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Gil Thorp, 5/16/09

If I’ve been ignoring Gil Thorp, as I’ve been doing of late, you can pretty much just assume that it’s because it’s been pointless and boring (as opposed to its more entertaining mode, when it’s pointless and delightfully deranged). The baseball-season plot revolves around YouTube videos, and you know that any time a continuity strip takes on modern Internet culture, you’re in for a roller-coasters ride, if roller-coasters had no hills and didn’t move at all.

Making things worse is the choice of Bill Hawkins as this spring’s protagonist. Bill is a quiet, hard-working type who has managed to woo the Amazonian Molly despite his complete lack of a personality or sense of humor. We are left to wonder just what sort of rowdiness the guys were getting up to down there. Drugs? Orgy? Drug-fueled orgy? Thanks to Bill’s goody two-shoeism, we’ll never know.

(Speaking of Gil Thorp and pointless Internet culture, I keep meaning to mention that Marty Moon has a Twitter account, featuring important updates like “I’ve been growing my beard for charity. Was I supposed to tell anyone about it first?”)

Archie, 5/16/09

Ignore for the moment the joke in today’s strip (easy enough to do, right?) and take a look at that terrifying Archie-resembling ventriloquist’s dummy in the foreground of the first panel. What could its meaning or significance be? Where does one even go to get such a thing made, and how would notorious deadbeat Jughead pay for what must be a custom job? Does Jughead spend the nights on which Archie is out on a date with Betty and/or Veronica alone in his filthy room, acting out the part of his best friend through the magic of ventriloquism? It’s all so unsettling that I almost didn’t notice that Jughead also appears to have a copy of a magazine with his own face on the cover, presumably an Oprah-esque lifestyle publication for people who want to be more like Jughead.

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Gil Thorp, 5/2/09

Like any comic strip plot involving the YouTube and other newfangled computery whosits, our current Gil Thorp storyline will, it appears, be all about the idiocy of the Kids Today. Specifically, this plotline’s two designated assclowns, whose names I categorically refuse to look up, have been driven mad with fame-lust after witnessing Coach Thorp’s rise to accidental head-bonking YouTube stardom. Now they themselves will attempt to make it in the highly lucrative world of videotaped injuries, which is indicative of the Warped Values that the Youth have, as a result of the Internet. They should instead be enjoying solid, wholesome, character-building activities like competitive athletics, where if you injure yourself it will only be because you are giving 110 percent, and only a few dozen people will see it, unless you make it to the pros.

The fact that the title character of Napoleon Dynamite appears unbidden as the low-rent videographer in the first panel indicates the youth-scolding agenda of this comic. That piece of young-person-beloved hipster indie cinema baffles and angers the exact same set of people who are baffled and angered by YouTube antics, so why not roll them all together into one big ball of contempt for people under the age of thirty? It’s not like any of them read the newspaper anyway.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/2/09

Ha ha, so remember the other day when I said “bring it on” to the ménage à séance and the like? Well, uh, it turns out that I’m all talk. So, um, no more with the dead wife crying ghostly tears of ghost joy as her husband makes out with his new girlfriend, OK? Please? I … I apologize, I swear, just, you know, make it stop.

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Gil Thorp, 4/29/09

So it looks like the coming Gil Thorp storyline will involve old-school coach Gil taking on the terrible cesspool that is Internet sports blogging and fandom. People who get all their information from newspapers will finally learn about Websites with crazy, incomprehensible Web 2.0 names like “T.A.P. Room” run by jackasses with stupid haircuts who say things like “you’re en fuego, coach.” (Admittedly, anyone who says “you’re en fuego, coach” should in fact be killed.) It’s kind of too bad that reliable Thorp media nemesis Marty Moon isn’t behind this nonsense, but longtime readers know that any technology more advanced than a bottle opener baffles and terrifies him. One can only hope that these darn Intertube punks irritate Gil to the point that he unleashes a Buzz Bissinger-style tirade about how the Internet is a sewer and why don’t people read print media anymore and get off my lawn.

Cathy, 4/29/09

Here’s a sentence you don’t want to hear about any creative endeavor you’re involved with, ever: this strip has apparently decided to steal ideas from Marvin. In fact, if there was strip that could in my eyes make Marvin look good in comparison, it’s Cathy. Cathy’s in-laws are more grating and awful than Marvin’s grandparents, and they aren’t drawn anywhere nearly as well. On the bright side, there will probably be fewer jokes in this strip about people shitting themselves.

Dick Tracy, 4/29/09

I guess it’s sort of part of my job description to point out when insane, over-the-top violence takes place in Dick Tracy, so: look, it’s insane, over-the-top violence in today’s Dick Tracy! I’m not sure what I like more: the fact that Dick’s go-to surprise attack move is to rip off his opponent’s nose, causing blood and boogers to splatter all over his face, or the terrified look of the innocent couple in the second panel, who just wanted to gamble away what was left of their life savings at the roulette wheel in peace and totally didn’t sign up for any of this flying shards of glass and tumbling bodies crap, man.

Mark Trail, 4/29/09

Yeah, they’re really having to work pretty hard to “go after” Sassy, who appears to just be standing there waiting for them to pick him up. “Please, I don’t want to ever have to look at the deformed, neckerchief-wearing freak again!” he barks. “Take me with you on your ill-thought-out multi-state crime spree!”

(In other news: Hey, everybody! Here is a thing I wrote, about how they try to market computers to the ladies! Read it, won’t you?)