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Gil Thorp, 2/2/15

Oh my gosh, I was wrong and Gil Thorp really is doing a Very Important Drug story! The drug in question is Adderall, which is about as intense and Important as Gil Thorp can handle, I guess. This all assumes that that I’m interpreting “I want some!” correctly. Maybe Max Bacon™ is asking to be infected with ADHD to improve his basketball play, which would indicate that he profoundly misunderstands the disorder in a number of distinct ways.

Mark Trail, 2/2/15

Despite having read Mark Trail daily for more than a decade, I honestly couldn’t tell you whether Mark is one of those action heroes for whom refusing to pull a gun on someone is part of his shtick. But assuming he’s not, I’m reading panel one as him cautiously feeling out his new ally. “Yeah, so they’ve definitely got guns, so … I’m just spitballing here, but … maybe … you’ve got some firearms … back at your isolated hunting hut? No? Okay then! Well, we shouldn’t have a problem sneaking up on them in this flat-bottom! Ha ha! Yeah, this is going to go great.”

Mary Worth, 2/2/15

I haven’t really featured any of the strips where Hanna’s annoying daughter Amy has disapproved of her relationship with Sean, probably because they’ve been pretty boring, but trust me when I tell you that Hanna’s annoying daughter Amy disapproves of her relationship with Sean. And now Hanna’s going to ask some random lady she barely knows to be her witness! That’ll show her ungrateful offspring, who primarily uses Hanna as a free babysitting service! As the cruel look on her face in panel one makes clear, Hanna is getting married for the best possible reason: revenge.

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Spider-Man, 1/31/15

This week’s Spider-Man has involved some confusing business about Peter sauntering into the emergency room after a robot fell on him and then sauntering out again diagnosed with a cracked rib and I honestly don’t know enough about his spider-powers (the proportional powers of … a spider) to know whether rib-breaking is a thing that could happen to him, and so whether this is all genuine boring medical talk or a boring ruse to protect his boring secret identity. The fact that the fracture in the x-ray extends beyond the rib itself seems to indicate the latter? Either way, Mysterio lets the wall-crawler know who’s boss by crumpling the x-ray up and fucking it.

Gil Thorp, 1/31/15

In any other narrative context, an athlete whispering, essentially, “Please! I hurt so bad!!” to a trainer would be a cue to start a Serious Issue Story about performance-enhancing drugs of some sort. But since the person being implored is the dorky student manager who only cares about fundamentals and sweater vests and branding, probably he’ll just get some advice about dribbling or something. Gil Thorp can be a pretty disappointing comic strip most of the time, guys.

Six Chix, 1/31/15

You know, Six Chix usually manages to fly under my radar, but it’s had a banner week this week, all bloated corpses and petty grievances and other bloated corpses. And this is a pretty solid capper: a woman dressed all in black, like a burglar or a puppetteer, attempts to buy a robotic simulacrum of a loving family, only to be rebuffed in favor of her own cat, who is in turn repulsed and terrified by the android’s steely embrace.

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Slylock Fox, 1/26/15

One of my favorite things about Slylock Fox is the fact that the planet isn’t entirely populated by anthropomorphic animals; although the vast majority of the human race was apparently exterminated as the beasts took control, a few representatives of our species remain, presumably enough to preserve a breeding stock, and need to deal with the unimaginable trauma the best they can. It’s impossible to tell whether these men were professional clowns in the Before Time, or if dressing as such is the only way they can deal with the madness of the world they inhabit. As clowns number two and three demonstrate, traditional clown makeup long ago ceased being manufactured, leaving them to do the best they could with material that actually matched their skintone. Basically if you can visualize a faux-hobo clown wearing flesh-colored makeup stealing candy from a bipedal, dress-wearing pig’s porch, desperately holding up his pants as he runs away, and not break down weeping, you have a heart of stone.

Apartment 3-G, 1/26/16

OK, this thing where the art in Apartment 3-G has little or nothing to do with the writing is just getting sad and alarming, guys. Like, when Margo and her dad were having lunch at a “Tribeca Grill” that looked suspiciously like the inside of somebody’s dowdy apartment, there was at least one word in that description that worked, and that word was “inside.” But now Margo is just straight-up ordering breakfast at a “cafe” that is literally just her and some other woman standing out on the sidewalk. “Now that’s what I call a healthy appetite!” her interlocutor says, as she stares directly into the face of madness.

Gil Thorp, 1/26/15

Speaking of the face of madness, how about panel two of Gil Thorp, eh? Against Gil’s advice, Maxwell has decided to forge an alliance with Marty Moon and establish a memorable #brand! And that brand is MAX BACON™. Because when it comes to bacon … who doesn’t want the max? Other than people keen on not dying of heart disease, that is!

Herb and Jamaal, 1/26/15

Let me tell you lucky kids today: if you grew up before the Internet provided an on-demand stream of smut into every household, you spent a not-insignificant part of your junior high years parsing movie descriptions in the paper for exactly terms like this, just in case there was a chance you could see these so-called “adult situations” on HBO after your parents were likely to be in bed. Jamaal, a jaded inhabitant of our modern porn-world, just sips his iced tea and regards the on-screen simulated humping with disinterest and vague distaste.

Mark Trail, 1/26/15

Do you think Mark is quickly changing the subject in panel two because he’s thinking “Hmm, this swamp-king is awful blase about having seen a mangled corpse and left it behind to be devoured by bog-creatures, better tread lightly,” or because he’s thinking “Well, that problem is solved! I’ll never have to deal with that ponytail man again!” It’s so hard to tell with him.