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Gil Thorp, 5/9/14

Yeah, what’s with the hand? Or the hands plural, for that matter? Why is one of them all turned around at a weird, unnatural angle? Why is the other one flapping in the direction of the first one, fingers splayed, as if that’s a gesture that’s used by humans to convey information of some kind? What’s with the hands? It’s what we’ve wondered for years about this strip, so I’m glad someone’s finally worked up the nerve to ask.

Apartment 3-G, 5/9/14

Speaking as someone who writes dumb jokes about newspaper comics on the Internet for a living, I do sort of understand the appeal of “real work” that Tommie’s talking about here — not enough to actually do any of it, you understand, but I can sort of see it. But it’s worth pointing out that before she came out to the country to shovel horse poop in exchange for room and board, Tommie was a nurse, which strikes me as pretty real? You’re not supposed to get your hands dirty, though, what with the danger of deadly infections. Maybe Tommie was just tired of the relentlessly sanitary hospital environment?

Crankshaft, 5/9/14

This week Crankshaft has been poking a little light-hearted fun at golf by explaining the emotions a golfer experiences after a whiff in terms of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief one goes through after suffering the death of a loved one or other serious life trauma. Today we reach the Funkyverse’s natural level with stage four: depression. What’s more depressing than contemplating killing yourself? Why, contemplating what it’d be like to fail at killing yourself, just like you always fail at golf and everything else, of course!

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Gil Thorp, 5/3/14

Gil Thorp’s baseball-season storyline continues to be super boring, to the extent that today’s panel three got me thinking about how great it would be to see the Gil Thorp creative team take a few weeks off from high school sports action to give us a recap of the Battle of Stalingrad. It’d be all big flappy hands and confusing jumps back and forth to different indistinguishable soldiers in the various battle zones and occasional appearances by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein dispensing vague platitudes while wearing a shit-eating smirk. It would definitely be more interesting than whatever’s going on with Lucky Haskins’s academic problems, I tell you what.

Apartment 3-G, 5/3/14

Tommie has been under Jack’s Svengali-like sway for three whole weeks, which is plenty of time to get her into a routine, work her to exhaustion, and separate her from all desire to go back to her previous life. But he hasn’t stopped his scheming there, and frankly I approve of his plan to ply the formerly bearish Professor with carbs and cheese, as his new character design is far too emaciated for my taste.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/3/14

Yes, why would you solve a math problem with some dumb old “equation” when you could just use common sense instead? That … that would be a super power, honestly.

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/22/14

Welp, at last, Jess has solved the mystery of why her father was murdered. It’s not just because he was a dick that nobody liked; it’s because one of the people to whom he was a dick disliked him so much that he decided he deserved to be killed. Shouldn’t she be filming this or something?

Judge Parker, 4/22/14

Hahaha, remember when Abbott gave April a bunch of diamonds of mysterious provenance? Well, apparently they were a wedding present for Randy (a dowry, maybe?), and also bait to lure the Gardia brothers into a firefight they can’t win, and, well, if Randy gets killed in the crossfire while April safely wanders around the jungle looking for Katherine, then I don’t think too many people are going to lose sleep over that, do you?

Apartment 3-G, 4/22/14

Oh, man, I love that Tommie is just holding the phone away from her head as Margo launches into her freakout. “Not coming home — I don’t undersand. What’s going on?! Who’s going to cook me dinner?!? I’m getting hungry! Tommie? Tommie?”

Gil Thorp, 4/22/14

In case you’re wondering what’s going on with wacky klutzy Lucky Haskins and Amy Lange: Lucky has convinced Amy that she can improve her luck by rubbing his head. That isn’t a euphemism for anything, though as you can see here their encounters are suffused with a certain queasy eroticism.

Spider-Man, 4/22/14

Good news, everyone! Spider-Man and “Iron Jonah” aren’t going to be killed by plummeting into the arch in Washington Square Park because they’ve been saved by Iron Man at the last minute. Since the whole point of this crisis was that Jonah was going too fast and any impact would leave him smeared all over the inside of that outdated Iron Man suit, I’m not sure how Iron Man SLAMMing into him at full speed is really much of a solution, but any denouement in which Spidey’s rescue attempt is upstaged by another, better superhero is OK with me.

Heathcliff, 4/22/14

Heathcliff and his ex-con dad have trained an army of bee henchmen! Nobody can touch them now.