Post Content

Mark Trail, 8/22/16

Is it sad, Mark? Is it really? Sad for the bats, maybe. Not sad for Woods and Wildlife Magazine’s clickthrough rate. Your article, given the snappy title “It Can’t Be Stopped. It Can’t Be Cured. And It’s Killing Every Bat On Earth” by W&W’s Associate Engagement Editor, saw a huge uptick on social sharing sites, with over 40% of readers scrolling far enough into it to register ad impressions in two different sponsorship zones. Bill’s looking for more Facebook-friendly click-harvesting hits from you — in fact, he’s hoping to get at least two of them out of your trip, tentatively titled “How Invasive Fire Ants Made Our Vacation A Tropical Hell” and “Boatsplosion! [VIDEO]”

Spider-Man, 8/22/16

“Oh, my! You’re looking for me? Hank Pym? The former Ant-Man? However did you track me down to the prominently labelled Pym Annex? Was it by following my nondescript car, which was assigned the ANTPYM license plate wholly by coincidence? I do value my privacy, but of course I’ll sign a glossy photo of myself for you. Oh, you don’t have one? Don’t worry, I have a whole drawer full of them, here at the Pym Annex.”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/22/16

Traditionally, Funky Winkerbean deaths have been agonizingly drawn out, which is why I’m really looking forward to Bull abruptly dropping dead from a rage-stroke by Thursday.

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 8/14/16

All week long we’ve been enduring tell-don’t-show conversations about “hazing” followed by weak-sauce wordplay, ain’t-it-awful mopery, and one incredibly off “joke” about depriving a sick old man of his oxygen. So I suppose we should be glad that Sunday’s strip finally shows us some actual hazing? And even more glad that hazing is now a thing of the past, having been overcome through unspecified single-handed efforts by our chop-jawed heroine Becky here?

Nope! This is Funky Winkerbean, and that last panel is there to show us that no matter how good things may seem, somebody suffers. Somebody always suffers.

PS. If you really want to suffer, try taking a nap on a Sousaphone some time.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/14/16

After learning that Dolly Pierpont artificially spun up Sarah’s career by buying all her horsey pictures and museum books, Rex spent the week telling her to back the hell off with the chauffeur-driven Mercedes, private-school tuition, art lessons, museum donations, and soirée guest-of-honor slots, and let Sarah earn her own honors. Dude, who are you, and what have you done with the real Rex Morgan?

Now we learn that Dolly was only trying to buy Sarah as a replacement for her dear departed Linda. You know, if she’d come to Rex with that deal in the first place, I’m sure they could’ve worked something out.

Judge Parker, 8/14/16 (panels)

I’ll spare you more “Neddy has a sad” panels. The real action is rolling down from Morristown in the rain, doubtless approaching Chekhov’s Curve off the main road to Alpine Pass. Enjoy A Sip Of vodka, Zeke and Ms. Honey “Does Not Understand Inventory Management” Ballenger – you’re in for a long night!

Well, that’s it for me. Thanks for a fun week — Josh will be back bright and early Monday.

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Six Chix, 8/9/16

Freed from the demands of writing Apartment 3-G, Margaret Shulock tries out for that sweet Funky Winkerbean gig.

Love the art, btw: I haven’t done a rebus in years.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/9/16

Apparently we’re just talking about hazing this week? With no actual hazing in evidence, is that it? Or maybe Forehead Girl and Horn Boy are just stone-cold hazing the crap out of one another right this instant, except they’re bonded so tightly from Stockholm Syndrome that it feels to them like the giddy throes of First Love? Sure, makes as much sense as anything.

Gil Thorp, 8/9/16

Welp, Barry “Darth” Bader, ditched at last by the teammates he’s dissed all season, has his final little locker-room sad, then it’s onward to “Somebody’s Mom is Sick.” After all the operatic hard-drinking, drive-drunking, hang-judging, Boo-murdering, funeral-going action this summer I was expecting a bigger close, but hey — there’s only a month left ’til football, and that time’s not gonna waste itself!

Judge Parker, 8/9/16

Sam and Abbey have grown so emotionally and sexually anesthetized toward one another that the only flashes of feeling they experience come from spying on and meddling in their children’s relationships. Knowing this, Sophie and Neddy stage little Facebook dramas to spark up their parents’ lives. Now playing are “Hank is leaving,” “Who hates Honey Ballenger?,” and “Neddy starts a business.”

In reality, Sophie’s the B-student treasurer of her public high school’s Future Farmers of America, and Neddy’s a Carmelite nun. Nobody tell Sam and Abbey — and especially not the strip’s new writer, who’s going to be terribly disappointed when he shows up for work at Spencer Farms on the 22^nd and sees how things really are.

PS. Abbey looks nothing like that, chews tobacco, and is wearing a parka.

–Uncle Lumpy