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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/5/08

Oh, Rex Morgan, M.D.! You send us into the weekend with a double dose of delight! Should we snicker at the image of Rex headed down to the docks this evening, offering up his middle-class body to the rough affections of those salty sailors, just off the boat and ready for action? Or should we giggle at the thought of Lenore tying Rex to the bedposts in the “captain’s cabin,” demonstrating just the sort of submissive attitude she demands of her cabin boys? Darn it, this is America, where you can have it all, so I choose both.

Ziggy, 9/5/08

Ha ha, remember a few months ago, when Ziggy picked up a seashell and got a virus alert? Or three weeks ago, when he picked up a seashell and discovered that it was a podcast? Well, uh, it turns out that today it’s a push poll. What will it be tomorrow? Tune in to Ziggy to find out!

Herb and Jamaal, 9/5/08

Every once in a while, I think, “Do I make fun of Herb and Jamaal a little too much for being nonspecific.” Then I see stuff like this and think “No, no I don’t.” Now see here, Herb and Jamaal: I know that thirty years from now, we might use something entirely different to remove hair from whatever surface future fashion dictates be depilated, so you might try to just deploy some generic and nonexistent word that means “object that shaves” to avoid any future anachronism, but: they’re called “razors.” Razors, damn you. Razors.

Oh, it’s also called “cripplingly strict adherence to prescribed gender constructs even when they interfere with your everyday life.”

Gil Thorp, 9/5/08

So it turns out that the aforementioned athletics-kiboshing ailment is [music sting] a HEART CONDITION! I wonder how Matt’s heart will hold up when he finds out his girlfriend is a seven-foot tall drag queen named “Candy LaChance.”

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Gil Thorp, 9/2/08

Wait … in panel two … is that … YES! COACH KAZ’S EARRINGS ARE BACK! COACH KAZ’S EARRINGS ARE BACK! This, along with the shadowy figure lurking in the back of the equipment shed (no doubt with an axe) has me so excited that I’m willing to forgive the fact that in panel three we’re being shown word balloons emerging randomly out of GYM rather than some kind of crazy homoerotic mass “group physical” featuring dozens of teenage boys and the author of I Know This Much Is True.

By the way, any guesses on the Very Special Affliction that is keeping some player to be named later off of this year’s gridiron squad? Scabies? Testicular cancer? Bighandulism?

Funky Winkerbean, 9/2/08

Thank goodness for my faithful commentors, who informed us all that Susan Smith Westbrook was the student who pre-time-jump fell in love with mopey Les for some reason and tried to kill herself when he didn’t return her mopey advances. Naturally this strip will be completely baffling to anyone who isn’t privy to this information, even if, like me, they’ve been following Funky Winkerbean faithfully for the last three years. Anyway, Susan’s thousand-mile stare in panel three promises more psychotic hijinks to come. She looks like she’s spent most of her life fleeing across Darfur one step ahead of genocidal militias — or, you know, like she’s a character in Funky Winkerbean.

Archie, 9/2/08

At first I was going to guess that “SHOOOM! KA-BLAM!” represented Archie ka-blamming in his pants as he finally gets to first base with Veronica. But on closer inspection of panel three, I think that’s a transcription of the noises his spine makes as he attempts to twist around for optimal out-making while keeping his crotch pointed firmly away from his partner, as the strict puritan movie theater rules demand.

Mary Worth, 9/2/08

“Easy for you to say … since you’re sitting in front of a computer … and can just do exactly what you described with the touch of a button … oh, God, this so so horrible!” [uncontrollable sobbing, etc.]

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/2/08

“Yes, she’s a desperate, lonely old woman, possibly in the early stages of dementia! Better cash that check before someone responsible gets wind of it!”

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Gil Thorp, 9/1/08

Hey everyone! The incredibly long long boring long non-exciting long story of Elmer appears to have finally ended, with Elmer getting to stay in America because he has a new job doing bilingual outreach for the Kalamazoo Kings, even though it was repeatedly established that Elmer is entirely monolingual. But whatever! Don’t question it, or they’ll drag him back and try to explain away his happy ending some more.

Anyway, it’s September, which means it’s football season, which means that we get to see Matt Rogers and Jeff Ponczak head off to Central City to get a “football physical”, for some reason. Matt and Jeff (which sounds just like Mutt and Jeff — one’s short and one’s tall, get it) are a couple of nattily dressed buds who are no doubt destined to be this strip’s most lovable pair of totally platonic dude friends since Bill Ritter and Stormy Hicks. I’m sure there will be delightful antics, with more hilarious malapropisms from the Widow Ponczak, the batty Bratislavan!

Apartment 3-G and Blondie, 9/1/08

Since the harrowing real-life effects of drug abuse — the violence, the terrible mood swings, the neglect for hygiene and the resulting oozing open sores — are considered too intense to depict on the comics page, there’s only one way left to depict Alan as the desperate addict we all know he is: by establishing via a narration box and dialog that he was asleep in the middle of the afternoon! Damn you, demon dope! (Of course, we can’t actually show him sleeping, as that would be simply too shocking.)

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that I think Dagwood has been a junkie for quite a while now.

Gasoline Alley, 9/1/08

I was going to make fun of Gasoline Alley for taking a day off, but then I realized that the chain link fence depicted here has had more work put into it than a week’s worth of this strip’s usual hillbilly antics.

Pluggers, 9/1/08

You know, if you’ve gotta repeat a joke every four months or so, pluggers ain’t gonna hold it against you or nothin’.