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Gil Thorp, 2/12/07

Sometimes, you just need to go with your strengths. Since everyone in Gil Thorp already looks like the shuffling, grey-skinned undead, it’s perfectly logical that they start bleeding profusely from the head while looking vaguely uneasy. Panel one reminds of me of the horrifying scene in the second Star Trek movie when that eel thing crawled out of Chekov’s ear, and it would probably be just as traumatizing if it were drawn at all realistically.

Mark Trail, 2/12/07

Sweet Jesus, Cherry has never looked scarier than she has in panel two. Note the blue hair combed forward to mask her freakish, bulbous forehead. She’s just an inch or so of foundation away from looking like Tammy Faye Baker.

Since Dan seems to have learned everything about fishing from magazine articles, I’m really looking forward to his encounter with the viscera-stained reality. “Hey, what are you doing to that fish? Wait, did you just use ‘gut’ as a verb? AAAHHHHH!”

Apartment 3-G, 2/12/07

When this weekend began (about three and a half weeks ago) I expressed my suspicions about Margo’s schedule. Now I’m even more dubious that a party planner would have a schedule that has her arriving home from Long Island early Monday morning, unless “party planner” is code for “prostitute” and “Long Island” is code for “the Port Authority bus terminal.”

In panel three, Tommie is going to hold that smug facial expression as long as she can, but eventually she will have to admit that her big weekend involved making out with a pencil-mustachioed theater impresario who forgot her name, and then giving her phone number to a shy guy she didn’t like. And then Margo will laugh and laugh and laugh.

For Better Or For Worse, 2/12/07

I am all in favor of harassing and abusing Michael Patterson by any means available. I’m not sure that I would have started out by shouting things at the top of my lungs directly into his face, but I’m willing to wait and see where Weed’s going with this.

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Apartment 3-G, 2/4/07

So I just spent a good chunk of time catching up on the various comics I missed while I was away, and I have to say that nothing was so disturbing as the bizarre turn of events in Apartment 3-G that saw Tommie falling into the arms of a pencil-mustached lothario out of the 1970s 1950s 1890s [Note: Historical records confirm that there has been no decade in recorded human history in which Neil’s clothes, haircut, and mustache would be considered fashionable and attractive. –Eds] Less traumatizing than Neil, who will soon cast aside Tommie like a used tissue, is Gary, aka “Boy Tommie.” Clearly this lookalike duo is destined for romance, at which point all of time and space will collapse into a black hole of bland mopiness from which nothing, not even fun, can escape.

I really thought for a minute that Tommie was supposed to be wearing a bolo tie, but it turns out that it’s just a Victorian locket or something. Still, she is looking rather Old Western, and not in a good way.

Before I conclude, I do want to cast a look back at a couple of gems from last week. I certainly don’t mean this as a disparagement of Uncle Lumpy’s fine job filling in, but it’s just that he doesn’t necessarily share all of my incomprehensible comics obsessions, one of which is old people having sex.

Judge Parker and Crankshaft, 2/1/07

It was too slow-moving and pointless to cover here, but I always thought there was something a little odd in the interaction between Rachel and her regular butler (who now seems to be locked in his sickroom, totally forgotten) in the weeks leading up to Abbey and Neddy’s arrival in Paris. I don’t even want to know about the twisted power dynamics that go on in a sexual relationship between an old gazillionare biddy and her manservant. I do know that I love Rachel’s expression in panel two. It says, “Yeah, that’s right, you sexy young mulleted whippersnapper, I’m eighty years old and dying of cancer, but I’ve been gettin’ me some hot servant tail for decades, while you can’t even bed your own husband by wearing something low-cut and getting him boozed up!”

Crankshaft’s face, meanwhile, bears the ashen expression of a lonely widower who is suddenly reminded that he hasn’t felt the intimate touch of another human being in decades. That’s Crankshaft for you, which mainly serves to provide comic relief for Funky Winkerbean.

Finally, yesterday’s Watch Your Head had an amusing take on Curtis.

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I never paid much attention to the art in comic strips before I discovered Josh’s site. Most of it doesn’t seem very good. It must be hard for an artist to work with today’s cheap newsprint, fuzzy water-based inks, and tiny spaces, especially in the dailies. The Web may help, or it may not. I’ve spent a lot of time this week compressing strips to make them fit the bandwidth budget – and the better the original art, the more compression seems to hurt it.

It’s easy to blame the artists, but it’s not always right. Look at what Mary Worth‘s Joe Giella can do:

Yes, that’s our Toeby on the left. Helluva right hook, too. And merciful Heavens, look what they’ve done to the girls in Apartment 3G:

You can say that again, Margo! This clip, by the way, is from the excellent Prof. Mendez retrospective on photo-realistic strips that’s been cited before in these pages.

I wouldn’t be much of a Curmudgeon — even a substitute — if I didn’t think things were going to hell in a handbasket. But there’s always hope. Manga Patrick Nagel June in Rex Morgan, the Sunday Phantom, the clever frame-bending in Get Fuzzy and 9 Chickweed Lane, the pixellated iconography of Diesel Sweeties – artists are finding new ways of working within their constraints. But still, I don’t think we’re going to see anything like this again:

My, how I do go on. But big news: Josh is back! Look for a satisfying wallow through the Sunday comics tomorrow! And everybody, thanks for a delightful week – see you in the comments!

– Uncle Lumpy