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Gasoline Alley, 6/30/18

Every few years, Gasoline Alley teases us that supercentenarian Walt Wallet is headed for the Old Comics Home, a kind of heaven for discontinued comic-strip characters. But it was a lie and a cheat in 2006, and a cheat and a lie in 2013. Will no one rid us of this troublesome coot?

Maybe this time. Here, Team Alley promises to put Walt away for good, with a “roast and toast affair” that will cook, slice, and serve him up on open-face sandwiches. Farewell, honored patriarch, and bon appétit, everybody! Glue down those dentures, folks — there’s a-gonna be some chewin’!

Phantom, 6/30/18

Since its origins in 1936, Phantom has threaded the needle pretty tight on issues of colonialism and race. So it’s refreshing to see today’s unambiguous repudiation of “one drop of blood” racial classification. It’s also pretty savvy of Team Bandar to top up the Phantom with blood from warrior Babudan — Guran’s is basically donuts dissolved in palm wine. Which would make him a plugger, I guess?

Spider-Man, 6/30/18

Aw, look at these two, bickering with Fate when they were clearly Meant to Be. Soon, they will cover the ground together. So much ground!

Luann, 6/30/18

Grr, all right here is your precious Luann.

You know, for the pragmatic, hypercapable member of Team Tonad, Toni keeps getting basic mechanics wrong: using a torque wrench for disassembly, or setting up her pipe wrench to tighten that hose coupling. Seems to have the arm strength, though. And those mitts are the size of her head!

Hello, faithful readers! I’ll be sitting in through Wednesday July 11, as Josh nobly attends to family duties in faraway France while the rest of us sweat it out here. SO UNFAIR. Reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if the site gives you trouble. No need to alert me to comments in moderation, though — I get automatic updates. Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Crock, 6/21/18

[extremely hack ’90s standup comedian voice] Hey, you guys, uh, you heard about this “Google”? They got all these crazy names for things on the Internet. [adjusts tie] It’s wild, man, it’s wild. Hey, what if there was some old wise man in a cave and it turned out he was just surfing the web using “Google”? [pats forehead with handkerchief] That’d be pretty crazy, huh?

Gasoline Alley, 6/21/18

Well, we’ve moved on from Slim’s erotic concussion and have started a new Gasoline Alley plot, about a centenarian with paranoid delusions about the personal care industry, and I’m not gonna lie: I am hooked.

Family Circus, 6/21/18

Look at those eyes! Look at that spittle! Listen to the unhinged ravings! Billy is in the middle of a full-on cookie mania, and it’s difficult to watch.

Hi and Lois, 6/21/18

WHEN YOU’VE COMMITTED A SIN SO GREAT THAT EVEN THE SUN ABANDONS YOU

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Mary Worth, 6/14/18

Guys, guys, guys, are you ready for Tommy’s drug-free, Christ-centered summer romance? Because it’s happening! Tommy has chivalrously driven his comely co-worker home so she doesn’t have to take the bus, and I assume from his pregnant pause before “hang out” that her neighborhood was the site of some criminal adventures in his younger “very own meth lab” days. That’s probably where he went to buy — as an ahead-of-his-time entrepreneur, when it came time for him to peddle his wares, he did so in the leafy environs of UC Santa Royale, which unfortunately resulted in his immediate arrest. Anyway, I assume that Brandy lives downtown, which in the ’00s was a seedy, nightmarish hellscape filled with tank-top wearing toughs and abused women who had to suffer at the women’s shelter if they didn’t have a nice lady like Mary to take them back to her condo; but today it has a burgeoning arts scene and is, as Brandy notes, gentrifying nicely. Better not try any funny drug business around here now, Tommy! The cops actually respond to calls downtown these days!

Gasoline Alley, 6/14/18

Good news! Slim has finally received medication to help treat his terrible head injury, and it’s immediately sent him into an erotic desert island reverie. Did you know “play post office” is code for “three-way makeout fest”? I didn’t, and I’m now having to re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about the American mail distribution system.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/14/18

Last week’s Crankshafts were all about how Crankshaft hoarded thousands of “Bean’s End Catalogs” (Bean’s End being like the combination of LL Bean and Land’s End, only … about gardening equipment rather than sensible clothing?) and eventually agreed to sell them off, and then they were purchased by obsessive collector Chester “The Chiseler”; meanwhile, ten years later in the Funkypresent, Chester, now the employer of Darin and Mopey Pete at a doomed comics startup, decided to unload his Bean’s End Catalog collection on eBay in order to bring in some cash to stretch out the lifespan of said doomed comics startup. I didn’t cover any of this at the time because it was all boring, but I am assuming that Funky’s dad lurking around weirdly and overhearing this conversation will lead to him buying said Bean’s End Catalogs as a gift for the now-comatose Crankshaft. I’m not sure how this dovetails in with the few things I seem to remember about Funky-dad’s characterization, which is that he’s an alcoholic and a real asshole, but if he ends up spending the bulk of Funky’s inheritance on a futile gesture of kindness towards a man who won’t appreciate or even notice it, that’s OK with me!

Mark Trail, 6/14/18

“A whole country full of ruins? An entire civilization laid waste by foreign invaders and the alien diseases they brought with them, their people reduced to a subordinate caste for centuries and their monuments left to crumble in the jungle? And now I get to climb all over them and take pictures? That’s amazing! I can’t get enough!”

Pluggers, 6/14/18

You’re a plugger if everyone you know is either sick or dead.