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Gil Thorp, 10/23/10

So there’s multiple boring storylines going on in this fall’s Gil Thorp, most of which revolve around golden boy/team captain/foster child Cody Exner, who is selfless and noble and may be buying drugs down at the park in the middle of the night, who knows, probably it will end up being something stupidly innocuous. But today’s strip contains one of the most subtly hilarious panels in many weeks of Gil Thorp, featuring young Cody frolicking with his real, unfit parents. Look, mom is smoking! And dad has a damn ponytail! Monsters! Presumably Child Protective Services stumbled onto this bucolic scene mere moments later and whisked young Cody away to a better life, where tobacco is forbidden and no man’s hair extends below the collar.

It’s even funnier to imagine that Cody is buying drugs down at the park and this story about his parents is an improvised ruse, because that would probably mean that the “parents” in his vision are just his dealers.

Spider-Man, 10/23/10

There were some hints at the beginning of this storyline that the Mole Man was going to drag Aunt May down to his subsurface kingdom and make her his unwilling bride, and Spider-Man would be required to preform a certain degree of superheroics to rescue her. But now it looks like the subterranean weirdo and Peter’s aged aunt are going to embark on a wholly consensual romance, which means that the drama will involve Peter whining about having to go have dinner with them despite the fact that the Mole Man creeps him out. This is frankly much more this strip’s speed.

Archie, 10/23/10

Oh, God, those aren’t the eyes of an adorable and mildly mischievous tyke; those are windows into a soul of PURE EVIL. Leroy knows that what he’s done was wrong, and that’s exactly why he’s going to do it again and again.

But where will he find his bride?

Family Circus, 10/23/10

“How many sins must I commit before the voices in my head stop, grandma? HOW MUCH EVIL MUST I DO TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT?”

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Mary Worth, 9/16/10

You know, in between all the drive-bys and the vigilantism and the reconciliation and the dropping dead, I think we lost sight of something important about this storyline: it was originally about two people who were afraid to love, not just one. We’ve stayed with Dr. Mike through every excruciating moment of his Journey to Wholeness, so we can truly appreciate the love-capable orange-suited human sitting before us. But Jenna’s thought balloon makes her problem seem much shallower. Mike had to watch his father die before the icy crust around his heart finally melted; Jenna, meanwhile, was just waiting for the right guy in a hideous outfit to buy her a basket of taupe oblong food-things.

On the other hand, I’m not sure if I can handle a six-to-eight-week emotional archaeological expedition through the ruins of Jenna’s past, so maybe we should let her think dreamily about how she finally snagged the piece of arm candy that best matches her furniture and move on.

Archie, 9/16/10

Hey, check it out! Svenson the janitor has just gotten hip and grown a goatee. Welcome to the brotherhood, sir! Don’t let anyone tell you that this facial hair configuration went out of style in 1998. It’s a timeless look!

Apartment 3-G, 9/16/10

Oh, God, New Tommie’s had more than just a little styling done to her hair; it looks like there’s been some unlicensed rhinoplasty work done as well. Check out that last panel: her nose looks to be rapidly caving into her face, Michael Jackson-style. Either that or the “myself” she likes again is her true identity, Lord Voldemort.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/7/10

In all my years of reading the strip, I have encountered few scenes in Snuffy Smith more harrowing than panel two here. Lureen looks rightly terrified at the slavering mob of women who have assembled at the Gossip Fence, the traditional gathering place for female-oriented rituals in Hootin’ Holler. Little does she know that any woman who manages to successfully bed the hamlet’s most eligible bachelor is by iron custom torn to bits and devoured by all the other women in the town. This is how the community maintains its uniform hideousness: by weeding all the even vaguely attractive people out of the gene pool.

Archie, 9/7/10

Mr. Weatherbee, with his black shirt and white jacket, always seems to be waiting for an ’80s fashion revival that never arrives; today, he’s really attempting to force the issue by donning a piano tie. GIVE IT UP, MR. WEATHERBEE. IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Spider-Man, 9/7/10

I love the fact that Spider-Man, true to his intense laziness, just automatically associates computers with video games and nothing else. “Wait, you can use the keyboard-television for things that aren’t Farmville?”

Pluggers, 9/7/10

Seriously, pluggers are shockingly lazy and just straight up don’t give a rat’s ass about what you think.