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Gil Thorp, 4/24/15

Don’t worry — Gil hasn’t squeezed all the air out of that blonde in the pink outfit and glasses; they’re actually two separate people. The one on the left is an Athletic Department admin, currently down in HR filling out a sexual harassment complaint. The one on the right is Marjie Ducey, the local newspaper sports reporter who shows up when the strip needs to unload some exposition.

So Wednesday night Aunt Lumpy and I were watching our beloved local major-league baseball team squeak out a win over their hated rival from the detestable Southern Part of the State, a team whose name is literally synonymous with evasion and cowardice. Watching a slow-motion replay of our heroic pitcher’s delivery, Aunt Lumpy wondered aloud “how do these guys not hurt themselves every game?” Now comes Gil Thorp, who is putting True Standish in as pitcher. You remember True Standish — the phenomenal nationally-ranked quarterback who has a scholarship lock at any college he chooses? The guy who led the Mudlarks to their first state championship since the Pleistocene? Accident-prone True Standish?

True to form, Gil cannot find a way to care about the kid’s welfare or future — his mind is all on wrapping up this interview and rushing over to his chiropractor’s office.

Mark Trail, 4/24/15

Wallace Wood “just wants one good year selling his lumber” so he can ask Susan to marry him. But ha ha, Nature hates Wally, and is determined to ruin his life. Parasitoids got the emerald ash borers under control? No problem, we’ll burn his trees to the ground. Fire goes out? No problem, we’ll get those beavers to put his land under water. Breach in the dam? Ha! That wolf will just stone-cold attack and eat Wally. Wally escapes the wolf? No prob, we’ve got a moose around here somewhere.

Find yourself a nice city fella, Susan.

Sherman’s Lagoon, 4/24/15

OK OK OK so Team Sherman here narrowly beat Paul Allen’s sub to sunken WWII battleship Musashi. They found the keys still in the ignition, and it started right up! But Allen’s research vessel, incomprehensibly armed, is closing in fast.

Allen, of course, owns the Seattle Seahawks, hated rival of our beloved local National Football League team, so I’m kinda hoping maybe the Musashi’s guns work, too? Is that so wrong?

Just a reminder that there is no Comment of the Week when I sit in — Enlong’s gem gets to ride up top a little longer.

–Uncle Lumpy

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Curtis, 4/10/15

Oh, give me a break, Greg. Facebook is for people who have a pathetic, insatiable hunger for the attention of friends, relatives, acquaintances, and people they met at a party once three years ago to feel like they matter. People who have a pathetic, insatiable hunger for the attention of strangers use Twitter. In unrelated news, did you guys know you can follow me on Twitter? I make tons of funny jokes there and sometimes post pictures of my cat! Follow me! Love me! I need this!

Gil Thorp, 4/10/15

Hey guys, it’s base/softball season in Gil Thorp! Trust me: you don’t want to know why they call Addison Radley “Boo.” It’s a story that starts twenty years ago … on a night, and a softball diamond, just like this one, when promising pitcher Addison Radley died in a tragic accident. Ever since then, her shade has haunted the field, pitching balls at superhuman speeds. You see, they call her “Boo” because, even though she doesn’t know it, she’s … a ghost. ADDISON RADLEY: TEENAGE GHOST PITCHER: SUNDAYS THIS FALL ON THE CW.

No, wait, they call her that after the character Boo Radley from the beloved classic To Kill A Mockingbird? Huh. Not sure why we wouldn’t want to know that, unless we’re trying to avoid falling afoul of Harper Lee’s lawyers.

Herb and Jamaal, 4/10/15

Oh my God, Eula is a reverse chrononaut, using dark magic or forbidden science to travel backwards along her own timeline! And she’s on the verge of revealing her causality violation to a time-standard individual! Chances of a class-three temporal paradox are up to 85 percent, we need an intervention from the Time Corps, stat.

Marvin, 4/10/15

This is your occasional reminder that, after decades of doing jokes about babies pissing and shitting, Marvin introduced some dog characters so it could do jokes about dogs pissing and shitting. I’m not sure which would be worse: if “go potty” were a euphemism imposed by the syndicate in a desperate attempt to impose some kind of sanity, or if that’s how the joke was originally written, too make it “cute.”

Spider-Man, 4/10/15

My number one biggest laugh in the comics pages today came from seeing Spidey wordlessly peacing out in the first panel of today’s strip. “Welp, I’ve put Mary Jane under the protection of the Black Widow, and probably nothing can go wrong! My fellow superhero certainly isn’t going to, say, push her off a building, that’s for sure. Later, everybody!”

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Apartment 3-G, 4/4/15

Oh, look, Margo is back with her old friend Thelma! You remember Thelma, of course, as the waitress at Margo’s favorite diner, which is actually outside on the sidewalk or maybe inside some apartment where the decor hasn’t been updated in fifty years, who can even tell. She used to be a redhead and now she’s a blonde, but the important thing is that her sidewalk/apartment diner also serves booze now! And Margo wants her sweet, sweet brown liquor, so step it up, lady. Her swear words say “I will cut you” but her big grin says “It’s fine, everything’s fine!”

NEW THEORY ABOUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN APARTMENT 3-G: all the ladies Margo’s been interacting with lately look vaguely like Lu Ann because they are all Lu Ann. Margo finally had that psychotic break we’ve all been waiting for and is now confined to a reputable mental health facility or possibly her apartment, and dear, sweet Lu Ann is play-acting as just about everyone else in her delusional world, to distract her.

Gil Thorp, 4/4/15

Say, were you wondering how the tale of Max Bacon™, Fake Pill Popper®, turned out? Well, Max was suspended from the team for the rest of the season, Bobby was fired as student manager, and the basketball team missed the playdowns. Max will apparently get to come back next year, presumably chastened and fake-drug free, whereas Bobby … Bobby is raising an army of children to aid his bloody, violent, sure-to-be legendary revenge. They’ll regret underestimating Bobby. They’ll all regret it.