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Funky Winkerbean, 3/13/19

The first two days of this week’s Funky Winkerbean teased us with “Holly’s gonna drop some bad news on Funky over the phone,” and this being Funky Winkerbean the smart money would’ve been on “somebody’s dying.” Instead, it’s just “your mother-in-law, of whom neither of us is particularly fond, is going to live with us, forever,” which is honestly one of the best case scenarios here. But I do like the rollercoaster of emotion Funky is going through> Look at him smiling in panel one, even though, as noted, he has been warned that non-good news is at some point in this conversation going to be delivered! Like he hears “We don’t have to drive my mother back from Florida” and thinks “That’s great! We’ve already established that she’s an old lady incapable of driving herself and we’re her only family, so I’m not sure how she’s getting back there — maybe she’ll ride the rails, like a hobo? — but that sure takes a load off my mind. Things are only looking up today!”

Mark Trail, 3/13/19

Oh, whew, Cherry’s dad was briefly at risk of experiencing emotional growth by allowing himself to mourn his friend, but then he realized that talking, or thinking, about feelings isn’t what men do! What men do is talk and think about mysterious bearded strangers who blow into town with tall tales of magical Native American gold mines. At some point we’re presumably going to discover that the real magical gold mine was the friends we made along the way, and that’s all the healing that Doc is going to need.

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Mary Worth, 3/12/19

Oh, hey, if you’re wondering where the Estelle/Arthur Z (or, more accurately, Estelle/team of catfishers hanging out in a Kuala Lumpur cybercafe operating the “Arthur Z” SilverDaters account) is at, it’s reached “quoting e e cummings over the phone,” and Estelle is over the moon! The main question I have is if they’ve somehow tricked her into calling into a phone number she has to pay them for, or if they’re doing this toll-free via Skype or whatever and they’re keeping their powder dry for the moment when “Arthur Z” loses his wallet and needs a five-figure sum wired to a Malaysian Western Union office, stat.

Mark Trail, 3/12/19

Meanwhile, in Mark Trail, Cherry’s dad just got a phone call letting him know his old friend died, which means we have six to fifteen weeks of a “Doc confronts his own mortality!” adventure ahead of us. Not sure how they’re going to work Mark blowing up a boat into this but I’m confident they’ll find a way.

Beetle Bailey, 3/12/19

The Wikipedia list of Beetle Bailey supporting characters is invaluable to a scholar of the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC oeuvre such as myself, but I have problems with some of its takes on the players’ personalities. For instance, Dr. Bonkus (NO REALLY HIS NAME IS “DR. BONKUS”) is described as “Camp Swampy’s loopy staff psychiatrist, whose own sanity is questionable,” but in all the time I’ve been reading the strip he’s never been anything other than a long-suffering straight man to everyone else’s antics. I kind of enjoy the fact that today’s strip takes place in two entirely different locations; it would have been a little shticky if Rocky had pulled out his guitar and delivered this punchline in mid-session, but as it is we can imagine that he just said “Great!” and got off the couch and left without further explanation, leaving Dr. Bonkus behind to sigh heavily and contemplate, not for the first time, just how much he really helps his patients.

The Phantom, 3/12/19

You’d think that when you’ve been raised from birth to be the 21st in a lineal series of mysterious jungle superheroes, you wouldn’t make rookie secret identity mistakes along the lines of “me … uh, I mean, not me, my close personal friend, the hero, who isn’t me at all, heheheheheh [nervous laughter gradually fades out]”

Six Chix, 3/12/19

Congrats to Six Chix for taking its weird foot thing to the next level … indeed, to the highest possible level. Who wouldn’t want to worship a God with such magnificent toes? Truly we are blessed to be formed in His image, foot-wise.

Pluggers, 3/12/19

Ha ha, did you guys know that bears are carnivores and kangaroos are herbivores? I sure hope plugger diner seats are pleather or some other material that’s easy to hose the blood and viscera off of!

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Six Chix, 3/1/19

Wow, these narrow-minded scientists are blinded by their sexist assumptions and won’t ever see Bigfoot … because it doesn’t even occur to them that she might be a woman! Also probably they’re looking for some hairy ape-like creature who’s about seven or eight feet tall, not a human-like creature who’s 60 feet tall and also wearing shoes. In related news, remember this Six Chix, about a lady who fucked a Bigfoot? Is there some kind of rule that to be one of the Six Chix, you have to eventually do a Bigfoot fetish comic, sort of the way you have to be beaten into a gang?

Mark Trail, 3/1/19

I’m not sure which possible scenario here is sadder: that Mark Trail, its publisher King Features, and its parent corporation Hearst Communications are too terrified of irritating intellectual property holders to print the words “Lego” or “[insert whatever TV show you think they’re talking about here, I did some half-assed Googling for ‘red black car TV’ and didn’t find the results illuminating]”; or that Mark and his friends live in a world without the #brands that we know and love, moving through a sea of undifferentiated products that lack any of the value added by the branding process.

Mary Worth, 3/1/19

Estelle’s date #4 is a literal hobo! You gotta admit, of all the ways to scam a free meal out of someone, this isn’t the absolute worst. At least he looks like he’s under 60!

Gil Thorp, 3/1/19

Say what you will about Marty Moon, but he has a certain cunning, and as a lifelong inhabitant/prisoner of the dump that is Milford, he knows exactly what pisses off everyone else who lives there: being reminded that their town is a dump. Guess B/Robby is going to be stuck in the dump forever as well, as punishment!