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Funky Winkerbean, 3/18/17

So Funky walked up the hill to that mysterious abandoned house and then … spent the week walking around in it eerie emptiness? And then looked at an old painting on the wall for a while. And today, in the first dialogue of the whole week, thought-balloons some stuff that I guess is supposed to be profound but is actually just a symptom of a major depressive disorder. I honestly don’t know if this is a Significant Location From Storylines Past or just a Metaphor Symbolizing Life’s Impermanence, and I also don’t know what’s supposed to be happening here, but in a larger sense I feel like I know exactly what’s happening here, you know?

Judge Parker, 3/18/17

You’ll recall that when Derek was first introduced to this strip, he was Honey Ballinger’s boyfriend but Sophie liked him she decided to steam him away, but then suddenly (and by “suddenly” I mean “four years later,” because this is Judge Parker after all) Derek was Sophie’s boyfriend and she was worried Honey Ballinger was going to steal him away from her. This could’ve all been chalked up to the silly, transient nature of teen relationships, but as today’s final panel reveals, the question of who exactly was dating whom has abruptly become extremely serious.

Mary Worth, 3/18/17

Pretty sure that this is what you’d get if you were making a movie and directed your actors to “do a bunch of cocaine and then yell whatever comes into your head about cruises as loud and as fast as you can.”

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Mary Worth, 3/17/17

Look, I understand that in these troubled time for publishing, media properties have to do all they can to come up with new and creative sources of revenue. I just don’t think it’s appropriate to let the cruise industry buy long stretches of enthusiastic dialogue in Mary Worth like this. This only thing missing here is Dawn or Tommy or some other condo resident wandering by and saying “Hey, I couldn’t help but overhear that you were talking about taking a cruise! Did you know that the threats from norovirus and Legionnaire’s Disease to passengers are vastly overhyped as part of the liberal media’s anti-cruise-industry agenda?”

Mary and Tobey should should be extolling the dining possibilities aboard top-of-the-line cruise ships. Sure, the buffets might leave a little to be desired, but they’re leaps and bounds ahead of the nutrient-rich but bland “Charterstone Chow” pellets they’re eating for lunch today.

Crankshaft, 3/17/17

Remember, Crankshaft is supposed to be the “fun” Funkyverse strip, which means its punchlines are meant to be broader and less grounded in reality. Unfortunately (or maybe extremely fortunately), the art style is still infected by omnipresent Funkyverse gloom-realism, which means that this week’s strips, about how silly it would be if a beekeeper gave rum balls to bees and they got a li’l tipsy, have now climaxed with Crankshaft looking genuinely terrified that he’s about to be hauled off to jail.

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Slylock Fox, 3/15/17

Wow, some hard truths about animals being laid down here, including the hard truth that owls … are actually kind of dumb? I bet the post-animalpocalypse regime will come to feel bad staffing its entire legal system with owls, then. Just another human superstition they should’ve rejected! Also, it mysteriously seems that the very smart crows never appear in Slylock Fox, at least not in any of the strips in my archive. We can only assume that the Event that granted all the animals sapience made the crows super-intelligent, and they all built spaceships and went to a different, better planet, or maybe transcended their physical bodies and became creatures of pure mind.

Shoe, 3/15/17

Ha ha, yes, it’s funny because Loon’s butt froze, but I have to question what prompted the question in the first place. The Perfesser is just reading the financial section of the newspaper, and thinks, “Huh, you know who seems like a criminal who probably had a warrant taken out against him to ensure that he couldn’t use any of his ill-gotten resources to continue his illegal activities? My friend and co-worker over here!”

Mary Worth, 3/15/17

Dr. Jeff has been taking some time off from his busy schedule of going to the Bum Boat with Mary and trying and failing to get her to marry him to nurse his bad knee at his daughter and son-in-law’s house, so surely he’ll understand when Mary decides to take time off from going to the Bum Boat with Dr. Jeff and rejecting his marriage proposals to go on a fun, sexy cruise with Tobey! And screw the column! Nobody gives a shit about the column! Let nothing stand in the way of this glorious plotline!

Blondie, 3/15/17

Neither Alexander nor Cookie know what “flash in the pan” means. Sad!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/15/17

[long, increasingly awkward silence]