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Crankshaft, 8/17/06

All right, Crankshaft. Do you want to be hardcore? I mean, the way the Lockhorns is hardcore, with an unrelenting focus on the unlikability of your title character? I sometimes get the feeling that you do, but you so often chicken out, with humanizing anecdotes about Crankshaft’s childhood or glimpses into his supposed soft side or mild jokes told by scantily clad girls. You’ve got to jettison all of that. Instead, every day should be like today. Panel one: Crankshaft is presented with an opportunity, at virtually no cost to himself, to perform some small act of human kindness. Panel two: Crankshaft declines to take said opportunity. Boom, boom. Hardcore.

Six Chix, 8/17/06

OK, Six Chix using the same joke as They’ll Do It Every Time was probably a coincidence. But here they’re using the patented TDIET format. Should Al Scaduto sit idly by and let them rip him off? No way! He needs to respond in the harshest way possible! No, not a lawsuit — with an angry cartoon!

Howzzat again? “Libby” and five of her friends say they’re going to create a new kind of comic strip … real “fresh,” yuh see…

…but when they run out of ideas … well, uh … guess whose playbook they’re poaching from?

Oh yeah!

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Apartment 3-G, 8/6/06

I think it’s pretty clear that Tommie’s going to get her mind blown, over and over, until she begs to never ever get a storyline of her own again. I admit that it’s pretty shocking that a woman in her late twenties might call a man in his early fifties by his first name — if you live in 1954. Otherwise, I got nothing on Tommie’s total bafflement. Maybe she’s devastated that her longtime partner in sexless chastity has a non-platonic date with someone. Whatever it is, I hope we’re treated to a whole week of Tommie word-ballooning random words in quotation marks and out of context.

Mary Worth, 8/6/06

“I’m pretty open-mined, but I don’t find Aldo’s brand of stalking amusing at all!” Personally, I find Mary, that champion of suburban condo conformity, describing herself as “open minded” to be quite amusing. Tell the ladies at the downtown women’s shelter all about your open-mindedness, why don’t ya?

Since I actually am open minded, I find Aldo’s brand of humor freakin’ hilarious. Particularly risible is his maniacal and heavily-motion-lined evil hand-rubbing in the final panel. Or maybe he’s so turned on by the thrill of pursuit that he’s doing some spontaneous hand-jiving.

Crankshaft, 8/6/06

There’s absolutely nothing about the humor content of this strip that demands that it be narrated by girls in bikinis, but I’m gradually learning that the main role of the granddaughter in this feature is to distract from the lame-o writing by wearing something skimpy.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/13/06

OK, I know Apartment 3-G is forbidden by law from being sexy, but … Lucy swaps spit with Captain Brushcut in an elevator, and then ends up slightly disheveled but fully clothed on his couch? Lamest. Extramarital affair. Ever.

I do like the trepidatious way in which she’s regarding the slightly open doorway. “That color … oh, crap, please tell me I didn’t go home with that tool Seth from my poetry group, who’s always wearing those hideous electric blue suit jackets. Note to self: eat something after the fourth cosmo from now on.”

Curtis, 7/13/06

Here’s something that you may not believe or even agree with: though I don’t find Curtis funny most of the time, I have come to admire it. Unlike so many, many syndicated strips, it doesn’t phone things in; there’s almost always a wealth of details that reward examination. I particularly like the use of the double-wide second panel to show the Curtis POV church lady panorama, with Curtis’ horrified head dead center. I’m even willing to overlook the inappropriate quote marks in the final panel just because the idea of Curtis hoping to be freed from these women by death’s sweet embrace makes me laugh.

(Tangent: This past weekend we went to see a free outdoor concert by a Latin-y/swing band that a friend of ours is in. Towards the end, this adorable little ham of a child, somewhere in the six to eight range, ran down in front of the stage and started busting a hilarious and surprisingly successful series of circa-1986 breakdancing moves. He was wearing a ludicrously oversized baseball cap that kept falling off as he would spin around on his back or whatever, and ever time he picked it up, he’d be careful to put it back on a more or less the same jaunty angle at which Curtis is rocking his own chapeau here.)

Crankshaft, 7/13/06

In case you’re wondering what Crankshaft does to supplement his meager Social Security checks during the summer when he’s not driving a bus, this week has the answer: he drives an ice cream truck, though this seemingly benign profession should not be taken to indicate that he’s open to compromise on his fundamental and general hatred of the human race. Strips in this storyline so far have featured Crankshaft engaging in such par-for-the-course prickery as taunting people at a Weight Watchers meeting, being rude to children, and, as depicted here, refusing to deploy even basic customer service techniques. It all strengthens my conviction that this strip should be given the slightly longer but much more descriptive title Jesus Christ, Ed Crankshaft Is Such An Asshole.

Gil Thorp and Judge Parker, 7/13/06

Boy, Raju is sure going to be disillusioned when he signs up for his first American gymnastics class.