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Hi and Lois, 5/30/16

Wow, the Flagston kids are easily impressed. I don’t even like salad, but as far as I’m concerned, Hi didn’t come close to upstaging his wife’s ultra-local meal. Did he raise adorable calfs and pigs in his yard until they were juicy, delicious adults, then slaughter them in an abattoir of his own design and grind the byproducts into delicious hotdog-slurry with a hand-cranked slurry grinder? Is their home splattered with bits of blood and bone and viscera that will never wash out, all so the kids can enjoy a few fleeting moments of meaty deliciousness? No? He just bought some meat at the store, like a chump? Give me a break.

Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, 5/30/16

Ugh, fine, I guess I’ll pay attention to the Funkyverse’s time-jump-spanning crossover antics. Over in the past, which is also the present, Jeff is about to get dumped by his therapist for being so irritating. (You can tell it’s the past because Jeff’s health insurance has paid for enough sessions to get him to this point.) In the future, which is also the present, Jeff and Pam discuss the fact that Pam’s irritating parent still lives. (You can tell it’s the future because there’s only one print newspaper, and it’s just called The Paper, and it’s only 16 pages long.)

Pluggers, 5/30/16

I love the wild disparity between today’s caption and today’s cartoon. I’m sure the Whitneys are just kinda tickled by the fact that their car’s “check engine” light’s been on forever with no ill effects and wouldn’t actually give a hoot if it went out, but Dog-Man seems be seized by absolute panic over the sudden reversal. “OH MY GOD! THIS IS IT! WHAT WE’VE ALWAYS WORRIED ABOUT! IT’S FINALLY HERE! I’M GOING TO OPEN MY DOOR AND ROLL OUT, YOU DO THE SAME! IF WE DON’T MAKE IT, I’LL SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VEIL! WE HAD A GOOD LIIIIIFEEEEEEEEEEEE”

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Slylock Fox, 5/23/16

I’m not sure what’s funnier about this scenario. Is it that the Count has the awe-inspiring capability to build incredibly lifelike androids but only uses them as decoys when he’s on the lam? Is it that Deputy Duck lassoed this machine-man while it presumably stood there whirring and grinning like a moron? Is it how darn happy Deputy Duck looks to have finally achieved something, and everyone else looks very grave, aware that his sense of accomplishment will soon vanish? No, trick question: the actual funniest thing is that Deputy Duck isn’t wearing pants.

Crankshaft, 5/23/16

Good news! Jeff didn’t get a chance to tell his mother he forgives her, which, since she definitely didn’t think she ever did anything wrong, is a scenario that definitely would have involved her mustering her last shred of strength to say something incredibly cutting and cruel that would have left him even more emotionally torn up than when he started! See, sometimes good things do happen in the Funkyverse.

Mary Worth, 5/23/16

“Incidents lead me to believe too many people are lacking in some way! Incidents, Mary! Incidents! Lacking! This is how I talk, all the time! I don’t understand why I have problems making friends!”

Pluggers, 5/23/16

Pluggers are tired. So very, very tired. When will death finally come for pluggers? When will they finally be able to sleep, forever?

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Crankshaft, 5/22/16

The Funkyverse seems to have taken my proclamed indifference to its chrono-narrative shenanigans as some sort of challenge. “Oh, Mr. Fancy Comics Blogger Man, it doesn’t bother you that Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft take place ten years apart, and yet both also take place in an eternal Comic Book Time present, which right now in both cases is a recognizable 2016? Well, what if we do a fractured-time narrative around Rose’s death in Crankshaft, and we keep prefacing every strip with narration boxes like ‘One week ago…’ and ‘Three weeks ago…’, but we do it over the course of nearly a month, so it becomes increasingly muddled what the chronological reference point is? How about that, huh?” Well, OK, fine. That would bother me. That would bother me quite a bit, actually!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/22/16

Funky Winkerbean, meanwhile, presents me with a simple pleasure: knowing that, while Les thinks he can glimpse daylight at the end of the decade-long hell-tunnel that is his chosen profession, he’ll actually be stuck in place spinning his wheels endlessly until this strip hits its next time-jump, which will no doubt catapult him past his brief joy upon retirement and straight into whatever his next depressing life stage is (old age and death, I would hope).

Mary Worth, 5/22/16

Oh, look, it’s Mary Worth’s first appearance under the new Sunday strip artistic regime! I give her two thumbs up; the cowl-neck sweater is a particularly appropriate choice. Less appropriate is Dawn’s assertion that obviously she’s not in love with Harlan, but if she were, would that really be so bad? After all, Cher once fell in love with a bitter, sullen Nicolas Cage in a movie, and that worked out fine!

Judge Parker, 5/22/16

Since Neddy abandoned her old person sweatshop idea, the world has clamored to know: how will the Spencer-Drivers get rich now, at taxpayer expense? Well, it looks like this is how!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/22/16

Congratulations to the animals, for finally figuring out how to drive the Morgans out of the countryside!