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Some quick one-panel entries from the Sunday funnies to begin your week!

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 6/13/10

In classic A3G Sunday style, today’s strip rehashed the last week’s worth of story and then gave us exactly five additional seconds of action — in this case confirming my guess form yesterday that this returnee was Gina. I’m feeling more than a little validated by this, because I am a sad and pathetic little man!

Panel from Curtis, 6/13/10

Today’s Curtis features the title character, who has been rockin’ exactly the same fly style since he first appeared on the comics page in 1988, offering a sneering discursis of the admittedly fairly goofy droopy-pants fashion epidemic that has been gripping America’s inner cities for the better part of the decade. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I found this throwaway panel, in which our hero was dwarfed by a boxer-shorted ass looming menacingly in the foreground, fairly delightful.

Panel from the Lockhorns, 6/13/10

One of my favorite Lockhorns tropes is when the titular pair manages to lure some other poor couple over for some kind of no doubt hellish double date. These people never appear in the strip more than once, since presumably a single evening spent with the Leroy and Loretta’s psychodrama is more than sufficient for an entire human lifetime; by the time we actually see them in the strip, the poor victims are generally sitting on the couch staring numbly ahead, waiting for the horror to be over. Today, though, the female half of the non-Lockhorns couple seems intrigued by Loretta’s fiery feminist talk. “Right on, sister!” she says, with her barely perceptible smile.

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/13/10

I know I’ve been terribly neglectful in following the Rex Morgan drama of late, right when it’s gotten vaguely interesting (no doubt a manifestation of my recurring Rex Morgan Problem). Still, I felt it was important to update you all on the following fact: nobody calls Brook a bimbo and lives. Have any of you been calling Brook a bimbo, in the comments here, or just to your friends and family members, or even in what you assumed was the safety of your minds? Better make your peace with your God now, my friends.

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Apartment 3-G, 6/12/10

OMG GASP WHO’S THAT AT THE DOOR! IT’S … IT’S … damn it, I’m not actually sure who that it is. This is a major problem in a strip where everyone but the three main characters looks more or less alike! I suppose it’s supposed to be late 2006-early 2007 beloved ancillary character Gina, who had similar short hair flips; Gina left to find fame and fortune in Hollywood, which may explain why she’s looking somewhat older and wiser, as presumably that terrible town chewed her up and spat her back to New York in short order (“short order” in soap opera strips being three years or so). Anyway, most of her time in the strip was spent in two main pursuits: insulting Tommie, which means that Tommie’s pleased-to-see-you smile is just another sign of her deeply ingrained self-loathing, and bedding the Professor. This explains why Ari was so excited by the new arrival on Monday, I guess. Ha ha, isn’t it convenient when, right after one of your lovers has been bundled off to a crooked mental hospital, another one shows up, her dreams broken and her heart vulnerable? Yup, being the Professor is pretty sweet.

Wizard of Id, 6/12/10

Wow, the Wiz is a kind of funny-looking bearded old man, so I guess Id’s aesthetic standards for rentboys are quite different from those that hold in early 21st century America. Of course, you know, magic powers and all that; he could be supernaturally sexy.

Pluggers, 6/12/10

You’re a plugger if you once, entirely by accident, got a gift to which your wife reacted positively, and you just keep buying the same thing for her, over and over again, because that’s so much easier than trying to figure what sort of things she likes and dislikes, or even just asking her what she wants, and anyway you can get birdhouses for cheap, sure enough.

You’re married to a plugger if your fantasies veer wildly between divorce and murder.

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Blondie, 6/9/10

Here is a 100 percent true story: When I was about 10 or so, my dad and I were driving through downtown Buffalo, and this car sort of cut us off, and my dad said, “Jeez, what’s up with this clown,” exactly the way you would in such a situation, and then I looked closer and saw that the car in question was being driven by an actual, literal clown, in full make-up and regalia and everything. His car was not unusually small, nor was he sharing it with dozens of other clowns. This was endlessly hilarious to me, and whenever I see clowns depicted in everyday life, I think of this incident, and it makes me laugh. Certainly it was much funnier than Blondie’s grim and off-putting attempt to wring surrealistic yuks out of a vicious clown assault.

Mark Trail, 6/9/10

You know who really, really likes working zoning disputes into his stories? Jack Elrod, author of Mark Trail! Now, it probably is true that land use regulations are a much more important part of rural life than we city slickers realize, but now all of the sudden a dramatic change in zoning laws is arising as a plot point in this unusually urban storyline. Thus, I must assume that Elrod is a member of the small, misunderstood community of zoning fetishists, or “zonies.” While he toils away on the outdoorsman strip he inherited from Ed Dodd, he’s always hoping that one day one of the alternative presses will pick up Fred Gorski, Zoning Board Co-Chair Of Destiny!, the erotic graphic novel he’s been tinkering with for years.

Apartment 3-G, 6/9/10

Uh, is it just me, or are those oven mitts really, really big? They look more like the freakishly oversized novelty hands you get at sporting events. Naturally, Tommie has cut off the protruding index finger, as neither she nor anyone else believes her to be “number one.”