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Spider-Man, 8/31/16

I love the idea of an Ant-Man who is 100% fed up with any kind of mystifying legends or penumbra around superheroes and villains. “Look, my name’s Scott, Egghead’s name is Elihas, yours is … well, you didn’t tell me, even though I teed up a perfect opportunity for you to do that, and I think that’s kind of rude, but let’s not dwell on it. Anyway, we’re just … we’re just people, OK? People with regular people names. I’m just an ordinary guy, who happens to be able to shrink down to ant size and is wearing a helmet with … God, I don’t even know. I guess those things coming out from my ears are supposed to represent an ant’s mandibles? Except what’s in between them? Like, an olive or something? The whole thing’s absurd. Please, call me Scott, it’s the only thing that tethers me to reality at this point.”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/31/16

I guess, if you’re reading Funky Winkerbean and care enough to squint to see the small text at the bottom of the first panel, you probably already have enough information to properly interpret it: In a couple of weeks, a Rotary Club in Mentor (a suburb in the Cleveland area, which is the home of Tom Batuik and the setting of the Funkyverse strips) is having a “Lisa’s Legacy” run, a real-life version of the in-strip fundraiser/tribute to a character who died of breast cancer, nine years ago. But imagine that you’re trying to parse this without any of that background. It would read like the stuff on some numbers station. “Mentor? Rotary? 9/11? Sir, I believe we’ve intercepted a warning of an impending catastrophic attack.”

Pluggers, 8/31/16

I’m gonna spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that in this panel Elvis is depicted as fully human and not a half-animal beast-man like everyone else in this strip. Is it any wonder they worship his image as their God?

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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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Funky Winkerbean, 8/26/16

Haha, whoops, looks like I was wrong about Bull’s death being swift and merciful! Nope, it seems we’re in for a long, drawn-out tale of our least favorite retroactively-semi-redeemed bully slowly succumbing to early onset Alzheimer’s, which I diagnose not as a doctor but as someone who over the years has become finely attuned to the sort of misery the Funkyverse dishes out. And is that … a hint of domestic violence in the final panel? Oh, this is going to be a hate-read for the ages, everybody.

Beetle Bailey, 8/26/16

General Halftrack has of course been pickling his brain in alcohol for years, so his incipient dementia isn’t the least bit of a dramatic reveal. I’m more concerned about whatever terrifying website Miss Blips is loading up in the background with its angry wolf splash screen. Best-case scenario is that it’s some kind of S&M wolf furry fetish site; I’m actually worried she’s joined a white supremacist militia and that, safe in the knowledge that her boss has checked out mentally, she’s now just openly browsing its message board at work.