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Three for Thursday today, folks:

Gasoline Alley, 11/10/05

Check out the turtle-mouthed death’s-head look that the hateful Lil Skinner is sporting in panel one. You don’t know how much I wanted this to be the harbinger of the horrible truth: that Lil really was dead, and that Slim was carrying on a week’s worth of Norman Bates-style insane conversation with her withered, husk-like corpse. Unfortunately, Clovia seems to see her alive and well in panel three, so I guess we’re stuck with yet more hijinks from the comics pages’ most transparent sociopath.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/10/05

OK, OK, Rex Morgan, we get it, OK? You like to look up Rex’s nose. But why do you have to make us look up his nose so often?

Sheesh.

Curtis, 11/10/05

Now, I mock Curtis a lot. I’m a Curtis-mocker, it’s fair to say. But I do like the art, and it’s growing on me more and more over time. What comic would spend time lovingly detailing a large, late-middle-age woman with a gynormous bosom as she levitates three feet off the ground in wide-eyed panic? Curtis would, that’s who. And I for one salute it.

Speaking of sociopaths, I’m guessing the perpetrator of this arachnoid outrage is none other than “Tuffy,” the kid who brought a gun to school a few weeks ago; it turned out to be a squirt gun, but it still would have gotten him sent to a lock-down facility in any actual school district in twenty-first century America. His capacity for over-the-top mischief seems matched only by his unfounded loyalty to Curtis, which could result in discomfort-causing storylines far more intriguing than that damn invisible lizard’s latest antics.

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Gasoline Alley, Herb and Jamaal, and Kudzu, 10/5/05

There’s nothing that brings out humor better than the interplay of two opposing minds! Yes, it’s the back and forth between two different points of view, and the zingers that well-formed characters can throw back and forth at one another when they’re versed in each other foibles, that really form the core of sparkling wit — nay, heart the comedic enterprise itself.

Or, you know, you could just have three or four panels of some character talking or thinking to herself, with nobody else in sight. Your call, cartoonists!

The saddest thing about this Herb and Jamaal is that, since Mrs. Herb here (I forget her name … Peaches?) spends half the comic mentally rehashing what her husband said, the comic could just as easily been written with the miserly Herb speaking for himself. And maybe Mrs. Slim (I forget her name too … Jim?) is showing some sort of meta-awareness of her soliloquy by reminding us that we’re never really alone, what with the omnipresent LORD always listening in on our conversations. As for Doris the Parakeet … well, I’ve always found it to be a good policy to say as little about Doris the Parakeet as possible.

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Gasoline Alley, 8/22/05

Gasoline Alley is at it again with the realistically-drawn characters dropped into a highly cartoonish milieu without explanation. Check out the extreme close-up in panel two. I swear the artist is working off of a photograph here. Who is she? What is her relationship to the strip’s creators? And does she object to her portrayal as a Vegas cocktail bunny serving drinks in what appears to be a bathing suit?

This current Gasoline Alley plot deserves pretty much the same amount of attention as the last five or six, which is to say none, but I admit that I like the little halo floating over Lil’s head in panel three as she attempts to cute-old-lady her way out of a serious beating from the casino’s security staff.