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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

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Mary Worth, 8/9/18

Oh, man, not only does Tommy think that his remaining on the straight and narrow is entirely a result of a choice not to sin, but he also thinks his ability to keep making that choice is entirely dependent on his relationship with Brandy, a woman for whom substance abuse has painful emotional resonances! Literally nobody has been in a better or more secure position in his recovery than Tommy right now, I’m pretty sure.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/9/18

Do you get that, everyone? A couple days after the wedding, if you get Mindy’s drift … nudge, nudge. Mindy’s drift is that she wants to spend a couple days after her wedding enjoying some vigorous sex with her new husband before she goes to the Pinball Hall of Fame! Unfortunately, her new husband has previously been defeated by stairs and had to be hospitalized after becoming dehydrated from walking around a comic book convention, so I’m afraid some bitter marital disappointments are looming.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/8/18

So Funky has to go get Holly’s mom in Florida for complex reasons that I’ll probably have to explain at some point if I want to make fun of this strip in the next several weeks but let’s just set them aside at this point, and he’s leaving his dumb stepson Cory (I think he’s his stepson? I’ve never actually been clear on this point) in charge of Montoni’s while he’s away. I’m assuming the joke here is that Cory is trying to relate to his stepdad using awful wordplay, which is the preferred method of establishing intimacy in Westview, but Funky is just getting madder and madder because he never liked Cory and he never will. But it would be much funnier if Cory were trying to convince Funky to roll out his million-dollar idea for a new product, “Pizza Cake,” which the family then sinks all its money into promoting only to discover that Cory has just accidentally reinvented Chicago-style pizza and none of the right-thinking citizens of northeast Ohio want anything to do with it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/8/18

Our fellas are laffin’ it up, but they’re also expressing a genuine frustration about life in Hootin’ Holler: in the absence of a widely accepted system of impartial justice, disputes in this hardscrabble region are settled by the power wielded by interlocking kinship groups, and frequently escalate into violent feuds. Lukey and Snuffy live in a world where no relationship with another person is allowed to be merely tepid or neutral: either someone is your dearest friend who you would defend, literally, to the death, or a hated enemy who must be defeated, all based on an argument that happened in a saloon three generations ago.