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Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, 3/24/16

Unlike what appears to be a surprising number of you, I don’t care much about the weird chronological disconnect between Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, where both strips take place in the present (as near as can be determined by technological and social details) and yet Funky Winkerbean takes place ten years after Crankshaft. I really don’t care at all! It’s just Comic Book Time, y’all, and unless you’re dealing with For Better or for Worse or Doonesbury, you just accept that the characters all stay the same age more or less while the universe ages around them. The Funkyverse seems to want its readers to care about the discontinuity, though, which is strange because literally the only forms of “caring” anyone could have about this are “confusion” and “irritation”; still, what other explanation is there for the slo-mo crossover details that would only be of interest to Funkyverse obsessives? Like those twin girls who recently surfaced in Funky Winkerbean as teens are now back in Crankshaft, teasing us with potential clues about their birthdate! (Jokes on you, nerds: October 1995 is before they were born whether Crankshaft takes place in 2016 or 2006.) Meanwhile, in Funky Winkerbean, the gang is visiting the Valentine, presumably to show us that Max and his girlfriend have managed to run it for a decade without going bankrupt. I guess that’s supposed to be Max? Or some other bearded dude? At least he’s making a dumb play on words based on a phrase nobody ever uses. At least something makes sense.

Mary Worth, 3/24/16

Is there a phrase more emblematic of Mary Worth’s ethos than “Mary explains what Dawn is feeling”? Anyway, now that Mary has successfully annihilated Dawn’s emotional autonomy, she’ll be ready to force her puppet to make a “bolder personal effort” for “in-person connecting,” which probably will entail an assassination attempt on a senator or businessman opposed to Mary’s interests.

Crock, 3/24/16

Normally I would just pass over this incomprehensible punchline like so many others in Crock, but the title character’s knowing glance in the final panel is really forcing me to dwell on it. “Eh? Hairy backs? Get it? His back? It’s hairy?”

Herb and Jamaal, 3/24/16

You know those Slylock Fox puzzles where the solution revolves around someone making a technically true but misleading statement to beat a lie detector test? This reminds me of a particularly pathetic version of that. “Heh heh,” thinks Herb smugly in the final panel. “I sure gave her a piece of my mind, in a way that guarantees that she’ll never notice! That’ll show her!”

Judge Parker, 3/24/16

WOW, when is BIG GOVERNMENT going to get OFF THE BACKS of JOB CREATORS who want to MAKE THINGS IN AMERICA by HIRING OLD PEOPLE and NOT PAYING THEM ANY BENEFITS because they’re ALREADY ON MEDICARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY????? Man, whichever local state legislator had his or her last campaign entirely financed by the Spencer-Driver SuperPAC is going to hear about this.

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Marvin, 3/18/16

Sure, we make fun of Marvin for the poop jokes a lot around here, but definitely worse than the poop jokes are the jokes about how Marvin and his fellow babies have romantic lives. At least pooping is a normal and healthy thing babies really do! Gross, but normal and healthy! This week’s storyline has involved a weird inverse evil Cyrano de Bergerac scenario where Marvin’s “girlfriend” (ugh) wants to watch musicals with him, and Marvin doesn’t enjoy them and can’t bring himself to perform even this incredibly basic bit of emotional labor, so he’s brought in some kind of lookalike ringer to take his place. But it turns out that if someone does all the work of a relationship on Marvin’s behalf, Marvin isn’t necessary … at all? This is definitely the worst thing you’ll read in the comics today, and will make you glad next week when all the jokes are about Marvin stewing in his own feces.

Judge Parker, 3/18/16

Sure, we make fun of Judge Parker for always having every story end with someone handing the protagonists money, but definitely worse than someone handing the protagonists money is someone literally abusing their position of state-sanctioned power to help the protagonists, because they’re good and/or rich and thus deserve to have the law bent on their behalf. Like, remember when Rocky Ledge assaulted a photographer, then felt bad about it, and Sam had the local constabulary run the guy out of town? (The guy who had been beaten up, not the guy who had done the beating.) Anyway, definitely a good use of some highway patrolman’s time and tax-funded paycheck will be driving around looking for a rental car and then informing some random private citizen about said rental car’s location. But why stop there, really? Why not just send a special ops team to “extract” Rocky from his romantic getaway with his secretary, eliminating any potential witnesses to his infidelity in the process?

Pluggers, 3/18/16

You know you’re a plugger when you choose to live someplace so unrelentingly hostile to pedestrians that, to stave off that coronary for another month or two via the sort of “exercise” that used to be a basic reality of the human condition, you have to drive your polluting automobile onto a vast expanse of asphalt so you can walk dully in circles through a gently decaying indoor mall.

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Six Chix, 2/20/16

“Whatta bunch of shallow losers! They spent all night watching stories that teams of writers, performers, and technicians had crafted just for them, that say something about the human condition! I meanwhile spent the evening staring up at the unfeeling stars, which burn on endlessly whether I exist or not.”

Judge Parker, 2/20/16

Remember, Derek’s band is made up entirely of high school students, and Sophie, who I guess plays guitar in it, literally did not know how to play guitar at all until she started taking lessons with Derek in 2011, which is probably like three months ago in strip time, tops. This will be the ultimate test of the Parkerverse’s “A Spencer-Driver-Parker always gets paid” constant.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/20/16

Speaking of the protagonist of a soap opera strip always getting paid, I love Summer’s worried facial expression in panel three here. “So, he wants to buy a house and he needs me to … oh, God, I’m supposed to give him a house, right? Just like that other guy did? Where … where am I going to find a house on such short notice?”

Beetle Bailey, 2/20/16

General Halftrack’s facial expression in panel two is exactly how you should look when you’re visualizing an undead Winston Churchill, rotting flesh sloughing off in great chunks, shambling about stinking of gin and attempting to reconquer India.

Crankshaft, 2/20/16

I feel like my suspicions yesterday have been confirmed: this is definitely a plot in which “valentine” is code for “dick pic.”

Gasoline Alley, 2/20/16

You know who else was widely thought to be dead but was then discovered alive in a cave, several days later? What is the New Testament, if not a scrapbook of the risen Christ?

Heathcliff, 2/20/16

~INFINITE NESTING HEATHCLIFFS~