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Funky Winkerbean, 7/20/19

I have to admit, this absolutely bonkers “killer chimp” reveal has at least gotten me seriously emotionally invested in Funky Winkerbean, event though my investment is basically in seeing how much more bonkers it’s going to get. Today Cindy posits that Zanzibar was “jealous,” which … hasn’t really been explored in the strip, as far I’ve noticed? And also Cliff let Butter leave town with a talking, thinking, murderous ape??? How did he know Zanzibar wasn’t going to kill again? Who would stop him? Certainly not Butter Brinkel! How many corpses did Butter and Zanzibar leave in their wake as they fled from state to state across the country?

The whole vibe this episode is a delightful (for certain admittedly very limited definitions of “delightful”) throwback not to the Funkyverse’s actual zany past but to the moment when the strip was shifting gears from its zany past to its ultra-depressing present. “There’s a chimp who can talk and also he murdered an innocent woman and ruined countless lives” definitely fits in with “There’s a zany dude who goes by ‘Plantman’ who dresses up as a plant and is also a murderous maniac.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/20/19

I have to admit it’s kind of charming how these two are talking frankly and cheerfully about their jobs as scam artist: giving professional praise, coming up with ideas for new revenue streams, brainstorming the details of possible strategies, and so on. I’m also intrigued that we have yet to see the sinister puppetmaster’s face, but, just like an actual puppetmaster, he’s always dressed in black. You know who else dresses all in black?

THAT’S RIGHT, BABY, IT’S RENE THE ART FORGER

HE’S NOT SATISIFED WITH FORGING ART, NOW HE’S PUTTING OUT FAKE MEDICAL SERVICES TOO

HE’S THE BAD BOY OF THIS STRIP AND HE DOESN’T CARE WHOSE TOES HE STEPS ON

BUT HE’S ALWAYS POLITE AND ENCOURAGING TO HIS ACCOMPLICES BECAUSE THAT’S JUST THE KIND OF GUY HE IS

Pluggers, 7/20/19

For most of us the facts of life are about sex. For pluggers, they’re about the lifetime of unacknowledged and unappreciated domestic and emotional labor their wives have put in to keep them alive. Ha ha, it’s funny because if the chicken-lady dies, the dog man won’t survive for six months without her!

Mark Trail, 7/20/19

Does … does Mark Trail know how mines work? I’m pretty sure this isn’t how mines work.

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/19/19

For the past few days of monkey madness in this strip, I’ve begun to suspect that the payoff of this Butter Brinkel storyline would be “Zanzibar did it!” This would be some classic Funky grimness: though a chimp has the opposable thumbs necessary to pick up and fire a gun, clearly any resulting death would be both an accident and liable to result in an innocent creature being put down, and so Butter instead refused to testify in his own defense and went to prison in order to save the life of his beloved pet.

What I didn’t expect was that the real solution to the mystery was that Zanzibar did it, and also Zanzibar can think and talk and reason like a human being, and Zanzibar thinks of Butter as his “father,” and the only reason Cliff Anger is still alive is because he didn’t have any actual firearms in the house. I’m looking forward to the vicious, desperate hand-to-hand combat between man and killer ape that will transfix comics readers across the nation for the next several weeks.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/19/19

I had sort of built up this image in my mind of Miss Galexia as a very woo-woo new agey type, an older woman who’s been in this game for years, and who believed in her own mysticism once before she turned it into a lucrative revenue stream, or maybe even still believed and managed to hold both the commercial and the spiritual in her mind at once. Sadly, this is Rex Morgan, M.D., where everything is pretty much exactly as it seems and can be resolved very quickly, and so Miss Galexia is a petty con artist who likes to cackle about the rubes she’s fleecing with her boss while drinking a cup of what I assume isn’t even herbal tea.

Mark Trail, 7/19/19

I like how the composition here makes it look like Mark and Leola seem to have angrily turned their attention not on JJ, who I assume is thoroughly unconscious, but on Doc, who after all is the guy who got them into this mess in the first place. “Look old man, I’m not scared of some bestubblèd mining shop proprietor with a gun, but at the same time I don’t exactly enjoy having a pistol stuck in my face, so there’d better be some god-damned gold in this magic mine of yours, capisce?”

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Family Circus, 7/18/19

There’s a common joke that little kids act like they’re on drugs sometimes because everything — even fairly basic human biological functioning — is new and strange to them. I don’t know if drugs are quite the right metaphor here, but I appreciate the extent to which heavy-lidded Jeffy is just luxuriating in the sensation of sweating, which most adults find somewhere on the spectrum between uncomfortable and gross. Not Jeffy! His body is magically creating water out of nothing, and keeping him cool in the process, and he can’t get enough of it. It’s like taking a refreshing shower, except he’s the shower! Ahh yeah, that’s the stuff.

Mark Trail, 7/18/19

Oh, snap, JJ! Looks like you followed the boring “conventional wisdom” that if you point a gun at a person at point-blank range, they’ll more or less do what you say, because you can pull the trigger in just a split second and they don’t want to be killed. But Mark Trail doesn’t worry about any of that business! Mark Trail knows his unerring fists are faster and more powerful than any pistol! Mark Trail is always ready to powerfully twist his torso and knock out evil-doers an instant, no matter if they’re fully bearded or just lightly stubbled! Remember, to stop a bad guy with a gun, you need a good guy … who’s Mark Trail.