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Gil Thorp, 5/25/10

I’ve read Gil Thorp for many years with three different artists at the helm, and I’ve sort of grown fond of the strip’s tendency to cut away from the sports action just as something exciting’s going to happen, showing us only someone reacting to it. But sometimes it would be nice to see actual events occurring; in this case, for instance, perhaps we could see not just the (unsettlingly pinheaded) shortstop crouching as the ball heads his way, but his bobbling of the play as well, or maybe the runners crossing home plate. Though perhaps it’s for our own good: Marty’s eyeball is a milky white, indicating that the play was so exciting that it was like looking directly into a blinding nuclear explosion.

Apartment 3-G, 5/25/10

OH SNAP LU ANN JUST ADMITTED SHE’S A BOYFRIEND-STEALING STRUMPET (in the safety of her mind, where Margo can’t hear her, or so she thinks). I’m a bit puzzled by the “maybe twice” line, which sort of implies that she steals so many boyfriends from so many people that she can’t keep track of them all, though it’s just as likely that she can’t remember because of her oxygen-deprivation-induced brain damage. Anyway, the last boyfriend I remember Lu Ann stealing from Margo was FBI Pete, with all the betrayal happening even before I started the blog, so who even knows how far back the other shenanigans happened.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/25/10

Every five and a half years or so, Herb and Jamaal tests the waters to see if the world of newspaper comics is ready for a joke about hiding corpses. We’ll see if they’ll print it in November of 2015, assuming that newspapers still exist then!

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Mary Worth and Gil Thorp, 5/20/10

A pair of truly nightmare-fueling visages in today’s comics! Dr. Jeff has chosen exactly the wrong evening to come out of his hidey-hole and once again eat thawed-out halibut with his paramour, as Mary is clearly in the throes of a meddling binge. Eyes the size of dinner plates, she rapturously details her intention to not only “help” poor Bonnie with her problems, but to change the woman’s very essence so that it’s more in line with what Mary expects and demands from a human who’s fallen haplessly into her orbit. Jeff almost looks taken aback in the first panel as he takes in Mary’s meddle-glow. I thought that my sacrifice was enough, he thinks. I thought that by submitting to her requirements, I would keep the rest of humanity safe. But now I see that she’ll never be satisfied.

Meanwhile, in Gil Thorp, country star/weirdo Slim Chance is giving Cassie advice on undoing the pariah status she earned by scheduling an abortive elopement the day her basketball team was playing its Big Game. Said advice seems to have mostly consisted of “Be nice to the girls who hate you with good reason,” and today we see it’s finally worked — with Ashley Aiello, last seen as a wrongly accused suspect in the great Nutboy caper. Ashley went through her own social trials in the wake of that incident, if I’m remembering correctly, and the way her head swivels raptor-like towards the sound of her name in the final panel is frankly creeping me out. “POSSIBLE FRIEND?” she thinks, her eyes lighting up like high-powered laser beams.

Pluggers, 5/20/10

It’s sad when Pluggers can’t even master something simple, like the rhythms of how ordinary down-home Americans (or freakish man-animals, in this case) actually talk. It’s the lack of a contraction, “you will” instead of “you’ll”, that’s really setting me off; it sounds to me like nothing so much as a line that would be delivered by some stereotypical Jewish pawn broker in a movie made in the ’30s. This may be a defense mechanism, though: perhaps my inability to hear “will” as anything other than “vill” is preventing me from seeing the stilted sentence construction as an exaggerated faux-courtly pass, which will in short order lead to plugger-on-plugger coupling, right there on the hair-strewn linoleum.

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Gil Thorp, 5/1/10

So I guess the Gil Thorp baseball-season A plot (getting started a little late, isn’t it?) will revolve around how groovy musician Derek Chance is just on a, like, different wavelength, man, and how all the dumb jocks on the baseball team don’t “get” him, leading to Conflict. Never mind that even alt-country, Derek’s chosen musical genre, is fairly closely associated with a persona that’s more ordinary Joe than space cadet. Anyway, hopefully we’ll get a “no-hitter on acid” plotline out of this, which will force Gil to choose between Honor and Victory. (In cases like this he always chooses, “Honor,” the sucker.)

Apartment 3-G, 5/1/10

The hilarious point of this strip is that Grief Cannot Touch Margo’s Icy Heart, but it got me wondering: who actually did die and make Lu Ann curator? I’m ashamed to admit that I can’t keep track. It wasn’t Eric; Eric died and made Margo gallery owner. Was it Alan? Wasn’t Alan curator when he was gunned down by a crazed bald dope fiend? And what’s Jack’s job? Is he just some nebulous “business consultant” or was he actually hired as curator? If so, perhaps he died and made Lu Ann curator when Margo killed him for approving the damn note cards.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/10

Even when it isn’t gruesomely punishing its characters, Funky Winkerbean is depressing, as the prospect of two reasonably nice and attractive women vying for Les’s smirky charms and pear-shaped body ought to sadden all readers everywhere. At least we have the sure knowledge that this will inevitably end badly for everyone to console us.