Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 11/11/08

Every long-running narrative form drifts towards its own extremes, which explains how Funky Winkerbean went from being an occasionally melancholy strip about high school hijinks to a charnel house. Hopefully today’s near-wordless installment is about to take things to the next level: instead of being struck down by alcoholism or cancer or garden-variety despair, Montoni is going to be devoured by the rampaging Tyrannosaurus Rex that has escaped from a secret underground genetics lab, and is now eating everything in sight. Hopefully, the new accelerated pace of death will kill off all the strip’s characters in short order, opening us up for a new, happier beginning, or at least three blank panels a day in which nobody weeps openly.

Crankshaft, 11/11/08

Meanwhile, over in the “fun” Funkyverse strip, the complex issue of Afghan poppy cultivation — which is the only means that many impoverished Afghan farmers have to make a living, but which fuels terrorism and religious extremism in the region and desperate addiction in the United States — provides the source material for a terrible joke about pastries for Crankshaft to squint angrily at. Crankshaft is irritated by this news report, naturally, because it promises that the smack that makes his life bearable will be more expensive in the coming months.

Apartment 3-G, 11/11/08

The third-stringers continue to stink up the field here in Apartment 3-G, as Gary, completely rattled by a little razzing from Dr. Kelly, flails emotionally at Tommie for no reason. “You two work together. Is he always a little … ODD???? Hey, don’t walk so far away when I’m shouting paranoid nonsense at you!” It’s just as well that Tommie found out that Gary can’t deal with difficult people now, before she took him home to be terrified by Margo.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/11/08

“Seriously, no more! Your heterosexual shenanigans repulse me.”

Marmaduke, 11/11/08

“Guess who’s got rabies! Me, soon enough.”

Pluggers, 11/11/08

OH FOR THE LOVE GOD NO PLUGGERS AND GARAGE CLEANING NOOOOOO

(For you Johnny- and Janey-come-latelies who don’t know what “garage cleaning” is code for, travel back in time.)

Post Content

Spider-Man, 11/8/08

Spider-Man has posed one vaguely interesting super-hero-esque narrative dilemma this week: How will Spidey get out of those nutty handcuffs? Naturally, this is resolved just below the bottom of panel two, where we can’t see it, while the storyline is endlessly rehashed by characters nobody likes.

Gasoline Alley, 11/8/08

Will Slim and Clovia loot what little cash is left in their business’s accounts, then high-tail it across American on the run from their creditors and unpaid employees? I’d love to see it, if only because Slim is such a spectacular failure that he’d inevitably end up in debtors’ prison.

Pluggers, 11/8/08

Pluggers have nowhere in particular to go and nobody who wants to see them, so they might as well just sit at the barber’s for twenty minutes, or an hour, who the hell cares, at least they have old magazines to read, God, why is life so empty and meaningless.

Post Content

Cleats, 11/6/08

This is Cleats! I almost never talk about it, except when it becomes a scene of nightmarish horror; but, seeing as it’s ostensibly a good-natured, light-hearted look at the world of youth athletics, that happens more than you’d think. Anyhoo, Edith there is a slightly bookish young lady who enjoys goaltending and fencing. She has terrifying, inhuman mouth-parts that she uses to feed on soccer balls, and rotting flesh.

Pluggers, 11/6/08

You know you’re an impoverished plugger when you live in an apartment so tiny that your can barely fit your legs between your TV stand and your chair, which is just as well seeing as you can’t afford any other furniture. Also, you know you’re an impoverished plugger when you’d like to eat your cat, but you can’t move quickly enough to catch him because you’re weak and keep fainting, because of the hunger. At least this poor bastard hasn’t had to resort to the ultimate plugger indignity: hocking his television.

Mark Trail, 11/6/08

“Raccoons like to wander a lot … around in nature! That’s because they’re wild animals! They don’t care a whit about you, or your family! You’re lucky Sneaky managed to ‘sneak’ out, or else he probably would have ‘snuck’ into your room at night and bit you on the face, for no reason!”

Also, I challenge you all to use the phrase “That will make it easier to chain to a log” in casual conversation today.

Shoe, 11/6/08

“Also, I’m old and dying! So the future can pretty much bite me, you know what I’m saying?”

Psst! If you’re interested in discussing the election, this would be a good place to do it.