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Shoe, 12/11/14

A cool thing about having a daily comic strip is that you can use it to air some very specific gripes you might have that arise from your personal life! I mean, if it were me and I was taking on Geico, I’d probably go with “Why does Geico have so many mascots, like there’s the gecko and the caveman and the pig and the talking paintings and the two guys with ukeleles and I think also there’s a stack of money with googly eyes?” But, you know, “I resent the application of actuarial science to me in particular” could work too!

Funky Winkerbean, 12/11/14

I know it seems weird, but there are probably some people who only read Funky Winkerbean and not its sister strip, Crankshaft, or vice versa. These people are spared the useless mental exercise of trying to figure out how the timelines of the two Funkyverse strips now line up, as are 99 percent of the people who read both and still only have the vaguest idea that they’re connected. But even if you forgot/don’t care, Funky Winkerbean has decided that its readers are starved for delightful Crankshaft-related content, and are giving us a charming flashback to the Funkypast/Crankpresent, in which the ’Shaft deals with an obviously emotionally vulnerable little girl with his classic lack of tact. I don’t was to cast aspersions on anyone’s parenting, but it sure looks like this child came to talk to a pizza-parlor Santa with neither her father nor her mother with her, so her family situation is probably pretty dire.

Crankshaft, 12/11/14

Meanwhile, over in Actual Crankshaft, we learn that in the Funkyverse you never ask an innocuous question because you might get a super depressing answer.

Phantom, 12/11/14

Hey, what’s happening over in the “Amnesiac Phantom Joins The Jungle Patrol” plotline, guys? Well, the Jungle Patrol’s colonel decided to test his theory that “John X” was secretly a criminal by locking him in a holding cell with a bunch of criminals, and then our hero brutally beat them into unconsciousness. Now he’s going to be taking down to the infirmary by a leering, sexually aggressive medic. Based on the conduct of one of the country’s main law enforcement bodies, I may have to retract my assessment of Bangalla as a successful post-colonial democracy, guys.

Mary Worth, 12/11/14

Hanna and Sean are so crazed with lust for each other that they’re finding erotic inspiration in anything, even Mary’s cooking. I honestly am rooting for them to start going at it right here on the dining room table, if only to take Mary to levels of scandalization we never would’ve thought possible.

Hi and Lois, 12/11/14

“Chemicals!” shouts Ditto. “The touch of water is anathema to me! Bathe me in a cleansing tetrachloroethylene fire!”

Six Chix, 12/11/14

Hey, everyone, here’s today’s Six Chix! It is 100% grim as shit.

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Spider-Man, 12/10/14

Sequels sure can be tricky! You need to build on an original story that’s beloved enough to merit a second installment and honor what people liked about it while still pushing forward into new territory. We don’t know yet exactly how the fascinating script for Marvella 2 manages to pull this off, but since this Newspaper Spider-Man plot is in fact itself a sequel to a storyline for 2006, we can get a good sense of how you should balance the old and the new. Back then, Marvella’s nemesis was being played by an older actress instead of the director’s young ingenue daughter, and she was angry about having been beat out for the title role by Mary Jane after auditioning for it, rather than actually getting the part and then being angry because she was displaced by Mary Jane when she became available. See, totally different! Similarly, I believe that, at the climax of this story, rather than being knocked unconscious with a lead pipe by a butler, Spider-Man will be bludgeoned by, let’s say, a special effects artist, using something you might find around a movie set.

Momma, 12/10/14

We already knew that Momma’s dedication to passive-aggression is intense, but she’s really taking things to the next level by having a near life-size photo of Francis in his Boy Scout uniform hanging on the wall just to serve as a prompt for her to belittle him by bringing up his past humiliations.

Slylock Fox, 12/10/14

5) Did your Comics Curmudgeon manage to successfully resist the almost overwhelming urge to Google Image Search “bats with six-foot wingspans” because he knew the results would haunt his nightmares for weeks? Answer: Very true!

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Gasoline Alley, 12/9/14

YES YES YES THE BELOVED “MILDLY RUDE SALESMAN WITH A PENCIL MUSTACHE” GUY FROM THE SKEEZIX RETURNS A DVD PLAYER STORYLINE IS BACK, BABY! That’s how you know we’re in for some high-quality verbal jousts over the next three to seven weeks. Today we get some important background on this character’s motivation: his “Marx brothers” reference is a veiled description of his political orientation. He’s not a dick to his customers just for fun, but rather as part of the long political struggle of class against class that Marx described so presciently. I see big things for this guy when the revolution comes.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/9/14

After an absence from the strip that bears his name that lasted literally decades, Barney Google has made a number of trips to Hootin’ Holler over the past few years, bringing news of strange big-city mores to the isolated inhabitants there. For instance, today we learn that the horse modeling industry is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rife with horsefuckers! Look at these two creeps laughing it up at poor Spark Plug’s distress. “You don’t understand! Being a horse-model was my lifelong dream … and in one brief moment it became a nightmare.”

Spider-Man, 12/9/14

Wow, that’s a pretty rude way to talk to your film’s high-profile leading lady, Rory! You might wonder how he gets away with that kind of sass. Well, it’s simple: he’s got the only combo flattop/mullet/rat-tail in the business. You don’t fire that haircut. You just don’t.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/9/14

Having successfully convinced Rex that Sarah is the one foretold in prophecy, Rene is now talking Rex into allowing Kelly to continue on as her lackey, as long as she submits to the stringent conditions that any acolyte must accept. Rex is clearly intrigued. “Hmm, a teenage girl consecrating her body and mind to purity and swearing to lie down her own worthless life in order to protect my daughter? Tell me more!”