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Family Circus, 10/29/13

You can criticize the Mommy and Daddy’s decision to keep the Keane Kids forever bottled up in the Keane Kompound, with the resulting stunting of their psychological, intellectual, and physical development obvious in every Family Circus panel. Still, you have to marvel at how even in their stunted circumstances, their imaginations soar. Sure, they’ve been denied contact with any biological texts outside of Genesis 2:20, but that hasn’t stopped them from coming up with their own charming and whimsical explanations for what they observe of the natural world. What would their parents say if they could hear their precious children’s simple just-so story? Probably it would involve scouring the Kompound for hidden radios to try to stop any further knowledge of “Halloween” reaching the children.

Funky Winkerbean and Pluggers, 10/29/13

Haha, it’s Tuesday a day of a week, so here’s a couple of comic strips making ham-handed jokes about Facebook! Rachel (her name’s Rachel, right? it’s actually remarkably difficult to find a complete list of Funky Winkerbean characters online) is trying to engage Funky on how he’s coping with Cory, his disappointment of a son (stepson? I’m honestly kind of pleased with my inability to pull up Funkyfacts from memory), being deployed in Afghanistan. As you can tell from Funky’s disgusted facial expression, he doesn’t want to talk about it! Yesterday he claimed that he’s never been on Facebook because “I’m an adult” (fun fact: the average age of a Facebook user is 41). Today he expressionlessly make a joyless sup-pun about how Skype, another technology he can’t be bothered to deal with, allows soldiers in a war zone to still feel connected to loved ones back home, and perhaps hold onto a little bit of their sanity. As long as those loved ones aren’t Funky Winkerbean, anyway! Funky has no desire to learn about fancy screen-phone whosits. Funky is also incapable of feeling affection for another human being, so what would the point of talking to him even be.

Pluggers, in its typical way, is taking a much simpler route to a laff. Whether you’re talking about a scary “web site” on the computer thingie that we guess we have to look at if we want to see the grandkids’ pictures now, or an actual physical book written by nerdlingers who think they’re smarter than us, “facebook” makes us sleepy! Zzzzz.

Archie, 10/29/13

How terrifying must it be to be poor, simple Archie Andrews? Imagine being so acutely aware of your own intellectual limitations that you live in constant terror of your mind being erased by some awful cerebral event, but too dumb to know what what such an event might feel or sound like!

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Family Circus, 10/20/13

Thel leaves the dishes for her evening pick-me-up down in the laundry room. Bil strains to remember what people mean by words like “hope” and “win.” Candyland was never supposed to be like this … not like this. The animals bide their time.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/20/13

Another sunset-colored Sunday Funky, in which we learn that Winkerbean pere et fils can only interact through the medium of commerce: “I’m here, Dad! How much attention and respect would you like to buy this time?”

Hey, remember when I said the Montoni pizza was the standard transactional unit of misery in Westview? SEE?

Why are Wally and Darrin taking a table out at closing time?

Better Half, 10/20/13 (panel)

Sadly, Harriet, that is definitely a Thing, and there’s a lot of it going around:

Mark Trail, 10/17/13 (panel)

Mary Worth, 10/20/13

So Mary Worth is apparently giving up on those confusing “stories” entirely and cutting straight to the self-congratulation? Unless the story is the self-congratulation, and Shelly’s got a chain-link cage set up in her drawing room so she and Mary can oil up and square off after lunch in a ‘Condescending Vanity’-themed Hell in a Cell? ‘Cause I would totally spring for the Pay-per-View on that.

OK, that’s it for me — look for Josh Sunday afternoon or early Monday with Comments of Slightly More than a Week and lots of good clean family-style comics mockery. Thanks for a fun time, everybody!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/14/13

In exchange for his miserable wordplay, Jim Kablichnik gets a ticket to Becky’s miserable event — a capsule illustration of Westview economics.

In the standard microeconomic model, transactions equilibrate supply and demand. But the classical supply curve occupies only the upper-right of four quadrants, the one where supply and demand both have positive value. An entire economy can be built in the lower-left quadrant, if a group of people can be found who will ignore their own satisfaction and seek instead to maximize one another’s misery. Sound like anybody we know?

Here’s how it works – Kablichnik creates misery de novo, just as a miner might bury valuable metal or a cobbler ruin shoes. In panel 2, Jim demands that Becky “get”, or accept, his miserable utterance — but Becky is prepared! Her ticket-currency* stores the misery accumulated during hours of student band practice, and she quickly agrees to an exchange that she rightly calls ‘even.’ Jim also accepts, no doubt musing how he’s going to stick the ticket to Les Moore, whose industrial-scale misery production puts him at the pinnacle/nadir of Westview’s upper/under class.

Trade dynamics need to be worked out. A misery-based economy like Westview could be an appealing trading partner if we can overcome two problems: First, the town offers nothing of value to exchange for the misery that utility-based economies would heap on it. Second, the liquidity of the Westview Misery Market is limited by the number of tears those poor souls can cry.

It’s possible we could create leverage through mockery. After all, multiple voices can ridicule a single underlying misfortune, thus securitizing misery at one remove and dodging the liquidity problem. The misery that comes from being mocked is added value. I see a market-making role for the Comics Curmudgeon here. What could possibly go wrong?

* Denominated in “Montonis”, where 1 Montoni = the aggregate misery generated by consuming a medium plain pizza at the named establishment (no take-outs or deliveries). The “Free Pizza” coupon is the basic unit; a “Battle of the Bands” ticket is worth 5 Montonis and a “Lisa’s Legacy Run” credential 10.

Mark Trail, 10/14/13

“I pick up a piece of recognizably modern technology for the first time in half a century and this happens! That’s it — I’m going back to the steam semaphore for good!

Dick Tracy, 10/14/13

“Your horns are — fake. Power Rays — fake. Eyes, teeth, hair, family, biography, memories — fake, fake, fake! Are you sensing a theme here, sweetheart? ‘Cause I haven’t got all day for this.”

“[Crap, how hard do I have to pull on this thing to get some smoke out of it? I swear if Morrie’s slipping those damn Parodis in with my Cubans again I’ll put the Havana punch to his other pinky.]”

“You were engineered out of some kid and goo from the bottom of Moon Maid’s wreck. You’ve been brainwashed and there’s a GPS in your abdomen. Crooks did it to steal my 1970’s magnetism technology, which you can pick up at The Sharper Image these days for about eighty-nine bucks.”

“[Dammit, I want to smoke this thing, not drink it. That stupid magnetic humidor Jameson got me at Sharper Image must be on the fritz again.]”

“They picked you because nobody cared enough to keep an eye on you or report you missing. Kidnappers took a shortcut. That’s what crooks do – you blame ’em?”

“[That warranty’s got to be in here someplace and it damn well better be a full year or I’ll ruin their sorry asses. Again.]”

“Somebody bring me a damn toothpick!”

Gasoline Alley, 10/14/13

I don’t know whether this speaks worse of Clovia or Slim. The dog’s not entirely blameless either.

— Uncle Lumpy