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Gil Thorp, 1/14/10

Feast your eyes on panel one, everybody, because you’ll see that rarest of sights: Coach Thorp engaged in actual coaching! Assuming, of course, that you consider responding to desperate pleas for guidance with irritating, unhelpful gnomic pronouncements to constitute “coaching,” which, you know, Gil clearly does!

Since it includes the creepy, menacing figure of Steve Luhm sitting in the bleachers, panel one is also setting up an extremely common Gil Thorp sight: Gil finding some random community member who’s willing to take on coaching duties (without pay, naturally). First it was the mother of a member of the girl’s basketball team, who couldn’t stop shouting suggestions from the stands; then it was some crazy old man who just started showing up at baseball practice one day; so now, sure, let’s let the janitor do it, why not. And what intriguing advice he has! Micah, the key to basketball glory is to be loud and obnoxious, like your sister! You know, one I was just hitting on! Yes, you’re right to be sweating freely.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/14/10

OK, this is officially the saddest and weirdest Funky Winkerbean yet, and it’s a strip that pretty much specializes in sad and weird. “Crazy” Harry lives up to his nickname, telling Mopey Pete that only here in this dingy pizza parlor is he allowed to verbalize any happiness whatsoever, because otherwise They will have some kind of unspecified but unpleasant vengeance to dish out. Briefly he imagines himself to be Linus in the pumpkin patch, with … an expression of happiness being insincerity, and the “happiness police” being the Great Pumpkin, I guess? Point is, the guy’s clearly insane, but somehow this rambling madness will convince Pete that Montoni’s is the place where he wants to wile away the time until his death from a massive coronary.

Mary Worth, 1/14/10

Meanwhile, over in the comic strip that specializes in weird and hilarious, we finally learn what drove apart Wilbur and Abby: a sinister gang of scowling pompadoured Richie Riches. Look at them, striding around with their jackets on and their collars defiantly open! What free-spirited young lady (or dead-eyed zombie, if panel two is an accurate depiction) could resist them, even she was already carrying another man’s child? Particularly if it was an unlikeable, Wilbury man’s child?

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 1/14/10

I’ll tell you right now: I’m kind of a fan of classic old radiators! We have them in our house, and I love ’em! And Bobbie, those radiators are nothing special. Come on, there’s not even any decorative work on the metal! Also, I used to kind of be a fan of crazy ladies! And relationships with them generally lead nowhere good. So I think “Um” is really the best response in this situation.

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Gil Thorp, 1/12/10

Say, let’s catch up with Steve Luhm, the promising young man who decided to turn his back on his college career and become a high school janitor! Why would an obviously clever person do such a thing? Today, we learn that Steve is looking for easy access to high school girls, who he wrongheadedly believes will be impressed when he superciliously corrects their basic geography mistakes. Sure, Steve, rub the back of your head bashfully if you will, but you’re obviously hoping that your easy command of body-of-water nomenclature will somehow compensate for your lack of earning power and social status and get you at least to second base with sexy vest girl there. Let me assure you right now that it will not.

One might forgive Steve if he is genuinely the compulsive geographer that he claims. The chances that anybody, even in the “halls of academe,” would be having a dismissive conversation about various seas are extremely low, and this might be the only chance he has to strut his stuff. But I’m thinking it’s more the terribly-awkward-advance thing.

Spider-Man, 1/12/10

Like Spider-Man himself, I’m pretty disoriented by today’s Spider-Man strip. Not only is our hero being abruptly forced in mid-banter to engage in actual heroics, but there wasn’t even any elaborate set-up establishing the extremely low stakes in this conflict. Will this battle somehow reduce Peter Parker’s already low income, which he doesn’t really need anyway because his wife is a movie star? Will it reveal his secret identity to his Aunt May, who probably already actually knows? Will it embarrass him in the press? Will it interfere with his enjoyment of NBC’s Thursday-night lineup?

I’m assuming that the radiating black lines in panel two represent tingling spider-sense, in which case said sense is even less useful than I have hitherto imagined it. Note that Spidey encountered Sabertooth when the former was idly web-slinging around town, only to be abruptly punched in the chest by the latter. If his sense of prescience is only firing off now, as a giant mutant with razor-sharp claws is verbally threatening to kill him while actually lunging at him, I’d have to imagine that this supposed super-power is more distracting than anything else.

Curtis, 1/12/10

Credit where credit is due: “I’m, like, the black Greg Louganis of ice skating” is extremely funny. I’m a little concerned that Curtis appears to have lost a finger on his gloved hand between panels one and two, however.

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Like most of you, I have some New Year’s traditions. Of course, yours probably involve some kind of self-improvement resolutions, which would be unnecessary for me because of my extreme awesomeness. Instead, I generally take the first post of the year to catch up on the action in my beloved continuity strips.

Panel from Dick Tracy, 12/24/09

Let’s start with Dick Tracy, which appears to be as unfamiliar with the social and economic realities of early 21st century classical music as it is with pretty much any other kind of realities you could name.

