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Crankshaft, 5/24/25

The wisteria guy from earlier this week is, as Uncle Lumpy remembers so I don’t have to, the former paramour of Lilian’s now-deceased sister Lucy; he used to dance with her at the Wisteria Ballroom, and then set up an overly elaborate proposal scenario that was to take place there that didn’t come off right and therefore their love was thwarted forever, to their mutual despair, which could’ve been avoided if he had been just a little bit normal about the whole thing. Anyway, the lady at the flower shop gave him some wisterias, which he wistfully put on Lucy’s grave, and now, mere minutes later, a maintenance guy is driving by to grab them and put them directly in the garbage. The terrible Funkyverse vibes are back, everybody! They’re back and they’re better than ever!

Luann, 5/24/25

Speaking of terrible vibes, Luann and the weird uptight guy she kissed behind a clipboard exactly once are apparently going to move into a tiny studio apartment together? There’s two ways this could go: the strip could finally approach young people’s sexuality in a straightforward way or it could do a ribald fanfic-style storyline where, uh oh! There’s only one bed!!!! I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which possibility I find more likely.

Gil Thorp, 5/24/25

Hmm, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court ruled that a public high school football coach could lead students in prayer on the 50 yard line after games, but the Milford administration thinks it can stop Coach Hernandez from peacefully using an Ouija board to contact a ghost in a school supply closet? “Lawyer up, coach!” is what the beloved dead “Pop(s)” is urging Luke, as he floats conveniently where Dr. Pearl can’t see him.

Beetle Bailey, 5/24/25

C’mon, man, the Beetle Bailey gang is in the army, and they have their own special forces units, like the Rangers. The joke should’ve been “Maybe I could’ve been an Army Ranger” “You’re more of a bear” and OK now I see why they didn’t go with that one.

Pluggers, 5/24/25

Pluggers are of an age at which they’re more prone to falling, and a fall could result in serious injury. They live in constant fear that such a thing could happen to them or their partners!

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The Phantom, 5/17/25

One of the key ongoing dramas of The Phantom is the question of what woman will contribute her genetic material to the ongoing Phantom bloodline by allowing Kit to sire the 24th Phantom on her, and so far the main competitors have been Kit’s local sweetheart in Tibet or his mother and sister’s choice, Kadia Sahara, the daughter of former Phantom archnemesis The Nomad. But … is there another? Savarna, of course, has mostly been interested in Kit’s dad, having flirted with him when he thought his wife was dead and proposed a superstar teamup that the Ghost Who Has Morals rejected because she’s violent and kind of insane. As a result, it seems that flirtation has cooled — sure, rescuing her from Gravelines Prison was the inciting incident behind the years-long “Death of the Phantom” arc, but that was a purely platonic jailbreak. Anyway, apparently somewhere along the line that I forgot about she met Kit back at the Skull Cave, and like many a young man, he fell under the spell of a worldly, sophisticated older woman. Like, look at her: she’s using a napkin! Ooh la la, fancy lady!

Gil Thorp, 5/17/15

There’s been some spring sports action in Gil Thorp over the past couple weeks that quite frankly has not risen to a level of “interesting” that would get me to comment on it. But Coach Martinez attempting to summon the ghost of Pop(s) right there in the athletic department storage room specifically to prove a point to Gil, to the obvious amusement of the other assistant coaches? You’d better believe I’m ready for multiple weeks of this.

Dennis the Menace, 5/17/25

Henry, wearing that checkered suit jacket/bow tie combo in public anywhere of course marks you as a true fashion moron. But specifically wearing it to a restaurant’s clearly labelled Western night? You dipshit. You absolute fool.

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Gil Thorp, 5/5/25

Hey, remember when we met Marty’s AA pal, “Clam,” and I said, “Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if that was the same person as Clambake, the guy who did some unpaid coaching for Gil and claimed to be a Negro Leaguer, but it turns out he was a fraud?” Well, ha ha, it seems that is the same guy, and he only went around lying about his baseball career because he was drunk, I guess, but now that he’s clean and sober he’s welcome to come back to the Milford dugout to do some unpaid coaching again, or at least to stare meaningfully out at the field with Gil.

This actually gives me a chance to talk about the weird Gil Thorp variant of comic book time, in which the kids age in real time, spending no more than four years as school-age characters and occasionally returning as adults, but Gil and his fellow coaches seemingly do not. And the original Clambake storyline, which ran in 2007, actually gives us some pegs to real ages: in his fabrication, he claimed to have been 83 years old and played in the late 1940s, when in fact he was only 71, as Gil found out with some help from the local cops once he decided to maybe figure out if this random dude who’d been hanging around the school for weeks was on the up and up. That would make him 89 years old now … or maybe still 71, if he’s in the same time-stasis as Gil? Unclear. I’m interested in finding out, though.

Dick Tracy, 5/5/25

I haven’t really been keeping up with the details in Dick Tracy, but I am happy to inform you that Dick finally has all the information he needs to put an end to Neo-Chicago’s nephewcrime epidemic once and for all. I love that the only photo the cops have of these two is a party pic printed out from Facebook; I assume that the heavily armed SWAT team currently converging on their location has been warned that “suspects may be enjoying canapés, repeat, canapés.”

Pluggers, 5/5/25

Now, the other coastal elitists and I all like to see pluggers engaging in their vaguely depressing down-home antics and ask, jokingly, “Are pluggers OK? Ha ha!” But, for real: are pluggers OK. Are pluggers no longer able to properly care for themselves, or possibly being physically abused. Do we need to call a social worker, to keep the pluggers safe.