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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/13/08

I’ve been having a pretty good day so far, and coming home to find out that Rex kicked off today’s installment of his namesake comic strip by saying “Speaking of cruising…” just made it that much better. Even though the plot being expositioned up seems to involve less sex with anonymous 18-year-olds in the park and more yacht-related high society hijinks, I’m still pretty excited about it. Rex’s shifty-eyed look in the final panel would seem to indicate that he’s Lenore Foster’s connection for banned performance-enhancing drugs before each year’s regatta; of course, this calls into question which drugs might enhance yachting performance. Gin?

Curtis, 8/13/08

Oh, look, Ms. Honeystump’s emblackenation has spread to his classmate Venus!

If I may talk seriously for a moment: some readers have speculated that these mysterious racial shifts have been designed to accommodate editorial grumbles about the merest hint of miscegenation. Truly, I think you’re giving the comics coloring world far too much credit, in terms of thinking that weird things actually happen for reasons. The online versions of the King Features strips are not colored by the artists, nor do the artists offer guidance for same. The colorists can only use the internal context of the strip to help them make their choices. When you realize that they often ignore explicit in-strip cues to product howlers like this and this, well, do you really expect some sort of multi-week trans-strip consistency?

For Better Or For Worse, 8/13/08

“I’ve known you both for a long time. I’ve seen you guys through a lot of crazy circumstances. You know, like when you were transparently lusting after her even though you were married and passive-aggressively browbeating your wife into having a child she didn’t want! And when you were still married and propositioned her right after she was nearly raped! And when she moved back to Millborough specifically because she heard you were getting divorced, but continued to string along her boyfriend! I gotta say … this feels like it’s gonna work. I say that because I’m a terrible, terrible person.”

Crankshaft, 8/13/08

Oh, that Crankshaft! Trying to warm up to his new housemate, he offered to “take [her] on [his] favorite ride!” By which he almost certainly means his penis! Ha ha, I have to go lie down and weep now because I thought of that.

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Gil Thorp, 8/5/08

Could Gil Thorp’s summer insanity at last be belatedly getting underway? That crazed look in Jimmy Hughes’s eyes in panel two is strangely reminiscent of what you’d see in the origin story of every supervillain ever. Are we about to learn that the cult hero status that comes with being on an extremely minor league baseball team is too much power for any man with legal permanent U.S. residence to handle? Will the prospect of toiling in the Tigers’ farm system for the next six years instead of getting a college education and a job with a 401K drive young Mr. Hughes mad with glory-lust? Will Gil step in to set Jimmy on the straight and narrow path back to humdrum normalcy, or does the five-minute walk to “Java Jive” represent the limit of how much he’s willing to care about his students during the off-season? Hopefully we’ll get answers, before football practice starts!

Gasoline Alley, 8/5/08

I’m quite proud of myself for successfully ignoring the Gasoline Alley storyline that just wrapped up, which featured painful hillbilly stereotype Rufus tangling with a painful French stereotype during the filming of a cat food commercial. I’m looking forward to the upcoming plot, though, as it appears to be ripped right from today’s headlines. Four dollar gas has driven our rustic protagonists to desperate measures! Perhaps Rover will be able to tweak his Eisenhower-era pickup so that it gets an incredible eight miles per gallon.

For Better Or For Worse, 8/5/08

John has obviously been spending way, way too much time hanging around his teenage daughter. For one thing, he’s slipping into adolescent Canadianisms like “hafta”. For another, he’s squirming and whining about putting on nice clothes like a fucking twelve-year-old.

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Momma, 8/4/08

Whoa there, Francis! Unless “cheese I can serve my buds” is code for “bud I can serve whatever cheep floozy I bring home tonight” and the gentleman behind the counter is the nattiest drug dealer outside of Apartment 3-G, you have officially lost your spot as the comics’ number one “bad boy” — I don’t care how cheap you are about it. Of course, everything else about this comic is puzzling as well. For instance, even the elitists at Whole Foods will sell you cheese for less than $14 a pound that would be wholly acceptable for a party with your loser friends in your filthy apartment. Then there’s the question of why the deli man offered you the cheapest kind in the first place, and … oh, wait, what was that? I’m sorry I’ve just been informed that the amount of time it’s considered healthy to think about Momma in any given 24-hour-period has long since elapsed. We’ll be moving on now.

For Better Or For Worse, 8/4/08

Just FYI, the long, turbulence-ridden, nausea-inducing flight towards the Lizthony union of souls is beginning its final descent. Do you like weddings? Do you like it when people realize that adventure is for other people and the best thing to do is be exactly like their boring parents? Do you like passive-aggressive emotional adulterers with clammy hands? Then the next three to eight weeks are for you, my friends.

Family Circus, 8/4/08

“And the brown liquors are best for numbing the humiliation you feel every time your freakish melon-headed grandchildren open their fool mouths!”