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Mary Worth, 1/14/19

Why, what’s this? It seems that the case of the smitten student just got a little more complex. If I’m interpreting that thought balloon correctly, Jannie isn’t overcome by lust for Professor Cameron at all, but is rather just buttering him up for her own inscrutable purposes. Is she planning on kidnapping him for ransom? On stealing his organs? On … getting a better grade than her work alone would merit, exactly as Toby suspected all along? Ha ha, isn’t everyone going to feel silly when that turns out to be the case! Anyway, this dude is probably her actual boyfriend. You can tell he’s more desirable to a young woman than Ian, because he knows about hip new bands like the Rolling Stones.

Gil Thorp, 1/14/19

Oh, man, this Gil Thorp storyline appears to be about how the tyranny of student confidentiality laws are shackling honest adults who need the right to humiliate children in public, to protect their reputation, and I for one am I here for it! In the meantime, please enjoy Kaz aggressively pointing at Gil to drive home his “point” that B/Robby Howry’s youthful transgressions are fair game in this PR battle.

Pluggers, 1/14/19

Obviously the joke here is that pluggers have grandchildren who don’t have a firm grip on typical human lifespans and/or the dates of major historic events, but I’m choosing to believe that this panel takes place after a future bloody civil war in which pluggers were on the losing side. They believed they’d have an inherent advantage over the big-city types, but it quickly became clear that their ramshackle automobiles and sedentary lifestyles were not the military assets they assumed them to be.

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Gil Thorp, 1/10/19

AHH AHH AHH BOBBY HOWREY! You might remember Bobby from one of the greatest ever Gil Thorp plots, when he was the sweater-vest-clad megalomaniac student manager who hooked up one of the Mudlarks with Adderall but it was OK because it was actually just baby aspirin, but Gil was too square and didn’t think it was OK and so Bobby ended up coaching literal children down at the rec center. Now, four years later, he’s all grown up, with the much more grown-up name “Robby” and an actual website, so he’s ready to destroy Gil and his regime of mediocrity, in which you’re not allowed to give fake performance-enhancing drugs to players even if it helps you win!

Because we all become exactly what we hate most, I make fun of the newspaper comics for being helplessly mired in nostalgia but absolutely love the Gil Thorp plots where wronged players from years past reappear to blame Gil for their problems, like when Steve Luhm, who was a social justice warrior before it was cool, came back as a disgruntled janitor, or when Marty DeJong stalked Gil with baseballs because Gil’s inadequate coaching ruined Marty’s arm and his life. I’m definitely looking forward to learning how B/Robby’s exile to the Milford Recreation Center failed to teach him any kind of lesson at all, but rather left him a twisted, broken soul intent on billboard-delivered vengeance.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/10/19

We all knew as soon as we saw that Brayden wore his baseball cap backwards that he didn’t play by society’s rules — the brim is supposed to go foreward, to shield your face from the sun, but he just doesn’t care! So it should’t come as a surprise that he’s tearing the mask off society’s polite fictions before this plane’s even left the gate. The air marshals are helpless: there’s nothing in FAA regulations that authorizes them to stop someone from dropping truth bombs.

Mark Trail, 1/10/19

“You!?” Mark bellows with total conviction, having recognized our culprit as, uh … this dude? Does anyone know who he’s supposed to be? I’m so tired, you guys.

Family Circus, 1/10/19

Big Daddy Keane’s little smile is the expression of a man who’s just found a loophole. “She said ‘four children’ … but she didn’t say which four children, now did she?”

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Crock, 1/9/18

I got into a Twitter discussion last week about what the deal is with Crock exactly, what with its creator having died in 2011 and then his son, after briefly running the strip, deciding he didn’t want to keep it going. I guess the consensus is that what we’re getting are reruns, but there are some updates to the dialogue to keep the strip “fresh.” Like, the “4” in today’s final panel seems pretty obviously to be in a different handwriting from the rest of the dialogue, presumably because this strip originally appeared in 2001 when PlayStation 2s were all the rage. It’s honestly amazing that someone would go through the trouble of making sure the most current PlayStation model is reflected in the dialogue but not, say, question the premise of the strip, which is that home video game consoles and pay toilets are even in the remotely same category of thing, and decide to just pull another Crock from the presumably infinite quantity of Crocks in the archive instead.

Gil Thorp, 1/9/18

Hmm, who could the mysterious billboard-aggressor be? Let’s take a closer look at that “E” in “fire”:

And then compare it to the “E” in “December” on the wall of Gil’s office:

And, well, there you have it! Find your calendar-maker and you have tracked down your mysterious … wait, what’s that you say? Fonts are widely used and commercially available? Also, the billboard guy put his URL right on the billboard. Well, I still think my font thing is relevant, thank you.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/9/18

Oh hell yes, Rex is going to have to deal with some sullen little twerp named “Brayden” for the duration of his flight to Phoenix! I know I complain about the slow pace of this strip, but I sincerely hope that this storyline lasts for months.

Pajama Diaries, 1/9/18

Say, wouldn’t it be interesting if you were forced to look at your grandchildren’s dick pics for all eternity, in hell? Just something to ponder!

Slylock Fox, 1/9/18

WAIT ARE THOSE GIANT MICE OR IS THAT A VERY TINY ELEPHANT

I’M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO THINK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE FOR WEEKS