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Wizard of Id, 8/23/13

Wizard of Id doesn’t go in for meticulously researched historical detail like Prince Valiant or whatever, but usually its strips include its pseudo-historical characters in its faux-medieval milieu, or at least people who might be plausibly presented as existing in said faux-medieval milieu, even if there are also jokey non-medieval angles to the gag. But today all of the strip’s 49 years of accumulated baggage has been cast aside so that we can enjoy this entirely contemporary joke. Not that it isn’t worth it, obviously, since the punchline is so original, so groundbreaking, that once it had been conceived of it would have been a literal crime against humanity to give it anything but the widest publication possible. (It’s about how kids today use computers instead of magazines, you see, and also about how the magazines in doctors’ offices are generally quite old.)

Family Circus, 8/23/13

Remember, old people aren’t better at hugging because their age and wisdom have opened their hearts more fully to the possibility of loving other human beings without judgement or fear. They’ve just done it more than you have! Have you ever been hugged by a child? It was awful, right? They’re terrible at it. They need more practice.

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Crankshaft, 8/20/13

Crankshaft’s crankiness secrets … revealed! It turns out that he isn’t just an implacable machine hard-wired for hate. He actually has to work at it. There’s a real danger that he might actually have a pleasant interaction with a child, and we can’t have that. Did it used to come more naturally to him? Is he going soft in his old age? The sort of chill up the spine normal people get when they forget why they walked into a room or can’t remember the name of a loved one — does Crankshaft experience that when he catches himself smiling in the mirror sometimes, or when he notices that he’s expressing a glimmer of affection for his family?

Family Circus, 8/20/13

Aww, isn’t this an adorable edition of Kids Say The Darndest Things About Death? “Congrats on being the grandfather who will die second, grandpa! Can I tug on your wrinkled, sagging face-flesh, which feels so different from my own young and supple skin? Whoa, you really yelp if I pinch it too hard! I guess you still have some felling left in it! Yep, you’re still our alive-grandpa! You know, for now.”

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Family Circus, 8/16/13

I freely admit to being charmed by the little drama in today’s Family Circus. It is a story told almost entirely in facial expressions. Dolly and Jeffy are largely uninterested in where they eat, so long as they get to eat soon; PJ doesn’t really understand what’s happening, but he can feel the anger in the air, and it makes him sad; Ma Keane is upset both about the sassback she’s getting and about the fact that once again she’s been assigned the role of the enforcer. And then there’s Big Daddy Keane and his eldest son, the axis around which today’s story revolves. Far in the background, but still deliberately made very visible to us, Daddy is practically glowing. It’s because he’s looking forward to an entire meal of adult conversation for once, of course, but it’s also because he’s getting to watch Billy get put in his place. Billy, meanwhile, is just as aware of what’s going on. He glowers back at his mother, seething at his banishment to the kitchen. Alone among the Keane Kids, he understands that the seating arrangements are based on status, and that he has fallen on the wrong side of the dividing line. Someday he’ll be at the grown-up table, he thinks, and the grown-ups will all be shut up in a nursing home somewhere, unvisited and unloved. Someday.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/16/13

Finally, after showing the main characters lounging around in their underwear and threatening to show them in a bikini and actually showing them in a bikini and having them walk in on people wearing just a towel and order people to take their shirts off — finally the strip gets to depict a naked butt. Jokes on you, prudes! That naked butt is a naked statue butt, so it’s art. Can’t argue with art!

Crankshaft, 8/16/13

Crankshaft’s viscera are still bathed in enough bodily fluids to keep them functioning, in case you were wondering.