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Mary Worth, 12/21/10

Ever since she successfully cured Dr. Mike’s inability to love, Mary’s fancied herself something of an amateur therapist. Today we learn just how far she’s going with her little hobby: she’s apparently developed some extreme form of rational-emotive behavioral therapy where patients use their thoughts to control not only their emotions and attitudes, but their memories as well. “Jill, you were only abandoned by your fiance at the altar because that’s how you choose to remember it! If you simply rethink your memories, then perhaps you’ll realize that he did show up after all, and you’ve been happily married for the past seven years! If you go home and find your house still empty and lonesome, it probably just means that you’re not trying hard enough.”

Gil Thorp, 12/21/10

Notice that Gil actually gives Marty a straight and substantive answer about sports, — in response to Marty’s hesitant attempt to establish emotional intimacy with his long-term frenemy. “Jeez, I’m glad I didn’t tell him that what I wish I had but don’t: recognition from my journalistic peers and my parents of how hard I work on my sportswriting craft. Christ, I feel like an asshole now.”

Apartment 3-G, 12/21/10

Hmm, the girls are already dressed in their best party clothes — Margo in an actually rather fetching little black dress, Tommie in her Star Trek: The Motion Picture-era Starfleet uniform, and Lu Ann in [artist’s duty to think of third party outfit avoided by crafty foreground figure placement] — and Iris has gotten out the punch bowl and traditional balloon wreath, and yet this seems to be the first our trio of protagonists have heard of this party. The possibilities: either we’re in the last scene of an ’80s comedy and all Iris needs to do is mention a party to summon the various accoutrements thereof out of thin air while a Journey soundtrack blares in the background, or she was planning on throwing a swell party and not inviting the 3-G gals, a plan they ruined by stopping by unannounced on their way someplace else.

By the way, it’s nice to see that Iris is planning on repaying Mrs. Bloom’s kind offer of a free place to crash by trashing said free place with endless partying.

Mark Trail, 12/21/10

“Yes, just put your boat near his boat! I am ‘interested’ in being within seeing distance of him! This is because of something I will explain later. It certainly not because I am on a secret government mission, so do not believe that! I am, uh, interested in making sex with him! Yes, that’s it! That’s something humans say, right?”

Ziggy, 12/21/10

Since the mice in Ziggy are generally portrayed as anthropomorphic wisecrackers, the sight of one dead and dangling limply from a cat’s grinning mouth is fairly startling. What could make this worse? Oh, right, the thought of the stench of searing mouse flesh, the hint of which will always linger on the coils of the toaster’s heating elements! Yes, that will do nicely.

Funky Winkerbean, 12/21/10

Oh, look, despite a mysterious phone call from his dead wife warning him not to get on his flight, Les did not in fact die in a fiery plane crash. I know, I’m just as disappointed as you are.

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Pluggers, 12/11/10

One of the running jokes with which I routinely irritate my friends and family comes up every time anyone discusses their plans for their mortal remains after their death. I always claim that I intend to have my corpse taxidermied and arranged in a heroic pose — possibly holding a sword, definitely naked — and that whoever wants to inherit my vast fortune will be required to place me somewhere prominent in their home. Now, this is all good fun (or at least it will be until my will is unsealed), but it did make my mind go someplace particularly grim upon seeing a typical Pluggers man-animal in a storefront taxidermist. At least pluggers don’t simply feast on the rotting flesh of their dead fellows, as the bird-inhabitants of their sister strip Shoe do. I for one would like to see a “plugger cemetery” (glassed-in display case) if only in the hopes that the taxidermist’s art provides the various schlubby, ill-dressed dead pluggers with a modicum of dignity and dynamism that was wholly lacking from their lives.

Gasoline Alley, 12/11/10

You don’t have to be following the current typically dull Gasoline Alley plot to appreciate today’s strip, in which the loathsome Slim’s mother-in-law does her best to pretend that he simply doesn’t exist.

Gil Thorp, 12/11/10

Oh, also, in Gil Thorp Jamaar died for our sins.

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Mark Trail, 12/6/10

Allow me to dabble in a little heresy here for a moment: could Kelly and Mark actually be perfect for one another? It’s been clear for some time that Cherry isn’t getting her needs met by her spouse: she expects “love” or “affection” or at least a husband who “understands” the “emotions” that motivate “humans.” On the other hand, Kelly, though ostensibly cast in the role of the strip’s sexpot, seems genuinely confused about why it would be inappropriate for her to walk into Mark’s hotel room while he’s showering and answer a phone call from his wife. I don’t think we’re intended to read her line in panel three as being delivered in some kind of sultry yet sarcastic mode; instead, she’s just gazing dumbfounded at the phone, wondering how something she said could possibly have caused such offense. You know who else demonstrates that sort of diagnosable inability to grasp the needs and inner lives of others? Mark Trail.

I’m sort of curious about exactly how Cherry’s posture translates into the massive SLAM we see in panel two. Did she suddenly go all faint at the thought of Kelly in Mark’s hotel room and lose her balance, with one hand catching herself on the table as she pitched forward and the other sending the phone careening back into the cradle almost by accident? Or did she firmly place right hand on the table for balance, so that she could smash the handset down with her left all the more vigorously?

Mary Worth, 12/6/10

A comic panel is, when you think about it, a curious way to convey narrative: although it’s tempting to think of it as a single frozen moment, panels with dialogue do depict a certain amount of time passing, and so each of the motionless characters must occupy a particular instant within the interval that the panel contains. In today’s panel two — which, I hope I don’t need to say, is the most wonderful thing anyone will show you today — Dr. Jeff still bears the beatific expression of a man in the midst of a good uninterrupted bloviation, whereas Mary and Adrian’s looks of stricken horror indicate that they’re living in the moment after Jill’s drunken interruption ruined everything good, forever.

I love virtually all of the details in today’s strips: Jill taking a big gulp of wine in panel one, for courage; the happy couple holding hands, oblivious to what’s about to happen; Mary bringing one hand up to her mouth in shock, while Adrian merely stares on dumbly, finally aware that the friend she’s coddled all this time really, truly doesn’t like any of this crap. But mostly I love Jill’s inexplicable rage, which I’ve loved from the moment it became apparent that it would be the driving force behind this storyline. Jill won’t put up with Jeff’s pablum. God? Don’t talk to Jill about God. Jill knows there’s no heaven above us, just a grid of hideous drop ceiling panels that never end.

Gil Thorp, 12/6/10

With Milford’s star player kicked off the team for dealing drugs, Gil needs to pull some clever coaching out of his coaching hat at the end of the season if he wants to salvage his playdown hopes. “They’ll be looking for the wildcat formation — but not this wildcat!” he says, revealing the the mountain lion he plans to release into his opponents’ backfield on key plays. “Who wants to volunteer to sneak into Valley Tech’s locker room and rub raw meat all over their jock straps?”