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Gil Thorp, 7/9/07

Unlike most of you naysayers, I unabashedly love Gil Thorp, and I particularly love Gil Thorp’s summer storylines. As regular readers know, while the strip is pretty demented plotwise at all times, during the school year it at least is obligated to stay within the stately rhythms of high school athletics: football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball and softball in the spring. In the summer, though, without the structure of the traditional American team sports, anything can happen to the denizens of Milford. Here are some past summer storylines:

• Von worked as a late night DJ, had a weird on-air romance with a 30-year-old, and saved her from a stalker.
• A gymnastics team full of elementary school girls descended into racial hatred and fisticuffs.
• Marty Moon lost thousands of dollars in ill-advised golf bets to a Ben Franklin lookalike grifter, and ended up passed out drunk in his car.

And that’s just off the top of my head! You can understand why I’m very excited to see where the next few months will take us. As we begin, Coach Thorp and Assistant Coach Kaz are celebrating the fact that they don’t have to be around teenagers anymore by getting ripped at the local PUB. Hopefully once they get drunk enough, Gil will work up the nerve to finally ask Kaz why in God’s name he wears pearl earrings.

Crankshaft, 7/9/07

I was a little disappointed when I saw that the ’Shaft was reading Readers Digest; I had thought he’d get his versifying from Adirondack Review or maybe the Inkwell Journal. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve had piles of Readers Digests in the bathroom I frequent, but in my memory that publication focuses less on poetry and more on funny but true-to-life anecdotes from the workplace and common-sense features on the liberal lies that are destroying America. But I do really like the look of languid blankness on our hero’s face in the second panel. He captures the ennui of the modern cultural consumer, always looking for the entertainment that requires the absolute minimum of psychic energy, but vaguely aware of his dissatisfaction when he’s done.

Apartment 3-G, 7/9/07

Cousin, eh? You ever notice that all of Lu Ann’s relatives, like Ruby and Blaze and Mim, are vaguely-defined cousins and nieces? My theory is that her home is actually a sprawling polygamist compound in Wyoming foothills of the Rockies, where, after two or three generations of isolation, everyone is related to everyone else by marriage or blood in one way or another. It would explain the squishiness of the family ties, and the stupidity.

I love the imperious command in panel one. Margo’s victories over her enemies have no meaning if there is nobody present to witness them. The combat must be memorialized in the form of epic verse for the generations yet unborn.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/5/07

Oh, please, please, please let this be Lu Ann’s mother. Please. It only makes sense that Lu Ann’s wan, boring, unobtrusive personality grew up in the shadow of a larger-than-life southern belle, with her bright orange suit jackets and matching hair ribbons. It explains a lot, like why Lu Ann puts up with Margo’s constant stream of haughty abuse. Heck, if Lu Ann Senior and Margo start to bond, I will have officially died and gone to heaven.

Just because I like to make things even funnier in my mind, I’m imagining that Big Tipper is handing her cabbie a crisp dollar bill. “Now don’t spend it all in one place, sugar!” Of course, since the driver seems to be wearing an old-timey hat with a little button on it that presumably says “TAXI”, perhaps $1 does go pretty far back in his home decade.

Crankshaft, 7/5/07

Actually, from everything I’ve heard, the replacement of a brutal but essentially secular dictatorship with an elected coalition of religious-based political parties has resulted in Western dress becoming less common, not more, in Iraq. But if the Surge was abandoned and replaced with a strategy based on dressing Iraqis like the members of the Village People, the resulting political and diplomatic shitstorm would be 100 percent worth it, due to the extreme hilariousness that would result.

Mary Worth, 7/5/07

Dawn’s word balloon in panel two makes exactly zero sense. “I already wanted to study medicine — and now that I have made the entirely novel discovery that doctors are sometimes handsome, my choice becomes even more sensible!” Dawn, the more realistic attitude would be as follows: “Wait, I don’t have to go through the grueling process of earning a medical degree to net a doctor — there’s one standing right here in front of me! Now I can use the money Wilbur saved for tuition to help pay for the doves we’ll release at the end of our elaborate wedding ceremony!”

I know it’s impossible to tell from the Mary Worth art, which makes everyone looks like they’re in their 40s and it’s 1978, but anyone who’s gotten all the way through medical school and is now boasting at snoresville parties about being a doctor has got to be at minimum, what, 26? 27? FYI, kids: people in their late 20s who hit on college undergraduates = SKEEEEVY. I don’t want to see the funny pages lead a young generation astray on this.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/5/07

OH MY GOD FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLDS READ AND/OR SUBMIT ENTRIES TO TDIET EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS IS WRONG

I do have to say that Junior’s “Wha’-?” may be the most subtle expression of ironic bafflement in this feature’s history.

