The 2012 Elections In Newspaper Comic Strips [Recap]

Unlike CA Senior Writer Chris Sims, who steadfastly scours the funny pages each month for his Funky Winkerbean/Crankshaft chronicle, Funkywatch (to say nothing of his inspiration, Josh Fruhlinger at the daily Comics Curmudgeon blog), there's a good chance you don't indulge in traditional comic strips as much as you'd like. Me? I mostly only dig into traditional funnies around the holidays to be sentimental and, uh, the 2012 Elections were totally a holiday, right? My dose of comic strip nostalgia used to take mere seconds, but since Cathy has been out of the game for two years now, this election I had to scan all of the usual suspects to see what style of humor they'd use to comment on democracy in America. Hit the jump to scan some of the most... election-y... comic strips from November 6.

Family Circus

Yes! Vote! Preferably for the state measures that legalize the stuff everyone at your party came to enjoy in an effort to escape the futility of modern life!

The Lockhorns

I'm not sure which candidate that Leroy -- a miserable husband and complete sexist -- chose. I'd look up a photo of his completed ballot on Instagram, but something tells me he still hasn't figured out how to use that new Galaxy s3 he bought at the kiosk across from his mall's Victoria's Secret Outlet. That guy.

Blondie

In case you missed it, Dagwood Bumstead has been running as a write-in presidential candidate in Blondie for the past week or so. His motivation has been restoring a world he remembers as being safe enough to walk around at night, and where people got along and pulled together. His efforts to gain votes have mostly included making his mailman (and running mate) deliver pamphlets on his behalf and, you know, dreaming of his face carved into Mt. Rushmore. His final act as a presidential candidate was his most ambitious, however, as he promised his verbally abusive boss a billion-dollar stimulus bailout package just because he begged so nicely. I watched election coverage all night and didn't see any electoral votes go his way. I wonder why?

Hi and Lois

OH DIIIIIIIIIPPPPPP!!!!!!!! Is this a dig at what's going on in Blondie?! You think Chic Young put a whoopee cushion on Mort Walker's chair at one of those annual Cartoonist Illuminati meetings where they sacrificed virgins to extra-dimensional beings to ensure their strips would run for 200 years back in the day? That's the only rationale I can come up with to justify Hi and Lois copping this kind of 'tude.

Pearls Before Swine

Apathy, everybody.

Non Sequitur

More apathy! Jeez, you'd think these guys were largely financially dependent on a dying industry or something?

Pluggers

Ah, that's more like it. Usually Pluggers is about vaguely blue-collar or no-collar animals who have evolved into anthropomorphic versions of 60-something humans living in a version of rural America that hasn't changed much since the first heyday of orange and olive shag carpet. Yesterday it was about how we can all actually learn something from good-natured people with actual values. Furries though they may be, good for Pluggers.

Curtis

Curtis... you're... right? I guess the hideous growth you hide beneath that novelty-sized green baseball cap contains brain matter enow to plop out the occasional bit of wisdom.

Dennis the Menace

I dunno, Mr. Wilson. A president with a slingshot may just be what this great land needs. Also, cut it out with the wisecracks, old man. You haven't run for anything other than your Cheez Wiz-encrusted armchair in a quarter of a century and you'll be lucky if your last good artery doesn't clog before Dennis grows his first patchy 'stache.

Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

Yeah, but how do we know those votes even count in an age of digital fraud, maaaaaaaaan? Oh. Right. You've been the same characters since the mid 1930s.

Bizarro

This joke is cute not only because "gubernatorial" is a stupid word that nobody remembers the meaning of without checking Google (and also because, y'know, "guber" = "goober" = "idiot"), but because Ron Howard gets a nickel every time somebody remembers any character from The Andy Griffith Show. Don't worry, he's using the money to fund new episodes of Arrested Development.

Slylock Fox

Lastly we have Slylock Fox, which carries on its daily, sisyphean task of having readers point out the minor and often specious differences between two images that appear nearly identical at a glance... which is totally nothing like participating in a democracy dominated by just two parties. I uh, just like Slylock Fox, is all.