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Family Circus, 8/29/16

Wow, shoutout to the Family Circus for a punchline that’s actually a darndest thing a kid might say, in the year 2016! So, whaddya think the original caption for this panel was, before that phone was added in, since 90% of Family Circus panels consist of recycled art? I’m guessing something along the line of “Ooooh! Watch your feet, Grandma! We feed Kittycat too well and now she’s too lazy to catch mice. The house is infested with vermin!”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/29/16

Welp, it’s not early onset Alzheimer’s after all — it’s football-induced chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Devastating, slowly degenerative, and topical? That’s the Funkyverse way!

Dennis the Menace, 8/29/16

Hmm, Dennis seems to implying that dreams can exist within dreams, and thus calling into question the very nature of our lived existence: is everything we think we understand about our lives just a transitory phenomenon as we sleep, our body in some unknowably different universe that we’ve forgotten until we wake? Definitely some solid menacing action.

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Blondie, 8/23/16

I’m really not sure how to even begin grappling with this strip, in which Dagwood, a man who I’ve always assumed to be not too deep into middle age and in possession of a perfectly healthy set of teeth, sits through a nightmarish sales pitch for some kind of futuristic dental implant technology with a name out of a satirical dystopian sci-fi movie. Maybe his insatiable appetite is leading him into the dangerous world of body modification; once this dentist outfits him with ultra-efficient chewing tech, he’s going to show up at a hospital and demand that he be given gastric bypass surgery “only in reverse.”

Beetle Bailey, 8/23/16

Say what you will about today’s Beetle Bailey, but it does get to an essential truth at the heart of the strip, namely that all the characters are morons who also have access to military weaponry. I think it’s a nice touch that the joke focuses on Zero possibly blowing his own face off and just barely draws our attention to the box of live grenades propped awkwardly on the table, ready to tumble out at the most hilarious/violent moment.

Family Circus, 8/23/16

What character do you most identify with in today’s Family Circus? I’d like to think I’m the guy who’s just out there casually smoking a pipe while he’s sunbathing, but I’m probably more like the kid who thinks that because he’s wearing goggles we can’t tell how eagerly he’s staring at the other kid’s toy boat.

Mark Trail, 8/23/16

So, uh, the staff of Woods and Wildlife Magazine didn’t know invasive species were bad until, like, last year? I’m beginning to have some doubts about their environmentalist bona fides.

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Family Circus, 8/13/16

“Am I practicing flat-out nihilism, or some godless esoteric discipline — ha ha I’m agnostic on the question! Oh, I learned so much at Heresy Camp, Dolly, you have no idea ….”

Judge Parker, 8/13/16

Oh man, that’s some sub-Mary Worth-level advice Abbey is pitching right there, but in fairness, why would she engage seriously the efforts to “find and hold onto a man” of somebody whose 10-year romantic history reads like this:

• Hometown squeeze Bob — he of the front-porch “tongue thing”. Neddy dumped him.
• Julian “Beautiful Shoes Jules” Edgemont, Neddy’s “live-in boyfriend” from Paris. Neddy dumped him.
• “Retcon Mark,” Neddy’s newly-divorced former boyfriend, home from Harvard. Neddy dumped him.
• Mark again, back from Hong Kong and proposing marriage. Neddy dumped him again, and somehow everybody was supposed to feel sorry for her about it.

So maybe the reason you can’t hold onto men, Neddy, is that you keep dumping them? Just spitballin’ here.

Phantom, 8/13/16

Mr. Walker (for Ghost Who Walks don’tcha know) drops his son off at school. I hope this branches the story into three: Heloise and sometimes Diana in New York, mother/daughter bonding and daughter/roomie hijinking under the sinister eye of Eric Sahara (the Nomad!); Kit Jr. learning Phantomry from the monks; and Kit Sr. and sometimes Diana going through the trials of empty-cave syndrome.

But I wouldn’t get too sure about that “You’re a Phantom” thing quite yet – the strip has been dropping hints for a long time:

Phantom, 4/5/06

Since Heloise routinely bests young Kit in athletic contests, maybe some kind of sibling duel-to-the-death scenario is in the offing? I’ll pop some corn.

–Uncle Lumpy