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Crankshaft, 8/10/09

You might think that after his near death experience, Crankshaft would be ready to show a little humility — you might think that, that is, unless you read the strip on a regular basis, in which case you would know that being a smug dick is one of the key defining aspects of the old man’s personality. Admittedly, he isn’t actually causing anyone physical or emotional pain for once, but still, his expression of epically smug self-satisfaction in panel three is wildly at variance with the quality of the — well, I don’t even know what to call it. It’s not a pun, you can’t in good conscience call it a joke, and if you referred to it as a play on words, then the thought of how joyless and grim your playtime must have been as a child chills me to the core. Anyway, the point is that Crankshaft is an unfunny jerk who I’d hope would be stung to death by bees enraged at being roped into this sordid scene, except they already tried that and it didn’t work.

Cathy, 8/10/09

While I’m not Catholic, I do believe that confession is good for the soul, which is why I always feel compelled to admit it here when Cathy elicits a genuine chuckle. In the case of this strip, I wasn’t amused by the bizarre denouement, in which it’s revealed that Irving has no idea what he looks like (presumably that’s because any mirror brought into their home is shattered in short order by an ACKing swimsuit-clad Cathy); but I did kind of find the panels in which he’s shouting abuse into a laptop screen kind of funny, as it’s simultaneously ludicrous and something I feel a certain amount of familiarity with (see angry diatribe about Crankshaft, above).

Gil Thorp, 8/10/09

“I mean, Marty’s arm is already shot, so I don’t see how hauling a bunch of wood around could hurt him any more. Hey, Marty, let me know if your shoulders get sore! I have some cortisone here that will make you feel better!”

Meanwhile, at Ted Pearse’s Li’l Hobo Sport Camp And Sammich Dispensary™, another promising youngster is showing that he too is ready for some cortisone injections, as he participates in the traditional pastime of underprivileged youth: throwing around a stale sourdough batard that they fished out of a dumpster. Winner gets to eat it!

Dick Tracy, 8/10/09

“Hey, everyone, it’s me! The lifeless, bleeding, twisted corpse over here? Anyone want to throw a blanket over me? You know, help me maintain some shred of dignity? Anyone? Little help?”

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Gil Thorp, 7/31/09

I was hoping that Marty DeJong’s wrath was going to cause some actual introspection on the part of Gil on how he handles his young charges, but what with Kaz’s quick quips, I see now that these meatheads are completely incapable of self-reflection of any sort without drastic measures. So: remember how at the beginning of The Sixth Sense, Donnie Wahlberg breaks into Bruce Willis’s house and totally kills him, but he doesn’t realize it, and he’s, like, a ghost throughout the whole movie? Well, what if that’s what’s going to happen here? Marty DeJong has in fact already burned down Thorpe Manor, killing the entire Milford coaching staff. Since they very rarely interact with the student athletes they ostensibly coach, and much of the actual day-to-day coaching work is performed by random community members who wander in off the street, it may take them until the middle of basketball season to realize that they’re dead; when that moment comes, they’ll finally walk off into the light in order to reach the next plane of existence, greeted by a white-robed Clambake.

Dick Tracy, 7/31/09

“Yeah, I mean, she’s dead already, so belay that order to do anything urgent about it. We’ve all seen a dead body or twelve, am I right? I know I have. C’mon, these people paid good money for their circus tickets, on with the show! You might want to throw a blanket over her, if you can find one around somewhere; no big deal, otherwise.”

Curtis, 7/31/09

I haven’t mentioned how Curtis has been all Oedipal and creepy and weird for the last two weeks, with Curtis and his dad fighting for Diane’s attention with dueling ailments, but boy howdy has it been all Oedipal and creepy and weird. At least most of the strips have contained actual jokes, or reasonable joke substitutes; today’s strip seems to be under the impression that being Oedipal and creepy and weird qualifies as a punchline in and of itself.

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Beetle Bailey, 7/29/09

The action in today’s Beetle Bailey obviously violates every workplace sexual harassment regulation known to man, not that I expect Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Enterprises LLC to realize that there might be something inappropriate about handing a co-worker a skimpy undergarment and then demanding that she put it on right in front of you. Ignoring that for the moment, though, I do have to say that I like the (probably accidental) way that the always-unsettling wiggle lines of horniness emitted by Killer’s hat-nodules form what appear to be quotation marks around the word “present.” “I got you a ‘present.’ Well, it’s not really a present for you.”

Crock, 7/29/09

Now here’s a problem that arises when the art in your strip is mangled and impenetrable: I guess today’s punchline is supposed to some cruel joke about how the librarian’s girlfriend is ugly, but this being Crock, who can tell? Whether the joke is about supposedly ugly people or supposedly pretty people, they’re all just barely-recognizable Crock-squiggles.

Dick Tracy, 7/29/09

Wait, did I say that Dick Tracy was like German expressionist film? Now that we have an elaborately dressed ringmaster responding to a tragic scene by repeatedly shouting “It happened!”, I’m updating that assessment to David Lynch.

It’s nice of Dick to address our no-doubt-implicated-in-the-crime-but-still-emotionally-tortured ringmaster as “Mr. Ringmaster.” He knows that it costs him nothing to be polite, just as it will cost our overburdened court systems nothing when he executes everyone involved without trial in front of hundreds of horrified onlookers.

Mary Worth, 7/29/09

Oh, goodness, Charley isn’t just a sex pervert, but also an alcoholic, by which I mean “someone who drinks alcohol that isn’t the terrible ketchup-red wine they serve at the Bum Boat.” Delilah is right to cringe on that couch in terror! Of course she wants plain soda water, as flavored sodas are far too exciting.

Family Circus, 7/29/09

As several faithful readers have pointed out, this Family Circus camping sequence actually consists of reruns from the early 1980s. This explains the vintage station wagon, and the hanky code.