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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!

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Gil Thorp, 5/22/09

There is something hair-raisingly creepy about the last panel of today’s Gil Thorp, in which Gil’s empty chair faces a computer monitor lit up with pictures of his student athletes in happier, naughtier times. “There’s no such thing as privacy or anonymity anymore! You have to assume that your every move, your every transgressive behavior, is going to be scrutinized by prying eyes, watching silently as your delighted young faces light up when you press the limits of childhood and discover what it means to be an adult, breath quickening, palms sweating … uh … I gotta get back to my office. Shep, you’re in charge until I get back. Try not to get drunk or anything.”

Funky Winkerbean, 5/22/09

It’s true that infidelity usually ends in tears and shattered lives, so you’d think it would be a natural subject for a Funky Winkerbean plot. I don’t think it’s ever been tackled in this strip, though, possibly because affairs do generally begin with a jolt of joy, no matter how short-sighted and self-destructive that happiness might be. Thus, I’m curious to see whether or not the now remarried Funky and his ex are going to get it on in one of Montoni’s filthy plastic booths, or if their tryst will be nipped in the bud by weeping and impotence, only to be discovered and end in divorce anyway.

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Blondie, 5/20/09

You know, it used to be that Elmo served as a foil to draw out Dagwood’s barely concealed child-like side, with his penchant for cute little songs and whimsical nostalgia for mass unemployment and the like. But lately, it seems like he’s increasingly forced to stand in for The Kids Today, and specifically for the worst thing that The Kids Today do, which is texting. I suggest that Blondie should just take a solid week that consists entirely of Dagwood shouting “I HATE TEXTING! I HATE AND FEAR IT EVEN THOUGH I ONLY HAVE THE VAGUEST IDEA OF WHAT IT IS OR HOW OR WHY ONE DOES IT! IT MAKES ME FEEL OLD! I’M NOT OLD BUT TEXTING MAKES ME FEEL OLD! IT IS WORSE THAN GENOCIDE!” Once that’s out of his system, the feature can go back to what it does best (i.e., sandwich-based hilarity).

Pluggers, 5/20/09

Boy, the plugger chicken-lady sure is obsessed with her various surgeries, isn’t she? I look forward to this little plugger-plot escalating creepily. “Pluggers always like to keep their old stuff around — you never know when it will come in handy” will be the caption as the chicken-lady opens up a closet full of her jarred organs.

Gil Thorp, 5/20/09

Wow, so it looks like the current Gil Thorp storyline will be not so much “the Internet is terrible” but “don’t put pictures of stuff you don’t want people knowing about, such as pictures of you breaking the law, on the Internet, you stupid jackass.” This is actually a pretty useful lesson for today’s teenagers to learn, so it’s kind of too bad that none of them read Gil Thorp.

Dick Tracy, 5/20/09

“Get it? Because … that’s something you’d say in a poker game? And there’s sort of a card motif going on here? Anyway, long story short, I beat this guy to death.”