Post Content

Spider-Man, 8/25/19

Fandoms and conspiracy theories (pretty much the same thing, IMHO) have this weird tendency to crystallize attention around characters that normies see as incidental. So while I’m dimly aware of the likes of Boba Fett, Jean Grey, Konstantin Kilimnik, and Comet Ping Pong, they’re the center of the universe for yarn-and-corkboard trufans WHO KNOW WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON!!11!

Gwen Stacy is one such secret nexus, I think? You can tell this is a flashback to the earliest days of the canon because Green Goblin’s the only Spider-Man nemesis drawn in a cartoony style; later ones are “realistic” types like Melvin the Mole Man, Electro, and — God help us — Clown-9. So “Gwen and Norman die” is an origin story and plot driver, like the Uncle Ben thing. Except it’s messed up: Harry is mad at Spidey because Norman accidentally killed himself. Spidey swore vengeance on Norman because his own botched rescue attempt killed Gwen (“killed in a fall” is an elegant circumlocution). Maybe after she hears all this, Black Widow will set Spidey and Hobgoblin straight and get them to shake hands, exchange secret identities, and maybe catch The Price Is Right on TV?

Crankshaft, 8/25/19

Humanity’s disordered nature inclines us all toward sin, but I try to give unpleasant people the benefit of the doubt, you know? If somebody seems unreasonably belligerent, say, I chalk it up to them having a bad day, a shaky start in life, or the inability to get past some old grievance. I figure nobody gets up in the morning and says, “I’m going to be a total asshole today, all day long.” But seriously, how else do you explain something like this?

Breaking Cat News, 8/25/19

It’s the long-awaited crossover event between Breaking Cat News and Marvin. At last, POOP IS EVERYWHERE!

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Crankshaft, 8/19/19

I get irritated when authors reward their fictional characters but I kinda understand it? I mean, if Rex Morgan punches your meal ticket for nigh on seventy years, why not slip the guy a free boat now and again?

But this crosses a line. Lillian is no towering literary lion like Judge Parker, earning endless sweetheart contracts for a string of unreadable books. She’s a second-string Funkiverse villain who ruined her sister Lucy’s life, then abandoned her to die in hospice care demented and alone. Here’s how to make it right: Lillian should take Eugene’s advice and write a memoir about Lucy, forcing her to confront her monstrous past and hurl herself in shame from her second-story bookstore window. Unfortunately, she’d probably just sprain her ankle, prompting knowing smirks all ’round.

Curtis, 8/19/19

Oh, look, it’s Curtis Learns a Valuable Lesson While Doing Summer Volunteer Work, a regular feature. This year’s Lesson will be delivered by Quincy Shearer, an unpleasant blind incontinent disabled alcoholic with toe fungus, two annoying corgis, and epic ear hair. Settle in for bitter invective against Kids These Days with their ridiculous allergies, TwitBooking on SnapFace, and expensive torn-up jeans. But enjoy your mockery now, because we’re all going to feel just terrible when Quincy’s Heart of Gold and/or Redeeming Backstory is revealed in a day or two.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/19/19

Speaking of Redeeming Backstories, here’s yet another Hallowed Elder with a Funny Name from the golden age of Pop Culture, and this one is a (dramatic music) woman! You know, Dale (neé Dalia) Messick broke into comics in the 1950’s with Brenda Starr. But I guess nobody wants to hear from some Depression-enduring, World-War-II winning, rock-and-roll-inventing has-been generation, at least not when there’s a pot-smoking, sex-having, self-indulging, Social-Security-bankrupting has-been generation in line right behind it.

Judge Parker, 8/19/19

Hey April, remember Saturday, when you threatened these two at gunpoint and demanded that they talk? Happy now?

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 8/12/19

So underlying the whole “Hadley is using her big-city lawyer skills to browbeat the school board into letting an ineligible student attend Milford” plot is the “Hadley’s dad, who is also a lawyer, I guess, isn’t really that hot on her relationship with Jaquan for reasons nobody can explain.” I guess Hadley’s just straight-up annihilating the hapless small-town rubes of the Milford school board with facts and logic as way to show her dad that she isn’t “losing her edge”? Anyway, say what you will about Milford’s white-collar local elites, but they are not afraid to wear bold green suits in professional circumstances, which is more than the men in more supposedly culturally liberal big cities can say!

Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, 8/12/19

Yes, it sure is crazy that Mindy would want to come to the county fair, since county fairs are … one of America’s most treasured and popular local attractions? I guess if any effort had been put into coming up with a personality for Funky Winkerbean-era Mindy beyond “fond Crankshaft rememberer and sex reward for Mopey Pete,” we the audience might be surprised too! But she really does have an emotional connection to the fair, it seems: it was the place where she heard grandfather say “A funnel cake is like a donut on steroids!” which was the only time in her entire life that he successfully deployed a common turn of phrase without botching it so badly that it was difficult to believe that he was a native English speaker.

Mary Worth, 8/12/19

What’s Dawn going to do with the few short weeks she has left with Hugo? Sit on the lawn and stare at his ass and calves, apparently! This is honestly the most emotionally healthy choice we’ve ever seen her make.