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Funky Winkerbean, 6/25/19

I got some feedback on my joke about Sunday’s Funky Winkerbean and was about to write something whiny along the lines of “Ugh, Funky Winkerbean made me learn things,” but honestly? I love learning things, and telling other people about those things! So here we go: the most famous version of the Buster Keaton house-falling gag is from 1928’s Steamboat Bill, Jr., but Keaton had done an earlier version in 1920’s One Week — and, more relevant to this storyline, Fatty Arbuckle, for whom Butter Brinkel is pretty transparently a stand-in, did the original version of it 1919’s Back Stage, which Buster Keaton also appeared in. As the name implies, Back Stage was a comedy that took place behind the scenes of a play, and so the house-falling stunt was much smaller scale and actually involved a small facade used as part of the play’s set dressing, rather than an actual house as in the Steamboat Bill version; the depiction of Brinkel’s stunt (which you can see better in Sunday’s strip) more closely matches what happened in Back Stage.

There’s one big difference, of course: Arbuckle’s Back Stage stunt, like both of Keaton’s, went off safely; but Brinkel is an inhabitant of the Funkyverse, so his version was botched and left him in agony for years afterwards. That’s the special twist on history we’ve come to expect from this feature, folks!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/25/19

I sort of assumed I pretty much knew the lay of the land in the small, insular world of Hootin’ Holler, but apparently not? Apparently there’s a high-stakes card game in town that Snuffy has decided he’s ready for? Or maybe Snuffy, unfamiliar with the geography of the flatland world, assumes that “Las Vegas,” a city he’s heard about occasionally from Parson Tuttle’s television, is only a few more hours’ walk past whatever economically imploding mining town of 25,000 people or so is the closest metropolis to Hootin’ Holler. Anyway, we shouldn’t let this speculation distract us from the important point here, which is that Snuffy has gambled away his family’s meager resources and now they’re starving to death.

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Mary Worth, 6/24/19

Wow, so, uh, this Mary Worth plot: still happening??? I guess????? The obvious implication that this conversation is really about how Mary got Jeff to try all sorts of weird sex stuff when they first started dating and now he’s become such a kinkster than he wants to open up their relationship is too much for me to handle, emotionally, so I’m just going to take everything here at face value and point out how incredibly limited Dr. Jeff’s palatte must’ve been if going to some extremely mediocre boardwalk seafood restaurant constitutes “adventurous eating” for him. I guess the other possibility is that the “adventure” arises from the consistent C ratings the Bum Boat gets from the Santa Royale Health Department.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/24/19

I’ve given some thought to the logistics here, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the best case scenario is that Batman is aiming his penis so that his piss falls in an arc just past his nose and into toilet bowl, and the worst case scenario is that his penis is dangling upside down with the rest of him and urine is just, like, flowing down his chest and into his face, which is disgusting, but keep in mind that even a slight misstep with the best case scenario also results in a faceful of piss. This comic is an affront to human dignity, is what I’m trying to say, and I certainly hope DC Comics and its parent company, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., sues the entire newspaper comics industry out of existence in response. It would be wholly merited.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/24/19

Oh boy, this is even better than I’d hoped! What do you think Mr. Lewton is obsessing over? GMOs? Chemtrails? Vaccines? I’m very much looking forward to some heavy, heavy sighing from Rex.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/23/19

I know we all complain about how generally dull Rex Morgan has been since Woody Wilson retired as writer, but have we considered that maybe this is all at Rex’s request? Like, you try dealing with stripper subletters and MRSA epidemics and funeral brawls and helping your nanny defraud her stepson out of his inheritance, twice. You’d probably want a few years of low-stakes medical practice too! But hopefully for our sakes things are going to pick back up with a case of poisoning, or at least maybe factitious disorder, and a patient capable of producing a pissyface worth of Rex himself.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/23/19

Ha ha, check out the answer to this “mystery”: Slylock knows that no Great White shark could survive in a cage for three days, but he and Max still swam away, because they “didn’t want to take chances.” What’s the matter, Slylock? Not willing to stake your life on your endless supply of nature facts? Do you lack the courage of your convictions? I guess Weirdly is safe in his undersea hideout, with his probably but not definitely fake shark, to plot against us!

Pluggers, 6/23/19

I guess if you had asked me “Hey Josh, you wanna see a dead plugger,” I would’ve said “Sure, absolutely,” but it turns out that stumbling across the actual depiction of a plugger corpse in the funny pages actually unnerved and upset me. Sorry, everyone! I don’t want to see the dead body of some folksy animal-human hybrid abomination given the trappings of a decent funeral! Keep this business out of the paper, in my opinion!

Funky Winkerbean, 6/23/19

I’m no Ken Burns, but I would definitely start my Butter Brinkel research into finding out how Brinkel managed to make a career out of blatantly ripping off Buster Keaton.

Panel from Dennis the Menace, 6/23/19

The actual punchline was about video games or something, but I firmly believe that the absolute funniest image the comics will have to offer for 2019 will be a furious Mr. Wilson, having just been alerted by some article in the paper to the existence of people born after 1982, barking “Martha! You ever heard of these millennials?” at his wife while she brings him the cocktail that will hopefully spur his typical three-hour afternoon nap, when she can finally get some peace and quiet.