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Gil Thorp, 5/1/10

So I guess the Gil Thorp baseball-season A plot (getting started a little late, isn’t it?) will revolve around how groovy musician Derek Chance is just on a, like, different wavelength, man, and how all the dumb jocks on the baseball team don’t “get” him, leading to Conflict. Never mind that even alt-country, Derek’s chosen musical genre, is fairly closely associated with a persona that’s more ordinary Joe than space cadet. Anyway, hopefully we’ll get a “no-hitter on acid” plotline out of this, which will force Gil to choose between Honor and Victory. (In cases like this he always chooses, “Honor,” the sucker.)

Apartment 3-G, 5/1/10

The hilarious point of this strip is that Grief Cannot Touch Margo’s Icy Heart, but it got me wondering: who actually did die and make Lu Ann curator? I’m ashamed to admit that I can’t keep track. It wasn’t Eric; Eric died and made Margo gallery owner. Was it Alan? Wasn’t Alan curator when he was gunned down by a crazed bald dope fiend? And what’s Jack’s job? Is he just some nebulous “business consultant” or was he actually hired as curator? If so, perhaps he died and made Lu Ann curator when Margo killed him for approving the damn note cards.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/10

Even when it isn’t gruesomely punishing its characters, Funky Winkerbean is depressing, as the prospect of two reasonably nice and attractive women vying for Les’s smirky charms and pear-shaped body ought to sadden all readers everywhere. At least we have the sure knowledge that this will inevitably end badly for everyone to console us.

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Phantom, 4/22/10

I know that there’s been an uptick in security measures at airports since 9/11, but I think sleepy Westchester County Airport’s decision to acquire anti-aircraft weaponry may be an overreaction to current threats. Where will this escalation end? Will any of us sleep soundly at night once Yonkers has nukes?

Judge Parker, 4/22/10

Kudos to new artist Mike Manley for continuing the Judge Parker tradition of having female characters vamp sexily while the usual plot tedium drones on around them. “Anxiety attacks? How erotic,” panel three Neddy is thinking, from the looks of it.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/22/10

“And anyone who doesn’t want to burn to death when I torch it for the insurance money has about three minutes to get the hell out.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/21/10

Funky Winkerbean’s trip to New York featured a few moments of publishing hope for long-suffering victim Les (though surely we’ll see those dreams get squashed later), but we’ve quickly moved back to familiar territory: impotent, misplaced rage. Actually, “rage” is the wrong word: the dialogue seems rage-y enough, but the slouchy body language and numb faces denote a total absence of the passion that is rage’s necessary prerequisite. I stand by the impotence, though.

And the misplacement. There are any number of greedy, amoral morons who can be blamed for our current macroeconomic state of affairs; but, assuming that Funky is maundering about the failure of the Montoni’s franchise in New York to take off, I think it’s unlikely that, even in the best of economies, crappy midwestern pizza would have been a big hit in a city well known for its many well-established and much-loved pizza vendors. It’s not like Goldman Sachs was nefariously creating synthetic CDOs based on pizza futures and then betting against them.

Beetle Bailey, 4/21/10

Towards the end of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, God is briefly depicted as an enormous flaming aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The God of Beetle Bailey is much less impressive, consisting merely of the tiny and non-fiery Name of the strip’s creator. Today, God is attempting to make Beetle sound like someone you might actually want to go on a date with, with mixed results.

Mark Trail, 4/21/10

From my long and dedicated observation of the fauna in this strip, I’ve learned that when a senator starts emitting visible sweatballs, he is on the verge of a heart attack. This is a good illustration of the moral difference between our two rival lawmakers: Senator Good Senator only suffered a cardiac event after engaging in righteous fisticuffs with some longhair, while Senator Bad Senator’s heart is going south as soon as he realizes that arrest and/or punching might be in his future.

B.C., 4/21/10

Ha ha! The bird is afraid of being killed and eaten, but the snake thinks that the bird is afraid of being sexually assaulted!

Marmaduke, 4/21/10

Yeah, so, uh, this happened. Let’s never speak of it again, shall we?