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Funky Winkerbean, 3/10/22

Wow, in an extremely believable turn of events, Marianne has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, for her extremely cliched role as “wife who dies of cancer” in a movie nobody saw or liked or promoted! And, as is only appropriate, she begins her acceptance speech by thanking Lisa, who died of c– wait, what? She’s thanking her mother? UNACCEPTABLE! Under most circumstances, I don’t want to be confronted with Les’s smug face, but I do sort of want to see a smash cut to him watching at home mournfully, while Cayla smirks in the background.

Crankshaft, 3/10/22

Remember last month, when Crankshaft went to church to pray for a disaster-level snowstorm, which would snarl his town’s economy and possibly result in accidents and deaths, but would have the advantage of getting him time off of work? Well, I never followed up on that, but there was a big storm and they did cancel school, but he went in to work anyway because he didn’t bother to check, because he’s an idiot. What he took away from that experience, though, was that God would heed his call to heap pain and violence on others at his whim, and I think everyone in Centerville is going to be a lot worse off for it.

Rex Morgan, M.D. 3/10/22

Man, check out Rex’s expression in panel two! That’s the face of a man who knows that he’s supposed to feel joy at the prospect of a new adorable baby entering the world, and so he’s just going to tighten his cheeks has hard as he can and hope that’s the vibe he’s conveying.

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Marvin, 3/3/22

Man, Jeff’s facial expressions here are a real journey — and not, to be clear, a journey I enjoyed. In panel one he’s very excited, and if you didn’t know what this strip’s whole deal was, you might think he likes to cook and is happy to help out with tonight’s dinner. But, nope, it turns out he’s just thrilled to let his wife know that her cooking sucks in a new, hilarious way! His facial expression in the final panel is positively post-orgasmic. Obviously these two don’t have sex anymore because the last time they did they created Marvin, so I guess this is the only way Jeff can get off.

Crankshaft, 3/3/22

I touched on this last week, but, like — a year ago? two years ago? who can even say — there was an excruciating two weeks of Crankshaft strips where this one-armed guy with a beard, who apparently was the last employee at the local newspaper, went to New York and gave a long, indignant speech about corporate media control to the manager of the hedge fund who owned the newspaper and then quit. It was so boring that I never talked about it on this blog, and I’m reasonably sure we had never even met this character before, but I guess we’re finally getting the payoff to it because as I predicted the mysterious meeting was about launching a community newspaper, which is all well and good. But said meeting was organized (and the project funded?) by the historical society lady, and our ace reporter is about to learn that his new paymaster can be as controlling as any hedge fund. Is the Fire Department running a prostitution ring right of the firehouses? That can wait, because this lady’s rival for the PTA presidency is about to be destroyed by the free press.

Dustin, 3/3/22

“Ha, it’s funny, because we’re on the verge of financial ruin due to your mother’s neglect! Anyway, I’m just gonna keep eating this tiny cookie like a dipshit.”

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Dick Tracy, 2/23/22

Kind of weird that Dick Tracy, the man who had a portable voice communications device decades before the rest of us had cell phones, apparently has a … pager? In the year of our lord 2022? Seems implausible, to me. Probably more likely that he’s just desperately trying to get away from Sam as Sam tries to ratiocinate his way to the solution that Dick is going to get by doing some light enhanced interrogation on an informant or two next week. “I’d love to really get into your thought process, Sam, but I’m [tries and fails to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse] getting a page from [tries and fails to come up with a normal-sound name] Riger.”

Crankshaft, 2/23/22

Look, I am a huge history dork, OK? Last fall one of the high points of my trip to New York was going to a tiny train museum in the Catskills where I bought this sign and was sincerely disappointed that we had dinner reservations and couldn’t stay for the talk they were giving about … I don’t remember now, but it was definitely train related. But even I would be very upset if I got a mysterious invite that made it seem like I’m about to learn that my great-aunt was going to leave her entire fortune to anyone brave enough to spend the night in a haunted house, but I show up and it turns out it’s just at the local Historical Society. This is going to turn out to be some NIMBY bullshit where Crankshaft And The Gang Stop Evil Developers From Tearing Down An Old But Disused Silent Movie Theater or something and I’m going to wish they had ended up saving journalism instead.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/23/22

Funky Winkerbean has taken a break from its a plot about how the Oscar nominations work that was marred by a number of errors of fact and chronology, and is now doing a riff about how everyone in Hollywood has an eating disorder, which I have to admit is pretty on point.

Mary Worth, 2/23/22

Oh, sorry, it looks like Cal isn’t going to bring his smoldering youthful libido into Toby’s staid life and reawaken her sexual self, which she thought died years ago in Ian’s bed. No, he’s going to want her to be his substitute mom, but like a cool mom, who doesn’t yell at him when he gets high with his bros and does getting-high-adjacent stuff like playing frisbee or watching Netflix but instead tells him he’s “feeding his creativity.” He will still expect her to sleep with him, though.