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Lockhorns, 6/4/16

One of the fun things about the United States is that most people learn some fairly specific aspects of very local history when they’re in elementary school that only later do you find out are not globally important facts. Growing up in Western New York, we made Iroquois longhouses out of papier-mâché, whereas our counterparts in California were building Spanish missions. When covering the War of 1812, our teachers described in vivid detail the way the British had cruelly burned down Buffalo, mentioned only in passing that they would go on to do the same to Washington, D.C., and did not at all discuss that the Americans had done it to Toronto first. My wife, who grew up in Washington, Pennsylvania, got the Whiskey Rebellion, so I’m always charmed to see it get a shout-out in print, which doesn’t happen enough for my taste. It even got cut from the Hamilton musical! Anyway, I guess the point here is that Loretta saw the American Revolution as being just the first step towards knitting together a unified political and economic power out of disparate colonies, whereas Leroy saw many of the British taxes and other measures that sparked the revolution as being evil in and of themselves, not just because they were enacted without the colonists’ consent, and also he’s an embarrassing drunk.

Pluggers, 6/4/16

Pluggers will never, ever get healthier. They will just get sicker and sicker until they blessedly die.

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Crock, 6/3/16

Haha, it’s funny because the patrolmen are dying horribly in flames, miles away from help or rescue or even water! As the fire burns away everything that makes them human, their commanding officers coldly refer to them as “objects.”

Beetle Bailey, 6/3/16

Like many military operations, this started as an attempt to remove something with precision and skill and has now devolved into a test of strength in which someone is probably going to lose a limb.

Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, 6/3/16

Welp, I guess Jeff wasn’t being fired by his therapist earlier this week; he was being told to go back to his childhood home, to get “closure” or whatever, and also just start pulling up the floorboards of his old attic, despite the distinct lack of enthusiasm displayed by the house’s current resident. Meanwhile, in the future, we’re discovering how this actually ties in with his mother’s death: he’s using the decoder ring he’s found to translate a message from his mother, who is in outer space, which is apparently where hell is.

Mary Worth, 6/3/16

Looks like all the girls who were being super mean to Dawn because they thought she was sleeping with her professor are pals with her again because she’s deigned to spend time with them in between dropping Harlan’s name every other sentence, because that’s how human beings work! I am very much assuming that this upcoming showing of X-Men: Apocalypse that Dawn is being lured to will go pretty much like the prom scene in Carrie, except without the revenge via psychic powers.

Hi and Lois, 6/3/16

“Maybe I’m just not very good at school?”

Pluggers, 6/3/16

You’re a plugger if your grandchildren dislike you and flee from your presence the moment you’re distracted.

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Hi and Lois, 5/30/16

Wow, the Flagston kids are easily impressed. I don’t even like salad, but as far as I’m concerned, Hi didn’t come close to upstaging his wife’s ultra-local meal. Did he raise adorable calfs and pigs in his yard until they were juicy, delicious adults, then slaughter them in an abattoir of his own design and grind the byproducts into delicious hotdog-slurry with a hand-cranked slurry grinder? Is their home splattered with bits of blood and bone and viscera that will never wash out, all so the kids can enjoy a few fleeting moments of meaty deliciousness? No? He just bought some meat at the store, like a chump? Give me a break.

Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, 5/30/16

Ugh, fine, I guess I’ll pay attention to the Funkyverse’s time-jump-spanning crossover antics. Over in the past, which is also the present, Jeff is about to get dumped by his therapist for being so irritating. (You can tell it’s the past because Jeff’s health insurance has paid for enough sessions to get him to this point.) In the future, which is also the present, Jeff and Pam discuss the fact that Pam’s irritating parent still lives. (You can tell it’s the future because there’s only one print newspaper, and it’s just called The Paper, and it’s only 16 pages long.)

Pluggers, 5/30/16

I love the wild disparity between today’s caption and today’s cartoon. I’m sure the Whitneys are just kinda tickled by the fact that their car’s “check engine” light’s been on forever with no ill effects and wouldn’t actually give a hoot if it went out, but Dog-Man seems be seized by absolute panic over the sudden reversal. “OH MY GOD! THIS IS IT! WHAT WE’VE ALWAYS WORRIED ABOUT! IT’S FINALLY HERE! I’M GOING TO OPEN MY DOOR AND ROLL OUT, YOU DO THE SAME! IF WE DON’T MAKE IT, I’LL SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VEIL! WE HAD A GOOD LIIIIIFEEEEEEEEEEEE”