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Crock, 9/11/12

Wow, congratulations, Crock, for creating the Platonic ideal of an “angry old person rages against something he doesn’t understand at any level” comic strip! Shall we enumerate the ways in which the word-sequences in panel one fail to map onto the world as we understand it? Let’s start with “‘Virtual reality’ is the thing of the future,” which should really be “‘Virtual reality’ is the thing of the mid ’90s,” since that was the heyday of term (everyone knows that “augmented reality” is the new hotness). Then we’ll move on to “TV game,” which is inherently funny, and which is part of “everyone needs a TV game with it,” which I guess is an awkward way of saying “Everyone needs a video game that includes virtual reality features”? Or maybe it just means “Everyone needs a TV game with ‘virtual reality’, which I have no idea what that is,” which seems more likely. “How many do you want?” probably is supposed to mean “How many of the aforementioned TV games do you want” but I prefer to interpret it as “How many virtual realities do you want, here, look at these small brown boxes, each contains a virtual reality.” Finally, Crock’s smug “Now that’s virtual reality” is I guess supposed to be a triumphant zinger that represents a victory over the kids today with their TV games and their virtual reality, with the only downside being that it makes no sense to speak of. Kudos to you, Crock! Truly, this is a stunning triumph of out-of-touchness!

Gil Thorp, 9/11/12

Kudos also go to everyone who predicted that Irish soccer star Terry O’Irishperson (did you know that in non-America places they call soccer “football”???) would end up kicking for the Mudlark football team, which means kudos go to everyone because this was a painfully obvious development. I do have high hopes for Terry’s “I feel like a knight!” line in panel three, as perhaps his “armor” will make him prone to Don Quixote-style fits of nostalgic insanity. Perhaps he’ll use the annual football bonfire as an opportunity to burn some Cathar heretics at the stake!

Apartment 3-G, 9/11/12

Haha, there’s nothing better than reminding your boss that you’re using a little light office remodeling as an excuse to take an extra week’s worth of paid vacation! Presumably Margo is suddenly ten feet away from her dining companions in panel two because she’s about to unleash some killing death-rays of rage on them.

Six Chix, 9/11/12

If, like me, you’ve always been a little unsettled by whatever sexual implications lurk beneath the whole metaphorical “kiss a frog to turn him into a prince” story, you’ll find today’s Six Chix particularly disturbing.

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Apartment 3-G, 9/1/12

After enduring a comical series of interruptions, Greg Cooper finally gets the interruption he wants: the hot roommate! Yes, transparently angling for a three-way with your new publicist is totally 100% professional behavior for a … guy who … needs a publicist … and has a “manager” … and … uh … have we ever figured out exactly what it is that Greg does? Is he a handsome actor or maybe a literary bad boy? If so, this could all be part of the marketing plan, with Margo leaking word of his inappropriate advances to the press to cover up his boring, monogamous personal life.

It’s also worth noting that Greg wasn’t wearing a tie at the beginning of this meeting. He knows the way to a lady’s heart, or possibly to multiple ladies’ hearts: dapperness.

Gil Thorp, 9/1/12

We here at the Comics Curmudgeon would like to sincerely apologize for using linguistic markers to misidentify the Irish family in Gil Thorp as English; we realize that this is rather rude, for obvious reasons. Anyway, we would now like to revise the joke about what weirdo sports this family will demand from the Milford athletic department to include hurling and Gaelic handball.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/1/12

“Haw haw, I do enjoy a good bit of wordplay! But seriously, my baby is going to be born into abject poverty due to my husband’s shiftlessness.”

Beetle Bailey, 9/1/12

OH MY GOD THEY CLONED GENERAL HALFTRACK

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Gil Thorp, 8/30/12

Say, did you hear the one about the one-armed golfer? He was the subject of this summer’s Gil Thorp storyline, which turned out to not be that interesting! Wrapping up briefly: we learned that One-Armed Steve was full of rage because he did in fact lose his arm in a non-heroic fashion (car accident while on a military base overseas), and his attempts to woo Molly Kinsella failed not because he was an amputee but because he’s a grown man and she’s still in high school, gross. But all that psychic pain was nothing a little match play couldn’t cure, so Steve got cleaned up and has learned to love life again. So instead of getting a real job and getting back on his feet, he’s going to become yet another Milford community member offering the high school no-cost coaching services! It’s a win for everyone, but mostly for Gil.

And now our fall drama is taking shape! Anita Visci is taking cookies to her new neighbor … who refers to them as “biscuits,” which means that she’s English, probably! Will her son refuse to play decent American football and instead demand equal time for his British freak sports, like rugby or cricket or punting? Will Maeve take the pram to the lift on the telly in the boot or whatever? Stay tuned!

Family Circus, 8/30/12

Ha ha, yes, we all know little kids all over this great country of ours will be glued to the tube for the next couple of weeks, thrilling to the minutia of parliamentary procedure! Actually, this cartoon is kind of dating itself, as the last presidential nominating convention where there was realistic suspense about how things would go on the first ballot was (I think) in 1980, so maybe kids were smarter then?

Blondie, 8/30/12

Dagwood has gone through all the trouble of baking a pizza in an oven, and yet he’s still leaving his hat on while he eats. I don’t know why this bothers me, but it does.