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Gil Thorp, 1/18/23

You might not know it based on his lackluster coaching record, but Gil is capable of shrewdly planning ahead. He’s facing an abrupt firing if he fails to deliver a basketball championship, and he surely won’t get that sweet, sweet endorsement money he’s been too good chase after once that happens, which is why he needs to establish his new “Gilpa” persona now, while he’s still a draw. Hopefully by the time he’s fired, fans of the Fox Used Auto Extended Universe will have come to accept him as one of their many beloved characters and he can keep getting paid work.

Gasoline Alley, 1/18/23

Not sure I fully understand the theological world-building that underpins Gasoline Alley. In this universe, Santa is an immortal gift-giver who takes post-Christmas vacations and runs his operation like a modern businessman, but is also (see the halo) Nicholas of Myra, a 4th century Greek bishop who has ascended to sainthood and can intercede with God to protect the lives of mortals, a category that apparently includes non-human elves. Did Jesus also die to save elfkind in the GasAlliverse, or did they have their own Savior? Really hope we’re going to explore all this rather than waste time on Bunky’s inevitably failed business venture.

Dennis the Menace, 1/18/23

I was an extremely dorky child and teen, as evidenced by the fact that my big teenage rebellion consisted of skipping school a couple times a month so I could go by myself to the downtown library and read. But in my opinion, even that’s more menacing than doing it to spend quality time with a kindly old neighbor lady.

Blondie, 1/18/23

J.C. Dithers doesn’t seem like the most tech-savvy guy, but I certainly would hope that DithersCo’s IT department can set up web filtering software to prevent their employees from wasting entire afternoons writing intensely erotic roastfucking fanfic on AO3.

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Family Circus, 1/17/23

I’m really loving the body language in today’s panel. Jeffy clearly didn’t just mouth off at random; rather, he made a deliberate choice to provoke his sister, and was emotionally prepared for the consequences. That’s why, even though his body is bending backwards from the sheer physical force of Dolly’s disapproval, you can tell form his face that he’s remaining calm and collected during the onslaught.

Mary Worth, 1/17/23

One of my favorite Mary Worth running bits is Dr. Jeff proposing to Mary and getting rejected. It’s been quite a while since the last iteration of it, though, and it’s clear that Jeff has been biding his time for the perfect moment, the moment when he gets Mary to admit that wedding ceremonies are great and marriage itself is the end-all be-all of personal happiness. You’re almost there, Jeff! You’ve trapped her in her own words!

Crankshaft, 1/17/23

Ooh, foreshadowing, everybody! That’s the prototype of the robot model that’s going to take over Lillian’s bookstore someday, in the wake of “the Burnings,” an impending apocalyptic event that I assume involves the corpses of bookstore owners burned in great pyres by the robots that replace them.

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Crankshaft, 1/16/23

Now that Funky Winkerbean has vanished into the future, you may be wondering what happened to the Crankshaft zone of the Funkyverse, left abandoned by its parent reality in a sector of the space-time continuum that corresponds to our present day. Well, the first couple weeks of 2023 were dominated by a classic (?) Crankshaft bit involving Ed’s bus being full of glitter (??) from holiday sweaters (???), but now we’re ready to get back to a core Funkyverse concern: dumb old comic books that turn out to be incredibly valuable. I will feel genuinely irritated if Lillian here makes a visit over to Westview to sell this thing, providing an opportunity for some “special guest appearances” less than a month after Funky Winkerbean ended. At least Frasier had enough dignity to wait until its second season to do an episode with Sam Malone in it.

The Phantom, 1/16/22

I’m not even going to get into the extremely long Phantom plot we’re in the middle of, except to tell you enough to set up today’s strip, which takes place in the middle of a jailbreak our hero and his Bandar friends are doing at Gravelines Prison in Rhodia. Now, Rhodia is the Rhodesia-equivalent bad guys of the Phantom post-colonial southern Africa parallel universe, and its government is spoken of in hushed tones as quite sinister, but honestly the agents of this so-called fascist state don’t really live up to their fearsome reputation. I’m particularly charmed by this guy, staring at his dead comrade and just doing a sitcomy “Arrow!? — Are you kidding me!? — Aw jeez! — Can’t believe they’re shootin’ at us with bows and arrows over here! — Who woulda thunk it!?” bit.

Crock, 1/16/22

Today’s Crock rerun has seen its meaning completely transformed by the passage of time even as its content remains the same. When published, the joke was about how the kids don’t listen to teachers and authority figures because they’re all listening to their newfangled iPod gadgets. But today, it offers another chapter in the sad, poignant story of the Lost Patrol, who have been wandering isolated in the desert for so long that its members are still using iPods, a product Apple stopped making six years ago.