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Once again, I intended to skip over the days I missed when out of town … once again, I cannot resist their siren song! (And again, since I only skimmed the comments from while I was away, apologies if I’m repeating funnies here…)

Popeye, 6/30/07

In case you’re wondering, Popeye: still a horror show. While Olive Oyl’s manic suicide threat turned out to be the lead-in to some kind of baffling surrealist prank, we now have a sideburned thug threatening to stab Wimpy to death. GOOD FAMILY FUN.

Some commentor months ago said that the current Popeye strips are actually reruns from the 1990s. Can anyone confirm or deny if we’re seeing this disturbing tale a second time? Also, did Popeye really stuff spinach into his pipe and smoke it in one of the cartoons, or am I misremembering that?

Spider-Man, 6/30/07

With the sudden appearance of Badly Drawn Larry King, Spider-Man hits its highest pitch of excitement in months.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/1/07

Saparmurat Niyazov, who died last year, was the longtime dictator of Turkmenistan. His country was ground down by one of the most outrageous personality cults in history, the most obvious aspect of which was the inescapable omnipresence of his image. Photos, monuments, and statues of him were every where, including, most memorably, a gold-plated statue atop the Neutrality Arch, which rotated automatically so that it always faced the sun. “I admit it,” he said once, “there are too many portraits, pictures and monuments. I don’t find any pleasure in it, but the people demand it because of their mentality.”

Meanwhile, the battle for the heart (or something) of Niki begins! This fishing expedition should be an absolute hoot, as Niki, a tough kid from the mean streets of New Orleans, and Rex, an effete suburban doctor whose main hobbies are golf and petulance, attempt to bond by emulating crappy Hollywood movies about male bonding written by, directed by, and starring people who also have never fished in their lives. Look for Rex to flail about in disgust at the prospect of touching a live worm, and then accidentally swing the hook right into Niki’s eye. Rex’s dad looks down from heaven, still unimpressed.

Slylock Fox, 7/1/07

We Cassandra Cat fans enjoy the sight of our feline filcher staring lovingly if prematurely at her haul, but I have to once again take issue with the solution to the mystery. In a world where mice wear bowlers, foxes solve mysteries, and squirrels own jewelry and vinyl-sided houses, why couldn’t the kiwi have just walked into the house and stolen the ring? It could have just gone up the conveniently placed stairs.

Crankshaft, 7/1/07

Unless our unhappy family is parked directly above a tiny but still unimaginably powerful black hole, I’m going to have to call foul on the downward-bending light beam coming out of that car’s headlights. Perhaps it’s meant to be a metaphor for Crankshaft’s tragic erectile dysfunction.

Mark Trail, 7/1/07

“So you see, Rusty, sometimes you waste your entire life working on things that will ultimately be destroyed without a trace! Also, women like men with big ‘claws.'”

Panel from One Big Happy, 7/1/07

The advantage of having a character who generally speaks in unfiltered streams of quasi-nonsense is that you can slip in things like this and most people will barely notice.

Apartment 3-G, 7/2/07

Some might feel that this comic portrays Margo in an unflattering light, but you have to understand the context: yesterday was Lu Ann’s turn to cook, so she hasn’t eaten in nearly 48 hours. Naturally she’s a little irritable.

For Better Or For Worse, 7/2/07

Shawna-Marie’s wedding, week four: Canada’s nightmare continues.

It is of course obvious that Liz’s parade of suitors is being torn down one by one — too drunk, too distracted by their jobs and leering, too not white cheating — to make the inevitable pairing with Anthony vaguely palatable, since he has no actively redeeming qualities. The last few candidates at least had some kind of vague history in the strip, though; now we’re just being introduced to new potential mates solely so they can be eliminated. I look forward to the gap between the meet-cute and the unmasking getting shorter and shorter (Panel one: Liz meets handsome Joe! Panel three: Joe kicks a puppy!) until eventually a charming, attractive man comes upon Liz and says something punny and then tries to rape her in the same panel.

Gil Thorp, 7/2/07

“It’s not my job to do anything about it, though, obviously. Heck, what with you doing most of my job for me, my job mostly consisted of cashing the checks! So thanks, you lovable old fraud!”