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Crankshaft, 2/5/19

The sad thing is that this doctor probably spent a lot of time thinking up this zinger, but never said it out loud to anyone to make sure it actually made sense outside his head. “Get it, because you’re … going to make the person you’re calling pay … when you die? Or wait, maybe you’re the one getting the call in this scenario. Look, just eat less cheese, OK? Cut … cut back on the cheese, is what I’m saying.”

Six Chix, 2/5/19

There’s definitely an angle at which a wine bottle is held to the lips where it goes from “a jaunty swig” to “guzzling as part of some terrible emotional crisis,” and we seem well past it in this strip, to the extent that I’m very worried that that huge knife is so close at hand.

Gil Thorp, 2/5/19

God, Gil is so thrilled in panel three, it’s unseemly. “I knew it!” he thinks. “I knew this little twerp was suicidal! See, I can so connect with these losers emotionally. In your face, haters!”

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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.