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Gil Thorp, 8/5/08

Could Gil Thorp’s summer insanity at last be belatedly getting underway? That crazed look in Jimmy Hughes’s eyes in panel two is strangely reminiscent of what you’d see in the origin story of every supervillain ever. Are we about to learn that the cult hero status that comes with being on an extremely minor league baseball team is too much power for any man with legal permanent U.S. residence to handle? Will the prospect of toiling in the Tigers’ farm system for the next six years instead of getting a college education and a job with a 401K drive young Mr. Hughes mad with glory-lust? Will Gil step in to set Jimmy on the straight and narrow path back to humdrum normalcy, or does the five-minute walk to “Java Jive” represent the limit of how much he’s willing to care about his students during the off-season? Hopefully we’ll get answers, before football practice starts!

Gasoline Alley, 8/5/08

I’m quite proud of myself for successfully ignoring the Gasoline Alley storyline that just wrapped up, which featured painful hillbilly stereotype Rufus tangling with a painful French stereotype during the filming of a cat food commercial. I’m looking forward to the upcoming plot, though, as it appears to be ripped right from today’s headlines. Four dollar gas has driven our rustic protagonists to desperate measures! Perhaps Rover will be able to tweak his Eisenhower-era pickup so that it gets an incredible eight miles per gallon.

For Better Or For Worse, 8/5/08

John has obviously been spending way, way too much time hanging around his teenage daughter. For one thing, he’s slipping into adolescent Canadianisms like “hafta”. For another, he’s squirming and whining about putting on nice clothes like a fucking twelve-year-old.

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Mary Worth, 7/31/08

See, this is the sort of strip that people try to confront me with when I refuse to acknowledge that soap opera comics maybe might be a little bit boring. And yet how can you deny the tension that crackles out of these panels? Thrill as Mary and Toby half-heartedly argue over who will pick up the check! Shudder in anticipation as you try to imagine just what kind of paperwork awaits Mary back at her empty, lonely apartment! Gaze in wonder at a restaurant bill that contains only line items for “salad,” “stew,” and “dessert,” perhaps indicating that our ladies have lunched at the restaurant owned by Herb and Jamaal! It’s more exciting than taking a roller-coaster ride through a hail of gunfire while tweaking on crystal meth!

Gil Thorp, 7/31/08

It’s been repeatedly established that Elmer’s Spanish is no better than that of any other American-raised native English speaker who paid little or no attention in his high school Spanish class, so Kings manager Fran Riordan’s “let’s put all the brown guys in one hotel room” is mildly troubling. More troubling, though, is the gang sign he’s flashing in panel one, which may indicate that this so-called “minor-league baseball team” is really a violent organization dedicated to the sale of illegal narcotics. “WEST SIDE, BOYEEE!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/31/08

Taken in isolation, the second panel looks like Rex asking if a concerned citizen’s cellar could be used as a makeshift quarantine ward where the MRSA-infected youth could be locked up until the crisis is solved, possibly by their deaths. But since this is Rex Morgan, M.D., we know from the larger context that he actually just likes having a lot of teenage boys available in one easy-to-find location.

Marmaduke, 7/31/08

Today’s Marmaduke is funnier — by which I mean that it’s actually kind of funny — if you read it in light of the theory that Marmaduke’s owner is actually Hitler on the lam. “Argh, electoral democracy is a degenerate failure! When will these dummkopfs learn that the Volk’s will is best expressed through a single party headed by a single, unquestioned leader?” This scenario still doesn’t explain why he’s only sitting three feet away from his television, though.

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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.