Post Content

Crankshaft, 8/19/19

I get irritated when authors reward their fictional characters but I kinda understand it? I mean, if Rex Morgan punches your meal ticket for nigh on seventy years, why not slip the guy a free boat now and again?

But this crosses a line. Lillian is no towering literary lion like Judge Parker, earning endless sweetheart contracts for a string of unreadable books. She’s a second-string Funkiverse villain who ruined her sister Lucy’s life, then abandoned her to die in hospice care demented and alone. Here’s how to make it right: Lillian should take Eugene’s advice and write a memoir about Lucy, forcing her to confront her monstrous past and hurl herself in shame from her second-story bookstore window. Unfortunately, she’d probably just sprain her ankle, prompting knowing smirks all ’round.

Curtis, 8/19/19

Oh, look, it’s Curtis Learns a Valuable Lesson While Doing Summer Volunteer Work, a regular feature. This year’s Lesson will be delivered by Quincy Shearer, an unpleasant blind incontinent disabled alcoholic with toe fungus, two annoying corgis, and epic ear hair. Settle in for bitter invective against Kids These Days with their ridiculous allergies, TwitBooking on SnapFace, and expensive torn-up jeans. But enjoy your mockery now, because we’re all going to feel just terrible when Quincy’s Heart of Gold and/or Redeeming Backstory is revealed in a day or two.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/19/19

Speaking of Redeeming Backstories, here’s yet another Hallowed Elder with a Funny Name from the golden age of Pop Culture, and this one is a (dramatic music) woman! You know, Dale (neé Dalia) Messick broke into comics in the 1950’s with Brenda Starr. But I guess nobody wants to hear from some Depression-enduring, World-War-II winning, rock-and-roll-inventing has-been generation, at least not when there’s a pot-smoking, sex-having, self-indulging, Social-Security-bankrupting has-been generation in line right behind it.

Judge Parker, 8/19/19

Hey April, remember Saturday, when you threatened these two at gunpoint and demanded that they talk? Happy now?

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

On the Fastrack, 8/17/19

Say, here’s a long-running comic that started out as a pleasant ensemble gag-a-day strip but evolved into a soapbox for the observations, wordplay, and general adoration of a single character, who can do no wrong. Sound familiar? You can almost see Les Moore’s goatee poking out from under the goth makeup.

Gasoline Alley, 8/17/19

And here’s one of those evergreen “snatching death from the jaws of life” narratives. After decades of frustration and reader agony, Rufus’s picaresque woo is finally starting to erode Mayor Miz Melba’s defenses. As night follows day, this triggers his slide into “pain relief pill” addiction and death. Can’t blame him for wanting to quit this world, though, after that “off ow your feet” pun in panel 1.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/17/19

And here is the genuine article, authenticated by its ten-year time jump, week-long Crankshaft flashback/crossover, and overwrought exposition that falls apart on a moment’s inspection. To wit:

• “Stopping by” to give Crankshaft the funnel cake? Wait, weren’t Pete and Mindy just together at the fair? Has Mindy somehow moved into Bedside Manor?
• “I love his ‘donut on steroids’ line.” But that was back in the day, and Pete wasn’t there for it. Do these two spend all their off-panel time chattering about Things Grampa Said? Oh God, they probably do.
• “This is my engagement tiger that Pete won for me at the county fair baseball toss!” Got that, Gramps? Not, “We’re engaged!” or “We brought you a funnel cake!”, but a recap that manages to be both incomprehensible and wrong: a) Pete didn’t win the tiger, the carny gave it to him out of pity, a genuine real-world thing that happens every day; b) “I was planning to propose to you tonight …” is not a proposal, and “My engagement tiger?” is not an acceptance. (Funkyworld people do this weird proposal-not-a-proposal thing all the time.)

In all the confusion, it’s not clear whether Crankshaft is giving Pete the thumbs-up for a) his incompetent pitching, b) his incompetent wooing, or c) successful delivery of a funnel cake. My money’s on the cake.

Judge Parker, 8/17/19

Enough Funky — it’s the triumphant Apartment 3-G reboot! I like the buff new Papagoras! But adult women don’t really dress like the twins here, and since when is Margo the blonde?

Hi there! I’ll be sitting in through Wednesday the 28th while Josh takes a well-earned rest at bucolic Undisclosed Location, far up in the northern part of the state. Reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net with any access issues, etc.

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Pajama Diaries, 8/9/19

Despite its occasional unpleasant excursions into kink, the obsessive-neurotic Pajama Diaries has slowly wormed its way into the hole in my heart left behind by the obsessive-neurotics at Edge City (not that they didn’t have their own problems with off-putting sex stuff). Today’s strip does a better job at being even-handed than fellow battle-of-the-generations feature Dustin. Ha ha, it’s funny because young people are obsessed with carefully curating the impressions they make on others via social media, while their parents are obsessed with the violence always lurking at the edges of civilized society. What if they come and kidnap you tonight? What if they murder your whole family so that the only clue the police have to go on is the last photo you uploaded to Facebook? What if they need to be able to see every wrinkle, every imperfection, in order to identify your body when they eventually find it bloated and rotting in a ditch somewhere out in the countryside?

Mary Worth, 8/9/19

Mary has long been into taking cognitive-behavioral reality-shaping to extreme lengths, like the time she told a lady devastated because her fiance had stood her up at the altar that “the past only exists by how you remember it,” so all she had to do was remember things differently and she wouldn’t be sad anymore. Now Mary’s applying this theory to the present as well. All Dawn has to do is concentrate on being happy every moment of every day, and then she’ll always be happy! Hugo here? Happy. Hugo not here? Happy. Pretend Hugo never existed the moment he leaves? If letting go of object permanence is the key to happiness, then it’s a small price to pay!

Judge Parker, 8/9/19

Oh, turns out it’s Norton. Norton, everybody! Norton’s back, and he’s, uh, very sunburned, it seems.