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Mary Worth, 12/21/13

Oh my goodness you guys, in a totally unforeseeable development Ken Kensington has fallen for Mary Worth! Just another moth of a certain age drawn helplessly to her flame, soon to discover that it gives off light but no emotional warmth. In panel two, though, we can see that he’s still holding out hope, and is closing his eyes tightly and concentrating intently in an attempt to make her fall in love with him with his mind. Probably won’t work, but kudos for trying?

Gil Thorp, 12/21/13

I can’t tell you how much the narration box in panel three bothers me. Clearly it should be either “Meanwhile” or “In the meantime”, right? But I guess that would add between one and six characters, and we simply don’t have time for that, since we need to get to this gripping thrill-ride plot where some guy we may or may not have met before looks up things on the Internet that he acknowledges most people know already.

Marvin, 12/21/13

Marvin’s cousin has always served as a tightly controlled and regimented foil to Marvin’s slovenly, loosey-goosey ways, if you get what I’m talking about. (If you don’t, I’m talking about their personality, and also, in a Freudian sense, about pooping.) Anyway, today’s installment furthers the strip’s blatant pro-pants-crapping agenda by showing the terrible price of not being a complete gross slob: constant anxiety about your subconscious being monitored for virtue by mysterious figures with the power to reward and punish.

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Gil Thorp, 12/13/13

Ugh, guys, the football season Gil Thorp storyline ended up being so boring. Quick recap of how its various plot threads were “resolved”: it turned out that the big guy who never talks never talks because he was trapped in a car wreck with his dead parents for three days as a child, which is why he briefly freaked out when this happened; and Tip the gymnast/cheerleader, having been drafted onto the injury-decimated football team, scored the winning touchdown in the last game of the year by flipping over everyone’s head, gymnast-style. Milford didn’t even make the playdowns, obviously, but they did deny the conference championship to their hated rivals, so that’s worth something, right?

Anyway, basketball season doesn’t look like it’s going to be much better, given that Gil and Kaz are already handing out mental “good effort” awards to guys named things like “Don Stebbins.” I do appreciate Kaz’s attempt to liven things up a bit by dying his hair blue, to be more like the punk rockers he’s pretty sure the kids idolize.

Spider-Man, 12/13/13

Spider-sense: it may not protect you from debilitating blows from your adversaries to the back of your head, but if you’re interested in not lightly bumping into someone in the hallway at the office and getting hints about upcoming workplace personnel changes, it’s the superpower for you!

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Gil Thorp, 11/26/13

Uggggh guys, sorry I haven’t been keeping you in the loop on the Gil Thorp football season plot, but it’s been super boring. Here’s a quick summary: the big guy who never talks is making friends and has a girlfriend and is playing on the football team even though he continues not to talk, and the Coaches Thorp are doing some half-assed detective work to figure out his Past Life Trauma; and Tip the cheerleader has been dragooned into playing on the football team, because almost all the actual football players have been injured in some way. The injury spate has up until today been confined for the most part to incidents during games or in practice, but today the team’s running backs have just been straight-up killed in a car crash. Which leaves one to ask: what horrible sin against the Gods have the Mudlarks committed, to be suffering such a fate? Were their sacrifices at the annual bonfire not considered worthy? I was reminded of a line in this review of a book about Aztec culture and sacrificial religion:

I suspect that, given a geographical setting where the main instrumental aim of religious ritual was to avert natural dangers that came at irregular intervals, such practices were subject to an “intensification ratchet” — if your efforts did not succeed in preventing the earthquake, volcanic eruption, or hurricane despite the previous long period of peace and quiet, the best inference is that it’s probably because you did not try hard enough.

In other words, look for increasingly frequent and bloody pep rallies in the coming months, with the limping and injured players making the perfect sacrificial victims. “Why do you turn your backs on us, O Gods of Victory?” Coach Kaz will implore, blood-stained hands raised to the heavens over a steaming, gory altar at the front of the Milford High School auditorium.

Six Chix, 11/26/13

I’m intrigued by the truly radical proposal being broached in today’s Six Chix: that electricity-hungry humankind should bypass the oil companies and just deal directly with Satan, the Lord of Lies, himself, tapping the supernatural fires of Hell and the moans of damned souls as an energy source. What could possible go wrong? I mean, sure, eventually we’ll all be weird pinkish blobs tortured for eternity, but let’s be real: that was probably going to happen to most of us anyway, so why should we pay high utility bills in the meantime?

B.C., 11/26/13

This is as good an opportunity as any to remind you that I have a Twitter account that you can follow if you like that sort of thing! It’s, uh, mostly petty complaints.