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Gil Thorp, 10/23/10

So there’s multiple boring storylines going on in this fall’s Gil Thorp, most of which revolve around golden boy/team captain/foster child Cody Exner, who is selfless and noble and may be buying drugs down at the park in the middle of the night, who knows, probably it will end up being something stupidly innocuous. But today’s strip contains one of the most subtly hilarious panels in many weeks of Gil Thorp, featuring young Cody frolicking with his real, unfit parents. Look, mom is smoking! And dad has a damn ponytail! Monsters! Presumably Child Protective Services stumbled onto this bucolic scene mere moments later and whisked young Cody away to a better life, where tobacco is forbidden and no man’s hair extends below the collar.

It’s even funnier to imagine that Cody is buying drugs down at the park and this story about his parents is an improvised ruse, because that would probably mean that the “parents” in his vision are just his dealers.

Spider-Man, 10/23/10

There were some hints at the beginning of this storyline that the Mole Man was going to drag Aunt May down to his subsurface kingdom and make her his unwilling bride, and Spider-Man would be required to preform a certain degree of superheroics to rescue her. But now it looks like the subterranean weirdo and Peter’s aged aunt are going to embark on a wholly consensual romance, which means that the drama will involve Peter whining about having to go have dinner with them despite the fact that the Mole Man creeps him out. This is frankly much more this strip’s speed.

Archie, 10/23/10

Oh, God, those aren’t the eyes of an adorable and mildly mischievous tyke; those are windows into a soul of PURE EVIL. Leroy knows that what he’s done was wrong, and that’s exactly why he’s going to do it again and again.

But where will he find his bride?

Family Circus, 10/23/10

“How many sins must I commit before the voices in my head stop, grandma? HOW MUCH EVIL MUST I DO TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT?”

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Apartment 3-G, 10/20/10

Three years ago Lu Ann’s sassy cousin Ruby arrived in New York with some bags that needed carrying, a coquettish smile, and a wildly age-inappropriate set of hair ribbons. Today we meet Tommie’s Aunt Iris, hauling in her own luggage and showing more personality in three panels than Tommie has in the last year and a half. Apartment 3-G’s long-term plan of replacing its core cast members with their older and dowdier yet spunkier relatives is proceeding apace.

Family Circus, 10/20/10

This is the second time this week we’ve been treated to the sad and hilarious sight of a Keane Kid’s brain shutting down as a defensive measure to prevent too much knowledge from seeping in. At least Billy’s mind has been overwhelmed by genuine book-learning, unlike Jeffy, whose feeble mind can’t even deal with basic cable.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/20/10

Actually, Li’l Tater is presumably refusing to participate in cannibalism, based on a hilarious misunderstanding of the relationship between his name and the potatoes thrust before him. The confusion will eventually be cleared up, but this virtuous impulse will once again become a problem when he’s old enough to attend Hootin’ Holler’s most cherished annual ritual, the Fricasseein’ of the Revenooers.

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Beetle Bailey, 10/17/10

Sunday Beetle Baileys are notorious for being flabby and shapeless, with an absence of rhythm that guarantees that any possible fun is sucked out of it, but today’s is pretty much one of the worst I’ve seen. I’m not buying the idea that Beetle, who typically can’t even be bothered to push his hat out of his face, has suddenly developed a love for American Revolution trivia. And the weird ritualistic baseball/”surrender” exchange has so little payoff — one would expect that Beetle would use Sarge’s surrender to get out of work, or beatings, somehow — that Sarge is absolutely right to look as bored as he does. About all this strip has going for it is the reminder that Miss Buxley’s little black dress is actually a little red dress, colored black for the demands of the black-and-white daily strips that we increasingly often see colorized.

Family Circus, 10/17/10

Look, Jeffy, here in America we watch TV five hours a day. If you can’t hack it, maybe you should go to Communist Russia, where they’ll let you read books or some garbage like that.

My Cage, 10/17/10

This is getting a bit self-indulgent, but I did want to make sure that Curmudgeon readers who got shout-outs here and who rely on the no-Sunday Strips Houston Chronicle for their comics got to see their names in lights. What I want to know is, why no animal-style names for us? I dare you to come up with an animal-pun version of “Fruhlinger.”