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Gil Thorp, 7/30/08

I can’t hold back any longer! Summer, my friends, is the season when Gil Thorp is traditionally freed from the shackles of its need to focus on boring high school athletics and truly finds its completely deranged natural level. 2006 brought us vicious fights between little girls and Ben Franklin, time-traveling golf grifter; last summer, we saw one-legged boxing follies and the glory and majesty of Coach Kaz, PI to the rock and roll Carole King. Thus, I’ve been patiently awaiting the end of the very special “Elmer gets deported” storyline so we can move on to the summer madness.

But now, as we’re only a few weeks away from the start of football practice, it’s becoming clear that there is no joy in Milford. Elmer’s springtime woes have just dragged right on into July, as he’s been recalled from his two-week Mexile to take a spot on the independent minor league Kalamazoo Kings. So instead of boring high school sports action, we’re getting boring vaguely professional sports action, and it’s boring. The faint hopes that were raised by my first read of panel two’s narration box — “It’s the Kings vs. the Chillicothe Pants” — were dashed by a closer inspection of the text. Even the red-hot lower back action in panel three can’t save this from snoresville.

For Better Or For Worse, 7/30/08

After the trivet incident, I’m hesitant to admit when I have to look up a word in the dictionary, but: mucilage? Really? Maybe the reason Lynn Johnston is retiring is because there will soon literally be no words left in the English language to pun upon.

“An adhesive solution” is no doubt the meaning intended here, but the dictionary built in to my computer has as the word’s first definition “a viscous secretion or bodily fluid,” so this actually may not be a pun at all. “What you’re feeling? That’s mucilage! Please, change me! My own daughter refused and said I was ‘gross!'”

Beetle Bailey, 7/30/08

Like the fact that he could see right up your skirt in panel two, for instance.

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/18/08

“What I’m trying to say is, will you wear this bald wig tonight? I’ll pay you!”

Gil Thorp, 7/18/08

“I think I’m drifting in the Sea of Cortez someplace, and I need his help getting ahold of the Coast Guard down here.”

Mary Worth, 7/18/08

“Like, now? Can we make another go right now? Because I think if I have to look at this orangey glop for one more second, I’m going to throw up.”

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Gil Thorp, 7/17/08

While it’s true that the U.S. military was under intense pressure to come up with an “outside the box” solution that would bring the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to successful conclusions, “colossally misguided” was one of the kinder things future strategists and historians would have to say about the decision to deploy the Milford Mudlarks against the Taliban.

Apartment 3-G, 7/17/08

Desperate to stay relevant and solvent in a rapidly changing society, the League Of Wandering Eastern Holy Men signed a three-year contract with Hallmark to deliver all of their gnomic advice and warnings in greeting card form.

Judge Parker, 7/17/08

Sam surveyed the scene and had to be pleased: the dunce-capped lawyers from Dewey and Cheatem stood with their heads slumped, reciting their bourgeois, parasitic crimes against the proletariat in a soul-broken monotone, so that $50,000 advance couldn’t be far off; plus, the peasants who were occupying the newly nationalized golf course were well on their way towards meeting their five-year-plan goals for steel production.

Spider-Man, 7/17/08

I was going to make a “surrender Dorothy” joke here, but then I realized that Dorothy Gale showed courage, loyalty, and initiative, and in no way deserves to be compared to Spider-Man — except in the sense that she defeated her nemesis by accident, which is probably the best that Peter Parker can hope for.