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Gil Thorp, 3/28/09

“Hey, Josh,” you’re probably wondering, “How did the winter Gil Thorp story finally play out?” Well, Gil managed to convince the Larkins (who are black) that it would be racist to move back to New York City to take a lucrative job that would help Mr. Larkin get his career back on track, and take the family away from the awful town where the kids are dating juvenile delinquents! Brenda Larkin marked the permanence of her presence in Loserville, USA, by blowing a key shot in the big game, thus keeping the Lady Mudlarks out of the playdowns, again. (The boys’ team’s fate wasn’t even discussed, so presumably they weren’t even in contention.) Then a career criminal, Ted Ex Machina, confessed to the convenience store hold-up that put all this in motion. And today, the one bit of whimsy and joy this plotline has given us — the fact that Ashley got robbed of a case of Nutboys (“It’s Nutty!”) — has been retroactively erased in Orwellian fashion. THEY WERE NUTBOYS, DO YOU HEAR ME? NOT ZAGNUTS! NUTBOYS! Now, for the love of all that’s vaguely wacky, let’s move on to baseball season.

In the final panel, we have confirmed what we’ve known all along: that Milford is a sort of Jerusalem for everyone who’s given up on doing anything with their lives.

Family Circus, 3/29/09

I’m not sure what’s sadder: that the Keanes view representational art as sacrilegious, and thus only decorate their otherwise blank walls with exuberance-restricting commands in terrifying blackletter font, or that said commands are so routinely disobeyed in the Keane Kompound, which is best known for the sounds of morons shrieking malapropisms.

Luann, 3/29/09

“You’ll be making crepes for me. While I wait in bed. Your bed. Which is where I’ll sleep, after I’ve captured and subdued you with my muscular, prehensile head-tail. Even now, it’s curling and uncurling at the tip, in eager anticipation of the moment when it will strike and wrap around you with its anaconda-like strength.”

Apartment 3-G, 3/29/09

“Aunt Carol thinks that being a child of divorce, like pretty much half of everybody in America today, and having a father with a lucrative medical career is the equivalent of growing up in a squalid refugee camp in the middle of a war zone! Aunt Carol has absolutely no God-damned sense of proportion.”

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Gil Thorp, 3/20/09

Well, it looks like it’s that time of the season again, when Gil realizes that whatever squad he’s doing a half-assed job of coaching at the moment won’t be going to the playdowns, so he needs to make a half-assed attempt to intervene in the most egregious of the stupid dramas playing out among his charges in order to vaguely justify his existence. (If he doesn’t do this at least once every three months, they’ll take his name off the strip entirely and call it The Magical, Boozy Antics Of Marty Moon.) This spring’s crisis involves the Larsons, who are quite reasonably worried that they’ve moved their kids from the warm, nurturing environment of New York City into some kind of degenerate hellhole where they’ve become romantically entangled with vest-wearing fans of wacky, theatrical surf-rock bands. Gil needs that coffee, as he’s almost certainly come straight to Chez Larkin from PUB, as his drunken logic indicates. “See, Ashley and Dylan are all right kids … but, uh, don’t judge Milford based on them! We’re better than they are! Not that they’re … bad … per se … uh, what’s with those rays coming out of your eyes? Are you trying to use your mind control powers on me?”

Luann, 3/20/09

Well, there you have it. The big TJ mystery that’s been percolating since at least last Thanksgiving has been … solved! All thanks to a paragraph of exposition crammed into a single panel during a porch-based conversation. That should prove wrong everyone who thought the resolution to this plot point would be prurient, or interesting.

Slylock, 3/20/09

What kind of message are we sending to the young people of today? Look at this irresponsible bird, giving birth to an out-of-wedlock egg and then just strolling casually off! Where is this supposed to be, the ladies room at Parrot Prom?

Family Circus, 3/20/09

The way this little mob of melonheads is gathering at the open doorway, all staring silently at their teacher in her new short skirt and listening to Billy’s slander, is making me nervous. Miss McElfresh is about to find out how they deal with the Sin of Pride here at the Keane Kompound. (Hint: It involves rocks. Many sharp rocks.)

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Mark Trail, 3/6/09

I’ve been trying, and failing, to come up with a funny about what appears to be the terrible, terrible ending to this Mark Trail storyline, in which we get to see Patty, after months of living in obvious and sustained terror of her slap-happy, quick-trigger husband, groveling for his forgiveness. It’s OK, you see, because he took his medicine (in the form of some antlers to the solar plexus), and he only did it because he loved her too damn much! Ha ha ha! We should have all known that Ken would turn out to be a good guy because, hey, the man can trim off his facial hair like a pro. And now they’ll live happily ever after, until the murder-suicide.

Mary Worth, 3/6/09

Now, passive-aggressive psychological manipulation in relationships — that’s all good fun. “It also makes people check their common sense at the door! Emotions sometime override intelligent thought! Why, you can find yourself trapped with someone who isn’t as they seem, whose sweetness and light in public disguise their need to control and …” “Jeff, I’ve said repeatedly that Adrian will be fine — why are you still talking? Do you want to be banished back to first base for the rest of the month? Do you?”

Gil Thorp, 3/6/09

Good lord, look at the pupils on New Wave Hairstyle Girl Whose Name I Don’t Know in panel one. By “Ashley,” she clearly means “that enormous bag of Ecstasy I bought yesterday.”

Funky Winkerbean, 3/6/09

Teen Lesbian Locker Room Hookers — coming up next, on the Spice Channel.