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Mark Trail, 3/30/09

The tale of Bald Guy And Other Guy, The Dumbest Criminals Around, continues to roll onward in hilarious fashion. Here, Bald Guy, after a failed attempt to buy Rusty’s fancy digital camera and the incriminating photos within, rips the thing out of his hands so vigorously as to send the hapless urchin tumbling backwards. So far so good, but then Bald Guy’s face is mysteriously clouded by terror, and he hurls some cash and what appears to be his wallet at the boy before scampering off on his elevator shoes. It all leads one to wonder what crime this duo might be on the lam for in the first place. Did they rob a bank and then carefully fill out a withdrawal slip?

Gil Thorp, 3/30/09

“Oh, hey,” you almost certainly were not thinking, “Whatever happened with 6-foot-9 Jeff ‘The ’Czak’ Ponczak, and his buddy Matt the Hat, in their new gig running Marty Moon’s old cable access show?” Well, they’re still wearing the exact same stupid clothes and throwing up the exact same stupid fake gang signs as they were five months ago. (Matt appears to have added a stupid vest to his ensemble, but the hat remains his trademark outfit component, which he emphasizes by pointing at it in panel two.) Panel three shows us Coach Thorp and Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp watching their antics and saying coaching-type things in response, which is really too bad, as what we want to see is Marty watching their antics and doing crying-type things in response.

Slylock Fox, 3/30/09

Don’t bother reading the tedious explanatory text, which is just Slylock’s desperate spin after Max caught him changing into his giant rat costume; our favorite detective is actually suiting up for Midwest Furfest ’09, which, when you consider the fact that he’s already an anthropomorphic fox, ought to blow your mind.

The no doubt crotchless fursuits aside, I’m pretty sure that this is the first time we’ve seen Sly in his off-duty clothes. The green plaid jacket, yellow bow tie, and polka-dotted (or possibly just lint-speckled) baby blue slacks make his Sherlock Holmes get-up look positively normal.

Lockhorns, 3/30/09

When I first read this, I thought that this, as backhanded and twisted as it is, might be the first vaguely nice thing I’d ever seen Leroy do for his wife. Then I caught a glimpse of whatever that is in the box, and tried to imagine an item of lingerie that was that particularly barftastic shade of orange. Then I closed my eyes and rested my head on the desk.

I also have my doubts about any store that thinks polo shirts qualify as “lingerie.” At first I thought the puke-green specimen on display behind the counter was some sort of terrible combination of the polo shirt and the belly shirt, but then I realized that it was actually the perfect size for the torso of your typically dwarfish Lockhorns character.

Dick Tracy, 3/30/09

“Worried? Yeah, you might say I’m worried. I’m worried that my chin has sliced open my finger badly enough that I’ll need stitches. I’m worried that your head will soon be so large that your neck won’t be able to hold it up. I’ve got a lot on my mind, Tess.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/26/09

You know, I’ve gotten into a nice little groove here on this blog, but sometimes I have a crisis of faith. I wonder if my analysis gets more repetitive than the material warrants. Are the running jokes (which have their own section in this site’s Wikipedia entry!) getting overdone? Should I stop pointing out that Herb and Jamaal is ludicrously non-specific, that Marmaduke is a terrifying, all-devouring demon-thing, and that Funky Winkerbean is a black hole of bleakness and depression and cancer from which no joy or laughter can escape?

Then along come strips like this to reaffirm my central mission. For those of you not in the know, elevated PSA levels could indicate prostate cancer, and that biopsy will probably involve a scalpel in close proximity to Funky’s junk. This, naturally, is the only result that you can reasonably expect when you dare to beg God for relief from your ceaseless troubles. If there’s any consolation, it’s that Funky is a much less likable character than the last one who died of cancer here, and the strip’s admirable commitment to authenticity means that he’ll just get angrier and less pleasant as his slow march to death continues.

The dude sitting in a wheelchair a foot away from a TV blaring out grim economic news is really the strip’s pièce de résistance. Because there was a chance that you might read this and think “Hey, I don’t have cancer”; obviously you need to be reminded that you’ll soon be warming your hands over a trash-can fire and eating beans out of a can, probably after having become wheelchair-bound in an unrelated incident.

Dick Tracy, 3/26/09

It’s a sad day when America’s greatest comic-strip detective starts borrowing plot themes from Mary Worth, but the difference in how the two strips handle these identity theft storylines ought to be instructive. When Mary tackled it, we saw a lot of weeping and panic and forgiveness and easy-to-follow instructions from helpful experts. Dick Tracy’s take will no doubt involve weeping and panic as well, but a lot more broken bones and flayed skin, and definitely no forgiveness.

Mary Worth, 3/26/09

“Yes, the donation will be the last thing he’ll be thinking of … ever, once my plan to poison him is completed! MOO HA HA HA! Oh, wait, did I just say that part aloud?”

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For Better Or For Worse, 3/23/09

Generally speaking, I have chosen to ignore the “new-run” incarnation of For Better Or For Worse, partly to protest the strip’s shameless failure to fade away gracefully, and partly because it turns out that 99 percent of the fun was mocking the twists and turns of the end-game melodrama. I had intended to similarly pass over the current mostly-new storyline, in which Elly has gone off to Vancouver, leaving John alone to go whoring with his caddish co-worker at “The Swig And Swine” (BECAUSE MEN ARE DRUNK PIGS GET IT). But I was driven to briefly return from my self-imposed exile from Foobonia by panel two, in which the strip betrays its most important value: its Canadianosity. Seriously, what self-respecting Canuck would offer a toast with words that rebellious scoundrels used to separate part of His Majesty’s North American possessions from the mother country? This horny dentist’s ancestors were probably driven out of the southerly colonies by anti-royalist mobs with that very phrase on their lips! A real Canadian patriot would have instead raised a mug of Molson Golden to peace, order, and good government, and if that would have made it harder to transition to a terrible pun about trying to fuck the waitress, well, so much the better.

Apartment 3-G, 3/23/09

So the current Tommie storyline will apparently center on Dr. Kelly showing up at Apartment 3-G unannounced and putting her increasingly awkward situations. Since previous Tommie storylines included such gems as “Tommie is repeatedly insulted by her ditzy neighbor” and “Tommie tries and fails to seduce her married friend,” I say bring it on!

Children are kind of a wild card in the Apartment 3-G universe, as I can’t remember them ever appearing before, or any of the characters expressing the slightest interest in their existence. Margo’s reaction upon returning home and finding two short, unruly humans in her apartment ought to be priceless, at any rate. “Tommie, I was just trying to get them to settle down! It’s not my fault they can’t hold their liquor!”

Dick Tracy, 3/23/09

It looks like Dick Tracy, having eliminated all crime through his patented brand of Bill-of-Rights-violating mayhem, is now going to take on distasteful but wholly legal business practices. Next up: AIG executives are forced to pay back their bonuses … with their flesh.