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Gil Thorp, 11/21/11

Gil may be an incredibly crappy coach, but he’s no dummy! With his team coasting towards a winless season and the booster club in open revolt, he’s got one last chance to save his job, and he’s playing it for all it’s worth. “Sure, we may end the season with the worst record in decades, but we did help one kid with Asperger’s come out of his shell a bit and make friends. And isn’t that more important than some dumb old football game? Who’s gonna be the jerk to say that, huh? Yeah, thought so. See ya next year, when with any luck we’ll go 2-8!”

Apartment 3-G, 11/21/11

“Someone is crying her eyes out in there. It must be Lu Ann! Tommie has used advanced meditation techniques to ensure that she’s incapable of feeling anything stronger than ennui or mild anxiety, and if Margo were moved to tears, her sobs would be drowned out by the pleas for mercy from her hapless victims.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/21/11

Parson Tuttle is of course a notorious fraud without even the rudiments of a theological education, but based on that look of shock in panel two it appears that Parson Dickens isn’t, which will spell trouble for Hootin’ Holler’s beloved clergyman/grifter. “Tarnation, he’s callin’ a vacation a ‘sabbatical’? That’s sullyin’ the name of th’ sabbath — a violation of the fourth commandment! Welp, better gather th’ townsfolk for a good old-fashioned stonin’.”

Momma, 11/21/11

This strip would have been funnier (note that I didn’t say “funny”) if it had hinged on the contrast between Francis’ archaic CRT set and the flat-screen TVs that have pretty much been the only new televisions sold for the better part of a decade. But apparently that would require someone involved in the production of Momma to know that high-tech items like flat-screen TVs exist.

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Mark Trail, 10/22/11

WELL I GUESS WE ALL FEEL KIND OF SILLY NOW, don’t we? Yes, Mountie and Mother McQueen aren’t just living in paranoid fear that someone will stumble upon their bible banding operation; they’re living in paranoid fear that someone will stumble upon their Eden-like valley, where they’ve convinced all the animals to live in harmony with one another (if by “all the animals” we mean ducks, moose, and beaver), using some combination of divine favor, perverted science, and devil magic. Obviously the bible bands are some key part of the mysterious process by which this miraculous scene was created, with the possibility that the geese would bring visitors to see the Canadian Neo-Eden being only a harmful side effect, not the actual purpose of the banding. Anyway, with this shockingly insane revelation, this storyline has just gone from “enh” to “wow,” and will shoot all the way up to “holy moly” if Mark ends up punching someone in the face.

The bright green water in this scene indicates that algae may also be among the organisms forced into pan-biological harmony by the McQueens’ eerie witchery.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/22/11

I’m glad to see that Hootin’ Holler’s grinding poverty will now be the source of this strip’s humor, rather than just its unsettling background. Today, we learn that the Smifs are too poor to afford cheese, ha ha!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/20/11

I am 100 percent in favor of Snuffy Smith focusing less on chicken thievery and more on Lureen cutting a sexual swath through the male population of Hootin’ Holler. The nickname she’s chosen for her current beau is rather poignant; due to his ripe old age and her impoverished community’s rudimentary medical system, she probably doesn’t need to worry about this fling lasting very long, if you know what I mean.

Mary Worth, 10/20/11

Oh, good lord, Bobby does still love Gina, and now we’re going to get a week or two of strips dedicated to the two of them mewling rapturously about the glory and majesty of their affection for one another. Our only hope is that we suddenly switch to a different, more interesting plot — one that, say, explains how Inside the Actors Studio’s James Lipton lost it all and ended up working as a maitre d’ at a midscale restaurant in California.

Spider-Man, 10/20/11

“I mean, I’m really not the kind of guy people ‘like’ or ‘want to help in any way.’ What’s in it for her?”