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Gil Thorp, 5/19/07

Everyone who’s been whining about how relentlessly depressing and maudlin Funky Winkerbean’s cancer storyline may change their tune once they get a load of Gil Thorp’s frenzied, hard-to-follow take on the same material. My guess is that Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp is not, in fact, being told that she has cancer — the “bad news” will be that her insurance co-pay has gone up from $20 to $40 or something — but her student will spread the news to her squabbling teammates that Coach is on death’s door, and hilarious lesser-Shakespeare-comedy-of-misunderstanding-style hijinks will ensue, interspersed among Clambake’s down-home, vaguely racially offensive antics. It’ll be all cleared up right around the time the Lady Mudlark softball team gets bounced in the second round of the playdowns, and we’ll all learn a valuable lesson: namely, that nobody you actually know will ever get cancer.

Meanwhile, nobody will pay attention to the emotional and physical scars left by the vicious monkey attack on Blondie McWhatshername in panel three. The sinister simian has already clawed off most of her nose, and now it’s coming back for more.

Blondie, 5/19/07

It was distressing enough to learn that the Bumsteads’ neighborhood is full of vicious feral dogs who travel under the cover of night. Now we see that even the day isn’t safe, as this middle-school mafia travels from house to house demanding cash for work they don’t perform. The suburbs are even more terrifying than I could have imagined!

Apartment 3-G, 5/19/07

Some might argue that the revelation that Lu Ann’s veins are filled not with blood but some viscous black fluid indicates that she’s a robot, which would go a long way towards explaining her limited emotional range and general dimness. I prefer to believe that she’s been possessed by the X-Files’ black oil, and that “Albert Pinkham Ryder” is an avatar of the alien invasion force that’s been forcing her to paint endless numbers of boring fern watercolors to advance their sinister and inscrutable plans. In makes as much sense as anything else, which is to say: none at all.

9 Chickweed Lane, 5/19/07

A lot of people have been kvetching about this week’s 9 Chickweed Lane, in which Edda waxes maudlin about how nobody seems to understand the difference between being a dancer and being a professional dancer. As a non-traditional-job-having type myself (though my wife informed me this weekend that I did not actually qualify as “funemployed,” as much as I might like the word), I had a bit more sympathy than most, but even I was finding it pretty wearisome by the end … until suddenly it turned into Edda wearing short shorts and encountering a centaur, or unicorn, or something in the middle of a New York City park, and BAM! HOW YA LIKE ME NOW? It’s totally insane and doesn’t make any sense, but at least it’s more fun that Lu Ann’s leaky, addled skull.

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Blondie, 5/13/07

The saddest thing is that the central joke of this strip — that Blondie has been utterly charmed into an aroused frenzy by her pampering, and is eager to discovery what other surprises her husband has prepared for her, while Dagwood has one foot out the door as he’s planning to head out for a “men’s foursome” — is so in keeping with the well-established dynamic of the Bumstead marriage that I barely noticed it. The thing that really disturbed me is the heart that’s drifted up into Blondie’s word balloon in the final panel. I have no idea what it’s supposed to represent semantically. I suppose it could be “love” as a noun and term of endearment, rather than “love” as a verb, which it usually stands for — but then it ought to have a comma after it. Really, the fact that it’s sitting after a comma just makes it all the more anomalous to me. Mostly I’m worried that Dag and Blondie have ingested some kind of potent hallucinogen and now believe themselves to be conversing using abstract symbols rather than normal human speech.

Family Circus, 5/13/07

This strip is a subtle but powerful reminder of the strict laws of patriarchy that govern the Family Circus. Note that Dolly wonders who their mother would be if her parents hadn’t met, not who their father would be. On Mother’s Day, she assumes that her mother is just an interchangeable womb who could have been replaced by any number of other females from other times and places and their family would have remained pretty much the same.

I really enjoy the fact that all the other comics moms in Billy’s thought balloon are just sort of idly looking off into the distance, except for one. FBOFW’s Elly is looking straight at the eldest Keane boy in goggle-eyed horror, as if contemplating how excruciating it would have been to pass that enormous melonhead through her birth canal.

