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Funky Winkerbean, 10/19/17

Oh, well, looks like those stone-faced characters just wanted to track Darin down so they could send him free classic comics covers! Don’t worry, it’s not all fun, though: he only gets them because beloved comics artist Phil Holt dropped dead. You remember Phil Holt, right? He was a stand-in for real-life comics legend Jack Kirby who was reduced to penury and forced to work as a caricaturist at children’s parties, where Darin met him by chance and they talked for maybe five minutes! Anyway, apparently that brief conversation was the most validation Holt received in his twilight years, so he left his only valuable possessions to Darin in his will, which not only has cast a pall of melancholy over everything but also appears to be about to drive a wedge of jealousy between Darin and Mopey Pete.

Dennis the Menace, 10/19/17

An underrated way to menace: just sit absolutely still and watch your target try to obscure his own impotence in a cloud of misplaced nostalgia.

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/16/17

Ah, it’s Monday, and what new gloom is settling on the Funkyverse? Well, somebody in a generic office building has been working to track down Darrin Fairgood, somebody with a flat-top haircut and dour demeanor that implies law enforcement of some sort. Or maybe this is tied into the plotline about Darrin’s stalker-y bio-dad that never seemed to come to anything? Anyway, I love that these guys are acting like they just cracked a major cold case by looking up a guy’s IMDB page, as I’m sure it presages hilarity ahead!

Mary Worth, 10/16/17

The problem: Wilbur so hates and fears his own body that he’s unable to even dance properly. The solution: radical exposure therapy, implemented by taking him to the beach, putting him in a speedo, and showing him that nothing bad will happen as he and his beloved frolic together in the ocean for all the world to see. And it’s working! Look at the grin! Feel that joy! His glasses are about to get knocked off his face by the next big wave, but even that won’t be able to kill his mood!

Meanwhile, back in Santa Royale, Mary is sitting in the dark, to make sure she doesn’t accidentally catch a glimpse of her foul, sinful flesh.

Marvin, 10/16/17

Hey, just a reminder that Marvin’s house is wholly permeated by the smell of feces, to the extent that the family dog feels morally superior because he goes out in the yard to take a dump!

Dennis the Menace, 10/16/17

A good way to make us all feel really menaced is to remind us that we’re three or so generations into a long-running experiment to see what happens in a society where most people start getting antsy any time they’re not looking at a screen of some sort, and that experiment is not going well.

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Six Chix, 9/30/17

I find crows a little uncanny, what with their keen intelligence and ability to recognize and remember human faces. So I’ve always been a little averse to learning too much about their ways, lest I freak myself out even more about them, but today’s Six Chix finally led me to fatefully Google “what do crows eat?” Because … what is that the crow is scarfing/ripping/tearing/shredding/mutilating in panel two there? Remember, the coloring is done by the syndicate — it doesn’t necessarily represent the artist’s intent. It sort of looks like a pile of leaves but then it also kind of looks like the gutted body of another bird, right? Those are little bird feed sticking up from the end of it on our right? As the nice bird-feeding lady looks on in horror? Anyway, turns out “crows eat frogs, lizards, insects and anything else they can catch and swallow. They’re also known to eat carrion.” After that, I decided I was ready to give in to full-on bird horror, so I Googled “will crows eat other crows,” but I only got as far as “Crows occasionally murder each other for reasons that mystify scientists” before I decided, you know what, I’m not actually emotionally prepared for this.

Dennis the Menace, 9/30/17

We joke a lot on this blog about the true meaning of menace when it comes to this strip, but really: is there anything creepier than someone — especially a child — doing something destructive and manifestly not in his own best interest, for impenetrable reasons of his own, with a smile on his face? At this point I’m just hoping that bucket is full of water that came out of the faucet, if you catch my drift.

Pluggers, 9/30/17

I feel like this panel is cheating by giving us a plugger definition not just in the caption but also in a word balloon? Anyway, you have to respect the fact that, no matter how many folksy aphorisms you jam into the text here, this panel still looks like a couple guys cruising for erotic e-stim play partners in the parking lot of the Dillard’s out on Route 78 that closed down in 2011.