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Arctic Circle, 8/27/22

Arctic Circle boldly swerves out of its lane (preachy environmental half-jokes) directly into the oncoming traffic of toilet humor. Meanwhile back over in Marvin, Jeff and Jenny Miller return the tribute by composting their son.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/27/22

Hey, anybody remember Roland Mathews, the curly-haired “activist” hypocrite with a belligerent father and a blind spot for women’s rights? No? A solid number-three character during Funky Winkerbean‘s first year, Roland faded out during the strip’s evolution from political themes to high-school hijinx, reappearing once in 2008 for a reunion cameo (back row, second from right).

But the 50-year mark is a time for tying up loose ends, so here’s Rolanda! Will she recount the harrowing yet heartwarming details of her life’s journey? Will she at last unpack her complex issues with Roland’s old nemesis “Wicked” Wanda Waskowski, Westview’s no-nonsense sign-wielding “Girls’ Libber”? Most of all, will she deliver anything even remotely resembling a punchline?

Jury’s out on those first two.

Curtis, 8/27/22

On The Mickey Mouse Club of my longago youth, my least favorite day was Wednesday—”Anything Can Happen Day”—because, well, anything could happen. Mondays reliably delivered Fun With Music, and Thursday predictably brought in clowns, acrobats, animal acts, and circus paraphernalia. Wednesday? Total crapshoot, and very unsettling to the young psyche: these were the Cold War years, after all, and nuclear annihilation was on the table:

Today is the day that is filled with surprises
Nobody knows what’s gonna happen!
Why you might wake to see the Russian missiles raining down
Each one with several warheads to obliterate your town!
When they hit their mark
You will glow in the dark—
On the Mouseketeers’ Anything-Can-Happen Day!

So it is whenever Gunk arrives from Flyspeck Island to disrupt Curtis. His current gimmick is a self-filling salad bowl backed up by a salad-bowl-replicating suitcase, so that no one need ever again want for salad, or for that matter bowls. In today’s strip, Upper Manhattan’s Big Salad cartel predictably launches a witch-hunt to protect its business. But the kindly hardware-store owner begs off, since he… wait, what? “Ma! The writers murdered that kindly hardware-store owner for no good reason!” Anything can happen: this is what it looks like, people.

Many thanks to the indispensable ComicBookHarriet over at sonofstuckfunky.com for character histories of Roland, Wanda, and poor, dead, “I coulda been Lisa” Livinia Swenson.

–Uncle Lumpy

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/24/22

This week’s Funky Winkerbean is about Holly and Funky going to their high school reunion, which I think is hilarious, and to be clear, I mean that not in the sense of “this comic strip, which aims to make people laugh via jokes, is succeeding, because it’s so hilarious,” but rather in a cruel and mocking way. It’s hilarious (derogatory) because these people hang out with the people they went to high school with all time. Seriously! Is there any major recurring character in this strip who they didn’t go to high school with, other than the ones who are the children of the people they went ot high school with? So I’m not sure why they would go, but I’m also not sure why the idea of going would be so emotionally fraught, since they’re just going to see their whole social circle in another venue. I guess it’s possible that the Funky characters we know and love only represent a small portion of their graduating class and actually the rest of them rightfully hold the ones we’re familiar with in contempt? “Ugh, there’s Les and Funky and that crowd,” one of the normals will say. “Don’t make eye contact, I came here to have fun tonight.”

Marvin, 8/24/22

Ahh, Marvin, it looks like the hunter … has become the hunted. “Hunting” is a metaphor for pooping. Because Marvin talks about pooping all the time! You get it.

Judge Parker, 8/24/22

“Maybe I should just burn the whole compound down, for the insurance money! Haha, just kidding. But what if…?”

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Crankshaft, 8/19/22

“Slight markup” is my favorite part of this. Crankshaft isn’t doing this for the money! He’s doing it so he can make a big show out of being an asshole.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/19/22

Hey, remember how, at Les’s suggestion, Lisa made a bunch of videotapes before she died for Summer to watch over the course of her adolescence? Well, this week in Funky Winkerbean we learned that in fact, it was Crazy Harry’s idea! Pretty wild, huh? Does this upend everything you thought you knew about this strip? No? You say you actually don’t spend much time thinking about Funky Winkerbean, and while you vaguely remembered the whole videotape thing, you didn’t actually remember that it was supposedly Les’s idea and don’t really know why you should care that it wasn’t? Interesting. Interesting.

Marvin, 8/19/22

Look, I know the question of “what mental age is Marvin, the title character in the comic strip Marvin, supposed to be” is a muddled one, but this is still a kid who pisses and shits himself on the regular. He’s not thinking about the future at all! He’s never thought about anything but the present.

Six Chix, 8/19/22

Oh, sorry, are Marvin’s piss jokes too “basic” for you? Well, check out Six Chix, where the piss jokes are extremely baroque.