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Family Circus, 1/15/10

Yes, Dolly, a lot of cute pictures — which all appear to be thrown pell-mell into a cardboard box. You’d think that, what with her walls being a seemingly endless expanse of white, she might find room for a photo or two of your grotesquely swollen heads, or at least of your parents. But it looks as if she prefers emptiness, infinite emptiness, to any visual reminder that you exist. That little smile is her thinking about the moment you leave, when she’ll get to shove that box back under the bed and stop thinking about you for days and days.

Apartment 3-G, 1/15/10

Here in Baltimore, “The Block” is the name for the section of downtown where all the strip clubs are clustered together, so the narration box in panel one gave me brief hope that today’s strip would have content more interesting than tales of irritating wedding planning and not marrying guys named “Lyle.” I think matching redheads Tommie and Ruby could work up quite a little burlesque act together, slowly and suggestively unwinding their matching scarves until they finally reveal their necks to a hooting audience.

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Gil Thorp, 1/14/10

Feast your eyes on panel one, everybody, because you’ll see that rarest of sights: Coach Thorp engaged in actual coaching! Assuming, of course, that you consider responding to desperate pleas for guidance with irritating, unhelpful gnomic pronouncements to constitute “coaching,” which, you know, Gil clearly does!

Since it includes the creepy, menacing figure of Steve Luhm sitting in the bleachers, panel one is also setting up an extremely common Gil Thorp sight: Gil finding some random community member who’s willing to take on coaching duties (without pay, naturally). First it was the mother of a member of the girl’s basketball team, who couldn’t stop shouting suggestions from the stands; then it was some crazy old man who just started showing up at baseball practice one day; so now, sure, let’s let the janitor do it, why not. And what intriguing advice he has! Micah, the key to basketball glory is to be loud and obnoxious, like your sister! You know, one I was just hitting on! Yes, you’re right to be sweating freely.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/14/10

OK, this is officially the saddest and weirdest Funky Winkerbean yet, and it’s a strip that pretty much specializes in sad and weird. “Crazy” Harry lives up to his nickname, telling Mopey Pete that only here in this dingy pizza parlor is he allowed to verbalize any happiness whatsoever, because otherwise They will have some kind of unspecified but unpleasant vengeance to dish out. Briefly he imagines himself to be Linus in the pumpkin patch, with … an expression of happiness being insincerity, and the “happiness police” being the Great Pumpkin, I guess? Point is, the guy’s clearly insane, but somehow this rambling madness will convince Pete that Montoni’s is the place where he wants to wile away the time until his death from a massive coronary.

Mary Worth, 1/14/10

Meanwhile, over in the comic strip that specializes in weird and hilarious, we finally learn what drove apart Wilbur and Abby: a sinister gang of scowling pompadoured Richie Riches. Look at them, striding around with their jackets on and their collars defiantly open! What free-spirited young lady (or dead-eyed zombie, if panel two is an accurate depiction) could resist them, even she was already carrying another man’s child? Particularly if it was an unlikeable, Wilbury man’s child?

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 1/14/10

I’ll tell you right now: I’m kind of a fan of classic old radiators! We have them in our house, and I love ’em! And Bobbie, those radiators are nothing special. Come on, there’s not even any decorative work on the metal! Also, I used to kind of be a fan of crazy ladies! And relationships with them generally lead nowhere good. So I think “Um” is really the best response in this situation.

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Mary Worth, 1/8/10

I’m pretty sure that panel two of today’s Mary Worth is what happens when you have MC Escher draw your family reunion. Note that Kurt and Wilbur are ostensibly sitting on the same piece of furniture, but Kurt’s waist is somehow level with Wilbur’s knees. That may have something do with the fact that Kurt is turned 90 degrees towards Wilbur, but his legs are still magically able to bend! Meanwhile, Dawn appears to be drawing away from Wilbur and her probably-not-actually-half-brother in disgust, tucking her right arm awkwardly behind her back so that Wilbur can’t touch it, and somehow moving closer to the viewer than the actual length of the couch would seem to allow. Just as Kurt has disrupted the Westons’ lives with his story about his illicit parentage, so too has his presence disrupted the actual fabric of time and space in their condo unit.

Also, I like their plan of finally setting some time aside to get to know each other better next week! It should make the next few days of sitting around the house awkwardly super-fun.

Apartment 3-G, 1/8/10

Wow, it looks like dating a foul-mouthed married pill addict isn’t a bed of roses — who could have guessed? I’d have more sympathy for the outrage being perpetrated against Ari’s professionalism if not for the fact that he actually appears to be not so much “with a client” as “wandering around the foyer of his office while his client presumably drones on and on about his emotional problems in the next room, seriously, that guy never shuts up, he probably won’t notice if I take a break for a few minutes.” Also weighing against Ari’s right to be self-righteous: the fact that he prescribed sleeping pills to one of his clients almost immediately upon meeting her, then started sleeping with her. What I’m trying to say is that Ari can, in fact, go to @#*%!!

Family Circus, 1/8/10

My favorite thing about today’s Family Circus is the look of disappointment on Big Daddy Keane’s face. It’s like he always had dreams of having kids so he could read stories to them, only discover that actual children ruin everything by thinking for themselves and being bored and irritated by the things you like. At least Dolly is staying engaged enough to know what’s happening in the story, even if she’s going to pick it to bits with her dumb questions; PJ looks as if he’s fantasizing that something more interesting is happening — that’s he watching television, or instance, or staring at the wall.

Garfield, 1/8/10

Ha ha! Garfield and Odie are voyeuristic perverts!