Post Content

Dustin, 8/17/26

Hey kids! Do you remember the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that dumped 150 million gallons of oil into the ocean? Well, that happened in April of 2010, which I regret to inform you all was more than 16 years ago. I’m not saying that it’s impossible for someone in their early 20s, as Dustin is supposed to be, to have a memory of this event that includes the total amount of oil spilled over the course of the disaster; I am saying that it’s a testament to the unparalleled period of peace and prosperity we’ve experienced since, given that this is Dustin’s go-to reference for “something world-historically bad happening” within his lifetime.

Crankshaft, 8/17/26

Hey, kids! Do you remember Funky Winkerbean, the comic strip that was originally about wacky high school students in Northeast Ohio who hung out at Montoni’s Pizza, but eventually came to be about depressed adults in Northeast Ohio whose lives all revolved around Montoni’s Pizza in some way, before finally becoming about survivors living in a futuristic sci-fi Northeast Ohio hellscape where books were eradicated in “the burnings” and the last few precious copies are guarded by robots, with the status of Montoni’s Pizza being unclear? Anyway, long story short, Crankshaft hopes you do, because clearly the intention here is that Crankshaft sitting down and saying “a nice big slice of … Montoni’s Pizza” with an extremely knowing expression on his face will have all of us hootin’ and hollerin’ and yellin’ “got the reference” like we’re the live studio audience for Family Matters and Urkel just walked on set.

Post Content

Crankshaft, 8/10/26

You know how when you’ve been experiencing pain for a while so it’s become just kind of background radiation in your life, when it abates the absence of sensation feels actively pleasurable? That’s what I’m assuming is happening here: Pam had instinctively steeled herself to receive some gibberish pun-like utterance from her father, but then he just said some mostly coherent dribble of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and now she’s positively beaming about it. Obviously this is even less of a “punchline” than you usually get in this strip, but maybe reading one of the only Funkyverse strips ever where everybody involved is more or less happy is its own reward.

Alice, 8/10/26

I’m assuming we’re supposed to understand “The Marketplace” as Amazon or eBay or Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or something, but maybe Alice’s boyfriend is talking about, like, the marketplace as an abstract concept? Maybe Alice has crafted the perfect computer virus that’s going to destroy capitalism, and she just has to do “one more thing” to end all forms of buying and selling, forever.

Mary Worth, 8/10/26

Here’s a thing about Wilbur: he could’ve been fucking your mom for years and that wouldn’t make you his friend. You’ve got to go out for ice cream with him and conspicuously not mention the fact that he got a triple scoop and it’s melting all over everything to earn that status!

Post Content

Click the banner to contribute by PayPal or credit card, or see below for other options.

Oh my gosh it’s the very last day of the 2026 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser! Hurry! Thank you!

Crankshaft, 7/24/26

Boy, these multiverse stories sure get complicated! Like when Barry Allen Flash teamed up in the past with Jay Garrick Flash to battle The Thinker, The Fiddler, and Shade so Barry could persuade real-world writer Gardner Fox to write a comic book about their adventures! Or when Spider-Men Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire team up to defeat Electro, Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man: No Way Home to keep the hordes of people who know Spidey’s not-so-secret identity from overrunning our world. Or here, where transparent authorial self-insert character “Batton Thomas” teams up with opaque actual author self-insert character Tom Batiuk, presumably to Fight Crime. I don’t know, but if I were Lillian Mackenzie, Harry Dinkle, or Ed Crankshaft, I’d watch my back—these guys are cartoonists—they have erasers and they know how to use them.

Bizarro, 7/24/26

Whoops, looks like the stress finally got to our guy. Forget what I said yesterday.

Crock, 7/24/26

“At last! Our comic strip is saved!”

Phantom, 7/24/26

Chatu “The Python” has surrendered and put on the AI-enabled “Tokoloshe” control anklet, and I’m frankly a little disappointed in him. I mean, this is the guy who tried to Ebolify the whole world through an infected fruit-bat scheme, and blew up half of downtown Mawitaan just to get back at his nemesis the Phantom. He may or may not be a coward, but there is no way he’s gonna let some rich upstart out-evil him! All those years in that cage must’ve softened him up, or maybe he went mad from that interminable drum solo. Either way, get ready for an epic supervillain match-up and battle—now enhanced with AI!

No Comments of the Week on my watch; last week’s victor Victor Von gets a twofer.

—Uncle Lumpy