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Gil Thorp, 1/23/10

“Help” = all-too-interested-in-high-school-athletes creepster janitor Steve Luhm, obviously, whose stint “helping” the girl’s basketball team will turn out to be even less appropriate than his efforts with the boys.

Family Circus, 1/23/10

This is an illustration of the empathy-free horrors that the Keane Kids have become as a result of their monstrous upbringing, and a good reason why the Keane Kompound must be bombed, from a great height, for the safety of all mankind.

Sally Forth, 1/23/10

Having gone behind Ted’s back to loan family money to her deadbeat sister, Sally knows that she has only one chance to deflect her husband’s anger: to finally cater to his fantasy of having sex with Han Solo. Will Han shoot first in this scenario?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/23/10

Since Hootin’ Holler has long been neglected by the flatlander-dominated government and has never been serviced by any sort of municipal water supply, its impoverished rustic residents have only their own bodily fluids with which to bathe themselves.

Pluggers, 1/23/10

After a plugger dies of a massive coronary, the indelible dents his enormous ass left in the furniture make up the monument he leaves for his descendants to remember him by.

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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.