Post Content

Gil Thorp, 6/4/09

I’ll say this about the current Gil Thorp storyline: it’s managed, with a certain degree of skill, to keep you guessing as to what it’s about. With each new incident, it becomes clear that its dramatic ambit is wider than you think. It’s not just about dumb YouTube antics or underage drinking or Facebook or wacky locker-room pranks. At this point, the theme appears to be that teenagers are goofballs who make stupid decisions, and maybe you don’t want to create an electronic record of those decisions? (Though who knows, perhaps by next week the only unifying thread will be “all mortal existence is folly.”) Obviously that cell-phone photo of Molly will soon be circulated from giggling loser to giggling loser around the school, and she’ll be humiliated because there’s absolutely nothing more embarrassing than a picture of you hanging out with a bunch of your female friends in a not-particularly-revealing cardboard bikini. Molly will have no choice but to become a nun after the soft-carton-drink-bikini-sexting that’s about to ensue here. If only she’d learned from her incredibly dull boyfriend to avoid rowdiness at all costs!

My favorite person in this strip is actually the gal in the background in panel two, soaking up the imaginary approbation. “Yes, I helped fashion a pointless, non-functional bathing suit out of soda can boxes! Look at me, I’m just like Jesus!”

Mark Trail, 6/4/09

Wait, Mark couldn’t read the name of the company on the barrels when he was, you know, standing right in front of them, taking pictures of them, but he can read it now that he’s back at home and looking at the developed photos? Is he so committed to being a rugged outdoorsmen that, while out of doors, he refuses to display any non-rugged qualities, like literacy?

Post Content

Crock, 6/2/09

While I do not begrudge anyone a good ass-looking, I strenuously object to sexuality of any sort being discussed in the mangled world of Crock. Today’s panel has a little something for everyone. Longtime readers of the strip will, from long familiarity with all of these hateful characters, object to any of them contemplating eroticism of any sort, as it is better than any of them deserve. Naïfs just stumbling onto the strip by fateful accident will be traumatized to think that anyone would put the words “Maggot has better buns” in that particular sequence. And those of a philosophical bent can contemplate the quality scale on which one is expected to assess buns, if not their packaging.

On an unsettling art note, it appears that the artist seems to have long forgotten that Grossie is supposed to be wearing a niqab, and, apparently relying only on drawings of her from the front as a guide, has executed this profile shot under the assumption that her nose is two different colors.

Gil Thorp, 6/2/09

How to explain this: I think, somewhere in the bowels of the rapidly crumbling print newspaper industry, someone got wind of the fact there was a daily narrative feature, with pictures, half of the characters in which are physically fit teenage girls. “We need to play up the sex appeal!” came the barked orders of someone who’s spent the last decade fighting a holding action against Craigslist. And so Gil Thorp, confused but eager for relevance, lurched into action, swinging away from the “OH MY GOD THE FACEBOOK” story it had been following in a sort of desultory fashion and leaping at “sexy girls try on each other’s swimsuits SEXXXY!” This being Gil Thorp, of course, it will be awkward and uncomfortable-making, though on the bright side it will involve very little Shep Trumbo, unless things go horribly awry.

Archie, 6/2/09

Good lord, the mini-Archies are proliferating! If Jughead’s Archiform marionette weren’t unsettling enough, we now know that Betty has a plush li’l Archie to console herself with when Archie is off marrying Veronica for her money or whatever. More concerning to me, however, is how committed Archie is to leaning smugly while talking on his cell phone, even when there doesn’t actually appear to be anything for him to lean against. His pose in panel three, with one foot on the ladder, one foot hanging in empty space, one hip vaguely rested against a thin shelf, and one elbow stuck out into mid-air, is a workplace injury and subsequent worker’s comp claim waiting to happen, the paperwork for which will make Archie’s supervisor regret his decision to quit his job as a Tom of Finland character.

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 5/27/09

One of the (many, I swear!) things I like about Gil Thorp is its tendency to keep once-starring players around as background characters for as long as their fictional high school careers last. So, during basketball and baseball season of 2008, Andrew “The A-Train” Gregory (whose name was meant to taunt one of the strip’s younger readers) was an obnoxious, egomaniacal superjerk who dominated the plotlines with his self-aggrandizing antics. Now, though, he looks positively cuddly when compared to prank-happy megadouche Shep Trumbo. Presumably all of the strip’s readers will forgive Andrew’s past irritations if he makes good on his promise to choke the life out of Shep with that disturbingly realistic toy snake.

Marvin, 5/27/09

What is Marvin’s greatest affront to human dignity? This is a complex question that can probably only be fully answered by a duly constituted war crimes tribunal, but here’s my take. One of the things that make babies so enchanting is their innocence, their complete unfamiliarity with the world; everything is fascinating and delightful to them, even something as mundane as a household toaster, because it’s so new. But Marvin completely lacks this quality; instead, he’s a paradoxically cynical baby, viewing the world with heavy-lidded ironic distance. He’s a monstrous adult-infant hybrid: the worst aspects of grown-ups (emotional numbness, sarcasm) and babies (squalling, pants-shitting). He should be left on a hillside to be eaten by coyotes.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/27/09

This cartoon does a pretty good job of illustrating how difficult it must be to manufacture clothing in Herb and Jamaal-world, where individuals that are notionally of the same species can exhibit radically different physical characteristics. For instance, a baseball cap that fits snugly on the tip of Jamaal’s oblong skull can only balance precariously atop Herb’s spherical cranium.

Mary Worth, 5/27/09

Say, do you know what sort of people would be easy to snare in some sort of con? People who place their absolute trust in someone based on one ten-minute meeting and a relationship with his family that ended decades ago, that’s who!