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Crankshaft, 3/4/12

I’m always intrigued by the precise relationship between Crankshaft and its mother strip, Funky Winkerbean — not so much in terms of characters in common or mismatched chronology, but in tone. What thematic elements do they share, and what distinguishes them? Take this Sunday installment. All the old people are sitting around, talking in terms of mounting panic about the death of everyone they know, a fate that will find them soon enough. That’s basic Funkyverse fare. Then you get a dumb and tactless pun about the situation — also Funky-standard. But Crankshaft being a sullen, humorless jerk when he gets his pun taken away from him? That’s the Crankshaft value-add!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/4/12

Sorry, boys, nobody’s allowed to leave Hootin’ Holler! Loweezy’s doing you a favor: if you had managed to pilot your makeshift aircraft over the barbed wire fence, you just would have been shot by the guards.

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Hi and Lois and Beetle Bailey, 3/3/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Hi is flirting with some other lady right in front of his wife, and General Halftrack is reacting to his wife’s attempt to initiate intimacy with undisguised horror! I mean, we get it, entire staff of Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC, you find the prospect of having sex with your wives repulsive, no need to harp on it. (I was originally going to write “sex with your spouses” to cover the possibility that someone working there might be a lady or gay, but then I was thought about the last 30+ years of Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois and Hagar the Horrible and decided, nope, “wives” it is.)

Apartment 3-G, 3/3/12

Now here’s a couple with a healthy sex life! I almost wrote “a healthy relationship,” but then I remembered their widely divergent attitudes about the child they’re about to have together. At least they still like to get it on! Seriously, I assume that whoever hacked into the servers of the market research company that’s asking newspaper readers about what they want to see in Apartment 3-G and replaced all the survey responses with “PREGO PORN” is one of my readers, and I just want you to know that you’re my hero.

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WON’T YOU?

“That Archie is such a ‘card’! I want to ‘club’ him, have him ‘spade’, then pull out his still-beating ‘heart’ and show it to him.” –Ed Dravecky

And enjoy your extremely funny runners up!

“So when Lois suggested they eat away from the TV, Hi said, ‘You’ll have to pry this remote from my cold dead hand.’ One butcher knife later, the hand is cold and dead, but still clutching the remote in the living room, while Hi sits in stunned silence at the dinner table, glassy-eyed from acute blood loss.” –Nekrotzar

“Lacking wood or oil to warm their house, Snuffy and Loweezy warm themselves with a vigorous and cheerful rendition of the Macarena.” –Perky Bird

“It’s like the Godfather, if being literate had been Fredo’s betrayal.” –Doctor Handsome

“Are we sure those lines aren’t Mary’s spider-sense tingling? And by ‘spider-sense tingling,’ I mean, ‘Look out! Here come more inane, mind-numbing dialogue rather than any remotely resembling action.'” –R in CT

“Man, Flutesnoot is straight up original gangster. If I had to guess which Riverdale High teacher was cooking meth in a garage, I’d — well, I’d guess all of them. But if I had to guess which one breaks junkies’ legs when they don’t pay up? Flutesnoot.” –bunivasal

“‘Where’d all these cats come from?’ ‘Well, as near as historians can tell, they were first domesticated in Egypt in … AAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!!'” –Pozzo

“You’re six months pregnant with your first baby — at this point in your life everything is meaningful! You should try talking about your baby in every damn sentence at every damn opportunity. It isn’t tedious at all.” –Chareth Cutestory

I must thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

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