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Six Chix, 8/23/14

Pluggers Arise

Slowly, weighed down by the unfamiliar clothing, Betsy rose to stand on her hind legs … on her … legs. Powerful thoughts rose unbidden in her awakening mind. No more would she beg or heel for an “owner” or any other mistress: she would destroy them, and assume their place. She would have foibles … and, and, squalor, and resentments. And sweet prescription medications. Betsy’s time — her age — had come. She was next, and the world would tremble.

Her owner’s last shriek echoed in the gathering darkness: “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty plugger!”

Crankshaft, 8/23/14

The authors of Crankshaft wish their readers to know that they are perfectly capable of crafting a serviceable pun in English. It is their hateful main character, Ed Crankshaft himself, who alone butchers our language, out of spite.

Dennis the Menace, 8/23/14

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires Alice Mitchell to carry a Ionizing Radiation Hazard symbol with her at all times, because she is just that hot!

Edge City, 8/23/14

Obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin’s neurotic obsessions are approaching some sort of vanishing point.

Family Circus, 8/23/14

“All except the Oxy, Jeffy – I get those from Duwayne.”

Phantom, 8/23/14

Illegally imprisoned in a Deep Woods cage by a masked enforcer on trumped-up “terrorism” charges, Wambesi freedom-fighter Chatu is kept alive as bait to trick his followers into revealing their loyalties. When President Lamada Luaga can no longer tolerate the human-rights abuses carried out in his name, the Phantom subjects Chatu to a savage beat-down to show Luaga that his precious “Rule of Law” is no match for the Phantom’s own Law of the Jungle, so watch your step, pal. The terrified Luaga surrenders his principles and his rival’s fate to the sinister forces that underpin his regime, abandoning his citizen to a forgotten, hopeless future. Democracy’s heroes, ladies and gentlemen!

Spider-Man, 8/23/14

This would be nothing more than Spider-Man getting shamed by a real superhero yet again, except for the delightful rhyming onomatopoeia in the final panel: “Thok, Doc Ock! Btok! Sock, Pok! That’s a lock; off the clock — you rock!

Hey! I’m minding the store while Josh pulls up stakes and starts a new life in the City of Angels. Look for travel updates, old-timey postcards, and more ahead.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Family Circus, 8/22/14

Sure, we’ve always joked about the way the Keane Kids are drawn in this strip, with their hugely spherical noggins. Called ’em “melonheads.” It’s always been in good fun. We just figured it was a quirk of the artists’ style. But what if we’ve been wrong? What if these children are an intermediary stage in a selective breeding program with the goal of producing a monstrous post-human superbeing with the largest, roundest head possible? “No, PJ,” Dolly admonishes. “That chair is not for you. It is not for any of us. We are mere forerunners of He who is to come. That chair is a throne for the megacraniumed God who will eventually arrive to rule humankind. He will place it atop a pyramid of his enemies’ skulls. Their puny, puny skulls.”

Crankshaft, 8/22/14

Never forget that the central “joke” of Crankshaft, the “fun” Funkyverse strip, is that Ed Crankshaft is so terrible at his job that all the parents in town actively seek out information on school district transportation staffing decisions that in most jurisdictions would be of interest to nobody, because they fear for their children’s lives. Today we see that his reign of awful bus driving terror has concrete and negative economic impacts on this poor city’s real estate market.

Dick Tracy, 8/22/14

SORRY PROFESSIONAL CRIME-SOLVERS BUT I THINK YOU FIND THAT IF YOU TAKE AWAY SOME OF THESE LETTERS AND RE-ARRANGE THE REST YOU GET THE NAME OF SOMEONE WE ALREADY DISLIKE WELP GUESS WE’RE DONE HERE

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Wizard of Id, 8/16/14

This is supposed to be a serious commentary about how man is the most dangerous and deadly animal of all, which is of course accurate. Nevertheless, the first few moments I looked at it, I thought the Wiz was talking about wizards as a class, or maybe just about himself personally. The Wiz is a near-omnipotent mage who works for the dictatorial government of Id, which routinely tortures its citizens on a whim. Of course he kills thousands of people a year.

Family Circus, 8/16/14

You might think that Dolly is being a dolt about how day, night, and the various bodies in our solar system relate to each other, but she’s actually 100% right: it’s two in the afternoon and the “dark” is the construction paper Mommy and Daddy have used to block all the windows in the Keane Kompound, punishing the children for some minor act of disobedience with simulated eternal night. Sorry, PJ, but you won’t get to see the sun again until your older siblings show some halfway convincing repentance.