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Gil Thorp, 7/31/09

I was hoping that Marty DeJong’s wrath was going to cause some actual introspection on the part of Gil on how he handles his young charges, but what with Kaz’s quick quips, I see now that these meatheads are completely incapable of self-reflection of any sort without drastic measures. So: remember how at the beginning of The Sixth Sense, Donnie Wahlberg breaks into Bruce Willis’s house and totally kills him, but he doesn’t realize it, and he’s, like, a ghost throughout the whole movie? Well, what if that’s what’s going to happen here? Marty DeJong has in fact already burned down Thorpe Manor, killing the entire Milford coaching staff. Since they very rarely interact with the student athletes they ostensibly coach, and much of the actual day-to-day coaching work is performed by random community members who wander in off the street, it may take them until the middle of basketball season to realize that they’re dead; when that moment comes, they’ll finally walk off into the light in order to reach the next plane of existence, greeted by a white-robed Clambake.

Dick Tracy, 7/31/09

“Yeah, I mean, she’s dead already, so belay that order to do anything urgent about it. We’ve all seen a dead body or twelve, am I right? I know I have. C’mon, these people paid good money for their circus tickets, on with the show! You might want to throw a blanket over her, if you can find one around somewhere; no big deal, otherwise.”

Curtis, 7/31/09

I haven’t mentioned how Curtis has been all Oedipal and creepy and weird for the last two weeks, with Curtis and his dad fighting for Diane’s attention with dueling ailments, but boy howdy has it been all Oedipal and creepy and weird. At least most of the strips have contained actual jokes, or reasonable joke substitutes; today’s strip seems to be under the impression that being Oedipal and creepy and weird qualifies as a punchline in and of itself.

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Pardon me for interrupting this magical trip to Charley’s sex palace, but I do want to briefly feature several items that may be of interest to you, because I wrote them! First, and perhaps most exciting, is a new thing I’m doing for Newsweek’s Human Condition blog! It’s called “MediCinema” and can best be described as “like the Comics Curmudgeon, except for prescription drug ads.” Check it out! It could be a one-off thing or it could be a regular feature, depending on its reception, so receive it well, please!

Also! I wrote a couple of possible interesting things for ITworld.com yesterday — one about funny error messages going public by mistake and one about techies changing jobs to flee from terrible tools. Check ’em out, if you’re into that sort of thing!

Finally, to prove that it isn’t all about me — for those of you who need more detail on the whole Marty DeJong backstory in Gil Thorp, turn to the incomparable This Week In Milford blog, which has a good summary and links to the DeJong-related comics from 2003 (with special appearances from a young Brent Raptor). Turns out Gil sort-of-but-not-really advised Marty to skip college and head for pro baseball. How’d that work out? Not well, as apparently a modern high school education doesn’t even prepare you to be a decent arsonist.

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Mary Worth, 7/28/09

Oh, for … are you telling me that Delilah isn’t even going to be allowed to enjoy some revenge flirting, never mind revenge sex, before having her nose rubbed in the festering singularity of human degradation that’s at Charley’s core, obscured by his smooth moves and his chest hair and his stripey shirt? Delilah is clearly not used to seeing the female form in anything less than a jumpsuit (she turns the lights off when she showers, obviously) and has been brought to the brink of vomiting by whatever piece of specialized artwork Charley has hanging in his foyer. This masterpiece is kind of hard to see, but let’s zoom in for a closer look:

My God, it appears to be a female human wearing a one-piece bathing suit! Do you expect us to believe that depraved monsters walk among us who actually collect “that sort of thing”? What do we pay taxes for if not to ensure that these sex-demons are rounded up, chemically castrated, and interned behind barbed wire in pervert camps out in Montana somewhere? Won’t somebody think of the children?

Oh yeah, the children! Charley can hang up repulsive cheesecake shots (and, worse, decadent modern art like the painting in panel two) because his love pad is a no-kids zone, which obviously makes him an inhuman devil-thing! Remember, kids are for “other people” — specifically, people who don’t live in an all-adult condo community like Charterstone, where children are specifically forbidden in rules laid down by the board. Hmm, you know, there’s another character in this strip who was married but apparently lives a childfree lifestyle … doesn’t seem the worse for it … older lady … doesn’t have her character assassinated … can’t quite place her …

Wait, I’m s sorry, I was letting my mind drift from the core message of this strip, which that Charley is a child-hating sex criminal with terrible taste in art, and that Delilah will soon enough be running away from his wall-mounted centerfolds and back to her lonely, empty apartment, where at least her virginal eyes are shielded from such horror. Let’s take another look at that painting so we can condemn it further, shall we?

You know, now that I’m looking at it again, it seems that the lampshade is almost the exact same flesh tone as the model in Charley’s awful picture. Maybe that’s what’s got Delilah so worked up — it’s part of Charley’s “ladies I have skinned” collection. “Kids are for other people, Delilah! Sure, there are kid specialists, but there just isn’t enough raw material in your average child to make a nice lamp or even a book binding. Frankly, I don’t have the patience to capture enough to meet my needs!”

Gil Thorp, 7/28/09

Hey, Gil Thorp, you know how excited I was when I realized you’d be bringing back beloved characters from the past? Well, I’d appreciate it if they weren’t from before December of 2004, when I started reading this strip. Fortunately, faithful reader dannymo has the story, which, in a nutshell, is that Marty DeJong led Milford’s baseball team to the last championship anyone can remember, but ruined his arm in the process, leading him angry and brooding and hungry for fiery revenge against Coach Thorp. I predict Gil will somehow get him to coach the hobo little league, completely displacing Ted Pearse, who will respond by burning Gil’s house to the ground.

Marmaduke, 7/28/09

I’m a little concerned about precisely what vaguely spherical head-sized object Mrs. Hitler has in that sack; I worry that it is, in fact, a severed human head, and this is part of some plan of hers to teach her unruly dog a modicum of manners. “Look, he’s got to understand that human heads are not toys! It’s the only way he’ll learn!”