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Funky Winkerbean, 9/10/19

Hey, everyone, did you catch the fun comics news in the Grey Lady yesterday? It turns out that this week’s strips, in which a CTE-addled Bull obsessively washes the family laundry over and over again, isn’t just another round of the usual CTE-addled laffs that we’ve come to expect. Nope, according to a big, spoilers-heavy article in the New York Times, it’s just the setup for a month-long storyline that climaxes with … (wait for it) … (stop reading now if you don’t want to learn the extremely predictable denouement to all this, I guess) … Bull’s suicide! Did you worry that Lisa’s demise, being brought about more or less by random chance, wasn’t bad enough??? Well, good news, the character deaths in Funky Winkerbean are just going to get more grim from here on in, and will continue until all the demands are met.

Mark Trail, 9/10/19

Fortunately Mark Trail is a tragedy-free zone, which means that Mark probably isn’t going to be eaten by a yeti. I do enjoy that Doc has stood up in the background between panels; perhaps he assumed that, having managed to survive a desert flash flood, he’d proven his mettle and would now be Mark’s permanent companion on adventures. His facial expression in panel two indicates that he’s terribly disappointed to be displaced by some kind of freakish camel-scientist hybrid.

Shoe, 9/10/19

Shoe of course is a leader on the funny pages among strips that telegraph to us how little any of the characters want to be there or to be participating in the “jokes” or “wordplay” therein. We’re all familiar with the Patented Shoe Goggle Eyes Of Horror, but I’m fond of today’s more subtle offering, in which the Perfesser leans away from Roz between panels, as if to get as far away from this “punchline” as possible without actually getting up.

Gasoline Alley, 9/10/19

The Gasoline Alley characters, meanwhile, are proud of their punchlines! So proud they need to explain them to one another, at great length, to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/16/19

I’m not sure what it is Jughaid thinks will be “gross”. It could be the process of transformation by which an amphibian becomes a man, which will no doubt involve skin stretching, bones snapping and mending and snapping again, and the strange, chimeric creature bellowing out in pain as every single cell transmutes into something different, on fire from whatever cursed witch’s magic turned him into a frog in the first place; on the other hand, it could just be Mary Beth kissing a frog, I suppose. Either way, he’s right to think that Jamey would want to see it! Not a lot by way of entertainment available around these parts.

Shoe, 8/16/19

Ha ha! It’s funny because the Perfesser will soon find himself both humiliated and impoverished by our medical system!

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Pluggers, 7/29/19

What is the facial expression on this plugger supposed to be conveying? Is it a sly smile? Is this plugger thinking about how he “accidentally” left the house without his suspenders today? How his pants might just “accidentally” fall down, and there would be no way for him to stop it? Oops! How embarrassing! How naughty! Everyone will be able to see! It’s not his fault, he just forgot, but I suppose sometimes we need to be punished for our mistakes.

Gil Thorp, 7/29/18

Welp, it looks like Hadley has figured out what she’s doing with her summer, which is idly threatening to personally sue school board members for preventing Tiki Jansen from attending school in a district he doesn’t live in. Hey, you ever hear about poor parents who fudge their address so their kids can go to school in a better, wealthier school district and up getting sent to jail? Really too bad that none of those kids were on a varsity team with a coach who could connect them with a bored, unethical lawyer, huh?

Hi and Lois, 7/29/18

Look, Lois, Hi doesn’t give a shit about his dumb job or his mediocre salary. You know what Hi cares about? Golf. Winning at golf makes him horny as hell, and you’re clearly pretty pleased about the result, so let’s not quibble about the motivations.

Shoe, 7/29/19

Ha ha, it’s funny because Skyler, much like his uncle, is terribly depressed! Also a bird? A bird that, like all modern birds, doesn’t have teeth? And thus would have no use for orthodontia?