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Gil Thorp, 5/16/09

If I’ve been ignoring Gil Thorp, as I’ve been doing of late, you can pretty much just assume that it’s because it’s been pointless and boring (as opposed to its more entertaining mode, when it’s pointless and delightfully deranged). The baseball-season plot revolves around YouTube videos, and you know that any time a continuity strip takes on modern Internet culture, you’re in for a roller-coasters ride, if roller-coasters had no hills and didn’t move at all.

Making things worse is the choice of Bill Hawkins as this spring’s protagonist. Bill is a quiet, hard-working type who has managed to woo the Amazonian Molly despite his complete lack of a personality or sense of humor. We are left to wonder just what sort of rowdiness the guys were getting up to down there. Drugs? Orgy? Drug-fueled orgy? Thanks to Bill’s goody two-shoeism, we’ll never know.

(Speaking of Gil Thorp and pointless Internet culture, I keep meaning to mention that Marty Moon has a Twitter account, featuring important updates like “I’ve been growing my beard for charity. Was I supposed to tell anyone about it first?”)

Archie, 5/16/09

Ignore for the moment the joke in today’s strip (easy enough to do, right?) and take a look at that terrifying Archie-resembling ventriloquist’s dummy in the foreground of the first panel. What could its meaning or significance be? Where does one even go to get such a thing made, and how would notorious deadbeat Jughead pay for what must be a custom job? Does Jughead spend the nights on which Archie is out on a date with Betty and/or Veronica alone in his filthy room, acting out the part of his best friend through the magic of ventriloquism? It’s all so unsettling that I almost didn’t notice that Jughead also appears to have a copy of a magazine with his own face on the cover, presumably an Oprah-esque lifestyle publication for people who want to be more like Jughead.

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Hi and Lois, 5/11/09

Well, here it is: the first Hi and Lois in living memory at which I laughed more or less unironically, mostly because I think They Buried Beethoven Alive! would be the great name of a low-budget zombie flick. The thought of the greatest composer of the Romantic period shuffling through the streets of Vienna and moaning melodically for brains is ever so delightful to me. (The victory of the living would come when the film’s hero realizes that undead Beethoven was still deaf, meaning that anti-zombie hunters could sneak up on him from behind undetected.)

Anyway, my amusement at the joke was genuine enough that it seems churlish to point out that it doesn’t really make much sense. I suppose it’s just the usual “Ha ha, the hip-hop music that the kids today enjoy is the nadir of human creative expression, let us be ever so smug about it by invoking the name of people who died 200 years ago,” but I can’t figure out why exactly Beethoven’s corpse would find a teenager’s financial success in the music world to be shocking. Beethoven grew up a generation after Mozart had made musical child prodigies trendy, and had himself performed (paid) public concerts at the age of seven. Maybe he would just think it improper that the rapping lad is in control of his own finances and is spending money on gaudy palaces, when everyone knows that a great composer ought to live in an apartment rented for him by a bishop-elector or archduke.

Archie, 5/11/09

This strip gives me an opportunity to share a link to a blog post several faithful readers sent me a few weeks ago, explaining the origins of Jughead’s hat. In short, it’s about as retro piece of costuming as you can get, as you might have realized if you had, say, thought about it for more than 30 seconds. Still, I kind of like this strip, mostly because everyone is so angry at Jughead. They take their theme parties seriously in Riverdale, by God.

Apartment 3-G, 5/11/09

It’s no secret that Margo and Tommie don’t always get along, but it appears that, having joined forces to defeat a man in combat, they’re finally bonding a little bit. Margo has broken out a bottle of her finest black bile for the occasion, and is even letting Tommie wear her sexy Han Solo vest.

Luann, 5/11/09

Last week, Brad was injured saving Toni from a fall while the two of them were fighting a fire, and in gratitude she agreed to serve as his “day nurse” while he was recovering. Today, we realize that this storyline will be even more repulsive than any of us could have imagined. “But … all the naughty nurses in the movies on hotscatporn.com thought it was a real turn-on!”

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Mary Worth, 4/4/09

I suppose this strip is supposed to be interesting because it contains one of Dr. Jeff’s occasional and doomed attempts to become a Man Of Action, but to be honest I’m much more interested in his trademark green jacket. Presumably he bought it years ago from a Masters Tournament winner in desperate need of cash (John Daly?), and now wears it at all formal events to show his contempt for bourgeois notions that clothes should be “attractive to look at” or “match.” Still, look at the way he’s carrying it around Mary’s apartment at arm’s length. It’s almost as if he finds wearing it any longer to be an exhausting prospect, but its totemic power is such that he’s afraid to set it down or turn his back on it. He particularly needs to be wary of laying it on Mary’s mustard-colored sofa, because the resulting color clash could rip a hole in the fabric of space-time itself.

(UPDATE: As faithful reader willethompson pointed out, John Daly never won the Masters; I blame confusingly worded Wikipedia infoboxes. For a non-golf-fan, the appeal of a cheap “drunk and desperate John Daly” joke was too strong to resist.)

Archie, 4/4/09

These three panels of Archie contain all the power of a Greek tragedy. A blind (or, in this case, bespectacled) sage notes the rot that is destroying his culture from the inside out, but is powerless to do anything but comment. Then, like poor doomed Pentheus, he is torn to bits by a mob of crazed women.

Family Circus, 4/4/09

Normally, when the Keane Kids mangle the English language and/or basic common sense to make one of the subpuns or moronic bits of wordplay that are this beloved feature’s stock in trade, they just stare ahead with blank, dumb expressions while doing so, as the gags’ accidental nature is supposedly part of their charm. In this panel, though, Billy and Jeffy seem to be amused by the former’s wisecrack. This could herald a dangerous new phase, in which the melonheads, having somehow become aware of the fact that they are being cut out of the newspaper and hung on the refrigerators of nice old ladies everywhere, ramp up their cloying cuteness to unbearable levels. On the other hand, it’s possible that they’re just amused by the prospect of eating their grandmother’s head.

Curtis, 4/4/09

One of this strip’s most common running gags involves Curtis asking his father for a cell phone, and his father informing him that cell phones are too expensive. Thus, I must conclude that the strip’s creator has no idea what text messages are. Perhaps he thinks they somehow involve a tennis racket.