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Gil Thorp, 9/22/07

And once again, another Milford football season begins with defeat, vandalism, and desperate media spin. I may not know much about football (I went 0-3 this week in my family’s friendly betting league, setting me up to go out of the running altogether next week in some kind of all-time record for futility) but I can tell you that if the coaching staff of Valley Tech or Oakville or Generic WASPy Name High or whoever the Mudlarks are playing next week haven’t worked out that “awful quarterback + vaguely competent offensive line = working on screens and draws”, they’re probably even worse at their job than Gil, and may actually be Europeans who are confused by the odd shape of this so-called American “football”. Thus, Gil’s “off the record” comment to Marjorie (I think that’s Marjorie, right? Snoopy reporter girl? Broke the head-bashing Tyler story wide open, just like Tyler broke his head wide open?) seems particularly pointless, as it’s hard to imagine what she’d do with it, journalism-wise, other than just, you know, report it. Maybe Gil knows that by making her feel like she’s privy to insider information, she’ll remain his pliant media mouthpiece, leaving Marty Moon the only reporter who dares ask the tough questions of Milford’s althetics politburo. It can’t make that much difference in the long run, since the Milford Star, like most high school papers, probably only publishes two or three times a semester, so this interview probably won’t run until the Mudlarks are already out of the running for the playdowns.

Meanwhile, panel three is about the saddest thing you’ll ever seen in your life, as a trio of Milfordians hang their head in shame at the savage spray-painting the front of the school received. There’s nothing more humiliating than losing a football game by 10 whole points, so surely these kids are going to be way too depressed to learn anything today. I do like the fact that, if Gil’s segue is to be believed, the athletic department is responsible for cleaning the graffiti up. I can just see the janitor sneering at Coach Thorp and saying, “I’m not doing it! This never would have happened if your team wasn’t so shitty.”

Family Circus, 9/22/07

You know how sometimes a cat doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be inside or outside? Oh, that’s always funny when that happens! So it’d be just as funny when a little kid does it, right? Of course! Well, except change “funny” to “indicative of crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder.” Poor Jeffy is hopping back and forth over the door lintel, tormented by an inner drive that he can’t really grasp, only knowing that it’ll only be OK for him to come in the house when he gets it just right. So he goes in, then out, then back in, over and over, until his little thighs get so tired that he just collapses in the doorway, and all Dolly can do is stand there with her hands on her hips and say “Mommy, I think Jeffy’s stupid.” Nice support you get from your family there, Jeffy.

Dick Tracy, 9/22/07

I have to admit that other than the horrible stub-fingered hands that are omnipresent in the strip, I really do like the art in Dick Tracy. It has a very distinct stylized aesthetic that is both unique and unmistakable; Gretchen’s crazy eyes looming menacingly over that wrapped package could appear nowhere else in the newspaper. I also think that events in the individual strips actually have a great internal rhythm. It’s only when you start contemplating the continuity as a whole that it dissolves into a sea of incomprehensible nonsense. I was sort of hoping that Gretchen and her spy flunkies would crash their helicopter directly onto the Baron, killing all four and removing any chance that any of the details of this baffling plotline would ever be clarified. Instead, we’re presumably going to get Gretchen running endlessly towards the Pentagon or whatever for three weeks, following by the bomb going off in her hands and some cryptic explanation from Detective Tracy. At least we’ll get to see someone blown to bits, which is also an event that could be portrayed nowhere else in the newspaper quite as graphically as I expect we’re going to get treated to here.

Marmaduke, 9/22/07

Having failed in all of his other attempts to stop this huge, rampaging hellhound’s reign of terror, the dogcatcher has decided to try to kill Marmaduke with lung cancer.

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Dick Tracy, 9/15/07

For Dick Tracy, killing the bad guys as quickly and gruesomely as possible is more important than preventing a rain of flaming helicopter wreckage from tumbling down onto unsuspecting Washingtonians.

B.C., 9/15/07

Someone on the B.C. writing staff had an unspeakably disturbing experience in a very strange hotel bathroom.

Hi and Lois, 9/15/07

Someone at the orgy Hi and Lois attended last night had a laughably tiny penis.

Marmaduke, 9/15/07

Marmaduke has tired of his family’s attempts to restrict his behavior, and has decided to blow them up.

Mary Worth, 9/15/07

Next week’s Mary Worth is going to be so, so awesome.

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Gasoline Alley, 8/25/07

Wow, so who would have guessed that Slim’s descent into madness would have concluded with, you know, an actual descent into actual, clinically diagnosed madness? I have to say that while the recent Slim vs. the Basketball Playing Youth Of Today has been totally demented, it’s at least been kind of interesting, unlike the previous year or so of Gasoline Alley, so I sort of hope that they keep up with the wackiness. If nothing else, every year or so the gentle, good-humored domestic drama and hillbilly-dialect chuckles should be punctuated by Slim’s escape from the asylum, with hundreds of comically inept cops crawling everywhere in a failed attempt to keep him from killing again.

Dick Tracy, 8/25/07

I haven’t attempted to grapple with plot of Dick Tracy on this blog for about eight weeks; just take my word for it when I say that for about seven of those weeks, the same thing barely happened over and over again, then all of the sudden this week all sorts of things started happening, none of which made any sense if you thought about them for more than about thirty seconds. However, I feel that the dialog in today’s first panel — “Tracy! They know we know! They’re ramming us!” — stands on its own as a wonderful little dollop of poetic nonsense. I hope tomorrow one of the bad guys says “Gretchen! They know we know they know! We’re ramming them!” And then it could just go on like that pretty much indefinitely.

Also, in panel three, this is the second time that the Baron has arrived at the Pentagon via cab, and I have no reason to believe that it’s going to be the last.

Spider-Man, 8/25/07

Spider-Man continues to indulge its obsession with crumbling masonry. Perhaps the creators have decided that a renewed focus on our woefully neglected infrastructure is more important than providing the “thrills” and “excitement” that the masses expect from their superhero fare.

Also, I have to say that there’s something poignant about the modesty of the Shocker’s ambitions in panel one. He knows that there’s no chance of breaking into the big supervillain scene in New York or DC; he’d just be happy if people in San Francisco and LA, and maybe even Portland and Seattle, hear “the Shocker” and think not “obscene hand gesture” but “that mattress-wearing weirdo who robbed a bank.”

B.C., 8/25/07

Also, Clumsy, you’re not … bald? I mean, you’re not, right? As near as I can tell? I know we’re just plugging new jokes into old art, but couldn’t we at least have the same person picking out the jokes and the art?

Wizard of Id, 8/25/07

Ho ho ho! Id is an Orwellian police state, so dominated by the Panopticon-style omnipresence of its security apparatus that it resembles nothing so much as a vast gulag! Ah, whimsy!

Garfield, 8/25/07

This is pretty much the funniest Garfield that’s appeared in weeks. It’s about vomiting.