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Today’s Easter, the holiest day in the Christian calendar — and it’s on the same day for both Eastern and Western churches, for once. How are the comics doing with it? Not great, to be honest!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/16/17

Never would’ve picked Snuffy Smith as being in the pocket of a big anti-clerical cabal, but here it is, spending its Easter Sunday strip depicting the town’s only clergyman just going from house to house shaking down the impoverished residents for whatever sums they can muster.

Dennis the Menace, 4/16/17

Though I suppose it’s better than today’s Dennis the Menace, in which he sneers that the celebration of Christ’s resurrection is far inferior to the holiday dedicated to his Dark Lord Satan.

Pluggers, 4/16/17

You’d think pluggers, following the traditions of the American heartland, would be in church, wouldn’t you? But no, here’s featured plugger Andy Bear, spending the afternoon coveting the 21st century version of his neighbor’s ass.

Shoe, 4/16/17

And, uh, Shoe is about how if you take the wrong drug cocktail you’ll shit yourself while you sleep? This isn’t related to Easter much, except in the sense that this strip’s very existence firmly disproves the existence of a loving God.

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Crankshaft, 4/9/17

So, today’s Crankshaft only makes sense to people who understand all the weird nooks and crannies of the Funkyverse’s decades-long chrono-disjunctive narrative arcs, and, due to my many sins, I am one of those people, and as a punishment I guess I’m going to explain it to you? See, this takes place a decade in the past compared to Funky Winkerbean, and so Les is still hawking Fallen Star, his book about the murder of John Darling, who was the father of his soon-to-be-in-this-timeframe-dead wife’s biological son’s future wife. He spent years researching this book, which revealed that John Darling was killed by Plantman, as depicted in the final installment of the failed Funkyverse strip John Darling. The book was a financial failure! But Lillian, who has gone to this seminar on how to write a book only to encounter an author so unaccomplished that he held a book signing in the illegal bookstore she runs in her attic, is full of reassuring sentiments. Don’t worry, she says to Les: someday you’ll write something special, once your wife dies of cancer — like, I don’t know, the very book that appears in the first panel??? Anyway, the lesson here is that if you want literary success, you can’t write about just anyone dying, it has to be about someone you really love.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/9/17

Meanwhile, in the Funkypresent, it turns out Les is spending the energy he’s supposed to be channeling into yet another book about Lisa into primate-terminology-banter with his current, alive wife. C’mon, Les, the misery porn’s not going to write itself!

Mary Worth, 4/9/17

You know, the thought of going on a cruise has never really appealed to me, but the first couple panels here show me some of the charm. Who hasn’t wanted to yell at Florida from a safe distance away? “FUCK YOU, FLORIDA,” is what I’d shout. “YOU FUCKIN’ SUCK.”

Meanwhile, Toby is getting awful philosophical in the last panel. It’s true that you never know what tomorrow may bring! Maybe it’ll bring some guy out of his mind on nicotine withdrawal, just stabbing everyone who gets in his way on the no-cigs hell-cruise that destroyed his will to live! Who can say!

Shoe, 4/9/17

It turns out Roz, a major character in the long-running syndicated comic strip Shoe, is bisexual! This is an intriguing revelation, but it’s not an excuse for running a strip without a punchline of any sort?

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Shoe, 4/2/17

Phil Vittles died in the midst of an act of monstrous cannibalism, his love of fine food having twisted in on itself until he lost all sense of ethics and became a creature of pure appetite. Did his victim’s family stumble upon the scene of awful carnage and strike him down in revenge? Did he fall ill because, of course, no health-department-inspected restaurant would serve the criminal meal he craved, and so his nightmare-dish was unsafely prepared? Or did he finally have a moment of moral clarity as to the murderous act he’d committed, and drop dead of shock?

Pluggers, 4/2/17

Pluggers may not spend a lot of time typing on one of those new-fangled computers like one of those hacker fellas, but they’ll tell you one thing they like: watching some god-danged television. You know how many channels they got these days?