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Funky Winkerbean, 12/3/19

“Hey,” literally nobody asked, “What’s going on with Darrin and Mopey Pete in Funky Winkerbean?” Well, at the doomed comic book publishing venture that they gave up lucrative Hollywood jobs to work at, an artist from the Golden Age of Comics has either been hired in some vague consultant role or is just hanging around the office because he has nowhere to go and nothing better to do (I don’t remember which and if you think I’m going to bother digging through my archives to see if I can figure it out you have wildly overestimated my tolerance for the Comic Book Wankery plots of Funky Winkerbean). Anyway, you want a seasoned professional on your roster for moments like this: when he remembers some long-held grudge against a co-worker who’s almost certainly dead and can’t defend himself, and then just drones on and on all afternoon about what an asshole the guy was.

Crankshaft, 12/3/19

You know, I sort of assume that Crankshaft’s endless malapropism are generated by faulty wiring in his brain, and that he lets loose with them without really thinking about them or even realizing what he’s doing. That’s why I kind of resent the sly smile he’s giving his granddaughter in panel three here. “A ‘napkin,’ get it? What do you think of that one? Just a little something I’m workshopping.”

Six Chix, 12/3/19

Remember Chicken Little, the beloved folk tale protagonist who’s hit in the head with an acorn and believes the sky is falling, convincing his friends of upcoming doom and teaching listeners a valuable lesson about mass hysterias that can arise without much evidence of danger? Well, today’s Six Chix dares to pose the question: what if the sky … were falling? Really makes you think, doesn’t it.

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Dick Tracy, 11/26/19

Oh, wow, a couple of beloved comics characters from a cancelled strip are being revived, in … Dick Tracy, what an extremely surprising development! I won’t deny you the pleasure of taking your own journey through Steve Roper and Mike Nomad’s Wikipedia page, in the course of which you’ll learn that it was originally a wacky Native American minstrelsy strip called Big Chief Wahoo that morphed into a hard-hitting adventure strip starring two white guys, written for decades by Allen and John Saunders, the father-son team who also wrote Mary Worth for most of that stretch. I’ll only note that we seem to be out of the strip’s original continuity — its run ended with Roper and Nomad in their 60s and Roper standing over the grave of his dead wife, who divorced him from an insane asylum and gave birth to a daughter she never told him about — and that Proof Magazine (which does investigative reporting and not, like, articles about geometry, I think) must have a rental insurance premium as high as Woods and Wildlife’s if Steve’s extremely chill reaction to his car getting blown up is any indication.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/26/19

I always find it funny when repeated tropes/running gags with some basis in reality just drift further and further from their original germ of truth until they veer into truly nightmarish territory. Like, dogs are territorial animals and sometimes distrust strangers coming onto their turf, which is why they can be aggressive towards postal workers, meter readers, and other outsiders who have reasons to visit hundreds of homes a day; but the form this conflict has taken in the world of Mother Goose and Grimm is that Grimm, a sapient dog who can think in English sentences, hungers for mailman flesh.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/26/19

“They’re all exceptional — in the sense that we had to make exceptions to our policies to hire them, because most of them did very poorly in medical school. Ha! I’m kidding, of course. Fully two-thirds of our patients survive surgeries here, probably you’ll be fine.”

Six Chix, 11/26/19

Oh, this is nice! This lady’s friend is a ballerina and got a high-profile role, so she’s coming out to support her and watch the big performance! If anyone knows what the “joke” in this strip is, I’d love it if you could shoot me an email explaining it to me.

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Mark Trail, 11/8/19

Sorry I haven’t kept you up to date on what’s been going on in the month since Mark and Dr. Camel and their crew got attacked by a rhino, but honestly trust me when I say that it hasn’t been that interesting! There was an elephant ride but even that was more boring than it sounds, and as you can see they’re still in Nepal’s semi-tropical lowland zone and not in the rugged, mountainous region, which I assume is infested with yeti. Sorry, Mark Trail, you can’t promise me yeti and then just show me a bunch of boring-ass animals I can see in any zoo and expect me to remain engaged! In today’s strip, Genie desperately tries to liven things up by giving everyone cholera, but Mr. Mark “No Fun” Trail is gonna put a stop to even that.

Mary Worth, 11/8/19

An underrated thing about human beings — which is often borne out by, say, the oeuvre of Sacha Baron Cohen — is that we try our hardest to maintain illusion that everything is going fine and normally even when one participant in a social situation is behaving bizarrely and inappropriately. I both appreciate and find it fairly realistic that Zak, Estelle, and Iris are cheerfully going around the table saying what they liked about their meal while Wilbur is literally smearing himself with noodles. It’s magnificent.

Six Chix, 11/8/19

Sorry, I refuse to believe that this supposed slacker would have a framed picture hanging at a weird angle but then leave his cans neatly placed upright on the floor. And what are you going to stain your shirt with that’s grey? I feel like he’s protesting a little too much, like he wants a girlfriend who’s going to whip him into shape, literally, as part of some slovenliness dom/sub play.

Dennis the Menace, 11/8/19

So … instead of pretending to do yard work, you’re instead going to pretend to have a big dispute at the condo board meeting about the various estimates on what it’s going to cost to fix the elevator? I think we can agree both of these games suck ass.