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Funky Winkerbean, 2/9/20

I have barely been able work up the energy to try to follow the emotional contours of this week’s Funky Winkerbean, which involve this rich art patron lady teasing the various artists over at Atomic Comix with the prospect of a windfall payday for their mediocre drawings, but … are Darrin and Jessica in financial trouble? Like, are they so hard up for cash that Darrin needs to desperately draw through lunch so that this patroness can ensure that they aren’t turned out of their home by the bank? Because I’ve given it some thought and that’s the sort of Funkyverse misery I’d enjoy reading about, actually.

Daddy Daze, 2/9/20

I’m slowly coming to understand the world of Daddy Daze. For instance, it’s totally unsurprising to see the Daddy Daze baby crawling around on the floor and just eating garbage that’s been lying there for who knows how long. That absolutely tracks. The question I have is: does the Daddy Daze daddy’s house have any furniture in it? Like, at all?

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Mark Trail, 2/8/20

Oh my god, “Harvey completely made up the story of a yeti ripping his leg off and actually he just had juvenile diabetes” is a so much better ending (?) to this story than I could have possibly imagined. I don’t know what I want more for Monday: Harvey digging his way out of the avalanche and yell-growling “The yeti was a METAPHOR! … a metaphor for JUVENILE DIABETES, my greatest foe!” or just a smash cut back to the cabin in Lost Forest with Mark saying “Yes, Rusty, I did see some unusual animals in Nepal!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/8/20

Oh my god, I had forgotten that June mentioned Aunt Tildy had been married to a man “she called the Count, but he didn’t seem to be rich.” Shoutout to Rex Morgan for surprising me for the first time in literally years: “Andrzej and Tildy are destined to be together” seemed so obviously set up that I entirely missed “Andrzej and Tildy were together once and will be in the future, time is a flat circle, all of this has happened before and will happen again.”

Judge Parker, 2/8/20

Oh my god, what if Sophie decides to not run the campaign of her old family friend but instead puts her considerable political skills to the service of one of his rivals? From what we’ve seen of it, Alan’s campaign is focused on prison abolition and left-leaning NIMBYISM from a perspective of noblesse oblige, and I’m interested to see if his opponent, aided by Sophie’s inside information and all-around smarts, attacks him from the left (“Alan Parker should be put in jail as a class enemy”) or the right (“Alan Parker should be put in jail as an actual criminal, who broke several laws”).

Crock, 2/8/20

Not to be all “poor me” over here, as making fun of comics is something I obviously enjoy and I appreciate getting to earn part of my income from it, but let me just tell you that I read this strip and thought “Huh, I bet conditions on the plantations where they grow pepper are pretty dire, I wonder if there’s some joke to be made out of that,” and ended up opening multiple browser tabs, learning that, for instance, the bottom has fallen out of the Vietnamese pepper market, and that India attempts to protect its native pepper industry with tariffs and price controls but this has led to a a pepper smuggling pipeline from Vietnam via Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, big American companies like McCormick are investing in sustainable pepper operations, at least according to this advertorial “hosted by” The Guardian. I wasn’t really able to mine a lot of laffs out of all that, unless you count the meta-explanation of it I’m doing in this post, but I 100% guarantee that I put a lot more thought into this than was put into this joke.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/8/20

The Smifs have lost track of their baby as he crawls through the knee-deep trash that completely covers the floor of their filthy hovel! Ha … ha?

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Folks! With zero ado, here is this week’s top comment!

“Rex knows the obligations of his profession compel him to ask medical questions and receive answers from the aging husk of flesh before him, but goddamnit it doesn’t mean he’s obliged to LIKE it.” –The Silent Penultimate Panel

And here are this week’s very funny runners up!

“Sorry, but I don’t buy any of this. I can’t believe that the pirates would be so casual about a treasure map they’d just been studying. I can’t believe that Hagar would literally run home to tell his family he loves them. I can’t believe that his family would take him at face value, let alone be so enthusiastic about this. Most of all, I can’t believe Hagar’s vocabulary includes both ‘extraordinary’ and ‘incalculable.’” –Joe Blevins

“Look, buddy, walking around with that baby is already a perfectly good gimmick for picking up chicks. Adding an extra element to the scam is like putting a hat on a hat.” –BigTed

“On the one hand, the writer has given him the sort of unlikely pile-up of letters that a person who has never met a Polish person is likely to make up. On the other hand, ‘Tildy Bobrowski’ is the kind of super-charged zaniness Aunt Tildy is destined for, especially when she comes back to freeload again next year, after ol’ Andrzej here is dead.” –Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women

“Ah, Rex Morgan: the strip with a narration box that tells you exactly what’s going to happen, and then shows you that thing, regardless of how pointless or dull it might be. Never change.” –pugfuggly

“Given the grotesque Gasoline Alley aesthetic, I guess looking being a regular schlub is like the real world equivalent of being Pierce Brosnan.” –toxic

“The question isn’t whether Rex will violate HIPAA to tell Aunt Tildy all about Andrezjsfn’s personal history in an attempt to hook them up and get her out of his hair — of course he’s going to do that — but whether he’ll wait until the end of the day or cancel all his afternoon appointments at the last minute.” –TheDiva

“‘REMIND HIM WHAT I SAID ABOUT NO FOSSILIZED RECORD OF YETI OR YETI LIKE CREATURE EXISTING!!!’ [Takes out sign-off sheet. Puts initials in ‘2:30am’ box]” –Foodar

“Wilbur said ‘firsthand’ and ‘hard on’ in relation to long distance relationships to tell Hugo to get used to a lot of masturbation, but Hugo doesn’t speak English well enough to pick up the subtleties and will probably just cheat on Dawn.” –nescio

“Into Thick Air, a story of madness and tragedy in the Himalayas, will be the book that makes Mark famous. I mean, more famous. So famous that people who aren’t poachers and bass kidnappers will recognize him.” –Voshkod

“Times have been tough for Sam, without any clients in his new office. He has resorted to attaching a severed arm on top of his desk with the palm up, so that visitors can just drop cash into it without having to endure the annoyance of actually talking to Sam.” –seismic-2

“His stump speech will just be waving his paperback book in the air and asking if ‘you know who I am?’” –Rusty

“Dawn’s latest heartbreak comes when she realizes that she isn’t video-chatting with Hugo but, rather, watching a poorly dubbed anime on YouTube.” –Her Father, John Darling

“Long-distance relationships are always hard, but it must be especially rough with Hugo imprisoned in the Phantom Zone.” –Dan

“Look deep into your heart. It is a sex joke. You know this. No, don’t resist. Let the truth wash over you like a wave.” –pastordan

“Fire hydrant? Otto is imagining a trashcan to dispose of the bloodied and bruised body of the faux-patriarchal tyrant known as ‘Sarge,’ colored red as a means of communicating with his fellow comrades. Step two: fashion hammer and sickle out of his retrieved bones.” –Irrischano

“Look, I don’t mean to downplay Otto’s obviously abusive relationship with the Sarge, but if he can stand on his hind legs and tie the necktie on his uniform, he can probably just use the latrine.” –Francisco Arrowroot

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