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Everyone: just wanted to offer a huge thanks to those who participated in my novel’s Kickstarter campaign, and those who helped spread the word. I have been humbled by everyone’s support and I promise to present you the best novel I can, in a year or so!

Family Circus, 7/27/12

I hope I am not breaking any hearts or spirits when I tell you that the Family Circus, like many legacy comics, is pieced together from a huge library of clip art that is modified to the extent necessary and usually no further. At least we know that today’s panel features a genuinely new joke, both because today really is the opening of the 30th Olympiad and because only in today’s fallen, degraded society would the squeaky-clean Keane Kids even know that “XXX” denotes morally repugnant grown-up kissing without baby-making. Still, the TV in today’s panel is kind of interesting to me, as it’s not the usual Carter-era console set, but instead appears to be a flatscreen sitting directly on the floor, which … I don’t think is how anyone actually watches a flatscreen? Especially kind of a small one, like this? Which makes me think that this is just a modified version of an older drawing where a weird brown flatscreen has replaced the traditionally faux-wood-paneled console set. Although who knows, maybe this little TV-on-the-floor is specifically for Jeffy and Dolly (they’re not allowed on the furniture, for OBVIOUS REASONS) and the fact that they have access to such things explains why they now suddenly know that sin exists.

Gasoline Alley, 7/27/12

I really don’t have much to say about it, but I am in awe that this Gasoline Alley faulty DVD player storyline continues against all odds to exist, as it has gone on forever and nothing keeps on happening. Now they’re openly acknowledging that they’re repeating jokes! At least I assume that the referenced joke actually appeared in the strip in another go-round of this endless scenario. My memories of the details are vanishing into time’s mists.

Gil Thorp, 7/27/12

Honest question: Are there people who just assume that any amputee in street clothes is a war hero? What if they lost an arm doing something stupid (e.g., playing with dynamite) or evil (e.g., tried to strangle an orphan, had stranglin’ arm chopped off by an actual hero with a machete)?

Mary Worth, 7/27/12

Every Mary Worth of course takes place in a baffling dreamscape of non-Euclidean spatial relations, but I’m pretty confused about what we’re looking at in panel two. Normally a cruise ship’s deck wouldn’t be that close to the water, right? Is the boat tipping over, and the fellow in red isn’t so much leaping with unnatural strength to safety as tumbling out into space? Or is it sinking straight down, with the lower decks already swamped and the water quickly rising up to reach our heroes? Either way, I admit it’s a bit churlish to question anything about a Mary Worth panel that features a crazed man in a bow-tie screaming “It’s the only option!” as he points to the churning waters of the Mediterranean. But such is the critic’s curse!

Apartment 3-G, 7/27/12

Hey, remember when Lu Ann found out that the woman she always thought was her cousin was really her mother, and suddenly realized why the couple who raised her and her sister were always so bitter and distant, and went off to South Dakota to confront them all and sort out the emotional consequences of this elaborate web of deceit? That all sounds like it would have made for compelling drama! I guess we’ll never know now, though.

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Gil Thorp, 7/18/12

At last, this summer’s wacky Gil Thorp storyline comes into focus! And it involves … one of Gil’s former students, who joined the military and then was physically maimed and mentally scarred in combat, and has become a recluse? Damn it, that’s not wacky at all. Though surely whatever non-board-certified tough love therapy Gil will unleash on him will be good for a laugh or two. One also wonders if the particular nature of the poor young man’s injury is meant play to the strip’s artist’s strengths, since there’s guaranteed to be one fewer hideous flipper-hand per panel whenever he makes an appearance.

Pluggers and Marvin, 7/18/12

Ha ha, old people, they sure hate the computers and the social networking, right? Oh, wait, that just seems a little at odds with all the old people I know who love Facebook and the many pictures of grandchildren it provides to them. Anyway, mostly I would like to point out that (a) these pluggers have found reporting of plugger-esque exploits on the society pages, which in most newspapers are usually dedicated to fancy parties thrown by the wealthy and beautiful, which means that in Pluggerville there are people even lower on the social ladder than these guys; and (b) I would like a comic about Marvin’s grandpa and his cranky old friend cruising for sexy grandmas in the park a million times better than Marvin’s current Marvin-pooping-focused iteration.

Shoe, 7/18/12

Whoops, looks like Roz served the Perfesser a meal intended for one of the many insectivorous birds who patronize her diner! Also, she is extremely sarcastic.

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Hi and Lois, 7/2/12

You know, it’s not like I want to think about the sex lives of middle-aged comic strip characters (wait, no, I just remembered that Luann exists, amend that to “all comic strip characters of any age”). But when Hi leans back in his easy chair with his hands behind his head so as to vaguely thrust his crotch Loisward, throwing her some bedroom eyes and suggesting they go “wherever the road takes us,” I pretty much have to, OK? Lois, meanwhile, after having had four kids and seeing how they turned out, has finally figured out the value of planning when it comes to families.

Gil Thorp, 7/2/12

In other comics couples whose boinking styles I am now involuntarily thinking about news, here’s today’s Gil Thorp! I actually believe that this strip is part of Gil Thorp’s passive-aggressive battle with its own readership, aimed at those of us who are sad that the crazy, unstructured summer storylines when anything could happen have now been replaced by just another season of boring sports action. “Oh, hey, whiny readers, do you want to see a zany summer storyline about Coach Thorp and Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp’s sex life, full of B&D sex scenes so poorly written and illustrated that they make Fifty Shades of Grey look like Anais Nin?” “Nooooo, don’t do that, just show us some golf, please, for the love of God.”

Judge Parker, 7/2/12

Yep, Sam really hankers for the simple life! Just give him a vast estate and a RV bigger than most Americans’ houses and a bottomless pit of money and he’s a happy guy.