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Funky Winkerbean, 4/1/16

Remember when Cindy was fired from her job as a TV news anchor by her boss, who explicitly told her she was too old for her job, which should have invited a completely justified lawsuit which in turn would’ve ensured that she would never have to work a day in her life again? But instead she meekly slunk off and took a job for a “blog” (?), where she openly insults her co-workers. Now it’s also pretty clear that she’s bad at journalism! Probably her boss at the TV station could have fired her for any number of non-actionable reasons, is what I’m trying to say.

Gasoline Alley, 4/1/16

Having finally, at long last, run out of scrapbook material, Gasoline Alley is transitioning into a gritty, violent prison drama. It almost makes too much sense, if you think about it.

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Slylock Fox, 3/21/16

Ha, Slylock, this is pretty much the lamest anti-drug campaign I’ve ever seen. “No!” he shouts at the glassy-eyed hordes, eager to hand fists full of money over to Wanda. “Don’t you understand? She isn’t using honey at all!” The animals stumble back to their homes, or just lie down on the grass, chemically fueled happiness shooting through their veins. Slylock runs from prone form to prone form. “Honey is created by bees in hives! At best, she’s using honey that bees created after gathering nectar from lily and cactus flowers. At best!” Nobody listens. Nobody hears. They’re thinking happy thoughts! Nothing but happy thoughts! Your honey talk isn’t happy, Slylock, and they can’t even hear it.

Gasoline Alley, 3/21/16

Good news! Gasoline Alley’s Mildly Irritating Appliance Salesman Guy, who you might remember from strips like these, is back! And he’s a … police officer? Sure, why not! I don’t really understand why Gasoline Alley thinks Frank Nelson’s character from Jack Benny’s 1940’s radio show is someone that modern people yearn to see in cartoon form, but you could argue that if The Simpsons did it, it can’t be the worst idea in the world. You could also argue that this is a comic strip that just wrapped a multi-month story arc about scrapbooking, so clearly nobody involved gives a shit about what you or I or anyone else thinks!

Crock, 3/21/16

Since Crock is nominally set in early 20th century French colonial North Africa, if I had to identify the religion held by most of its characters, I’d have said “indifferent Catholics.” But clearly, in its decades wandering the desert, the Lost Patrol has fallen into some odd polytheism.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/21/15

“Your body is strong and robust and will go on living for years as your brain turns to goo and you lose every shred of the memories and personality that makes you you! This will only be a problem for your loved ones and people who talk to you, though, and I’m gonna stop talking to you right … about … now.”

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Slylock Fox, 3/8/16

Guys, we have a lot of fun here on joshreads dot com talking about the Slylock Fox backstory, when the animal uprising destroyed human civilization and brought the Before Time to an abrupt and violent end. But let’s just enjoy today’s six differences outside of that context, and appreciate it for what it is: a doubled depiction of mustachio’d man with a thousand-mile stare selling balloons, bright red balloons, each bearing a frowny face of the sort that would appeal to only the gloomiest and gothiest. But then — one drifts away! And smiles as it drifts to the skies! Here is the secret seventh difference: in the left panel, the balloon-man happened to have one smiley balloon, and that happened to be the one he lost his grip on; in the right, he has enslaved a race of silent but emotive balloon-beings, and one of them has finally managed to break free.

Gasoline Alley, 3/8/16

Speaking of the uncanny, Gasoline Alley seems to have shifted from an incredibly long and dull plot about scrapbooking to an incredibly unnerving plot about animals who can talk but only one little boy can understand them and also a forest fire burned down their home and now they want revenge. “I understand,” the owl says. “Your human justice system doesn’t consider us animals worthy of attention or protection. Fortunately, we have razor-sharp claws and teeth and can impose our own kind of justice on those who wronged us.”

Funky Winkerbean, 3/8/16

For reasons I cannot understand, the little girls who visit Crankshaft’s elderly, lonely neighbor and are extremely literal minded about everything have now been introduced into Funky Winkerbean, and apparently this was important enough to really highlight the weird chronological discontinuity between the strips by making them ten years older. Anyway, they’re making friends! Like with that 45-year-old dude who’s always trying to have sex with high school girls but the administration lets him hang around anyway, for some reason!