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Friday wouldn’t be Friday without the comment of the week!

“A better example of unintended consequences would be: I have slowly morphed my humor strip to misery porn over the decades and now I am stuck trying to write dramatic scenes about people with names like ‘Funky Winkerbean.’” –Rob

And you should also kick off your weekend with some runners up! Very funny!

“Drinking a bunch of wine always helps with insecurity.” –TeacherBoss, on Twitter

“If the storm forced Slylock to make an emergency landing, he sure did a shitty job of it. There’s a vast empty field behind the one tree he managed to crash into. Worse, Max survived.” –nescio

“Y’know, Brayden, most people don’t realize this, but strictly speaking ‘we’ll be in the air momentarily‘ means we’ll only be in the air for a moment and then come crashing back to earth like a ton of bricks. Funny, huh?” –Peanut Gallery

“Fish fry, eh? Well, although I can’t relate to a horny professor/sea captain and a milfian blob sculpturer that live together in a condo, I can relate to what it’s gonna smell like in there for the next three days. Kind of the perfect background aroma for this storyline when you think about it.” –Mikey

“Jannie! Hurry up and lure your professor to a second location so we can harvest his organs already! I’m only one of a dozen handlers scouting potential replacement organs for the Rolling Stones and I’m telling you time is an issue!” –iagbegreg

“Pluggers spend so much time ranting about the War of Northern Aggression that their grandkids assume they had a personal stake in it.” –TheDiva

“Don’t tell her you’re ‘game!’ If she is so vile to push Ian to adultery, she will have no qualms about organizing the hunting of human beings!” –Ettorre

“Why is ‘Jannie’ sucking on one of the nails from the crucifixion? I know that all the females in this strip are sub-human and morally-challenged (EXCEPT MARY OF COURSE), but this is the first time I’ve seen one depicted as actively initiating a Salem-era witches’ curse.” –Hopester

“Other papers are talking about the ongoing government shutdown or China arresting a Canadian. Meanwhile, Milford’s headlines read, ‘LOCAL TEEN SAYS VAGUELY NEGATIVE THINGS ABOUT SOME FORMER COACH OR TEACHER OR SOMETHING.’” –JJ48

“As much as I admire the current Mary Worth artwork, I miss the challenge of trying to puzzle out which characters were supposed to be attractive from context alone.” –Violet

“Uh oh, looks like Dolly’s breaking up with God.” –jroggs

“Heh heh … there’s no way I’ll get lung cancer from vaping if I stick the thing right up my nose instead of in my mouth! [later] My nose is connected to what?!” –Enlong

“It’s a good thing this is just a radio show. The public is not ready to get up close and personal with Robby’s face. They may never be ready.” –Joe Blevins

“Although I’m surprised any research ethics board signed off on the cruel gene splicing experiment, I’m glad we finally have an explanation for why Dagwood’s knees are halfway down his shins.” –Schroduck

“Say what you will about the pacing of this strip, but Moy certainly knows what the audience wants: the eventual humiliation of Ian and/or Wilbur.” –The Mighty Untrained FOOZLE

“Hmmm … time to increase the stimulus pressure [pours hot coffee onto his forehead]” –pugfuggly

“Since the words aren’t in the thought bubbles, is this guy talking to himself, or are they going to reveal some poor costume person cleaning the vomit off his costume and going, ‘Mmhmm … yeah … mmhmm … do you still need the fake chins or can we aerate them?’” –Jenna

“What’s bothering me? Well, it started when my brother and I made a bet, and the loser had to get the world’s stupidest-looking haircut.” –seismic-2

“How can you overlook the masterpiece that is Gil Thorp today? You’ve got Marty Moon, looking like semi-bearded Mr. Spock from the Douchebag Universe, sitting contentedly as his hapless minion does his dirty work. From this position you can imagine him shifting back in his big chair, tapping his fingertips together, and saying ‘Excellent.’ Meanwhile, Robby sits there with an idiot grin on his face, so thrilled to be listened to that he gives a thumbs-up to the radio audience. Of course they’ll do it again tomorrow: even though trashing a high school coach couldn’t possibly fill 10 minutes of real air time, these men have nothing else in their lives but this pathetic campaign.” –Banana Jr. 6000

“I, for one, can’t wait for additional political insights from Funky Winkerbean. ‘Well, you know, raising tariffs on farm goods generally imported by the Chinese might be an effective disincentive to prevent the Chinese from raising their tariffs[1], but will also impact the livelihood of the farmers[2], who will all get cancer anyway from the insecticides they use[3].’

[1] Ashley, Percy, Modern Tariffs
[2] Marx, Karl, Theories of Surplus Value, vol. 2
[3] Batiuk, Tom, Funky Winkerbean, passim” –Voshkod

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Funky Winkerbean, 1/18/19

Hmm, I would argue that fewer foreign students getting H-1B visas to work in the U.S. is actually … literally the intended consequence of the changes to the H-1B program? Like, you can be for or against policy, but you would be hard-pressed to claim that people like Adeela not getting a visa to work in the U.S. was some kind of unintended consequence of it, unless you’re one of those people who supports policies in the abstract but then when those policies negatively affect people you know and like in exactly the way they’re designed to, you’re suddenly like “oh no, who could’ve predicted this!” I guess it’s sort of like if you punch someone and by punching them you injure them and then you think “oh no, I never intended this consequence at all!” In other news, if Wally was going around Iraq using punching as his primary weapon, that may explain why he was the only American soldier to be held as a POW for a multi-year stint there.

Gil Thorp, 1/18/19

As is probably obvious from my commentary on Gil Thorp and also my whole deal in general, I don’t know a ton about sports stuff. Like, is it typically the point guard’s duty to perform emotional labor for the team? Or is that a Gil Thorp coaching innovation?

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Blondie, 1/17/19

To me, the best part of this comic, which posits that Dagwood is an animal test subject in some vast, mysterious laboratory, is that he’s failing to validate whatever experiment is being conducted. Blondie might imagine him fulfilling some higher being’s expectations for coffee’s effect on human motivation, but in real life there he is in bed, stubbornly refusing to be chemically motivated. It’s beautiful to me, though surely like all experimental subjects he’ll be disposed of soon enough.

Dick Tracy, 1/17/19

One of the people working on a Dick Tracy-derived performance that involves multiple layers of nostalgia, each resonating with a smaller and smaller audience, feels so unfulfilled by the exercise that he needs to drink himself stupid in order to carry on with it! Hopefully this is not a disturbing look behind the scenes at the strip.

Mary Worth, 1/17/19

MICHAEL [to himself]: “Oh, snap, this chick doesn’t need my help with the assignment, she must really be good at English lit. But how am I gonna get her to sleep with me then? I know, I’ll bust out some big words. Chicks who love English lit love big words!”

MICHAEL [aloud]: “Are you an English literature aficionado?”

Dustin, 1/17/19

Maybe I’m wrong about Dustin not adequately covering both sides of the Boomer-Millennial divide. Sure, the comic makes fun of today’s youths and their habit of just dozing off in the middle of the work day, but it also points out that today’s old people hate their families so much that it’s literally killing them.