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Crankshaft, 7/19/07

I think someone has left an “h” out of a strategic word in that first panel.

For Better Or For Worse, 7/19/07

When I see lovingly rendered stink lines like the ones in panels three and four, it reminds me why I don’t look at the animated versions of these strips on the main FBOFW site.

Gil Thorp, 7/19/07

Ha ha! The Milford locker room smells absolutely disgusting! Oh, hilarity. It’s good to see that Coach Thorp and … uh … whoever the hell that is spend their potentially teenager-free summers ’roiding up and liftin’ weights down at the high school.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/19/07

Ha ha, Darrin and Jessica are in deep shit! Because they live in Funky Winkerbean, what should be a vaguely awkward but ultimately fondly remembered act of wholly consensual sex will in fact result in one or more of the following:

• Pregnancy (despite the fact that this has been the longest-drawn-out lead-up in teen sex history, probably still nobody will think to use any form of birth control because, you know, nobody gets to have any fun)
• Cancer (sexually transmitted, somehow)
• Pregnant cancer
• Cancerous pregnancy

Shoe, 7/19/07

Ha ha, the Perfesser’s life is shitty! I like the way he’s staring at the bottom of his glass as he contemplates the awful, wasted decades.

Family Circus, 7/19/07

Man, Dolly’s quite the little shit. Notice that Grandma isn’t even attempting to maintain a look of grandmotherly good humor. Someone’s going to get bashed on the head with a coffee cup, but fast!

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Crankshaft, 7/18/07

Ha ha! Crankshaft’s prostate is grotesquely swollen, making every waking moment a torture for him! Ha ha! Oh, the hilarity!

Adding to the funny, of course, is the revelation that the dickery that the ’Shaft displays pretty much every day is part of a majestic chain of misanthropy that spans the generations. At least Crankshaft Senior has some actual annoyance to overreact to, since presumably one didn’t send children off to stadium restrooms on their own, even in the sepia-toned days of yore. Since our hero does not require assistance to toddle off to the john in the present day, I guess Crankshaft III just wants to make him feel bad about being old and decrepit.

Actually, now that I think about it, I guess that’s supposed to be Crankshaft’s son-in-law, not son, since he’s the one with the unspeakably hateful Ukrainian mother. Pretty much everyone in this strip is a loathsome human being, is what I’m saying.

(Hey, isn’t the ’Shaft supposed to be a WWII vet? If he’s 70, that would have him going through his basic training at the ripe old age of 7. Of course, it’s possible that the ’Shaft-in-law just uses “70” as his synonym for “I no longer bother to keep track of how old you actually are, fossil.”)

UPDATE: As several of you who are clearly smarter than I am pointed out, the little tot in the sepia-toned first panel is a girl child, which means that the horrible, horrible adult human being next to her is the ’Shaft himself. Let this be a lesson to you about not altering the facts to fit your grandiose “cycle of hate” thesis. Presumably said pigtailed tot is in fact the wife of the non-’Shaft dude in panel two, and thus he’s dishing out a little payback on her behalf.

Apartment 3-G, 7/18/07

“Yes, Nora, in my experience, there’s nothing an impoverished Oriental peasant respects more than a white man in an electric blue suit waving hard currency around and offering him the chance to choose between selling centuries-old pieces of his cultural patrimony and starving to death. The little buggers adore me.”

Something is seriously awry with Nora’s shirt in panel three. “God damn it, if I show him my left boob, will he stop nattering on about my dead husband and the filthy foreigners he forsook me for?”

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/18/07

Curmudgeon dominance of TDIET proceeds apace: today’s entry is from faithful reader Damian Penny, who sent this entry straight out of m************ Newfoundland, before he up and moved to Halifax. It may be the first TDIET to end in a twisted pile of steel and flesh — but not the last, I’m hoping.

HONK-A is an amusing but not outrageous variation, but I dare you to find a horn that can produce a sound like HONK-K. On the other hand, I really like the way the trucker’s wordless curse symbols are all tiny-like and entirely contained within the cab.

Mary Worth, 7/18/07

You get the feeling that Drew starts a lot of his sentences with “I love talking about my”.

Sally Forth, 7/18/07

So, long story short, that’s why everyone at Splash Land died of cholera.

Finally, I offer the latest in an extremely occasional series of potential LiveJournal icons from the comics, this one from today’s Crock:

It should correspond to “Mood: Incontinent”.

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Spider-Man, 7/15/07

I know it gets old hearing me go on about how Spider-Man is an incredible feeb, but … Jesus Christ, Spider-Man is such an incredible feeb. Today’s he’s decided that he’s just had about enough of this terrible secret identity curse, and so he’s going to pack up his things and go retire the Spider-Man identity entirely. Here’s a hint, Spidey: Spider-Man is the interesting one — by comparison, anyway. You know who should be going into retirement? Mr. Peter “Waaaah my wife makes more than me” “Waaah I don’t have health insurance even though I have super powers and don’t need it” “Waaah I can’t reach the remote” Parker, that’s who. Does this happen to all superheroes eventually? Were Rex Morgan and Mary Worth originally crime-fighting mutants who retired their superhero personae but somehow held on to their spots in the comics pages? Because Peter Parker sans Spidey could out-dull either of them.

I do like the leftmost panel in the bottom row, though, which dramatically illustrates the insane mob of camera-wielding maniacs that would surely drive even the most powerful superhero into seclusion. “Look, there’s a guy on the roof — he might be Spider-Man! Photograph, photographers, photograph!”

However, in the long run, even the usually reliable NEXT! box disappoints. Is that Papyrus font? Sheesh.

Judge Parker, 7/15/07

You can tell Mr. Caesar is a bad guy, because he wears a full three-piece suit when he goes to inspect his sinister industrial operation, which probably exists solely to transform crude oil directly into global-warming-causing CO₂ without even refining it into useful gasoline first, because he’s just that evil, you see. So also clearly this “Rusty” will have something really awful in store for Sam and Sophie. I’m guessing that when he makes his arrival tomorrow (tomorrow in Judge Parker time; actual date: June 3, 2008), he’s going to look a little something like this:

“GEEEAAHHH!” Sam will say. “YOU CAN HAVE OUR SHARES IN THE WINERY — JUST STOP POINTING THAT FACE AT ME!”

Sophie, meanwhile, is so worked up about environmental disaster that her left eyeball is rolling into the back of her head. It’s kind of freaking me out.

Crankshaft, 7/15/07

“Wait a minute … damned souls, trapped in trees and begging to be urinated on? Packed swimming pools full of boiling water, with the scent of cooking human flesh wafting over the whole neighborhood? That’s not ‘the past’ … those are my fantasies about the torture of my enemies in hell! Sorry, I’m old, I get things mixed up sometimes.”