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Funky Winkerbean, 7/17/15

YES, the moment I’ve been waiting for in this time travel plot has arrived! Everyone has met their past/future self, except … Lisa. Because she has no future self. She’s standing there in the background, looking gobsmacked, as the reality of her own mortality comes crashing down on her like a ton of bricks. Even Les, who supposedly loves Lisa more than anything and would give the world to see her just one more time, is too busy staring into his own dull, baffled eyes to notice her. Guess you’re just going to be stuck making awkward small talk with your replacement back there, teen Lisa! (Cayla’s younger self did not make this journey because I think she was busy being about eight years old.)

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/17/15

Oh, say, have I forgotten to mention that the Morgans are heading up to the same cabin where Rex and Niki had their now-legendary trout-fishing expedition just a mere eight years ago (approximately three months in strip time)? The trip is beginning with vomiting and an even more malformed than usual Sarah demanding pancakes, which bodes well.

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/15/15

Oh, hey, remember Crazy Harry’s dark premonition from last week? It turns out that he was remembering what everyone else apparently forgot: that when they were teens they travelled through a time pool (like a hot tub time machine, but less exciting, I guess) to the far-off future of 2015! Presumably most of these characters have had their memories of the experience suppressed for timeline-maintenance reasons, but like all the Mad, Crazy Harry can see through the universe’s veil. Anyway, this strip’s last time travel storyline began relatively cheerfully before degenerating into cancer talk and generalized grim maundering, so I’m excited to see what’s in store for us! We’re already getting off to a good start here, as all the teenage characters firmly believe that they’ll be long dead before they turn 50. Nope, just one of you!

Mary Worth, 7/15/15

This Mary Worth plot, in which Terry has given into Adam’s stalker-tastic behavior her true feelings, has definitely gotten into “Wait, is this storyline still happening? I thought it had stopped happening” territory. I just want to point out that “having good connections within the company” is probably code for “we threatened the HR director with a brutal beatdown, because violence and the threat of violence is how we solve our problems.”

Judge Parker, 7/15/15

Oh yeah, Neddy’s ex-boyfriend surprise-proposed to her last week and I didn’t tell you about it because it turned out to be pretty boring? Certainly more boring than dickering over shipping containers was. Anyway, I’m posting this strip mostly because I’m assuming that Sophie’s line in the final panel is supposed to be a sick burn, which is hilarious to me. “He hasn’t been the same since his first wife left him! Almost as if his whole vision of how his life would go was shattered as the person he loved more than anything in the world betrayed him! He’s been real erratic ever since for some reason I can’t undertand.”

Beetle Bailey, 7/15/15

Welp, it’s “Miss Buxley Wednesday” in Beetle Bailey, and you know what that means: let’s take a cute enough joke premise and then make it vaguely sexually gross for no reason!

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Pluggers, 7/10/15

I had a little difficulty parsing the text of today’s Pluggers — it’s actually a pretty good example of why I’m O.C. (Oxford comma) for lyfe. There was a brief moment where I thought maybe “Beltone and the Scooter Store” were a wacky morning DJ duo on the most old-person-friendly radio station around. In fact, they are, respectively, an apparently perfectly respectable hearing aid manufacturer and a company that manufactures mobility scooters that went out of business in 2013 after being having perpetrated upwards of $50 million in Medicare and Medicaid fraud. In other words, even Pluggers’ old-people cultural references are several years out of date! But the overall theme of today’s panel still stands: the U.S. Postal Service largely exists as a marketing tool for companies that try to make money off the elderly.

Mark Trail, 7/10/15

“Yes, we can afford this expensive office in a Manhattan high-rise because unlike literally every other print publication on the planet, Woods & Wildlife Magazine is insanely profitable, thanks to one thing: boat explosions. Our readers can’t get enough of them! So I don’t care what that wife of yours says, you’re going out on that boat, and if it doesn’t explode on its own, you make it explode, do you hear me?”

Heathcliff, 7/10/15

I spent a lot of time trying to relate this joke to the octopus having eight tentacles and Heathcliff having two feet and that adds up to ten, but then I realized that two of the octopus’s tentacles are being held aloft like arms and then also I checked with my perennial beginner surfer wife and she told me that the whole point of “hanging ten” is that all your toes are off the board, which is exactly what we’re not seeing here, so you know what? Screw you, Heathcliff. Screw you.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/10/15

“The reunion…! The one … foretold … in prophecy!” I have no idea where this is going but I’ll bet it’s gonna be pretty grim!