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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/29/15

I’m not sure which I find more jarring here: the fact that Jughaid has used the flatlander term “spoiler alert” (in Hootin’ Holler, as in many traditional cultures, entertainment takes the form of bards putting their own spin on endless variations of well-known narratives, so the very idea of a novel, linear plot with a surprising ending would be foreign to these children), or the fact that the normally raven-haired Miz Prunelly is suddenly a blonde.

Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, 1/29/15

Well, the Dick Tracy-Funky Winkerbean crossover is over, but the Funkyverse still has CROSSOVER FEVER!!!!! With nobody currently willing to cross over with it, though, it’s been forced to mingle timelines with … itself. Yes, there’s now a cross-decade Funky Winkerbean–Crankshaft narrative confluence in progress, about Crankshaft driving beloved (?) band leader Harry Dinkle and the band to some band championship or something. Funky’s installments are using Old Timey Photo Album Frame panels, the strip’s sign for Things That Happened Long Ago, which is confusing since both strips take place more or less in the present. All this timestream mucking about mainly serves to sadly let us know that, since Crankshaft’s life continues beyond this adventure, Harry will never make good on his promise to slide that baton straight through Crankshaft’s leathery old flesh and right into his black, shriveled heart.

Six Chix, 1/29/15

One good thing about having a nationally syndicated comic strip: when you experience some minor irritation in your daily life, the rapidly aging and declining comics-reading demographic will get to hear about it, by God.

Pluggers, 1/29/15

The only time pluggers will be addressed with the slightest glimmer of dignity is when they are already in the grave.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/23/15

Oh hey were you wondering what was going with the story of Kelly the teen, who’s being gifted with a free car and a zero-tolerance contract in order to ferry around Sarah Morgan and fulfill the nebulous art-education whims of a lovable old gangster moll? (Haha, I love trying to construct the most implausibly absurd sentences that are nevertheless 100% accurate descriptions of soap opera plots.) Anyway, Bugsy the driver, who is totally reformed and absolutely no longer a brutal mob enforcer, probably, is taking Kelly to get her free car, and it’s a hearse! It’s also free to Bugsy and Mrs. P., because of some ill-defined relationship between garishly suited hearse salesman “Tony” and Mrs. P.’s criminal syndicate. When Bugsy says Mrs. P. “sends her best to you and your family,” does that mean that Tony’s family has now been released from captivity? When Tony thanks Bugsy for “what she did for us,” is that a reference to her mob’s long reign of violent terror really boosting the market for hearses?

Pluggers, 1/23/15

You know you’re a plugger when you’ve never cooked anything even remotely healthy in your entire life.

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Beetle Bailey, 1/17/15

Hey, it’s my favorite Beetle Bailey running gag, The Halftracks Hate Each Other With An Awful Intensity That Makes The Lockhorns Look Like A Nicholas Sparks Novel! Like many awful things in the comics, I originally “liked” this ironically but have come over the years to respect its terrible purity. Anyway, today General Halftrack tells the woman he’s been married to for decades that he has very little idea how to love a woman, but he’s quite sure that women are incapable of loving him or anyone else back.

Family Circus, 1/17/15

BuzzFeed, like all other secular entertainment, is forbidden within the walls of the Keane Kompound, and so Billy has been forced to cobble his own version together from available materials.

Pluggers, 1/17/15

Say what you will about pluggers, but they can promise you this: they will never, ever subject you to the sight of their nipples on national television.