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Crankshaft, 3/6/12

Despite my (too many) years of reading Crankshaft, I’ve only just at this moment realized that Keesterman, the guy whose mailbox Crankshaft is constantly destroying due to his dangerous inability to operate a schoolbus, is also one of the guys who meets Crankshaft and some other old dudes at a sad chain diner where they drink coffee and pun sullenly and probably leave stingy tips. The endless mailbox-annihilation incidents might explain why Keesterman has finally snapped, looking in panel three like he’s going to react to Crankshaft’s mild ribbing with a punch to the face, something I dearly hope we get to see over the remainder of the week, from several different angles.

Hi and Lois, 3/6/12

We’ve seen some intermittent attempts to make Hi and Lois’ marriage interesting, but frankly I think there’s much more drama to be wrung from the lives of the Flagstons’ next-door neighbors. Check out Irma’s disgruntled look in the final panel: not only is her family mired in debt, but that means that she can’t even have a nice party without it devolving into recriminations and violence, which to her is the worst indignity.

Beetle Bailey, 3/6/12

There are occasional Beetle Baileys in which our heroes (?) are fighting something called the “Red Army,” and while it’s usually clear from context that these are training exercises, it would be fun to believe that today’s strip takes place in an alternate universe where the men of Camp Swampy have been deployed into combat against the Soviet Union, and that, as you’d expect, their division has been quickly defeated and its few survivors are now being rounded up. Given the creepy fact that we see no people attached to these massive gun barrels, it’s also possible that the Red Army is a band of out-of-control military death-bots, who are making short work of their hapless biological adversaries, not least thanks to the humans’ inability to function without technology that’s controlled by the cyber-enemy.

Hagar the Horrible, 3/6/12

Lucky Eddie has blatantly stolen this joke from Groucho Marx, but I’m not going to get too upset about it because in a minute he’s going to be mauled to death by bears for his crimes.

Marvin, 3/6/12

Yesterday I praised Marvin for grappling with interesting themes and avoiding scatological content. Naturally, today’s strip features the smug hell-infant boasting that he can just shit in his pants whenever he wants.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/6/12

If you’ve enjoyed this Herb and Jamaal strip about burping, why not enjoy the four paragraphs I somehow managed to write about it, back when it first ran in 2004?

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Pluggers, 2/10/12

OH GOD THE PAIN, THE PAIN IS SO BAD, HOW AM I EXPECTED TO THINK ABOUT SEX WHEN IT HURTS SO BAD (I’m talking, of course, about the pain of seeing a boner joke in Pluggers).

Apartment 3-G, 2/10/12

At first I was going to complain that by “baby bump” we clearly mean “a visibly pregnant belly that anyone would have noticed long ago at this point in the conversation if they weren’t incredibly self-absorbed,” but then I remembered, ha ha, Margo!

Herb and Jamaal, 2/10/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Herb is now openly rooting for his mother-in-law’s death!

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Mary Worth, 12/10/11

Just think about what a rabbit hole of meta this strip is. Yes, it features a comic strip character complaining that “life already feels like too much of a comic strip”; but, when you think about it, when most people think about comic strips, they think about ones that have jokes and punchlines and such — not Mary Worth, in other words. Who would be the sort of person who would be more likely to use “comic strip” as a shorthand for soap opera strips, in which pointless people slowly live through plots that are simultaneously bland and ridiculous? Mary Worth, that’s who! Wheels within wheels, people.

Herb and Jamaal, 12/10/11

When I read this comic, I snorted dismissively and said “Please, ‘that singer with the high-octave voice,’ why don’t they just say–” but then I realized that I don’t really know who in the current pop cultural landscape “that singer with the high-octave voice” would be. Apparently this is what it feels like to enter the Herb and Jamaal audience demographic. It doesn’t feel good, for the record.

Marmaduke, 12/10/11

Marmaduke’s owner manages to hand his last-ever paycheck over to his wife as Marmaduke starts to tear through his flesh and gnaw on his tasty bones.

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Side note: here is a thing I meant to pass on from faithful reader ChattyGenes: some comics collections about the aftermath of the tsunami and nuclear accidents in Japan. You should read them if you are interested in these subjects!