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Funky Winkerbean, 8/14/15

Oh, hey, I didn’t mention it the other day, but Darrin got offered a job helping Mopey Pete on the comic book movie he’s writing, and Jessica immediately agreed to move to Los Angeles with him, which Darrin treated as if this were some great favor she was doing him! Which seems to imply that someone, anyone, might want to live in the eternal Vale of Sadness that is Westview, and specifically the apartment above Montoni’s that presumably smells like mediocre pizza and depression all the time; it also ignores the fact (just like Funky Winkerbean the strip has been mostly ignoring the fact) that Jessica is in fact an aspiring documentary filmmaker so maybe … Los Angeles … might a place she’d want to live? Just a thought.

Anyway, clearly Montoni’s needs somebody paying rent on the apartment upstairs to supplement declining pizza revenue, and clearly Montoni’s needs someone in charge to make sure the giant barrels of low-grade pizza sauce shipped in monthly haven’t spoiled, and it looks like Wally is next in line for both positions! Wally already has a perfectly nice house that he and his wife live in, of course, but the needs of the pizza collective outweigh any rights he has to choose where he lives, as his look of stone panic in panel three makes very clear.

Mary Worth, 8/14/15

Thank you, Hilton Berkes: “I see enough of you on campus, Ian” is a sick burn for the ages. When I am cold at night, I will bring this strip up on my phone and bask in its cruel, warming glow.

Crankshaft, 8/14/15

Here’s today’s Crankshaft! It’s about uncontrollable pooping.

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Mark Trail, 8/13/15

OH MY GOD

MARK TRAIL HAS BEEN EXPOSED TO RADIATION

WILL HE BE MUTATED INTO A NEW SUPERHERO FOR A NEW AGE????

Let’s see, Spider-Man got all the powers of a spider when he was bitten by a radioactive spider, and Mark’s been irradiated by a bunch fo radioactive rods, so … he’s going to gain all the powers of a rod? Or maybe a guy named Rod? Rod-Man, Rod-Man, does whatever Rod/a rod (A-Rod?) can? This seems like an extremely boring angle on superheroic origins, but I’m willing to see where the strip goes with it.

Mary Worth, 8/13/15

This dinnertime conversation is in fact surpassing my wildest expectations for hypnotically fascinating dullness. Damn it, Ian, this poor man has already debased himself by taking a job at your pissant little university — don’t make him live in one of the little shitbox apartments in this crumbling late ’60s condo complex too! Leave him the scrap of dignity that living in a real house represents! Meanwhile, Toby is squeezing her eyes shut and thinking about her tiny sculptures as hard as she can, which I have to imagine is her strategy for sex with Ian as well.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/13/15

Boy, Lukey sure looks awfully sad. You don’t suppose Elivney … ate the goat? Right in front him? I’m pretty sure she ate the goat, guys.

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Mary Worth, 8/11/15

I moved to Baltimore in 2002, and, as was the style at the time, subscribed to home delivery of the local print newspaper, which had four glorious pages of comics, including the soap opera strips, which I had never really read before. The Mary Worth storyline in progress at the time involved a cantankerous old man named Smitty Smedlap, who was in the midst of a dinner with Mary and Jeff at the Bum Boat that, I swear to God, lasted for weeks, much of which spent with him complaining that he didn’t like fish (or, as he called it, “feesh”). I found it riveting, not least because, as the dinner unspooled day after day, I wasn’t sure who, if anyone, I was supposed to like. Was this dinner unusually comically full of mutual irritation for the strip, or was everything like this? Thus, I have high hopes that this meal will go on interminably as well, with Ian increasingly desperately trying to convince his boss to move into his condo complex for the most tenuous of reasons; in this case, though, any newcomers wondering how exactly they’re supposed to understand what’s happening will be helped out by Toby’s “can you get a load of this shit” facial expression.

Dennis the Menace, 8/11/15

Dennis the Menace has definitely crossed some kind of line today by having a panel in which Dennis isn’t present and Mr. Wilson says a cranky old man thing that isn’t Dennis-related at all. Is America ready for this feature to slowly become entirely Wilson-centric, with each day’s “joke” consisting of Mr. Wilson angrily informing his wife or some unfortunately passerby that things today are bad, especially things that involve or cater to young people? I’ll bet it is!