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Mary Worth, 8/11/18

I can’t really tell if Brandy is doing a jokey “Ha ha, I certainly hope you’re not gonna dump me” thing or is genuinely on a real emotional roller coaster here with Tommy. I also know Tommy is nervous about starting this conversation with Brandy, but I think that asking her to suddenly sit on the ground in the middle of this running path isn’t really the best of all possible ideas. It’s also possible that he’s abruptly decided, upon being called “lover boy,” that he is going to break up with her afer all.

Crankshaft, 8/11/18

I thought I was going to be mad that Lillian is covering like a solid 10 percent of her laptop screen with Ann’s card for no good reason (hey, Lillian, did you know you can put someone’s contact information inside the computer???) but then I realized that her word processor (?) has for mysterious reasons truncated her book’s title page? And has truncated it using three periods to represent two letters???? RAGE … RAGE …

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Hey kids, it’s Friday, and that means it’s time for your comment … of the week!

“And let’s wait a couple of days into the honeymoon before we visit the pinball hall of fame — it will make touring the pinball hall of fame seem like fun, by contrast.” –lumaca morente

And also time for your hi-larious runners up!

“Barberton, Ohio is the Magic City. That’s Crankshaft territory, beeyatch.” –Jim Collins, on Facebook

“Pluggers don’t need passports for their vacations. Anyway, few other countries reject The Hague tribunal.” –Ettore

“When you think about it, there really isn’t much difference between watching a movie and viewing the world’s natural wonders solely through the front window of your stultifying suburban home. Or, at least, that’s what Dolly will finally understand in another decade, when her college neo-Marxist film society screens The Truman Show.” –BigTed

“Spider-man, Spider-Man / Ugly American Spider-man / Can he speak / Your native tongue / No he can’t / Cuz he’s too dumb / Look out! He is the Spider-man.” –Bunivasal

“It took me a minute to realize that Eddie meant that he didn’t want ears that could hear people being mean to him. From his pained expression, I assumed he was haunted by the screams of those he had slaughtered. ‘Wait, I want to change my answer to jellyfish! They don’t have eyes to see spilled blood, or noses to smell the stench of death!’” –pugfuggly

“Rusty thinks that ‘Jose‘ rhymes with ‘toes,’ right?” –seismic-2

“Seriously … do you think you can … help me out here? I’ve lost my … balance and I seem to … be pitching slowly but inexorably … forward…” –Proteus454

“So Snuffy can’t pronounce ‘with’ or ‘your’ properly, but he can say ‘acquaintances’ flawlessly? Clearly, much as he tries to hide it, Snuffy is one o’ those book-lern’d types, and Lukey is keeping him awfully close, just waiting for the day the strip is allowed to get truly bloody.” –JJ48

“In addition to demonstrating mirth, the hand flapping and arm waving vigorously waft the body odor of Snuffy and his pal throughout their immediate surroundings so that they may trade pheromones in a ritual of male bonding. As a further bonus, it frightens off skeeters and looks really, really stupid.” –made of wince

“My favorite part of this Funky Winkerbean is how the counter has disappeared between panels one and three, leaving me to assume that Funky’s response to Cory’s assurance that he can, in fact, run a pizza parlor for three days or whatever while Funky attends to a sick loved one was to leap over the friggin’ counter, quivering, with hands raised and palms heading toward Cory’s scrawny neck, sputtering out sentence fragments. Meanwhile the girl with the wavy raven locks doesn’t even break her smirk during this outburst, and I can only assume will continue smirking as Funky throttles the life out of Cory over the next 2 days.” –Drew Funk

“Fun Fact! That cabbie started this trip with an uncreased brow and a mane of luminous, shoulder-length, jet-black hair. That was eight minutes ago.” –Joe Blevins

“Poor Tommy. You can try to ‘Do it for Brandy!‘ but every twelve step program will tell you that to succeed, first you need to do it for one person and one person only: Mary Worth.” –Mikey

“Imagine what a hell-hole Rocky’s hometown must be in order for her to decide to live in Westview with these smirking losers. Stay in school, kids, like Summer did, and never be seen in the strip again.” –Rusty

“Rocky never speaks, in an effort to maintain her as a sympathetic character. But the moment she says ‘I do’ it’s straight to Hollytown.” –Uncle Lumpy

“99% success rate? It doesn’t really even matter what’s being measured here, if it ain’t six sigma, it’s worthless. Hell, his success rate doesn’t even meet the purity-of-Ivory-soap standard!” –Richardf8

“Gasoline Alley’s heard about the unexpected success of The Shape of Water, but it hasn’t yet figured out that there’s more to winning awards than just graphic depictions of fish bestiality.” –Schroduck

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Crock, 8/10/18

So, uh, seven years ago Bill Rechin, the creator of Crock, died, and then a year after that his son Kevin, who had taken over, said that continuing the strip made him depressed so he wasn’t going to do it anymore, and, uh, well, it’s 2018 now and Crock still appears on King Features’ website (and presumably in print newspapers, who can say, someone who still subscribes to a print newspaper, I guess) with “©2018” at the bottom, and I just have never really gotten a handle on whether they’re reruns or someone is still churning these out or what. What I’m saying is, it might’ve been just barely possible in 2011 to imagine that there was a living person who believed that “chat rooms” were a kind of online space that was common and that “Dear chat room” was a normal and believable way someone introduced themselves there. Today, though, when we have Facebook groups like “Carrion Eaters Discussion Group (Positive Vibes Only)” and subreddits like /r/eatersofthedead and probably darkweb sites where you can use bitcoin to buy meat at exactly the right level of rottedness for your needs — well, this strip needs to get with the times, is what I’m saying.

Family Circus, 8/10/18

Jeffy is at that developmental stage where he thinks that the ability to record language via writing is “hip” and “with it” but can’t actually read yet. I guess Big Daddy Keane was banking on at least one of the literate kids being with the younger ones at all times, forgetting what he ought to know deep in his bones: nobody wants to hang around with Jeffy.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/10/18

Because I hate myself, I actually dug through my archives to find the last wedding they had at Montoni’s, which was apparently back in 2014, although that was when Wally and Rachel tried to get married outdoors but were driven by a vengeful God into Northeast Ohio’s most depressing pizza parlor. Speaking of hating yourself, though, Cory and Rocky look to be actually contemplating using the family’s grease-stained sadness hole as their Plan A, possibly because it’s the only retail business in town still in business other than Komix Korner and they still have just the tiniest shred of dignity left.

Gasoline Alley, 8/10/18

“I always say — most of our material circumstances are determined by inherited wealth, and meritocracy is a lie!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/10/18

THAT’S MY BOY! THIS IS THE HIGH POINT OF MY LIFE! MY MARRIAGE TO YOUR MOTHER, YOUR FIRST STEPS — ALL BULLSHIT! THIS IS THE BEST GAME OF PINBALL I’VE EVER PLAYED AND I’M GONNA SPEND MY FEW REMAINING YEARS WATCHING IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, SO KEEP FILMING OR SO HELP ME GOD YOU’LL REGRET IT