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Crankshaft, 3/11/21

OK, so we’ve been having a bit of fun with “The current run of Crankshaft strips were probably written in the early days of the pandemic, with somewhat amusing results.” But I think we can all agree that it’s a little uncanny that, in the year-ago writing strategy sessions, Funkyco decided that by March 2021 necessary post-pandemic fiscal stimulus would be held up by partisan legislative wrangling. Like, it wouldn’t have been impossible to predict, but I’m honestly pretty impressed — impressed enough that I was going to forgive today’s strip for neglecting to actually include a joke, until I remembered that mixing together two common and semantically related turns of phrase counts as a “joke” in Crankshaft.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/11/21

God, think about how sad it is to have a little kid visualize her dad wearing vaguely old-timey clothes while talking to his boring-ass real-life friends vague acquaintances, and saying that represents her “imagination run[ning] wild.” Guess that head injury was even worse than we thought, huh?

Mary Worth, 3/11/21

In other news, I’ve figured out what the absolute grossest phrase you can use while flirting is, and it’s “The dogs are chowing down … and now it’s our turn!”

Pluggers, 3/11/21

TIRED: Pluggers represent the “forgotten man” (and woman), the ones who keep their heads down and keep this country running despite tough times and the disdain of the elites.

WIRED: Pluggers have mastered the technology to send their enemies to the Phantom Zone. They experimented on their own parents to hone this weapon and will surely show us no mercy!

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Mary Worth, 3/5/21

Good news, everyone! Max got scared in a thunderstorm and ran away but Saul and Eve went to look for him and found him more or less immediately, with no real drama of any kind. They only got slightly rained on for their troub[squints at panel] ah, actually, they remained dry and comfortable throughout the ordeal as well. The overall lesson of this storyline is that dogs are good, and also pretty easy to find.

Family Circus, 3/5/21

Though cruelly slamming on the Family Circus is one of the oldest traditions of online comics-mocking, predating even this blog, you have to give the strip credit where it’s due, especially when it comes to “can you believe this fucking shit” facial expressions from the Keane parents. Thel is sporting a doozy today, and with very good reason! I myself am having a hard time believing this fucking shit.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/5/21

“You mean which superhero do I most want to have sex with, right? It’s Wonder Wo– [sees wife coming] I mean, Superman. I want to have sex with Superman. Whew, dodged a bullet there.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/2/21

Oh, boy, it looks like the early coronavirus pandemic echoes in Funkyverse strips that were probably written a year ago have reached the mothership, everybody! It’s funny that Crankshaft used the opportunity to do some zany jokes about hand sanitizer and whatnot, whereas in Funky Winkerbean itself the key question is “How can we make this global pandemic, which is particularly dangerous to the immunocompromised, all about Les — specifically, how can we show that Les is the real hero in Lisa’s cancer story, and is also unpleasantly neurotic?”

Crankshaft, 3/2/21

Meanwhile, Crankshaft is just riffing on headlines like “How a superspreader at choir practice sickened 52 people with COVID-19” with bits like “Wouldn’t it be funny if in the middle of a choral performance, the old lady playing the organ just straight-up dropped dead? Right there in church? In front of everybody?”

Mary Worth, 3/2/21

Look, it’s all fun and games to claim, without evidence, that your dog is a “champion tracker” when you never go hunting and there are no real stakes to it, especially when your dog is a tiny dachsund with a comically large snout! How much tracking does anyone’s pet dog do on a regular basis, anyway? Hardly none, right? But just know that if you say this sort of thing enough, you might eventually be called upon to render actual tracking services, and that can get real awkward real fast.