the Soviet Union, and that, as you’d expect, their division has been quickly defeated and its few survivors are now being rounded up. Given the creepy fact that we see no people attached to these massive gun barrels, it’s also possible that the Red Army is a band of out-of-control military death-bots, who are making short work of their hapless biological adversaries, not least thanks to the humans’ inability to function without technology that’s controlled by the cyber-enemy.

Hagar the Horrible, 3/6/12

Lucky Eddie has blatantly stolen this joke from Groucho Marx, but I’m not going to get too upset about it because in a minute he’s going to be mauled to death by bears for his crimes.

Marvin, 3/6/12

Yesterday I praised Marvin for grappling with interesting themes and avoiding scatological content. Naturally, today’s strip features the smug hell-infant boasting that he can just shit in his pants whenever he wants.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/6/12

If you’ve enjoyed this Herb and Jamaal strip about burping, why not enjoy the four paragraphs I somehow managed to write about it, back when it first ran in 2004?

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Crankshaft, 3/4/12

I’m always intrigued by the precise relationship between Crankshaft and its mother strip, Funky Winkerbean — not so much in terms of characters in common or mismatched chronology, but in tone. What thematic elements do they share, and what distinguishes them? Take this Sunday installment. All the old people are sitting around, talking in terms of mounting panic about the death of everyone they know, a fate that will find them soon enough. That’s basic Funkyverse fare. Then you get a dumb and tactless pun about the situation — also Funky-standard. But Crankshaft being a sullen, humorless jerk when he gets his pun taken away from him? That’s the Crankshaft value-add!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/4/12

Sorry, boys, nobody’s allowed to leave Hootin’ Holler! Loweezy’s doing you a favor: if you had managed to pilot your makeshift aircraft over the barbed wire fence, you just would have been shot by the guards.

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Pluggers, 2/25/12

When I was in college I had a big thing for a Catholic girl and one week I went to church with her (ROMANTIC PRO TIP: This very rarely works) and it was a typically crunchy collegiate parish and at one point the bearded priest busted out an acoustic guitar and we got a folk-rock version the Lord’s Prayer and all I could think was “Oh my God, Mel Gibson was right.” Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I feel you, my cranky plugger friend! And I’m not ashamed to say it!

Mary Worth, 2/25/12

More proof that Nola is being unfairly depicted as the villain in this story! Obviously in whatever badly decorated office this is the well-known rules of engagement are that one sleeps one’s way to the top. It’s probably right there in the HR manual! Our catty duo knows that they’d do the same if only they were endowed with the sexy gams and malleable face of their rival.

Crankshaft, 2/25/12

So Crankshaft was inducted into the local sports hall of fame to his great delight, but for some reason this week the plot took a turn and was suddenly about how this one-armed reporter we’d never seen before accidentally wrote and published an obituary for this other guy we’ve never seen before, which, weird and not-funny as it is, is surely better than seeing Crankshaft enjoy anything.

Marmaduke, 2/25/12

Don’t be ungrateful! It’s polite of Marmaduke to shake your hand before he brutally dismembers you, just as it’s polite of him to have dug graves for your various body parts rather than just leaving them strewn about the yard.