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Archive: Crankshaft

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OF COURSE HER FACE WILL BE ON THE PRODUCT, HOW DARE YOU

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Mary Worth, 2/8/18

Mary Worth is, of course, the most emotionally self-actualized character in the comic strip that bears her name. How could it be any other way? All of that is on full display on today’s strip. Mary neither seeks nor fears fame. She’s ready for the attention that her muffins’ greatness might draw to her; but, on the other hand, she knows that the vulgar mob is fickle, and if they turn away from her, it’s their fault, not hers, and definitely not the muffins’. She remains open to and sanguine about all possibilities, with an equanimity that Marcus Aurelius and the Stoic philosophers of old would admire.

Spider-Man, 2/8/18

WAIT WAIT WHY DIDN’T IT WORK … THE FIRST TIME???? Is spider-sense one of those things you have to train, like the way Siri learns to understand your voice better over time? “Huh, he’s about to get whacked by a giant lizard tail. Is that good or bad? Not sure, let’s wait and see! [later] OK, definitely bad, we won’t let that happen again, ha ha!”

Crankshaft, 2/8/18

Oh, whoops, Crankshaft isn’t faking his drug-seeking behavior at all: he’s hoarding pain pills to sell at big markup to his creaky-kneed friends. Are you ready for Breaking Bad, except with more terrible wordplay?

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Wednesday is for America’s slow decline

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Shoe, 2/7/18

Hey, so, uh, it’s a real tasty mashup of shapeless joke building in today’s Shoe, isn’t it? There’s two potential ways this joke could actually make sense: Uncle Lou could’ve quit the accounting firm to go work for the Food Network, and now he does the books for the cooks, or he could’ve quit the police force to become a producer for the Food Network, and now he books the cooks. Only the second one works with Shoe’s Goggle Eyes of Horror™. It’s like they started with the “accounting … books” thing and then made their way to a slightly different punchline and then, like, forgot they could go back and change the beginning before they submitted it. It’s so aggressively half-assed that I almost have to respect it.

Gil Thorp, 2/7/18

Sure, Paloma’s angry about the state of her home island, but now she’s getting some insight into mainland politics. Turns out it’s a thin veneer of democratic process that can’t cover up a broken, unresponsive system anymore!

Crankshaft, 2/7/18

America’s response to its out-of-control opioid crisis is growing increasingly punitive — like, did you know that in many states you have to keep prescription meds in the bottle with the original label at all times, making it technically illegal to use those pill organizers? What I’m saying is, Crankshaft will never face punishment for any of his actual crimes, so if his house ends up getting raided by the local SWAT team after his doctor reports his transparent drug-seeking behavior, I’m totally OK with it.

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Fed follies

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Gil Thorp, 2/5/18

Ahh, it looks like our Puerto Rican refugees are integrating into Milfordian society! Jorge is learning how boys on the mainland roughhouse (by … throwing towels near each other in the showers, I guess???); Paloma, meanwhile, is falling in with the “political” girls, who hold a wide and divergent group of beliefs but still hang out together because being nonspecifically “political” is a group identity that real people have in real life, sure! They’re also blending in via another important technique: becoming white! Sure, the population of Puerto Rico encompasses a wide variety of skin tones, but most people generally stick with the one they have rather than becoming paler after spending a few weeks in whatever Great Lakes-adjacent state Milford is in.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/5/18

Most of the depressing plots in Funky Winkerbean involve death: death from cancer, or CTE, or what have you. But Harry’s stricken face in the final panel reveals that for a Funkyverse denizen, the prospect of continuing to live indefinitely is terrifying in and of itself.

Crankshaft, 2/5/18

FUN FACT: the actual reason is that the Kansas City Federal Reserve decided to start an annual conference in 1982 and wanted to convince then-Fed chair Paul Volcker to come, and so decided to put it in Jackson Hole because Volcker loved fly-fishing! This has been going on for 25 years just to cater some old rich dude’s hobbies, even though the rich old dude has been in that job since 1987! The world is dumber than even Crankshaft can imagine