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Gil Thorp, 12/22/16

Ah yes, at last we’ve finally learned the Trouble With Aaron Aagard: he can’t focus on basketball or even stereotypical teenage refrigerator-rummaging because he obsessively searches for entertainment options online and then goes to warehouse raves or whatever. Gil isn’t worried, though, because this is one of the biggest teams they’ve had! It’s an enormous team, so they can put ten, twelve, fifteen players on the court at a time, overwhelming opponents with sheer numbers. Not sure why nobody thought of this strategy before!

Judge Parker, 12/22/16

Never mind these petty human interest stories, ladies! Can’t you see your own newscrawl? The rotting corpse of President Gerald Ford has risen from the grave and roams the land on a fresh, living horse! This can only be the first portent of global armageddon!

Mary Worth, 12/22/16

Ahh, yes, Wilbur’s finished his writing for the day and now it’s time for him to engage his imagination and indulge in some solo erot[my keyboard, computer, and cable modem simultaneously melt down in a desperate attempt to prevent me from finishing that sentence]

[I sign in with my phone]Those fingerless gloves he had on in yesterday’s strip should make the whole thing eas[the entire cell network for southern California goes up in flames in an act of species preservation]

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Gil Thorp, 12/20/16

One of my very favorite things about Gil Thorp is that when Gil casually says that someone “might be our best center since Trey Davis,” “Trey Davis” isn’t just some random name-combo pulled out of a hat, but an actual character who really was a great center who appeared in the strip at one point. I had managed to purge the name from my memory, but thanks to the glory and pageantry of my advanced archives, I was able to track down his appearances, which took place literally more than a decade ago, and isn’t it funny how time inevitably advances and makes a mockery of all our hopes and dreams? Anyway, great a center as Trey Davis was, he never really seemed to have his own storyline: he was overshadowed in the looks department by Ted Pearse, and later was overshadowed in the plot department by the revelation that Ted Pearse was secretly homeless. Later that spring, even the frenzy surrounding his recruitment was overshadowed by Brent “Rap-Dog” Raptor’s hilariously overbearing mom. I guess we’ll never know if Trey eventually spurned basketball glory to join the army as I predicted, since I never mentioned his post-Milford fate. Will I be sifting through my archives sometime in October of 2027 looking for evidence of the collegiate career of Aaron Aargard? Maybe! If so, I’d just like to say: hi, future Josh! I think it’s extremely cool that you’re 53 and still writing a blog about comics on the Internet, or on whatever they’ve replaced the Internet with.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/20/16

Joke’s on you, Sheriff! Snuffy froze to death inside that snowman hours ago. The coal smile is at this point a cruel, cruel joke.

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Curtis, 12/14/16

Curtis is a strip that I have many, many soft spots for, even when it comes to its eternal running gags, and since I admitted that I basically found this hemorrhoid joke in Crankshaft funny, I will admit this: I always laugh when Barry does something childishly disgusting to annoy Curtis. Panel three, with its extremely vivid nose-picking sound effects and motion lines, is all the more a marvel in that it managed to get past whatever remains of the comics pages’ editorial oversight.

Mark Trail, 12/14/16

Oh, in case you’re wondering, Mark and Abbey successfully leapt off that exploding island, into the ocean! Probably they’re about to be rescued by Cal, in Abbey’s stolen borrowed boat, but Abbey is taking no chances, and is clearly attempting to evolve into a magnificent cetacean, adapted to permanent life at sea, in the final panel.

Gil Thorp, 12/14/16

Ah, at last we get to the meat of the Gil Thorp basketball season storyline: the trial and tribulations of Aaron Aagard, who’s always first in alphabetical order for everything! Riveting stuff, I’m very excited.