Archive: Better Half

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Hagar the Horrible, 4/4/14

In benighted, backwards 10th century Scandinavia, where even the rudimentary medical knowledge of the Greeks and Romans either had never been learned or was long forgotten, doctors worked on some combination of superstition, ignorance, and fraud, and so patients may as well have offered their own suggestions and advice on treatment. Still, Helga seems more pleased than you’d think imagining her husband being gorily dismembered in a scene that sounds less like surgery and more like a bloody sacrifice to the violent Norse pantheon.

Crock, 4/4/14

It’s true: working in retail may be low-paying and low-status, but it sure beats dying in a far-off colonial war when your tiny, isolated fortlet is overrun by a bloodthirsty enemy.

Heathcliff, 4/4/14

Remember when Heathcliff panels about using marine life as sporting equipment seemed to be written so as to include jokes of some kind, even if they weren’t obviously funny in any way? Well, now they’re just naming fish species. Sad, really.

Apartment 3-G, 4/4/14

I was going to make a joke that panel one here featured Tommie’s post-coital request for oral servicing from this rough-hewn large animal vet, or that Lily in panel two had become so crazed with hunger that she learned how to open a car door, but then I got a good look at Tommie’s huge, terrifying claw-flipper in the first panel, so now I’m just going to sit here and gibber wordlessly for a while.

Better Half, 4/4/14

Speaking of horrifying nightmare-things, it looks like Cthulhu has finally awoken from his dreamless billion-year slumber! HAVE PITY ON US, CRUEL OLD ONE, AND CONSUME OUR SOULS WITH A MINIMUM OF AGONY

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Better Half, 3/15/14

Don’t ask Harriet, Stanley — she gave up on dreams long ago. Didn’t mind the format so much; just got sick of the programming.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/15/14

What passes for joy in the Funkyverse: He’s Not Really Dead, Part IV.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/15/14

The Reverend Croom has figured out Herb spits in his food.

Heathcliff, 3/15/14

Oh man, is that a cat thong in the middle there? The neighbor lady looks pretty horrified; I bet it’s a cat thong.

Between Friends, 3/15/14

OK, so this is Between Friends, which mixes joke-a-day and soapy arcs about the lives and times of three middle-aged women and should therefore be called Among Friends, but that’s not important right now. There’s an unfulfilled stay-at-home mom and a frazzled working mom and childless divorceé Maeve here, finishing up a whirlwind European vacation and wrenching final breakup with her ex-husband by visiting her company’s Paris office and trying to gin up a glam new international job. So you can apparently do a lot more with the whole “3 Girls” concept than orphan deer and off-panel plane crashes, even when everybody’s Canadian.


Hey, I’m filling in during Josh’s mostly-annual Spring Trip West through Sunday, March 23. Let me know if the site starts acting up on you and I’ll do what I can to fix it: uncle.lumpy@comcast.net. Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/4/14

Cindy Summers had been just about the only major Funky Winkerbean character to have escaped Westview’s depressive, cancerous gravitational pull, but since her discriminatory firing, her fantasy of personal happiness is now over and God, she’s even more miserable looking about it that I would’ve imagined. Look at the loving detail on the bags under her eyes in the final panel! Has she been crying? Or is she just tired, so very tired? Anyway, I love that instead of going to one of Cleveland’s hipper neighborhoods or even to some nice, soothing chain motel where she can get her bearings, she’s chosen to have the cab take her directly from the airport to the ex-husband-managed pizza place that’s the social and economic epicenter of the dying suburb where she grew up. You can go home again. You must go home again. THERE IS NO ESCAPING YOUR HOME, NOW, AGAIN, OR EVER.

Curtis, 3/4/14

Don’t worry everyone! Gunk did not die when he leapt into the icy water to rescue dolphins! He just went into a state of hibernation so everyone thought he was dead. (We did not get similarly reassuring closure on the status of the dolphins.) Also he has now explicitly admitted that the inhabitants of Flyspeck Island are a distinct and non-human species of hominids? Look for the U.S. Navy to quarantine the place and send in teams of scientists as soon as word gets out.

Better Half, 3/4/14

Harriet would prefer to have sex with a woman.

Lockhorns, 3/4/14

Loretta would prefer to have sex with the Brawny towel guy.