Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 1/14/12

So I’ve been pretty much ignoring this week’s Funky Winkerbean, which has been all about the crisis caused by the removal of the vending machines from the school, because, enh, vending machines. Really the only thing of interest so far has been the fact that everyone insists on calling the machines “vendos”, which ranks up with “solo car date” on the list of Formulations In Funky Winkerbean That Are Linguistically Probable But Nonetheless Never Uttered By Living English-Speaking Humans.

BUT! Today we learn that all the angst about this move is not just because everyone loves delicious vending machine food. No, it’s because, like all death-haunted citizens of the Funkyverse, the teachers and students at Westview wish that death would stop haunting them and just show up and take them away from their suffering once and for all. Too terrified to hurl themselves from a bridge or put a shotgun in their mouths or even take up smoking, they at least hope that each day is the day that a bag of sodium-laden chips triggers a massive stroke, after which would come blessed emptiness. But even rides on the carousel of death are now denied to them by their cruel creator.

Momma, 1/14/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Momma is an unlettered philistine! Or maybe she got a Kindle? Gah, who can tell, with this art.

Family Circus, 1/14/12

Now that the Keane Kids, previously Yahweh’s most loyal servants, have switched their allegiances, I guess it’s time for Him to hand over the rulership of creation to our new God, the iPhone.

Post Content

Crankshaft, 11/30/11

Once upon a time, the Funkyverse strips were actually whimsical and funny and not at all depressing, and you can find evidence of this embedded in some of the strips’ running gags, which now seem deeply horrible wrenched out of their original context. Remember how teenage hall monitor Les used to guard his station with a machine gun? In the old days that was just cheery absurdism, but now it would probably set up a story about a Columbine-style massacre — or, no, that’s too flashy, it’d probably actually be about how the gun went off accidentally and hit an innocent student-athlete in the leg, ending the Scapegoats’ chance for a championship and the poor kid’s promising career, leading to a downward spiral into alcoholism, suicide, etc.

Anyhoo, Crankshaft constantly destroying mailboxes out of some combination of incompetence and spite and Lena’s inedible and possibly poisonous brownies both had a similar sort of innocence about them back in the day, but in the modern Funkyverse we get to see the emotional devastation that they cause. Ha ha, that man is legitimately furious because Crankshaft ran over his mailbox, and neither Crankshaft nor the bureaucrats who employ him care, which just makes him madder! The best part of today’s strip is the expressions of genuine horror on the ’Shaft’s fellow drivers’ faces, as if somehow they’re only now realizing what a colossal dick he is.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/30/11

Speaking of the Funkyverse, today’s second panel could pretty much be its mission statement.

Six Chix, 11/30/11

It probably says something about me that this is a cartoon featuring the evil queen from Snow White talking about freezing her eggs and the thing that most baffles me about it is the setting. Is she on a date? Isn’t this talk a little heavy for a date? Or has she replaced her magic mirror with a nebbishy personal assistant, and this is the two of them unwinding after work?

Spider-Man, 11/30/11

“Yes! I finally got a staff job in the lucrative, growing print media business! And all I had to do was give my tyrannical boss a picture of my superhero identity consorting with a known criminal! I’m a genius!”

Archie, 11/30/11

Archie’s I Love The ’90s week continues! Today’s flashback memory: Remember when they started giving talk shows to ethnic people?

Post Content

Mary Worth, 11/24/11

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! What are you thankful for? Are you thankful that nobody at your Thanksgiving Dinner approached the table with eyes wide as dinner plates, surrounded by an eerie glow, bearing a tray full of brown … disk-like … things? Seriously, what the hell are those? Is that a teacup at the front right corner? Did Mary Worth just deep-fry a tea cup, for Thanksgiving dinner?

B.C., 11/24/11

Oh, also, are you thankful that your Thanksgiving dinner didn’t degenerate into insects talking about carnage and horror and feces?

Funky Winkerbean, 11/24/11

And if you want lessons in how not to be thankful, you can get them from Funky, obviously. “Oh, you were going to give away a trip to see one of the most breathtaking sights in the world? Whatever, people want to see dudes dressed up as maniacally grinning rats and/or pantsless ducks.”