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Hi and Lois, 11/26/21

Almost every family patriarch in a newspaper comic is a baby boomer, with tickets to the original Woodstock in a scrapbook and a disco leisure suit in the back of their closet, no matter how improbably that maps onto their current apparent age and/or family relationships. I therefore applaud today’s strip; while there’s still a potential interpretation where Hi is talking about himself, albeit with a modicum of self-awareness, I assume we’re really meant to understand that he’s making fun of all those old fogies, whereas he knows the real year that rock and roll changed the world: 1999, when nü metal hit the mainstream and Korn, Orgy, and Staind all had albums that topped the charts.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/26/21

God damn it Funky Winkerbean, you really had me starting to panic that yesterday’s awkward introductions were setting up yet another timeskip because here’s Wally and Rachel’s son and wait a minute when did Wally and Rachel have a son, who’s like six or seven at least? They got married back in 2014, so if people really are aging in real time, then maybe that’s possible? But thank goodness, Uncle Lumpy had already reminded us a year earlier that Rachel already had a kid when she and Wally met, who has now, it appears, been rescued from the memory hole in order to be introduced to Harry Dinkle. Speaking of kids, Rana is not only Becky and Comic Book John’s kid but also Wally’s kid, so yay for blended families, and also yay for extremely convoluted casts of characters in a syndicated newspaper strip. The official Wally Winkerbean page on Funky Winkerbean Dot Com notes that “My dream is to one day produce a Funky family tree (or family jungle) for the website. The thing about dreams is that they don’t always come true, but I haven’t quite given up on this one just yet. Fingers crossed.” This was written in 2018, so keep crossing those fingers, I guess.

Family Circus, 11/26/21

I don’t really even have a joke about this, it just really is one of the saddest things that’s ever appeared in the Family Circus. I hope that kind-hearted grandparents/Family Circus trufans are cutting this out of the paper to hang on the refrigerator, chuckling softly to themselves and saying “Oh, Jeffy, you really are a huge loser.”

Mary Worth, 11/26/21

Ha ha, check out how those two fish are looking at each other! Those are definitely “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, about a murder-suicide pact?” facial expressions.

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/25/21

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! If you’re looking for something to be thankful for, maybe you should give thanks that you don’t have Funky Winkerbean’s entire family showing up at your front door and explaining to you who they all are, for some reason, as if it were very vital for readers at home to get a full accounting. I have to wonder if the Funky team has forgotten that Mort, the sex creep in Harry’s band full of old people, is supposed to be the same person as Morton, Funky’s dad? The band member in this month’s “Mort from Harry’s band is horny for Lillian” sequence sure looks like Funky’s dad in the “Funky’s dad is horny for Holly’s mom” sequence from December 2018:

And maybe it’s just the angle, but Funky’s dad’s head looks pretty differently shaped today? Plus why would Funky feel like he has to introduce his dad to Harry, since his dad is in Harry’s band? I guess it’s possible that, having put his dad in a home specifically so he could think about the old man as little as possible, Funky has not bothered to keep up at all with his dad’s hobbies or activities.

Gasoline Alley, 11/25/18

Gasoline Alley also went in for a crowd scene, but in a way that is frankly a lot less tasking for me. Do I recognize these people as mostly Gasoline Alley characters? Yes. Could I name them? Some, but definitely not all. Does the strip insist on telling me what they’re all named, because it’s a good bet that I’ve forgotten and it wants me to double down on remembering them? No, it doesn’t, and I appreciate that.

The Lockhorns, 11/25/18

Speaking of things I’m thankful for, I remain thankful for the acidic purity of The Lockhorns. A lesser strip would depict a character burning furniture for heat, whereas this one depicts a character burning furniture out of spite.

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Dick Tracy, 11/24/21

It really tickles me to think that the various deformed criminals of Dick Tracy have their own fairly normal lives, from which they are occasionally called away in order to do bizarre crimes. Poor Mumbles was a date! He was having a great time with a nice girl! Now he’s gotta follow up on something some other guy screwed up? It’s not right! He doesn’t even get a gimp mask to conceal his identity!

Mary Worth, 11/24/21

Oh, man, Mary’s heavy-lidded expression in panel two as she contemplates who she can foist Wilbur onto is truly chilling. “Hmm, who do I know who completely hates themselves, who just has literally zero self-esteem, who’ll look at Wilbur and say ‘Yes! This is what I want. This is what deserve.’”

Shoe, 11/24/21

“Ha ha, get it? But seriously, Cate Blanchette murdered Elijah Wood, it’s real messed up actually.”