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Crankshaft, 2/8/21

My earlier suggestion that what we’re seeing in Crankshaft was written a year ago and reflects the very early days of the coronavirus pandemic was meant mostly in jest, but after two weeks of Crankshaft defiantly going through his daily life in a hazmat suit, I’ve become more and more convinced I was right. Today’s gag, which name-checks hand sanitizer, everyone’s early-to-mid-pandemic obsession, just confirms it for me. I guess the strip’s putting it in terms of “flu” because the thought was that jokes about COVID-19 would be completely out of date by February of 2021? Ha ha! [laugh becomes increasingly manic and desperate] HA HA HA HA

Gil Thorp, 2/8/21

Wait, so Tessi is “short” for Tessa, a word the same number of letters and syllables? I refuse to accept this, but the alternate reading is that her full name is actually “Contessa,” which I refuse to accept even harder.

Crock, 2/8/21

Ha ha, it’s funny because … the birds shit in their food, which they then ate, not realizing it was full of bird shit? Wow, between this and Dennis the Menace yesterday, everyone’s just kind of going for it, huh.

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Crankshaft, 2/7/21

I’m not such a stickler for detail that I’m opposed to a comic strip being established via in-strip dialog as taking plance on a different day of the week than the strip actually runs in the real world, but I do think that you sort of have to have a good reason for doing so, because it’s going to cause a little niggling of dissonance for the reader. Take today’s strip, for example; it’s a Sunday strip — something the format makes impossible to ignore — but within the world of the strip itself, it’s taking place on Thursday. At least the joke it’s in service of is very funny, right? Well, no, not really. But doesn’t the joke require the full muti-panel treatment that only a Sunday strip can provide? I’m afraid that’s not true either.

Dennis the Menace, 2/7/21

When margarine was first introduced to the U.S. in the late 1800s, the butter lobby pushed to undermine sales of it. For a while, it was mandated that pink food coloring be added to it to make its artificial and presumably less appetizing nature clear; though that law was struck down by the Supreme Court, other laws taxed margarine that had yellow food coloring added to make it look more butter-like. What I’m trying to say is that I wonder if today’s Dennis the Menace was the end product of a long, tortuous negotiations that ended with the editors saying that yes, fine, you can do an entire Sunday strip about Dennis picking his nose and even graphically depict boogers, but you have to depict said boogers in a bright yellow color found in no booger that has ever been extracted from a human nose.

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Dick Tracy, 2/6/21

Ahh yes, it’s Pouch, the beloved ancillary Dick Tracy character/criminal informant/balloon merchant who’s named after the utterly horrifying pendulous curtain of flesh hanging off his chin, which has a pouch with a snap where he can hide things. Anyway, if you’re like me, which is to say extremely normal, after a lot of strips where Pouch is loitering in the park, selling his balloons and/or information about underworld activity, you’ve probably wondered, “Say, what’s Pouch’s home life like?” Well, today’s Dick Tracy is here to report that it is in fact pretty bleak, since his “home” appears to be a seedy hotel and all he has for entertainment is a police scanner disguised as a Star Trek: The Original Series tricorder. His helium tank sitting in the corner is a nice touch though! Something I definitely have never wondered about is what his weird, gross neck pouch would like from the perspective of someone standing over his shoulder, but one of you sickos must’ve thought about this, because today’s strip is forcing us to contemplate it.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/6/21

Mel Brooks once said that “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” That’s the only logic I can discern as the driver to this strip, in which Funky, who lives in a universe of constant misery, illness, and death, has deemed a successful minor surgery that will immediately improve his quality of life a “tragedy.” Anyway, I certainly hope this aide is saying “lucky you” right as he gives Funky a gentle shove into off the curb and into oncoming traffic.