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Crankshaft, 5/1/17

Crankshaft, 5/2/17

Sure, Ed — those moms are chasing your empty bus.

Just look at the lovingly detailed bricks and rain, Ed’s meticulously randomized blackheads (4‑2‑3 — thank you, click-to-zoom feature!), and that enormous block of overwrought dialogue. Say what you will, a lot of time goes into making this strip. Leaving no time to read it, I guess?

I was vaguely unsettled by Monday’s Crankshaft even before Tuesday’s contradicted it, and this morning I realized why — Ed is smiling. Normally his face is a mask of aggrieved belligerence even when he’s doing things he enjoys, like gardening, barbecuing, or watching his beloved Cleveland sportsball teams. So if you ever need to get on Ed Crankshaft’s good side, God help you, start him bragging about what a thoroughly accomplished asshole he is.

Curtis, 5/2/17

So, tell us — did the guy rebuild his broken life or not? Sounds like he made a pretty good start! Don’t try to sell the moral ’til you’ve finished the fable, Aesop.

Pluggers, 5/2/17

Hey Andy, if social and family relationships baffle you, try making sense of Pluggers.

Spider-Man, 5/2/17

Before the doorman got in the way, Peter was driving straight into the lobby to save himself a couple steps. And check out the terror-font when Aunt May shows up — he knows she’ll get him up at the crack of dawn all week to make her damn chamomile tea and serve it up on the lovely balcony. Between the galactic defenders and widowed aunts, how’s a guy supposed to catch a nap?

OK, so it seems my superpower is finding logical errors in Crankshaft dialogue — still more useful than anything we’ve seen from Spider-Man!

–Uncle Lumpy

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Phantom, 4/29/17

Hmmm … can’t shake a “feeling of death,” Big Guy? Maybe it’s because you sleep cheek-by-jowl with your ancestors’ corpses, decorate yourself with skull jewelry, and live inside a gigantic death’s-head?

Nah. More likely it’s just a premonition that your city-bred wife, out stalking a pygmy tribal chief in the deep jungle, is about to get all slain by one of his adorable little arrows.

Crankshaft, 4/29/17

Wait, sad to outlive your dreams? But that way you’d still be around to enjoy them after they turn into facts! Sounds kinda nice — sign me up!

Not Lillian, though — she’s lived in the Funkyverse long enough to know this ain’t no Disney movie (the depression cats are a giveaway). So she games the system, adopting only those dreams that will fail slowly enough to outlast her. That way, she can die basking in the delusion that her remaining dreams still had a shot. Not like her dream to open a used bookstore above the garage — that sucker failed from the get-go and mocks her to this day.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/29/17

OK, Rex Morgan has been setting up this porno for so long the only question left is the dramatis personae: Niki and Kelly, sure, but who’s on third: rich-girl Holly — or Kelly’s Mom Summer (ew)?

And pace Josh, Niki’s actually far from a novice at this sort of thing: a decade ago, June blackmailed him into “cleaning her garage,” if you know what I mean. And that was before he got his wet hands all over Rex’s trout.

Anyway, it’s great to see this classic soaper returning to its roots. Its sexy, creepy roots.

Spider-Man, 4/29/17

Spider-Man plugs Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise almost as hard as Mary Worth plugs Carnival Cruise Lines. Probably for more cash, but definitely with a lot less effort. Never change, Web-Slinger!

Hello, faithful reader! I’m sitting in while Josh enjoys a Spring Break chock-full of enjoyable activities on a colossal liner steaming around the Caribbean, or maybe just sneaks out back for a delicious cigarette. Either way, reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if you have any problems with the site.

If you use the commenting feature, be aware that I’m notified automatically when a comment is placed in moderation, so there’s no need to alert me by email or in a follow-up comment. I’ll clear comments as soon as I see them, which won’t always be immediately. Thanks for your anticipated patience!

–Uncle Lumpy

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Hi and Lois, 4/27/17

“We had yell-phones. ‘Hey, Dot!’ That’s how we’d yell. And if someone lived outside of yelling distance, well, they weren’t our friends! How could you be friends with someone outside your village? There would be no way to know what clan they were a part of, to know the ties between your ancestors and theirs that defined your status relations! If you encountered any such person outside the palisade, violence was the immediate result! You couldn’t know if they were friend or foe so it was kill or be killed on sight. I have the blood of so many strangers on my hands! What were we talking about? Oh, right, phones, we didn’t have those.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/27/17

I know that Snuffy Smith is a notorious chicken thief — the syndicate apparently considers this more acceptable to joke about in the daily comics than his other traditional livelihood, moonshining — but it took me a while to realize that the joke here was that the chickens were evidence because he stole them. Maybe it’s because I’m a big fan of Roald Dahl and Alfred Hitchcock, but my immediate assumption was that Snuffy and Lukey murdered someone using a chicken as a weapon.

Spider-Man, 4/27/17

“Oh, you wrapped up the story with a couple days left to go? Well, uh, you could talk about some of the characters from the upcoming movie, I guess. Don’t bother looking up any pictures to see what the actors look like. Just work from memory! It’ll be fine!”