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Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, 6/7/13

So we’ve been wandering down Funkyverse memory lane this week, encountering of revelations about Lisa and Darrin and Frankie. This had been sort of already described by Funky scribe/puppetmaster Tom Batuik in an interview a few months ago, but: while in previous iterations of the Darrin origin narrative the story was that his conception was consensual if regrettable, we are now getting dark hints that this was not so much the case. This isn’t particularly unrealistic, honestly — as in, lots of people who are victims of acquaintance rape minimize it or don’t tell anyone due to shame or a feeling that other people won’t believe them — though it does also dovetail nicely with the strip’s overall plunge to the bottom of the deep pit of existential despair over the decades. I am a little bit unsettled by the smiles all around in the third panel. “Ha, so our downstairs neighbors stumbled upon your future biological parents right after your bio-dad raped your birth mother! What a kooky coincidence! So now he’s making a reality TV show, you say? How interesting.”

This all raises once again the somewhat awkward question of Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft’s relative chronology, i.e., Funky time-jumped and Crankshaft didn’t, so this incident took place around 30 years ago in Funky, but only around 20 years ago in Crankshaft, but the cultural references in both strips place them in the present, so if the Faircloths seek out Pam and Jeff will they be 10 years older than they are in Crankshaft or what, etc. Crankshaft could have tried to complement the Funky flashbackery, somehow, or it could have just ignored it, but instead it decided to go the most confusing route possible: launching its own flashback story to some indeterminate earlier period when Pam and Jeff had an entirely different downstairs neighbor lady who almost blew up the house.

Mary Worth, 6/7/13

Meanwhile, Mary Worth is about to launch into a much more fun and exciting scenario: a biddy on biddy battle. Mary’s overwhelming desire to see everyone in the world (except for her, natch) paired up in heteronormative couples is almost overwhelming. Do you think she’ll let anyone stand in the way of that? Even the mother of one half of the couple in question? You need to get one thing straight, Elinor: Mary will show no mercy.

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Apartment 3-G, 6/2/13

Last night I saw Frances Ha, a low-budget indie film that takes place mostly in New York but includes a brief sojourn to Paris that, I was surprised to see, was actually filmed in Paris. Admittedly it was all done with low-cost and probably handheld digital cameras, but even the cost of plane tickets for the star and a few crew members had to run into thousands of dollars, not an insignificant chunk of indie movie budget change. Comic strips are not restricted in this way, obviously, as any number of reference photographs available for free on the Internet could give an artist instant material to draw, say, an Italian cityscape as a background to Tommie’s adventures there, which is of course why the current storyline focuses on Lu Ann’s ill-defined children-of-veterans art education project, taking place in what I guess is the Mills Gallery. Still, it may have been all worth it just to see Marty tell Lu Ann what all of us have been waiting tell Lu Ann pretty much forever.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/2/13

Funky Winkerbean very, very rarely focuses on the positive. Still, the message I’m getting from today’s strip is: if your father was killed when you were a baby, maybe it’s just as well, because maybe he was an asshole you would’ve hated.

Marvin, 6/2/13

Marvin would like to take a break from its endless Marvin-pooping-in-his-pants jokes to offer you a Marvin-peeing-in-the-pool joke.

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Marvin, 6/1/13

Marvin’s dad’s brief attempt to interact socially with non-wife-and-Marvin persons ended in abysmal failure when his co-worker Ted clumsily attempted to flirt with bar-ladies in his presence. I guess Jeff had been brought as “wing-man,” since there’s nothing that makes you more attractive to a woman than a dead-eyed friend with a combover? Anyway, Jeff will now briefly enjoy his home life again, at least until the next Marvin-expelled toxic event reminds him that hell is other people, no matter what their age.

Heathcliff, 6/1/13

Heathcliff is taking a little break from its downward (upward?) spiral into insanity to do some classic cat humor — haha, the cat wants to eat the delicious, delicious birds! — but I still have some questions about the context here. Namely, is Heathcliff playing in an all-cat baseball game? It would explain why the outfield fence is only 18 inches high, I guess.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/1/13

Having successfully expelled Frankie from their lives with righteous indignation, Darrin and Jessica are getting back to what they do best: smirking at each other while engaged in passive-aggressive one-upmanship.

Pluggers, 6/1/13

Pluggers would rather spend hours driving around Chicago whining about parking than take the elitist communist L train.