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Billy, I do not choose you

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Family Circus, 8/29/16

Wow, shoutout to the Family Circus for a punchline that’s actually a darndest thing a kid might say, in the year 2016! So, whaddya think the original caption for this panel was, before that phone was added in, since 90% of Family Circus panels consist of recycled art? I’m guessing something along the line of “Ooooh! Watch your feet, Grandma! We feed Kittycat too well and now she’s too lazy to catch mice. The house is infested with vermin!”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/29/16

Welp, it’s not early onset Alzheimer’s after all — it’s football-induced chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Devastating, slowly degenerative, and topical? That’s the Funkyverse way!

Dennis the Menace, 8/29/16

Hmm, Dennis seems to implying that dreams can exist within dreams, and thus calling into question the very nature of our lived existence: is everything we think we understand about our lives just a transitory phenomenon as we sleep, our body in some unknowably different universe that we’ve forgotten until we wake? Definitely some solid menacing action.

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Who’ve you been hugging for the past few weeks? A bunch of books? SHAME

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Mary Worth, 8/28/16

Sorry I’ve sort of let coverage of the latest Tommy the Substance Abuser arc slip a little bit; that’s because it’s been less “Tommy lies around shirtless” and more “Sad Iris gets pie and advice from Mary.” And Mary’s advice is this: have you considered mothering your child? If he’s screwing up, or falling into a downward spiral of addiction, is it possible that it’s something you did, or failed to do? Mary really is a good advice columnist. Amateurs try to shame women who are full-time students or workers for neglecting their minor children; it takes a true master to try that on someone who’s kid is, like, 28 years old, at minimum.

The Phantom, 8/28/16

The Phantom runs separate storylines during the week and on Sunday, and the current Sunday plot, which I haven’t discussed here, involves the intertwined Chicago and Chinese mobs, representatives of whom arrived in Bangalla via plane crash. Someone over at Phantom central seems to have a hate-on for the People’s Republic of China for some reason, maybe because of their failure to uphold human rights! [gets to last panel of today’s strip, shifts in chair uncomfortably]

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/28/16

The parson is right to be worried! One more accidental pregnancy this weekend, and he’s in danger of infringing on the intellectual property of Polygram Filmed Entertainment, and those guys play rough.

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Crankshaft did all this damage during work hours, so maybe he’ll bankrupt the school district too!

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Crankshaft, 8/27/16

I’ve been reading Crankshaft on and off for most of my adult life, and so I of course was well familiar with the eternal struggle between the title character and George Keesterman, whose mailbox Crankshaft routinely destroys with his bus, because he’s dangerously incompetent at his job. For most of this time, I assumed that “Keesterman” was an always off-screen presence à la Maris from Frasier, and it was only a few years ago that I realized he was the guy in Crankshaft’s sad little social circle who wasn’t what’s-his-face, the short guy with the glasses and mustache who owned the old movie theater and ran for mayor. Ralph! That’s it, Ralph. Anyway, this was hard for me to reconcile, because I had always imagined Keesterman to while away his days animated by a white-hot rage against Crankshaft, so why was he spending time with him socially? The answer, I guess, is the typical Funkyversian one, which is that all life is suffering and unhappiness, but today he’s finally decided to have his revenge by dragging one of his only two friends into court in order to ruin him financially. Should make those long breakfasts where they sit around and drink coffee and tip poorly extra awkward! Especially for Ralph.

Dennis the Menace, 8/27/16

Haha, look at Alice’s face in panel one. She knows what’s coming. “Don’t you say it. Don’t you God-damned say it.” But no, he said it, while resting a finger on his chin and looking up with big, innocent eyes. This the most calculating menacing I’ve seen in this strip in months.

Spider-Man, 8/27/16

It’s day three of Spider-Man getting punched repeatedly in the face and I’m here to report: watching Spider-Man getting punched repeatedly in the face is in fact p-r-e-t-t-y great.