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Funky Winkerbean, 8/16/18

At some level, I am sympathetic to the dilemma facing Funky Winkerbean here. We live, after all, in a world where it’s almost impossible to avoid transnational brands. Even a generation ago, Funky and Holly might’ve been likely stopping off at a public rest area to have a picnic lunch; but today even most state-run rest stops are just food courts with a collection of national fast food franchises, and many people avoid them and just head straight for whatever cluster of chains awaits just off any interstate exit. The options for the chronicler of daily life on the road in 2018 are to depict the brands in a matter-of-fact way, and thus serve essentially as an unpaid marketing arm for a megacoporation, or to avoid referring to any particular real company, and risk ruining the sense of verisimilitude. Or, you know, you could take the tack today’s Funky Winkerbean does, which is to build a whole joke around one specific company’s consistently bland omnipresence, but then instead of using the company’s actual name you use a fake name that nevertheless lets everyone recognize the company you’re actually talking about. I wouldn’t advise you to do that, but you definitely could!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/16/18

That’s right, everyone, in the Decalogue YWHW commands His people to “not have any other Gods before me.” Yet in Las Vegas, we are all helpless for the God of Excess, impelled to bow down before the glowing neon and the crass, gargantuan architecture! Roz’s hairdresser is guilty of the sin of idolatry! And, uh, I guess she did one of the sex ones, too, probably.

Spider-Man, 8/16/18

Uh oh, looks like the Golden Claw-Kingpin partnership is running into the sort of snags that often arise when two organizations come together as equal partners with no clear lines of authority or decision making. Looks like Kingpin is going to have to follow up Murder By Committee with another best-selling management tome, Too Many Thugs Spoil The Murder: Why Gang Alliances Need To Establish Clear Delineation Of Responsibility So They Don’t End Up Shooting Someone And Then Setting Them On Fire For No Reason.

Six Chix, 8/16/18

Not sure what I’d say if I accidentally picked up a lit candle, guzzled hot wax, realized after it had seared its way halfway down my gullet what I had done, then vomited it up only to realize in horror that the wax was solidifying in my esophagus, leaving me with a hardened dangle of wax down my chin that I would no doubt paw at with increasing desperation until I asphyxiate, but to my mind “Oh for gosh sakes” would be a little too mild!

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Hi and Lois, 4/25/18

They called it the Day of the Second Sun: one morning, people woke up to see another luminous star blazing in the sky. The disasters began almost right away, of course: the effects on the tides, the ecosystem, the atmosphere, and the Van Allen belts were swift and catastrophic, to say nothing of the corrosive effects of endless day on the world’s collective psyche. But still, in those first few moments of that first awful day, there were a few scattered reactions of naïve hope and even delight.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/25/18

Man, you ever publish a comic strip for, like, literally 35 years, so long that you basically forget that there was at one point a conceit to the strip, something about fairy tales, or maybe that was only the title and it was never used as a joke, it’s been 35 years so who can remember at this point, but then — but then! — you suddenly come up with a perfect punchline that ties into this long-forgotten strip origin story, and it’s just in time to be only a week too late to be topical?

Pluggers, 4/25/18

Pluggers have developed their own elaborate version of hanky code, in which the various colors and labels of the work shirts they hang on their clothesline indicate their availability for various sex acts.

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Crankshaft, 3/26/18

Oh hey what’s up how are you feeling on a Monday morning are you emotionally prepared for Crankshaft’s daughter walking in on him surfing for cyberporn, right there at the desk in their home office??? Of course you aren’t, now here’s a closeup of what Ed Crankshaft’s face looks like when he finally finds some porn he likes:

Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/26/18

Oh, I’m sorry, did you find that unpleasant? Do you want to purge the image from your mind? Here, here’s one to replace it: a beloved dog with all of its flesh peeled off its skull, exposing the glistening bone beneath, yet somehow still alive, his eyes goggling in unimaginable horror but his jaws, no longer attached to any muscles or tendons, unable to open, so he must remain silent for what presumably is the very short remainder of his life.

Six Chix, 3/26/18

Ha ha, after all that, today’s Six Chix, about a woman who keeps three children (possibly hers, possibly not) prisoner in her basement seems positively wholesome!