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Apartment 3-G, 9/8/10

Makeover victim #1, revealed! Margo’s here and she’s, eh, not actively laughable. Still, this seems like it might be kind of overcompensation: Kat has reacted to Margo’s penchant for turtlenecks by forcing her to wear the exact opposite of a turtleneck, a dress with a top that’s as low as possible while maintaining a G rating. Margo might enjoy all the admiration her shoulders are getting now, but wait until she finds out that every single item in her remade wardrobe will be strapless, including her new collection of business casual tube tops and her winter coats.

Gil Thorp, 9/8/10

This week Gil Thorp has been very busy telegraphing the fall plot: it will be about Troubled Foster Kid Cody Exner! Gil had a life-changing conversation with Cody’s current foster mom yesterday, in which he learned that adults cannot remain in the foster care system indefinitely. This puts a crimp in his plan to find a foster family who will care for him so he can quit his job and drink full time.

In panel three, we see that the takeaway from the plot will be that foster kids are angry and violent — at least before they get some good, solid half-assed coaching from Gil Thorp. Cody will come around and be ready for adulthood by his 18th birthday, even though a few Mudlark teammates may be maimed in the process.

Dennis the Menace, 9/8/10

I was going to make some kind of distasteful “Dennis is a pimp” joke here before I was brought up short with horror at the faces of the little girls on either side of him. They’re a degree or two less cartoonish that the other children — could they be an attempt to represent two actual specific kids? — which only makes them that much more unsettling, in no small part because the more lifelike faces draw attention to their freakishly knobbly legs.

To distract yourself from this horror, consider the fact that Mr. Wilson is such a classic cartoon character that his face isn’t needed to establish presence in the scene, just his iconic gut.

Luann, 9/8/10

Hey, everyone, Dirk’s back, and the power of Christ compels you to like him! I’ve been ignoring him thus far this week, but I feel he earned a spot in this blog by treating Mrs. DeGroot like some sort of stalking-fun-killing vampire.

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Mark Trail, 9/2/10

You know, I was about to make fun of the idea that a caged hunt of semi-tame exotic animals could be this hideous, unpleasant man’s ticket to the governorship, but then I reflected on the mysterious ways in which the government works in the Mark Trail universe. This, after all, is a world where land use disputes and criminal investigations are handled at the same meeting of some ill-defined board, and where zoning hearings take place in dramatic trial form. So why shouldn’t the state’s chief executive be chosen in the context of shooting penned-in beasts? It makes as much sense as anything else. So you can just forget this fancy “voting” talk, Mrs. Evil Politician, because the only votes that count are the ones cast by the severed heads of majestic wildlife.

Gil Thorp, 9/2/10

I admitted on Twitter the other day that I actually enjoy seeing beloved former Gil Thorp characters pop up from year to year in this strip. This year’s returnee is Jamarr Gaddis, aka “the Ghost,” the team’s talented but self-aggrandizing egotist. I vaguely recall being amused by Jamarr’s cheerful self-promotion, so it will be good to have him back; today’s action implies that we’re going to learn about his inner struggles, or at least see how he reacts when people mock him for having a cold. Seriously, why does everyone find the fact that he’s sick so damn hilarious and/or enraging? Check out Coach Beardo in the first panel — he’s a third-in-command high school sports coach, so he’s got a lot of nerve acting so superior just because some poor kid decided to stay home with a fever instead of coming to practice and giving 110 percent right up to the point where he drops dead from exhaustion.

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Crock, 8/30/10

Many comic strips set theoretically in some specific time and place often end up wandering afield from that time and place, either for humorous effect or just out of sheer forgetfulness. Thus, while the action in Crock once was meant to be understood as taking place in North Africa under French colonial rule, today the strip might be happening somewhere where the IRS has authority, or really any time and any place at all. Today’s dialogue, for instance, implies that the action of the strip takes place during the time period described in one of the earlier sections of the book of Genesis, just before the Deluge. This is good news for everyone — including, I assume, all of you — who wants to see every single Crock character killed by an angry God in a world-destroying flood.

Gil Thorp, 8/30/10

Our phoned-in summer golf storyline has finally, mercifully, ended; let the phoned-in fall football storyline begin! It’s just day one and already the characters are starting to ask why we’re even bothering to have a fall football storyline. “Man, what’s the point?” asks a nameless Mudlark. “I mean, my face is melting due to some horrible space alien virus, and you all are just standing around with arms stretched out looking bored! Hello? Melting face? Over here?”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/30/10

There are few things simultaneously sadder and more hilarious than watching Les deliberate over whether to have his book launch party in his home town’s only functioning non-Toxic Taco restaurant with more anxiety and indecision than Hamlet trying to figure out whether he should kill his stepfather. But one of those even sadder and more hilarious things is watching two otherwise attractive and normal-seeming women compete to see who can debase themselves further to win Les’s mopey, self-absorbed affections.

Apartment 3-G, 8/30/10

Holy cats, is Apartment 3-G’s aged core audience about to be introduced to the great advances in hair extension technology that have taken place over the past few decades? Or does Tabitha simply plan to knock Margo out with some kind of sleeping potion, only for her to wake up 20 years later with her hair grown to ludicrous lengths, Rip van Winkle-style?

Slylock Fox, 8/30/10

Ha ha, it’s a trick question! There’s no such thing as “valuable” Kansas City Royals memorabilia.

Gasoline Alley, 8/30/10

I know I haven’t discussed the light-hearted Gasoline Alley strip lately, but in case you’re wondering what’s going on over there, here you go: a group of adorable schoolchildren is about to die in a terrible bus accident.