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Mary Worth, 7/30/18

Oh, huh, so it seems that Tommy’s jailhouse conversion was specifically to Roman Catholicism, interesting! You can understand why he finds it an attractive faith, seeing as he seems to have wildly misunderstood the purpose of the sacrament of confession; apparently he thinks that if there’s something you should probably tell somebody in your life, admitting it in the confessional instead is functionally the same thing! I feel bad for this priest, who’s probably had to hear the tales of Tommy’s meth-dealing days, like, five times by now.

Gil Thorp, 7/30/18

Finally, the “spring” baseball plot is over, and now we have just a few short weeks for a wacky summertime storyline! Clearly it’s not enough time to top such classics as “Kaz gets a job as a rock star’s bodyguard” or “Marty Moon gets grifted at golf” or “Gil does a pro wrestling match for charity,” but it seems to involve the local kids getting into the latest extreme sports craze, RainCycling, so I’m excited to see where it goes.

Gasoline Alley, 7/30/18

Like many characters of color working as servants in fiction, Gertie has a sassy personality and not much of an inner life to which we’re privy. Today, though, we learn a little bit of how she passes her time in her off hours: with lots and lots of Wookiee porn.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/30/18

REX MORGAN, M.D., PRESENTS: TWO-FISTED TALES OF GETTING TO THE AIRPORT ON TIME

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Spider-Man, 7/15/18

I have, of course, persistently refused to go out of my way to learn any of the lore behind the various superheroes who dominate our pop culture and the international economy today, which is just as well because with all the reboots and so forth the characters’ pasts are ever-changing anyway, but my understanding is that Peter Parker got into the stringer newspaper photography game not because of any burning desire to be a journalist but because he knew the Bugle’s management was obsessed with running pictures of Spider-Man and he was uniquely positioned to sell them said pictures and so it was a way for him to make money without doing too much extra work. The desire to not do too much extra work is of course one of Newspaper Spider-Man’s defining characteristics, so it really fits in well in this iteration of the Spidey multiverse; being a stringer photographer for a daily paper also pays very, very little, which fits in nicely with Newspaper Spider-Man’s overall stupidity as well. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not really buying Peter’s moral dilemma here! The idea that Peter has gotten a taste of journalistic fame and now he wants more is only marginally more believable than the idea that he cares about the Iron Fist’s privacy or whatever! I reiterate an idea I put forth over a decade ago: Peter should just use his spider-powers to take pictures of celebrities and sell them to TMZ or the like. The moral stakes are lower all around, and presumably the gig will be so lucrative that he’ll eventually stop fighting crime altogether.

Gasoline Alley, 7/15/18

I don’t know that I would start my Sunday comic with a warning to the reader that, though they may think they’re safe from baffling and enraging faux-rustic wordplay, the next few panels are about to prove them very, very very wrong. But I’m not the guy currently in charge of the century-old Gasoline Alley intellectual property, I guess!

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Gasoline Alley, 6/30/18

Every few years, Gasoline Alley teases us that supercentenarian Walt Wallet is headed for the Old Comics Home, a kind of heaven for discontinued comic-strip characters. But it was a lie and a cheat in 2006, and a cheat and a lie in 2013. Will no one rid us of this troublesome coot?

Maybe this time. Here, Team Alley promises to put Walt away for good, with a “roast and toast affair” that will cook, slice, and serve him up on open-face sandwiches. Farewell, honored patriarch, and bon appétit, everybody! Glue down those dentures, folks — there’s a-gonna be some chewin’!

Phantom, 6/30/18

Since its origins in 1936, Phantom has threaded the needle pretty tight on issues of colonialism and race. So it’s refreshing to see today’s unambiguous repudiation of “one drop of blood” racial classification. It’s also pretty savvy of Team Bandar to top up the Phantom with blood from warrior Babudan — Guran’s is basically donuts dissolved in palm wine. Which would make him a plugger, I guess?

Spider-Man, 6/30/18

Aw, look at these two, bickering with Fate when they were clearly Meant to Be. Soon, they will cover the ground together. So much ground!

Luann, 6/30/18

Grr, all right here is your precious Luann.

You know, for the pragmatic, hypercapable member of Team Tonad, Toni keeps getting basic mechanics wrong: using a torque wrench for disassembly, or setting up her pipe wrench to tighten that hose coupling. Seems to have the arm strength, though. And those mitts are the size of her head!

Hello, faithful readers! I’ll be sitting in through Wednesday July 11, as Josh nobly attends to family duties in faraway France while the rest of us sweat it out here. SO UNFAIR. Reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if the site gives you trouble. No need to alert me to comments in moderation, though — I get automatic updates. Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy