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What could be more obvious, more crank-turningly predictable than pre-Labor Day back-to-school themes? Nothing, that’s what! So let’s get started!

Dennis the Menace, 08/31/07

Here’s an archetypical back-to-school strip: cozy old theme, a little wordplay, easy on the menace, bang, out of the studio and beat the bridge traffic to the shore. Oh, and Alice Mitchell looks hot in that old-school put-together way. Knows it, too. Mmmm. But I digress.

Curtis, 08/31/07

Nobody turns the crank like Ray Billingsley — it’s like he’s the one working a desk at the DMV. Michelle spurned Curtis? Check! Here comes “Mom won’t buy what I want” as night follows day. Cue Magical Gunk! Barry, wet up that bed! On in five, “Onion”! Greg, smoke ’em if you got ’em! How Billingsley must pray for Kwanzaa, when the mushrooms ripen at last and his mind can soar free.

Crankshaft, 08/31/07

Tom Batiuk once had no peer at whimsy — the hall-monitor machine gun, soliloquies atop the gym rope, band gales. All swept from the cancerscape of FW of course, and alive in Crankshaft only as this ham-handed pretext ginned up to showcase Ed’s relentless petty spite.

Sally Forth, 08/31/05 and 08/28/07

Hey, look — Hilary’s going into the sixth grade. Stretchin’ right out, too — King Features might want to rethink that “precocious 10-year-old” business. And I’m pretty sure that’s her Dad’s manic glint in the second strip. Poor Sally.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Crankshaft, 8/17/07

UH OH WATCH OUT YOU POLITICAL CRUMBUMS! IT’S BEEN A MERE TWENTY MONTHS SINCE YOUR SINISTER MEDICARE PART D WENT INTO EFFECT, AND NOW YOU’VE GOT THE ’SHAFT TO ANSWER TO! At long last, Crankshaft’s smoldering anger will be harnessed to effect progressive political change. I can see it now: just as Lisa stands up to begin her testimony about how cancer is bad, suddenly the ’Shaft bursts into the committee chamber, planting an elbow into her tumor-ridden torso, sending her tumbling to the floor. “GOD DAMN IT ALL,” Crankshaft bellows. “I’M OLD, I’M PISSED, I’M WEARING A HAT, AND I DON’T WANT TO PAY FOR MY MEDS!” Everyone stands up and applauds, Medicare is fixed, Lisa expires unnoticed under the table, and cancer remains legal.

Mary Worth, 8/17/07

All week I’ve been ignoring Santa Royale’s most eligible young medico as he romances Bachelorette #2 over lumpy grey mush and human blood at some hideously decorated restaurant, but that was before today when oh Jesus God did Vera seriously just compare Drew to her brother?? Drew, I’ll tell you how this story ought to end: with your running for the door right now. Don’t bother picking up the check, as Vera’s lonely at the top of her chosen career path and can surely afford it. Just get out now.

Spider-Man, 8/17/07

“W-we’re vibrating!! And it actually feels pretty great! Boy, this is working a lot of stress out of my deep tissues. Thanks, the Shocker!”

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Crankshaft, 8/10/07

If there’s one thing that redeems Crankshaft for me, its the fact that the title character really does live up to his name. He’s always angry about something — or about everything — all the time. Take today’s strip, for example. Most people in this situation saying this word would be making a light-hearted little joke. You might expect them have a smile on their face — or, in this context, the patented Funky Winkerbean/Crankshaft gentle smirk. Not the ’Shaft, though. He’s regarding that feeble little sapling with the same look of unbridled hate and rage that he also uses on his yuppie neighbors, the children who ride his bus, his friends, and his own family. When he says “timberrr!”, he’s saying, “Hey, little tree, I know you didn’t get to choose where your seed landed. I know that you’re an example of the magic of life, of that genetic code that orders everything alive to reproduce and to grow, even the harshest of circumstances. I know all this and I don’t care. You’re in my gutter and I’m going to kill you. Fuck you, little tree.”

Mark Trail, 8/10/07

Did you ever notice that Mark never punches rich people? His fists of fury seem almost exclusively aimed at low-life hillbillies like Buzzard, occasionally deigning to sock out a lower-middle-class striver like Diver Dan. I used to think this was part of some ugly class-based agenda in the strip, but today we see the real reason: rich people are cowards. I’m guessing Mark is starting to ever so gradually clench his right fist just below the bottom of the first panel, leading to Leo’s terrified sweat balls and eventual confession. “He did it! Him! Punch him, not me!” The poor either aren’t afraid to get a facefull of Trail knuckles, or aren’t perceptive enough to recognize the incipient fisticuffs and surrender in advance.

Gil Thorp, 8/10/07

Speaking of punching, the next time Mark decides to punch someone, could we see him winding up looking through the undercrotch of the punchee? Failing that, could every comic in every newspaper just be replaced by today’s Gil Thorp, forever? Thanks.

Hi and Lois, 8/10/07

Hey, look, kids, it’s a ghost! That is, if you think “some dude being paid minimum wage to wear an old-timey miner outfit” is some sort of acceptable substitute for “a ghost.” Considering Hi ruined his family financially to go on this vacation, this is a pretty poor showing.

Mary Worth continues to be ludicrous, of course, but nothing I say could match t.a.m.s.y.’s Mary Worth/TDIET mashup.