Doodles by Mac & Sack, 5/13/07

Someone’s kind of fixated on the idea of being crushed to death by a boa constrictor, and it makes me uncomfortable. I’m also disturbed the puffed-out cheeks of “the Doughboy” in the Doodle Zoo: they clearly indicate that he’s dying horribly as the smart-ass little koala cracks wise. I am kind of amused that the Doughboy seems to have lost his “Pillsbury” moniker at the last minute due to trademark infringement concerns, though it does bring to mind the notion of an American infantryman, having survived the hell of combat in the trenches against the Hun’s forces on the Western Front, being felled by an unexpected snake attack.

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 5/13/07

I’m not showing you the rest of this strip, because these panels perfectly set up the Dennis the Menace strip we’d all like to see, the one where Mr. Wilson murders Dennis with a pair of garden shears.

Panel from Mary Worth, 5/13/07

Since Vera’s so angry at Von, it’s ironic that she’s remembering him at the height of his glory: all decked out in his yellow suit, shirt, and facepaint, standing in front of that blue door, and disco dancing like nobody’s business.

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Gil Thorp, 5/10/07

As part of my cantankerous mission to defend the indefensible, I’d like to speak up for the art in Gil Thorp. I won’t attempt to justify the baffling action sequences, or claim that a reasonable person can tell who the hell anybody is. But if there’s one thing that Gil Thorp does well, it’s smug. I draw your attention to the Central slugger in the first panel and invite you to imagine his internal narrative. “Ah ha! Another snail-slow meatball of a pitch from Jim Gross that I’ve just blasted over the far fences! I think I’ll stand here and follow its trajectory into the next county for a bit, then let the bat slowly and casually slip from my fingers before I begin my stately trot ‘round the bases! La di da!”

For a previous instance of Thorpian smuggery, I urge you to check out this post from two years ago, when I was still new to the ways of Milford athletics. This post prompted the following hilarious comment from faithful reader Incident, which still makes me chuckle:

What really makes this strip is Von Haney’s crazy diagonal smug leaning pose. I know in my heart he’s going to keep doing it throughout the entire game, ergonomics be damned, because he’s JUST THAT HARDCORE about being smug. Sally Forth is his bitch.

(Speaking of funny things other people are saying about Gil Thorp, I’m pretty sure I’ve already linked to This Week In Milford, but if you aren’t already reading it, you really should be.)

Blondie, 5/10/07

Speaking of smug, panel one of today’s Blondie screams “I’m white, middle-aged, and self-satisfied, how ya doin’?” so loudly that I sort of want to smack Dagwood, and I’m not even a particular fan of hip-hop. Fortunately, in the rest of the strip he makes a quick and gratifying descent into insanity.

Mark Trail, 5/10/07

Yes, sexy Sam the sexy biologist just couldn’t get rid of all the birds — not even with a constant series of controlled explosions (scroll down a bit) — so she just DESTROYED THE WETLANDS WHERE THEY LIVED! And, as a double bonus, they were able to build a mall on the former swamp! Win-win! It’s a good thing Mark Trail could never ever punch a woman, because otherwise Sam Hill would be in big trouble. In fact, I’m not convinced she is a woman, what with her disturbingly masculine first name. I think she’s a male Mark Trail villain, and her “breasts” are where she’s hiding her facial hair.

By the way, if you think “bird strikes” are only a problem in the funny pages, think again!

Mary Worth, 5/10/07

Yes, after a big blow-out over “some silly matter” (Vera won’t tell Mary anything more, so you just know it was something awful she did), Vera was flung bodily out of the vinyl-sided family mansion onto the lawn! In a driving drizzle! With nothing but her hideous periwinkle and purple outfit and tiny, tiny handbag! And from that day forward, she swore she’d express all her aggressive and negative impulses in thought balloon form! CURSES UPON YOU, VON!

Speaking of curses, I’m still mostly averting my eyes from the horror of Funky Winkerbean, but for those of you who think that the person on the other end the hilarious Lisa-really-does-have-terminal-cancer-after-all swapped-scans mix-up has had all of his or her problems solved, think again.