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/26/09

Over in Rex Morgan, the visit of June’s slobbish thieving white-trash cousin has driven this upper-middle-class family to the breaking point. Rex can absorb a lot of punishment, but for God’s sake don’t interfere with his precious, precious breakfast!

Panels from Apartment 3-G, 12/27/09

Against all expectations, Margo managed to enter a church without bursting into flame and crumbling into dust. This can only mean that, while we were wasting our time with the Professor’s boring love life, Margo beat God in a fight off panel.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/3/10

In Funky Winkerbean, the reformed alcoholic title character gazed at a bottle of champagne with more tenderness and affection than he’s ever shown any of his family or friends.

Judge Parker, 1/3/10

Just hours after acting as an unlicensed private investigator, Sam is ready to act as an unlicensed marriage therapist to violent rage maniac Rocky Ledge. One of Rocky’s employees, familiar with the man’s temperament, suggests that Sam will need protective gear before beginning the session.

Mark Trail, 12/28/09

In Mark Trail, Mark and Rusty managed to survive only because this gentle small-town sheriff was too much of a wimp to shoot an unarmed man in the back. I was all excited when it seemed like only Rusty’s head would be saved, leaving him a malformed skull in a jar that Mark would have to tote from place to place…

Mark Trail, 12/31/09

…but instead he just hobbled out of the doctor’s office Tiny Tim-style. His extreme cheerfulness in the face of his crippling is a testament to the powerful painkillers this rural medico has prescribed him.

Oh, and hey, what’s up with Gil Thorp? The Thorps typically celebrate Christmas Day by posing in a family tableau for our entertainment — see for example the entries from 2006, 2007, and 2008. But there’s a little something missing from this year’s installment, isn’t there?

Gil Thorp, 12/25/09

Yes, the holidays do come early when you somehow do away with your children, don’t they, Mimi? Presumably one of the pictures on the mantle there in panel two is of the two young Thorplings, off in their faraway boarding school or Bangladeshi garment factory or shallow grave or wherever they’ve been sent to give the Thorps senior more time to give each other presents and get romantical.

And speaking of presents, the strip give me a little gift last week; as it occasionally does, it brought back a wacky character from the past who only true obsessives like me will remember.

Gil Thorp, 12/28/09 and 12/30/09

In this case, it’s Steve Luhm, who was the protagonist in one of the very first Gil Thorp storylines I read, which was probably the one that got me to fall in love with the strip. Steve was assigned to romance women’s rights agitator Hadley V. Baxendale to keep her from disrupting the Milford patriarchy with her feminism; but instead, he ended up joining Hadley in her political activism, fighting for equal treatment for the girl’s basketball team. As you can see from that old strip, his hair used to be the most beautifully awful thing you’ve ever seen. Steve would later pop up with some hilariously misguided attempts to talk “street”. He got a better haircut and glasses after he went to college, but has not apparently improved his socioeconomic standing. Will this storyline be a biting commentary on the usefulness of a Women’s Studies degree in the post-collegiate world?

Spider-Man, 12/25/09 and 12/30/09

Spider-Man also celebrated Christmas, by having a fat, sweaty man stick a gun in our face. It’s like being robbed by Santa! Later, in keeping with the strip’s traditions, the storyline’s villain was defeated by one of his henchmen while Spider-Man stood by and watched.

But the crown the jewel of the past week or so has been the hot, hot illegitimate son action in Mary Worth.

Mary Worth, 12/25/09

On Christmas Day, Wilbur paused to look back to the past: when he had hair, a flat belly, and the same terrible taste in clothes, and his beloved became the first person in history to pair a belly shirt and an Easter bonnet.

Mary Worth, 12/28/09

But wait! It looks like the fruit of Wilbur’s youthful indiscretion has arrived! And he’s some sort of disheveled hobo!

Mary Worth, 12/29/09

Don’t worry, though: Wilbur can see the beautiful lady beneath the grime and stubble.

Mary Worth, 12/31/09 and 1/1/10

These two strips on either side of the transition to 2010 promise that we’ll be seeing father and son teaming up to become a pair of demon hunters, purging the earth of sinister supernatural forces once and for all.

Mary Worth, 1/3/10

Dawn, meanwhile, keeps her eye on the prize, the prize being Wilbur’s money. “Dad, the last thing you should be doing now is taking responsibility for your actions, especially when it could affect me! We can afford two hideous purple shirts a month for me now. I won’t settle for less than that! I won’t!” Wilbur’s so agitated that he appears to be attempting to chew off his own lower lip.

Yesterday I sent an email to my mother (who has become quite the Mary Worth reader, thanks to my site) asking if she thought this Kurt Evans character was really Wilbur’s son, and this is what she said:

It’s kind of hard to imagine anyone (especially that pretty blond) wanting to have sex with Wilbur!! Maybe he looked better back then. But what are these “demons” that he needs to lay to rest??!! And when does Mary pop in again?? It’s a puzzlement!

It is a puzzlement! A glorious puzzlement that we’ll all enjoy in the coming weeks, which makes me glad to be back in the blogging saddle. PLUS: When will the Curtis Kwanzaa story finally go completely bonkers, as we know it eventually will? We’ll find out as 2010 unfolds!