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The Phantom, 1/30/19

As an 83-year-old adventure comic set mostly in Africa, The Phantom has some, let’s say, confusing baggage in its world-building that gets papered over to varying degrees. Like, The Nomad, a longstanding Phantom nemesis and antagonist in the current storyline is a sinister terrorist whose real name is “Eric Sahara” and who looks like Mitt Romney, which is of course absurd, but they’ve tried to sort of make him more realistic by situating him in [squints at where Walker’s finger is pointing] North Africa; they also gave him a daughter named Kadia (not an Arabic name) and a wife named Imara (an Arabic name, but for men), and also … an Uncle Dave? Which is the funniest thing in the newspaper comics today by a mile. Dave Sahara, the terrorist’s uncle! Not a terrorist himself, but he knows a thing or two, that Dave.

Gil Thorp, 1/30/19

I don’t know if there’s a hard syndicate rule that prevents any teens in Gil Thorp from actually doing anything illegal or if the sacred responsibility to keep the strip pure is more of an unwritten thing, but it is funny to me how the teen antics mimic the sort of things that get actual teens in trouble, but don’t actually involve crimes. Like the time a sexting panic got triggered by a girl getting her picture taken wearing an extremely non-revealing cardboard bikini. Or, I guess, like the time that B/Robby Howry was dealing adderall, but it wasn’t actually adderall. Anyhoo, enjoy this posse of Milford teens almost but not quite getting involved in serious vandalism!

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Mark Trail, 1/24/19

Gosh, it’s been, what, nearly two weeks since I updated you on Mark Trail? Mark spent some more time punching the bad guys and then significantly more time fuming at Jose for failing to use the power of Mexican law enforcement to protect his extremely stupid and danger-prone son. Mark and Jose were walking towards where Rusty was last seen, Mark fuming darkly, as we all suspected that we’d find nothing but dismembered Rusty parts piled neatly in the corner. But then … womp womp! Just a couple kids playing a kids’ card game with Raul, who, to recap, once seemed cool enough to actually murder Rusty himself. Looks like all’s well that ends well! I expect this plotline will finally wrap up sometime in mid 2021.

Gil Thorp, 1/24/19

Wow, so, uh, Robby is really just a full-on part of Marty’s radio show now, huh? I genuinely can’t decide whether “unpaid assistant sports talk DJ” is a step up or step down from “unpaid assistant high school basketball coach,” but either way I’m very excited for when we get to the part of the story where Robby starts selling Marty fake uppers.

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Gil Thorp, 1/22/19

Sure, Gil talks a big game about how he doesn’t lose any sleep about how his slipshod coaching practices might negatively affect the lives of his players, but I gotta think this billboard business has him rattled. Maybe he’s starting to second-guess himself: should he have noticed that one of his student managers was dealing fake adderall to a player? Now he’s swinging wildly in the other direction and has decided that Mike Filion isn’t doing great in one of his classes and is irritating everyone with That ’70s Show quotes because he’s suicidal! I’m excited to discover that the only thing more annoying than Gil’s disinterested undercoaching is Gil’s intrusive overcoaching.

Judge Parker, 1/22/19

CHRISTOU: Thank you, everyone. The mainstream media would have you believe that beloved Western star Roy Rogers died of congestive heart failure in 1998 in California. But the question the police force of this unnamed resort island nation would like to pose to you is: what if he didn’t?

SAM: [on phone] My god, Abbey, it’s even more sick and depraved than I could’ve imagined!

Mary Worth, 1/22/19

HERE IT IS

HERE’S JANNIE’S BIG MOVE

HERE’S WHERE SHE “SEALS THE DEAL,” EROTICALLY

WINK, JANNIE

WINK LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT