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Funky Winkerbean, 1/14/12

So I’ve been pretty much ignoring this week’s Funky Winkerbean, which has been all about the crisis caused by the removal of the vending machines from the school, because, enh, vending machines. Really the only thing of interest so far has been the fact that everyone insists on calling the machines “vendos”, which ranks up with “solo car date” on the list of Formulations In Funky Winkerbean That Are Linguistically Probable But Nonetheless Never Uttered By Living English-Speaking Humans.

BUT! Today we learn that all the angst about this move is not just because everyone loves delicious vending machine food. No, it’s because, like all death-haunted citizens of the Funkyverse, the teachers and students at Westview wish that death would stop haunting them and just show up and take them away from their suffering once and for all. Too terrified to hurl themselves from a bridge or put a shotgun in their mouths or even take up smoking, they at least hope that each day is the day that a bag of sodium-laden chips triggers a massive stroke, after which would come blessed emptiness. But even rides on the carousel of death are now denied to them by their cruel creator.

Momma, 1/14/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Momma is an unlettered philistine! Or maybe she got a Kindle? Gah, who can tell, with this art.

Family Circus, 1/14/12

Now that the Keane Kids, previously Yahweh’s most loyal servants, have switched their allegiances, I guess it’s time for Him to hand over the rulership of creation to our new God, the iPhone.

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Apartment 3-G, 12/21/11

Aww, Lu Ann as earned herself a little post-engagement-breaking-off aimless wandering/thought ballooning. Naturally, I’m EXTREMELY hesitant to argue with any sentence that starts with “Maybe Margo was right all along,” but … maybe the adjective you’re thinking of isn’t “happy” so much as “creepy, controlling, and cult-like”? OK, that’s three adjectives, but you know. Of course, if Lu Ann did fall in love with the entire Linski compound, that’s a sure sign of insanity on her part, so Margo could still be right in that the Lu Ann’s misplaced affections are a sign of her severe emotional problems.

Spider-Man, 12/21/11

“I mean, will this new apartment have a ‘door,’ or one of those fancy new ‘windows’ everyone’s talking about? I know you got a big raise, but this is New York, and real estate is spendy if you want those kinds of amenities.”

Family Circus, 12/21/11

“And I’m not sweet at all! Everyone who’s met me thinks I’m basically intolerable!”

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Crankshaft, 12/15/11

This would just be yet another Crankshaft in which the title character sits on the couch silently while the TV makes a terrible, terrible joke at him, if not for the carefully rendered expression of pure, incandescent rage on his face in that final panel. I mean, really, Crankshaft is always on the spectrum between dyspeptic and pissed off, but this looks like he’s finally snapped. It’s hard to say why, exactly — maybe he knows that he’s naughty and doesn’t want to be lumped in with the terrorists, maybe he’s insulted that the local news has stooped to this level of holiday jocularity, maybe he’s just finally worked out the grand conspiracy that everyone in the world is in on together, against him — but I’m assuming that he’s on the verge of filling his school bus with guns and ammunition and driving straight into a police station, just to see what’ll happen.

Family Circus, 12/15/11

Dolly is playing here with the lyrics to “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” lyrics that, if you live in the United States and have left your house to enter a retail establishment of any sort in the past three weeks, I’m assuming you have running unbidden through your brain. Still, I kind of wish that the Family Circus scheduling computer had accidentally spat out this panel sometime in June. If you read it then, you’d probably assume that Dolly is just enforcing false joyfulness on general principles and has had enough of PJ’s sullen, rebel-without-a-cause attitude, because in this house we sit up straight and smile even if we’re not happy, mister.