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Crankshaft, 5/24/25

The wisteria guy from earlier this week is, as Uncle Lumpy remembers so I don’t have to, the former paramour of Lilian’s now-deceased sister Lucy; he used to dance with her at the Wisteria Ballroom, and then set up an overly elaborate proposal scenario that was to take place there that didn’t come off right and therefore their love was thwarted forever, to their mutual despair, which could’ve been avoided if he had been just a little bit normal about the whole thing. Anyway, the lady at the flower shop gave him some wisterias, which he wistfully put on Lucy’s grave, and now, mere minutes later, a maintenance guy is driving by to grab them and put them directly in the garbage. The terrible Funkyverse vibes are back, everybody! They’re back and they’re better than ever!

Luann, 5/24/25

Speaking of terrible vibes, Luann and the weird uptight guy she kissed behind a clipboard exactly once are apparently going to move into a tiny studio apartment together? There’s two ways this could go: the strip could finally approach young people’s sexuality in a straightforward way or it could do a ribald fanfic-style storyline where, uh oh! There’s only one bed!!!! I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which possibility I find more likely.

Gil Thorp, 5/24/25

Hmm, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court ruled that a public high school football coach could lead students in prayer on the 50 yard line after games, but the Milford administration thinks it can stop Coach Hernandez from peacefully using an Ouija board to contact a ghost in a school supply closet? “Lawyer up, coach!” is what the beloved dead “Pop(s)” is urging Luke, as he floats conveniently where Dr. Pearl can’t see him.

Beetle Bailey, 5/24/25

C’mon, man, the Beetle Bailey gang is in the army, and they have their own special forces units, like the Rangers. The joke should’ve been “Maybe I could’ve been an Army Ranger” “You’re more of a bear” and OK now I see why they didn’t go with that one.

Pluggers, 5/24/25

Pluggers are of an age at which they’re more prone to falling, and a fall could result in serious injury. They live in constant fear that such a thing could happen to them or their partners!

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Pluggers, 5/12/25

Man, the facial expressions in this one really make it, and by “make it” I mean “make it clear what a grim marital scene these two will be enduring for the rest of their lives.” Obviously the focus is on how the kangaroo lady is willing to go into bug-eyed urinary discomfort if it means she gets to experience a few more precious minutes spent not watching sports, but don’t ignore the bear man’s hooded eyes: he’s very much aware of what’s going on and is seething that his wife is willing to go to such lengths to stymie his desires. The really sad thing is that this plugger couple has also brought us “bear man wants to watch TV even though kangaroo lady is desperate to leave the house and do literally anything else” and “bear man is going to get kangaroo lady so drunk that she passes out so he can watch what he wants, and he considers this better than sex,” so this isn’t even the most depressing TV-related glimpse into this marriage that this trip has provided us with. Anyway, if the kangaroo lady really wants to keep the TV tuned to her channel while she’s in the bathroom, she could just take the remote with her. Obviously the bear man could get up off the couch and change the channel, but trust me, he is not going to get off the couch and change the channel.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/12/25

Look, I don’t want to minimize how scary it would be for the police to incorrectly suspect you of murder, but the length of time during which the police incorrectly suspected Augie of murder started when the beat cop showed up on the scene and decided to do as little work as possible and mostly ended when the homicide detective showed up and decided the stalker had been murdered by drugs, and then the whole thing was definitively put to rest when the real murderer called the cops and was like “actually it wasn’t a drug overdose, it was murder, and I, not Augie, am the murderer.” It’s always hard to tell how long things take in the comics but the first part took maybe an hour and I believe the second part was wrapped up by the end of that night? “A while” is really stretching things, is what I’m saying here.

Mary Worth, 5/12/25

The big narrative tension in this storyline is that we know that Belle is a murderous psycho and Dawn suspects but cannot prove that Belle is a murderous psycho, but it’s not clear if Wilbur thinks Belle is completely normal or is ignoring obvious warning signs because he is desperate for sex. I kind of feel like today’s strip points towards option two, as Wilbur does not take the obvious opportunity to have Belle come over to Mary’s apartment for a muffin sesh, indicating that he clearly knows such a scenario would end very badly. However, he’s not smart enough to realize that the arrival of the latest issue of Fish Fancy might lead Belle to realize how emotionally involved he is with his fish, which could be bad news for Willa.

Bizarro, 5/12/25

Hey, how do you think this ghost is going to get that cereal inside his body? Will he just dump it in through one of his eye holes? Will that interfere with looking at his phone? Sorry to dig into the details like this, but we’re all going to be dead someday and I honestly would like to know as much as possible about the mechanics in advance.

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Gil Thorp, 5/5/25

Hey, remember when we met Marty’s AA pal, “Clam,” and I said, “Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if that was the same person as Clambake, the guy who did some unpaid coaching for Gil and claimed to be a Negro Leaguer, but it turns out he was a fraud?” Well, ha ha, it seems that is the same guy, and he only went around lying about his baseball career because he was drunk, I guess, but now that he’s clean and sober he’s welcome to come back to the Milford dugout to do some unpaid coaching again, or at least to stare meaningfully out at the field with Gil.

This actually gives me a chance to talk about the weird Gil Thorp variant of comic book time, in which the kids age in real time, spending no more than four years as school-age characters and occasionally returning as adults, but Gil and his fellow coaches seemingly do not. And the original Clambake storyline, which ran in 2007, actually gives us some pegs to real ages: in his fabrication, he claimed to have been 83 years old and played in the late 1940s, when in fact he was only 71, as Gil found out with some help from the local cops once he decided to maybe figure out if this random dude who’d been hanging around the school for weeks was on the up and up. That would make him 89 years old now … or maybe still 71, if he’s in the same time-stasis as Gil? Unclear. I’m interested in finding out, though.

Dick Tracy, 5/5/25

I haven’t really been keeping up with the details in Dick Tracy, but I am happy to inform you that Dick finally has all the information he needs to put an end to Neo-Chicago’s nephewcrime epidemic once and for all. I love that the only photo the cops have of these two is a party pic printed out from Facebook; I assume that the heavily armed SWAT team currently converging on their location has been warned that “suspects may be enjoying canapés, repeat, canapés.”

Pluggers, 5/5/25

Now, the other coastal elitists and I all like to see pluggers engaging in their vaguely depressing down-home antics and ask, jokingly, “Are pluggers OK? Ha ha!” But, for real: are pluggers OK. Are pluggers no longer able to properly care for themselves, or possibly being physically abused. Do we need to call a social worker, to keep the pluggers safe.