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Hi and Lois, 8/12/18

In this fallen age where we’re all overworked and underpaid and comic strip revenue is dropping and endless digitized archives are out there for the reuse and remixing, I’m always slightly suspicious that anything I’m looking at as a comic strip could be a rerun with new dialogue and slightly updated art. Take today’s Hi and Lois. Obviously the core joke is very of the moment. And I’m not sure if we’re supposed to understand Chuck Green’s “my” as meaning “I invented this” or “I just downloaded it.” But is there any world where the visual stereotype to go with either of those things is “guy with white pants, spray tan, and shirt unbuttoned to display chest hair”? Anyway, feel free to imagine whatever extremely 1982 hijinks were going on here before the phone got dropped into the panel.

Crankshaft, 8/12/18

Today’s strip, combined with this weird storyline from a few months ago, indicates to me that someone on the Crankshaft creative team has finally noticed that low-margin retail banking is no longer a profit center for financial institutions and that they’re increasingly trying to cut costs through automation. Unfortunately for the financial services sector, they pissed off someone with access to the unparalleled reach of syndicated newspaper comics. Feeling that burn, Big Banks?

Spider-Man, 8/12/18

Shout-out to Peter Parker for taking time out of his busy being-tied-up-and-ineffectual schedule to notice that Suwan has a feisty nature and a great ass. “Oh, yeah! Shake that thang while you argue with your uncle! Daddy like!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/12/18

Thanks for putting quotes around “Elvis,” Rex Morgan, M.D., narration box! Without them, we might’ve briefly wondered if we were looking at the real Elvis Presley, and that would’ve been exciting, or at least interesting!

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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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