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Archive: Crankshaft

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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

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Which foodstuff do you think was so painful?

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Beetle Bailey, 2/4/18

Wow, this is a … very specific brand shout-out when it comes to Otto’s wine pairing? Really makes you wonder why he isn’t identifying the manufacturer of all those snack foods he found in his bed. Lay’s® classic potato chips! Snyder’s of Hanover® pretzels! Potato Stix, from Utz®! Really monetize this business! Anyway, if the point was to build brand awareness of Grand Estates Merlot from Columbia Crest Winery, mission accomplished, but if this was supposed to be a call to action, I regret to inform you that the Columbia Crest website currently appears to be inoperative.

Crankshaft, 2/4/18

Wow, considering Elvis probably died in part from all the prescription pills he was taking, that’s a spectacularly grim reference in the second panel! Crankshaft would be able to put himself out of his own endless misery, if he weren’t such a butterfingers.

Mary Worth, 2/4/18

Finally, someone has come up with something that could tempt Mary to make her deal with the devil Ted Miller and start hawking her muffins nationwide: the ability to afford a pied-à-terre in New York so she can live near handsome Broadway legend Ken Kensington, with whom Mary experienced a near-romance in a classic 2014 plotline. She could have Ken as her lover on the east coast and Dr. Jeff on the Pacific! You really can have it all … when you’re rich!