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Funky Winkerbean, 4/17/11

This latest plot development may be more weighted down with grim Funkyverse backstory than any we’ve yet encountered. For those who don’t keep up, or who continually purge Funky details from their mind so that they can continue to feel pleasure: the blond dude is Darrin, who was the baby Les’s sainted dead wife gave birth to as a teenager and gave up for adoption. His blonde wife is Jessica, whose father was a newscaster and the star of John Darling, a strip that Tom Batuik created with Marvin auteur Tom Armstrong; the strip was cancelled and was wrapped up in hilarious fashion when a crazed gunman murdered Darling. Later, back at the Funky mothership, Les solved the murder and made it the subject of his first book, which was a complete financial flop. Fun!

Jessica and Darrin somehow managed to escape the awful gravitational pull of gloom that is Westview, but are now returning voluntarily because Jessica wants to make a film about the death of her father, which will presumably do about as well as Les’s book. Anyway, the best part is that they have to live with the Moores (because everyone in town is far too depressed and/or cancer-ridden to build new houses) and Darrin will have to get a job at Montoni’s (because it’s literally the only functional business within a fifty-mile radius that doesn’t require an MD with an oncology specialization as a prerequisite of employment).

Curtis, 4/17/11

I fine it hard to believe that Gunk has, in all his years of paling around with Curtis on the comics pages, never been taken to an American movie. But I’m even more baffled that horror connoisseur Curtis can’t see the potential in the movie plot Gunk outlines. A respected scientist is transformed as a result of his obsession into a grotesque, enormous mollusk — a monstrous nightmare-thing that, in an appalling twist, his insatiable colleagues consume alive? The visceral horror combines with allegorical themes to make Flyspeck Island a shoo-in as winner of next year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (Wait, do they not speak English on Flyspeck Island?)

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/17/11

Perspiring visibly, the cop was so fixated the sordid sexual encounter he had planned for the evening that he couldn’t focus on his job! Sordid R-rated film starring Harvey Keitel or Nicolas Cage … or wacky comic that appears in family newspaper around the country?

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Curtis, 3/29/11

Greg, I’d be less concerned with the “con man” label, which after all sounds sort of quaint and roguish, and more with the implications of the pitchfork. Since there isn’t a lot of conceptual overlap between con men and farmers, I have to assume that Diane is suggesting that Greg’s father/grandfather/whoever is an actual demon, from hell. Is she worried about his presence in her innocent son’s dreams? Is he attempting to cross over into he real world, Freddy Krueger-style?

Marmaduke, 3/29/11

Speaking of demons from hell, we’ve finally discovered something that even Marmaduke is afraid of: the Wham-O Corporation’s trademark lawyers. I don’t know what’s sadder: the thought there are teams of lawyers paid to read the comics to make sure they don’t tread upon anybody’s trademarks, or that the Marmaduke artist might scrupulously add the appropriate symbol to registered trademarks unprompted.

Beetle Bailey, 3/29/11

Two weeks ago, General Halftrack slipped off to the woods to quietly kill himself. Today, in a very special Beetle Bailey, Beetle finds the body.

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Momma, 1/14/11

It’s been a long time since I’ve checked in with Momma’s passive-aggressive, vaguely incestuous stylings, and today’s entry is so delightfully absurd that I hesitate to try “explain” what it might “mean.” Are we to imagine that Francis has stuffed his nice hat so full of clothes that it has ridiculously stretched out? Or that Momma, in her dotage, went all knit-crazy and made a ludicrously oversized hat for her son? Or that Francis, having long ago traded away the precious maternal keepsake for beer or whatever, just tells the first improbable lie that comes into his head, betting that his mother’s senility will cause her to quickly forget exactly what they’re talking about?

Also, this strip reaffirms my firm belief that black and white strips should not be colored in, because that allows me to imagine, based on the vague patterns visible, that Momma has knitted Francis some kind of oversized rasta hat.

Mary Worth, 1/14/11

A quick visit to the Website of the Four Seasons Bora Bora reveals that it is (a) awesome and (b) the equivalent of about $650 a night, so Jill’s guilt over a little light drunken rehearsal-dinner-ruining must have been quite acute. But I’m less interested in what Jill hocked to pay for this craziness (assuming she just didn’t create fake “vouchers” in Photoshop) and more interested in Adrian and Scott’s wildly different reactions. Remember, Scott was the one who suggested a honeymoon at the local Motel 6, while Adrian longed for an exotic voyage; so why is Scott grinning with manic intensity at the thought of sun and fun in the South Pacific, while Adrian is about to vomit in terror?

Curtis, 1/14/11

We’ve finally arrived at the lesson of this year’s Kwanzcaapade in Curtis, which appears to be: there’s nothing we can’t achieve if we work together a species, so long as we can just go back in time and correct all our mistakes.

Gasoline Alley, 1/14/11

With his pleas to his God having been rejected with contempt, Slim has quickly turned to nihilism. “Really, honey, in 100 years we’ll all be dead. All of us, just marching inexorably towards the grave, and nobody will remember we ever existed. Why bother? Why bother doing anything?”