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Gil Thorp, 6/24/20

Just as it’s easy for a fish to forget that it lives in water, it’s easy for readers of Gil Thorp to forget that Gil Thorp takes place in a community/universe where interest in high school athletics is unusually intense. Like, an unsanctioned baseball game between the local high school and the local alternative school? I can see families and maybe friends showing up for this. But sun-seekers? The idle curious? Watching teens play baseball? There actually could have been a whole plot about Mike “The Mayor” using his extreme extroversion to promote interest in this game amongst the citizenry, but there hasn’t been and without it I feel like my ability to suspend disbelief has been stretched to its breaking point, no matter how much admire the new spiffy t-shirts.

Mary Worth, 6/24/20

If you want a strip that shits on millennials, you of course have Dustin. But Mary Worth is proving itself on the cutting edge by taking on the scourge of zoomers, the next up-and-coming generation of terrible young people. We all of course remember the brazen Jannie, the college student who heartlessly took advantage of Ian’s kind nature by trying to flirt her way out of an assignment and then reacting with vile profanity when he refused to play along. Now we have Madi, who’s younger (and therefore worse), and she not only cusses like a sailor herself but she left her clothes strewn all over Saul’s apartment. Man, this whole generation is a lost cause! We didn’t even know how good we had it with the millennials, even though we made fun of them for looking at their phones all the time. I wish Madi were looking at her phone, instead of rolling her eyes in that extremely aggresive way!

Mark Trail, 6/24/20

Most Hollywood celebs with lousy personalities have bad reputations in private, but their teams of managers and publicists work hard to make sure their public reputation is at least neutral or “exciting bad boy who doesn’t play by the Man’s rules.” If this Jeremy Cartwright is unable to be contained by such professional image-scrubbing then I am very excited to see the sparks fly when he and Mark meet up in LoFo! Will we finally get to see Mark punch … himself, or at least his Hollywood doppelgänger?

Funky Winkerbean, 6/24/20

Oh, haha, were you tired of “no actress is good enough to play Les’s blessed dead wife Lisa“? Well, good news, because we’re going to start alternating with “Cindy gets extremely jealous when her husband, an actor, kisses a lady in an acting role.” You know, a little something for the ladies (?).

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Funky Winkerbean, 6/21/20

Imagine you’re a relatively normal person, who only has as context to assess today’s Funky Winkerbean the last couple days of strips where Les is worried that the actresses being tested for Lisa are too young and sexy. Maybe you even remember that there was an earlier, abortive stab at making this movie, where it was going to be called Lust for Lisa, and Les only agreed to sign on for this version because Mason agreed to tell the story “the right way,” and even then he was dubious. With that as background, your read on the absolutely insane dialogue from the script that we see in today’s strip would probably be that in fact the entire project is clearly going off the rails.

But you’re not a normal person! You’re a dedicated reader of the Comics Curmudgeon, and “once the chemo starts, this playground will be closed for repairs” has been permanently burned into your brain for the last 14 years, ever since the dialogue from today’s strip played out in Les and Lisa’s real, actual life.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/25/06

I’m not really sure why Les felt compelled to change “Summer’s in bed” to “Summer’s at her grandma’s”; I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to have sex when your kid is in the same house as you! But the important thing is that, yes, this dialogue we’re seeing is the story being told the right way. If only we could find an actress who can satisfy Les’s exacting specifications, which I assume are “can say this dialogue without visibly recoiling in disgust.”

Mark Trail, 6/21/20

It really makes Mark, who’s nattering on about larvae and fresh scabs while Cherry grimaces silently at him over her morning coffee, seem like husband of the year, doesn’t it?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/21/20

God damn it, Snuffy Smith, I thought talk of “all these father’s day cards” was setting up the long-awaited big reveal of where Jughaid’s real father has been all this time! But nope, it’s just another joke about the notorious laziness of Hootin’ Holler’s residents.

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Family Circus, 6/20/20

One of the Secrets of the Family Circus is that there was an original, different Big Daddy Keane, with an entirely different attitude and body plan, in the early days of the strip. While mostly he’s forgotten now, you can still see hints of him in certain panels, like today’s, which implies heavily that the Keane patriarch doesn’t really like his kids and doesn’t want to spend any time with them.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/20/20

Look, there’s plenty to say about how roles for women are cast in Hollywood, with fairly transparent sexualization and an obsession with youth, but if you’re looking to make that point in the most off-putting and unpleasant way possible, then sure, just have Les seething through the whole process about these dumb sluts who dare to play my precious Lisa. Despite hanging around his hip Hollywood pals, Les seems unfamiliar with the concept of hair and makeup professionals who’ll be able to make whatever actress is chosen look just like Lisa, changing her hair color from … oh, look, how convenient, the syndicate colorists have done it for them.

Judge Parker, 6/20/20

OH MY GOD THE SPENCER-DRIVERS ARE EXPERIENCING FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES FROM THEIR ACTIONS????? THIS IS INSANE AND UNPRECEDENTED