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Apartment 3-G, 4/20/10

Oh, goody, Apartment 3-G is revisiting an important plot point from Sunday that I neglected to mention, namely the “private psychiatric facility upstate” into which the so-called “sane” characters in this strip are bamboozling our poor Bobbie. The Professor, of course, was the one who was prescribing pills to Bobbie and screwing her, possibly not in that order, so he’s the most suitable candidate for disposing of her in a way that’s convenient for everyone, without the pesky police getting involved. One wonders who’s paying for this fancy private facility! Martin, with his alimony checks? The Professor, out of guilt? Actually, if my suspicions are correct, it may be the sort of institution where she can earn her keep just like Margo did.

Crock, 4/20/10

Oh, look, Crock is trying to capture that awful yet moving vibe of yesterday’s Hagar the Horrible. Unfortunately, the sort of little grace notes that made that other strip work in spite of itself are wholly missing from this one, and the details that are present are just jarring and wrong (vultures do not have teeth, for instance). But mostly a steaming, bloated corpse being picked apart by a grotesque scavenger bird just doesn’t have the same grim majesty as a good burning at the stake, I’m afraid.

Gil Thorp, 4/20/10

Against all odds and logic, teen alt-country sensation “Slim” Chance has decided to spend his spring afternoons with the losers and yahoos on the Mudlark baseball team, possibly because he hopes to use their pathetic dreams and broken lives as material for his songwriting. He’s already blowing the kids’ minds with his crazy musical stylings; I’m assuming one of the major spring plots will involve his teammates, who have grown up on a diet of the terrible rap-metal, learning about good, wholesome music, like this country standard about adultery and murder.

Marmaduke, 4/20/10

Marmaduke is the last creature one would expect to see engaging in the sort of nonviolent passive resistance that Gandhi and Martin Luther King used to effect social and political change. It’s more likely that he’s hoping to lure unwary passersby close enough for him to kill and eat.

Mary Worth, 4/20/10

Tobey is overjoyed that Mary has at last made another friend, which takes the pressure off her, and is thus trying to minimize any potential flaws Mary might see in her. “Oh, she’s a big shopper? Is that all? That’s no reason why you two shouldn’t be thick as thieves and spend all your free time together. Whoa, is it 1:30 already? Gotta go! Later Mary! Say hi to Bonnie for me!” In panel two her hand is shaking in anticipation of freedom, sweet freedom.

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Mark Trail, 4/11/10

Man, for once, I want more educational information out of my Sunday educational Mark Trail! I would like Mark to answer the following questions:

• Is “the drug [hemp] yields” actually at all potent?
• If not, why are filthy hippies always extolling hemp’s industrial purposes like some kind of unshowered white-guy-with-dreadlocks blanket-and-rope PAC? If so, since said dirty hippies no doubt also support marijuana legalization, why don’t they just come out and say that they want to grow hemp to get high?
• Did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson get high together?
• If you rolled up the Declaration of Independence and smoked it, would you get a buzz?
• If growing hemp is illegal, where the hell is the hemp in birdseed coming from? Is that bird in the final panel some kind of tiny, feathered trafficker?
• Do birds get high by eating birdseed?
• Is Mark high right now? Is that what the yellow word balloon indicates?
• Will King Features be held legally liable when the factoid at the bottom right causes particularly dim tokers to attempt to smoke nylon?

Blondie, 4/11/10

Dagwood has never been shown to have any actual friends other than Herb; thus, in order to pad this gag out to Sunday-strip length, we have to watch him hear paltry excuses from two funny-looking characters who have never appeared in the strip before to my knowledge. It would have been depressing but truer to this feature’s established universe if, after being turned down by Herb, Dagwood spent the final three panels weeping alone about his lack of meaningful social relationships.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/11/10 (rotated 90 degrees for your convenience!)

Montoni’s may not be shutting down completely, but at least we now know that the drive to establish Montoni’s New York was all that was keeping Funky off the sauce, so that’s something. Also, we know that Funky’s DT-fueled fever dreams involve getting into knife fights with sexy jungle ladies and baboons, which is frankly more than I wanted to know.

Crock, 4/11/10

Wow, Vern, your standards for desolate and perilous neighborhoods are pretty high if you aren’t impressed by a desert urchin whose only friend is a sinister vulture. Admittedly, the vulture looks less sinister wearing a baseball cap turned backwards at a jaunty angle, but consider the fact that it probably scavenged it off of a bloated corpse it just ate.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 4/11/10

I’m sort of torn about the way the Lockhorns deals with its expanded Sunday real estate, which is to just cram in five disconnected panels, any one of which could run on its own during the week. On the one hand, I do feel that artists ought to make visually interesting use of all that extra room they get in the Sunday papers; on the other hand, I suppose the Lockhorns deserves kudos for essentially producing eleven panels a week when they only really need to do seven. Anyway, this particular panel reveals that Leroy, and the creators of the Lockhorns, are familiar with the concept of a “safe word,” so, you know, HORROR HORROR HORROR.

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Crock, 4/9/10

You have to give a certain amount of credit to a strip that knows its limitations. Crock has repeatedly shown that it is unable to depict supposedly attractive characters as anything other than mangle-faced horrors; thus, to preserve our illusions about Otis’s adorable little girlfriend, it’s best that the strip has chosen to position her so she remains mostly unseen. If only the creators had been wise enough to similarly hide the fact that none of them have a clue what the hell an “iTunes” is.

Shoe, 4/9/10

I know that being one of the birds of Shoe means being cynical and world-weary about everything, but I hope that if I’m ever informed that the spirit of a dead loved one is attempting to communicate with me from beyond the grave, I would respond with something other than a belligerent “So?”

Pluggers, 4/9/10

Pluggers know that “copy editing” is for big city elitists.