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Funky Winkerbean, 4/17/11

This latest plot development may be more weighted down with grim Funkyverse backstory than any we’ve yet encountered. For those who don’t keep up, or who continually purge Funky details from their mind so that they can continue to feel pleasure: the blond dude is Darrin, who was the baby Les’s sainted dead wife gave birth to as a teenager and gave up for adoption. His blonde wife is Jessica, whose father was a newscaster and the star of John Darling, a strip that Tom Batuik created with Marvin auteur Tom Armstrong; the strip was cancelled and was wrapped up in hilarious fashion when a crazed gunman murdered Darling. Later, back at the Funky mothership, Les solved the murder and made it the subject of his first book, which was a complete financial flop. Fun!

Jessica and Darrin somehow managed to escape the awful gravitational pull of gloom that is Westview, but are now returning voluntarily because Jessica wants to make a film about the death of her father, which will presumably do about as well as Les’s book. Anyway, the best part is that they have to live with the Moores (because everyone in town is far too depressed and/or cancer-ridden to build new houses) and Darrin will have to get a job at Montoni’s (because it’s literally the only functional business within a fifty-mile radius that doesn’t require an MD with an oncology specialization as a prerequisite of employment).

Curtis, 4/17/11

I fine it hard to believe that Gunk has, in all his years of paling around with Curtis on the comics pages, never been taken to an American movie. But I’m even more baffled that horror connoisseur Curtis can’t see the potential in the movie plot Gunk outlines. A respected scientist is transformed as a result of his obsession into a grotesque, enormous mollusk — a monstrous nightmare-thing that, in an appalling twist, his insatiable colleagues consume alive? The visceral horror combines with allegorical themes to make Flyspeck Island a shoo-in as winner of next year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (Wait, do they not speak English on Flyspeck Island?)

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/17/11

Perspiring visibly, the cop was so fixated the sordid sexual encounter he had planned for the evening that he couldn’t focus on his job! Sordid R-rated film starring Harvey Keitel or Nicolas Cage … or wacky comic that appears in family newspaper around the country?

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Gil Thorp, 4/16/11

“Besides the heater? Are you talking about the pitch in panel one that violates the rules of space and time, passing right through the batter’s body without harming him? Becuase I think that’s pretty much enough, don’t you?”

Mary Worth, 4/16/11

“And what I want right now is cocaine, for my tiny, tiny spoon! Don’t happen to know where we can get some, do you, Doc?”

Apartment 3-G, 4/16/11

“This is amazing, Dan! You have a whole recording studio, right here, in your recording studio!”

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As the seasons change, the comments of the week continue. Here’s this week’s top spot!

“She nursed me, a complete stranger, back to health with no thought to the horrors that might come to her and her child from the same evil thugs who murdered her husband. And all you can think to ask is if she was PRETTY??? Actually, she looked exactly like you if you wore a halter top and a wig. So, no, I wouldn’t describe her as ‘pretty.’ I hope she gets back with her relatives or something. Girls are icky.” –Mustang

And the runners up — very funny!

“Looks to me like Cherry and Rusty have gotten over Mark’s disappearance and presumed death — for example, they’ve already scribbled over all the portraits of him in their house, which is stage 15 on the Kubler-Ross scale, I think.” –Oavis

“To be fair, is there any emotion Rusty expresses without ‘face twisting’?” –SecretMargo

“It’s a good thing that Mark Trail took the time to shave before he called his family to tell them he’s OK. First things first.” –Mark B

“Funnily enough, this is just how Rusty always answers the phone, what with the shouting and demanding questions and creepy mind rays oozing out of his eyes, down the phone lines, and into the caller’s skull to dig out their thoughts and memories, one by one, like ice cream being gouged with a scoop.” –Jim North

On the proposal that this gown in Luann might be a salwar kameez: “I mean, seriously, a salwar kameez is like *the* *best* *thing* *to* *wear* *ever.* It would take a kind of obsessed person with unhealthy goals and limitless free time to screw one up. Which, Gunther.” –Katy

“Hopefully she got back with her relatives! She did save my life, so the very least I can do is ponder vaguely about her fate with idle good intentions.” –Lorne

“I’m playing count the mouths on Cherry in the first panel and keep losing.” –Tophat

“It’s supposed to be update on the line, ‘that and a nickel will get you a cup of coffee,’ which was coined when coffee could be obtained for 5 cents a cup. All of which means, ‘talk is worthless.’ Since he has willfully moved back to the economically and emotionally depressed center of Batiukland, the phrase would have been rendered better as ‘that and a buck will get you a slice of crappy pizza that tastes like weeping.'” –gleeb

“Morbius is ‘urban’ in the sense that he wears terrible spandex from the 1970s.” –Naked Bunny With A Whip

“It looks like Larry Lieber attended the ‘Joe Giella Master Class on Human Gestures and How To Render Them.’ Joe’s secret? Hands! Humans, like, do things with their hands when they talk to each other! ‘What do I pay you for? Hands!’ ‘Actually you don’t! Hands!’ ‘Get me a shot of that urban Dracula tonight! HANDS!'” –Krazy Kat

• Parents Behaving Badly: The dads who coach like Patton! The moms who drink like fish! And the kids caught in the middle. If your child has participated in youth sports, you’ll relate to Parents Behaving Badly. Scott Gummer’s new novel gives the grown-ups who seek vicarious glory the send-up they so richly deserve. For video and more, click here!

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