Post Content

Crankshaft, 9/8/16

Crankshaft trufans (by which I mean Crankshaft haters, which are sadly the only kinds of Crankshaft trufans out there) have long asked themselves: when will Ed Crankshaft, who is remarkably, dangerously bad at his job as a school bus driver, finally be fired? He’s managed to so far stay employed despite the extensive and actionable damage caused by his incompetent driving. But can his career survive actual child endangerment? Stay tuned!

Pluggers, 9/8/16

It probably says something terrible about me that the most affection I’ve ever felt for a plugger came from this cartoon: a plugger-lady sitting silently, unsmiling, staring at her tiny TV, waiting for something terrible to happen to the host of the gameshow she watches every day. Maybe it won’t happen today. Maybe it won’t ever happen. But if it does, she wants to be there to see it.

Post Content

Family Circus, 9/7/16

We all joke, of course, about the “melonheaded” children of the Family Circus, but we all just assumed their apparent macrocephaly was a quirk of Bil Keane’s art style, now handed down to his son Jeff. How wrong we were. How horribly, horribly wrong. Today we learn that the Keane Kids’ heads are grossly distended due to whatever monstrous science is required to keep them alive indefinitely, as they are transplanted from one child’s body to another — and really, the less time spent dwelling on how exactly those bodies are acquired, the better. “How old was my head in this picture?” Jeffy asks, his immortal life being nothing more to him than an undifferentiated blur of surgeries and tiny bodies that eventually fail and wither.

Gasoline Alley, 9/7/16

Speaking of awful nightmare visions, two members of Gasoline Alley’s extended cast are, for reasons I’m not even going to bother going into here, engaged in a little light accidental-woods-birth action. I’m sure this will turn out fine and not be nightmarish at all, but I am super unsettled by the array of woodland creatures, eagerly watching to see the baby’s head crown with big, adorable, staring, unblinking eyes.

Mary Worth, 9/7/16

“So, wait, you’re telling me there’s a pill … that I can take … when I have an unbearable urge to take another kind of pill? This new pill sounds great! I’m just gonna swallow a whole bottle’s worth all at once!”

Post Content

The Lockhorns, 9/6/16

“Like, take the guy who designed this building. How high do you think that ceiling is? Six feet? Six and a half? I’d like to use the democratic process to let that architect know what I think of him! Too bad we can’t. Too bad he works for the Management of this building, which is an enormous edifice built on the post-apocalyptic wasteland that used to be ‘outside.’ Or that’s what they say, anyway. I’ve never seen a window. Have you? Has anyone? How many generations has humanity been inside this fortress? Has anyone seen the Manager, who has enslaved us to inscrutable busywork under the eternal glare of flickering fluorescent lights? Did you catch the big game last night? Working hard or hardly working?”

Gil Thorp, 9/6/16

Oh hey, now that phenom QB True Standish is off to anchor the Wake Forest Demon Deacons’ 114th-ranked offense, I guess there’s a new quarterback battle shaping up in Milford! Soon enough we’ll learn if Kevin Pelwecki is a standard-issue “overly cocky high school athlete” of the sort we get once a year, or actively delusional!

Hagar the Horrible, 9/6/16

Legitimate shoutout to Hagar the Horrible for depicting how the only way to truly survive war with your mind intact is to pretend your enemies aren’t human! The carnage behind Hagar and Eddie is particularly great — but nothing compared to what happened to Eddie’s soul.