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Gil Thorp, 3/20/09

Well, it looks like it’s that time of the season again, when Gil realizes that whatever squad he’s doing a half-assed job of coaching at the moment won’t be going to the playdowns, so he needs to make a half-assed attempt to intervene in the most egregious of the stupid dramas playing out among his charges in order to vaguely justify his existence. (If he doesn’t do this at least once every three months, they’ll take his name off the strip entirely and call it The Magical, Boozy Antics Of Marty Moon.) This spring’s crisis involves the Larsons, who are quite reasonably worried that they’ve moved their kids from the warm, nurturing environment of New York City into some kind of degenerate hellhole where they’ve become romantically entangled with vest-wearing fans of wacky, theatrical surf-rock bands. Gil needs that coffee, as he’s almost certainly come straight to Chez Larkin from PUB, as his drunken logic indicates. “See, Ashley and Dylan are all right kids … but, uh, don’t judge Milford based on them! We’re better than they are! Not that they’re … bad … per se … uh, what’s with those rays coming out of your eyes? Are you trying to use your mind control powers on me?”

Luann, 3/20/09

Well, there you have it. The big TJ mystery that’s been percolating since at least last Thanksgiving has been … solved! All thanks to a paragraph of exposition crammed into a single panel during a porch-based conversation. That should prove wrong everyone who thought the resolution to this plot point would be prurient, or interesting.

Slylock, 3/20/09

What kind of message are we sending to the young people of today? Look at this irresponsible bird, giving birth to an out-of-wedlock egg and then just strolling casually off! Where is this supposed to be, the ladies room at Parrot Prom?

Family Circus, 3/20/09

The way this little mob of melonheads is gathering at the open doorway, all staring silently at their teacher in her new short skirt and listening to Billy’s slander, is making me nervous. Miss McElfresh is about to find out how they deal with the Sin of Pride here at the Keane Kompound. (Hint: It involves rocks. Many sharp rocks.)

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/10/09

OK, I’m sure I’m going to get all sorts of comments and emails from doctors and other medical personnel (and from the developers of medical-themed Web sites) about how the Internet is going to revolutionize medicine and replace those huge, hard-to-read medical textbooks and not every doctor holds all information about all diseases in his head at all times and blah blah blah, but … I find panel two, in which Rex makes his serious face and declares that he’ll be solving this medical crisis with the help of the Internet, to be kind of funny. I guess I mostly associate the intersection of the Web and medical diagnoses with people posting things like “how can u tell if u have siphalis?” to Yahoo! Answers and/or hypochondriacs spending ten minutes with WebMD and coming away convinced their sore throat is esophageal cancer. I’m all the more skeptical because the weaselly little ship’s doctor is blatantly coming down with Norwalk himself right before our eyes, while all Rex can do is stand around and look concerned in a manly way while he reaches for any excuse to get down to the ship’s computer lab and start his intensive search for barely legal Ukrainian soldier-boy porn.

Marvin, 3/10/09

“Oh, excellent! I’ve just constructed a delightful little joke that based on two complementary concepts, ‘work’ and ‘play’! Except … it’s possible that the rubes who read this strip won’t pick up on my subtle wordplay. How can I make things a bit more obvious? I know … now, where did I put that bold font?”

Family Circus, 3/10/09

Berating your baby brother is all good fun, Jeffy, but you’d better watch yourself: it looks like PJ’s time as the only member of the Keane Klan who doesn’t know how to punch you in the face is about to end just … about … now.

Apartment 3-G, 3/10/09

OMG MOMENTOUS MOMENT! Margo’s father finally appears in the strip! And he looks … uh … pretty much like every other dude who has appeared in Apartment 3-G, ever. Huh. Whee.

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Hi and Lois, 3/8/09

My goodness, today’s Hi and Lois presents one of the most searing indictments of standard-issue suburban heteronormality that I’ve ever seen — it certainly strikes me as more compelling than Revolutionary Road, which, I should confess, I didn’t see, because it looked pretty snoresville. Side note: I think Revolutionary Road should have been marketed as a Titanic sequel, and framed as a dream sequence going through Leo DiCaprio’s character’s mind as he froze to death in the North Atlantic, imagining what his life would be like if he survived and married Kate Winslet’s character. The numb, soul-crushing lifestyle he envisions for their future would really just reflect the fact that his body and mind are shutting down in the icy waters.

Wait, where was I? Oh, right, Hi and Lois. Lois, driven completely bonkers by her unruly brood, contemplates just leaving, just walking out, getting some “fresh air” and not coming back. Her wide-eyed look in the next-to-last panel is particularly harrowing: she’s just staring off to space, thinking, “What if I just keep standing here? They say that freezing to death is just like falling asleep. You don’t even feel anything. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice to fall asleep in the nice white fluffy snow, forever?” Eventually, she decides that venturing into her hell-house is marginally better than dying of frostbite, so she turns around and returns, a wan little smile on her face.

The first two throwaway panels add an extra little bit of awful to the whole affair. “Woah,” Hi says, “Your mother sure looks like she’s about at her breaking point! I’m just going to take this newspaper with me to the bathroom and not come out again for the rest of the night.” At least Chip doesn’t actively flee when asked to help, though I note that he “took over” without once getting off the couch or even looking up from the tiny little screen on his cell phone.

Mary Worth, 3/8/09

On that note, I should mention that Mary Worth appears to be setting itself up to compete with the recently completed “sometimes we slap and terrify our partners because we love them too much” Mark Trail storyline in the repressive patriarchy department. Adrian may be a full-grown adult and a doctor to boot, but we’ll soon learn what happens when a fragile, vulnerable, young little girl attempts to choose her own husband: betrayal and grifting and heartbreak and despair. Once Ted has left town with her life savings, Adrian will finally agree to the plan her father has been pushing all along: an arranged marriage with the son of Dr. Jeff’s neighbors, so that their children will eventually inherit both estates and achieve a higher status in the ranks of the local landed gentry.

Family Circus, 3/8/09

Ah, NyQuil — is there any problem you can’t solve?

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 3/8/09

There’s nothing Mr. Wilson longs for more than to pound back a few bourbons, get in his car, and slam himself into a tree.

Crankshaft, 3/8/09

Ha ha! It’s funny because Crankshaft is old, and all his friends are dying!