Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 1/15/13

Funky Winkerbean Is The Most Depressing Long-Form Work Of Art Ever Created, Chapter 923: two happily married young people with no major current traumas (though plenty of traumas lurking in their past, obviously, not all of which I can remember right now, why is there not a specialized wiki online with articles for each Funkyverse character explaining the specific awfulness they’ve suffered) are having a pleasant evening at home, and express contentment, but that contentment is tempered by an overwhelming sense that any fleeting moment of happiness will immediately be destroyed by the hateful God of Sadness who rules over all. It’s a recurring theme in this strip! And lo, it has come true in panel three, with … a call from Darrin’s mother? Isn’t Darrin’s mother (his mother who adopted him as an infant, not his biological mother, who was LISA who DIED OF CANCER very soon after she and Darrin reconnected with one another) the nice lady who helped coach the girl’s basketball team last year? Why would they fear a phone call from her? Well, I’m sure there will be reasons. Terribly and arbitrarily depressing reasons. Get ready for a dramatic roller-coaster ride this week! (Is it still a roller-coaster ride when you only go down?)

Better Half, 1/15/13

In contrast, this shockingly frank panel is almost hopeful. Mental illness cannot be cured by mere aphorisms! Seek help from a licensed professional!

Mary Worth, 1/15/13

AT LAST, THE DRAMATIC CONFLICT IN MARY WORTH! Mary has been asked to help John design his cakes for his entry in the contest, but John is maybe deciding he’d rather do it on his own and will try passive-aggressively to extricate himself from Mary’s mentorship! Will their pairing end amicably, or will it be mildly socially awkward? Don’t miss a single panel of pulse-pounding action, be sure to order home delivery of every newspaper you can, just in case one gets lost!

Dennis the Menace, 1/15/13

Dad’s job is soul-killing grind, where he neither learns anything nor grows professionally.

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 1/9/13

As threatened, Crazy Harry is about to do some kind of emotionally scarring sybaritic dance, probably while naked. He’s already basically making sweet love to that comics anthology, right in plain sight of everybody. John, powerless to stop his employee, is desperately trying to minimized the damage. “Can’t let the children see,” he thinks. “We’ll be shut down for sure if any of the children see.”

Hagar the Horrible, 1/9/13

All simple sheep-herding peasants who tend flocks on pastureland within a day’s march of the coast of the North Sea: prepare to have your livestock raided, your family killed, and your village burned to the ground.

Dennis the Menace, 1/9/13

“Plus she’s really, really skinny. Why does she talk about dieting all the time? Sometimes I worry that she has an eating disorder!”

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 12/11/12

One of Dennis’s core menacing shticks is repeating things he doesn’t fully understand in a way that causes embarrassment to his parents, usually because it’s something insulting they’ve said about someone behind their backs. Unfortunately, Dennis has now become a self-aware menace, and he now knows that he can get a rise out of people this way; but since the whole thing revolves around him not knowing the meaning of the things he’s saying, he’s sort of blundering around in the dark, latching onto phrases he’s not familiar with in the hopes that someone will be humiliated when he spouts them off. “So it’s a doggie bag, but it’s not for the dog, right? Eh? Eh? I’m saying what everyone’s thinking? Is anyone in trouble yet?”

Pluggers, 12/11/12

The games whose outcomes were so important to pluggers in their youth — grown men, scrambling around in the dirt after a ball! — seem meaningless now. Pluggers know that there’s only one game left in town: survival. They don’t care how many pills they have to choke down, how agonizing it is to carry their creaking frame from chair to chair; the biological imperative carries a thrill all its own. Those names and faces in the obits section belong to family and friends, some of them very dearly missed, and yet in a real sense, just being alive to see the pictures and read the pocket biographies is a victory.