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Gil Thorp, 3/24/08

Hooray, the A-Train and his moppet siblings won’t be whisked off to some Dickensian workhouse by Social Services after all! And it’s all thanks to local drunkard Marty Moon, who shook off his unwavering hatred of Milford athletics to heroically perpetrate fraud against the government agency that protects our children from situations just like this. I hope he didn’t smell too much like tequila and those pine-scented car air fresheners that he uses to try to cover up the tequila smell!

I’m a regular Gil Thorp reader, and I too don’t know why Marty Moon might owe Andrew a favor. It’s possible that I missed it in the strip’s usual frenzied storytelling, but I think the key is in Maureen (or whoever)’s rather precise formulation in panel three: not “He owed Andrew a favor” but “I told him he owed Andrew a favor!” Marty probably assumed that he would once again have to follow up on boasts he made during an alcohol-fueled blackout.

Mark Trail, 3/24/08

So, we already knew that the winner of Woods and Wildlife’s Win A Free Puppy From Mark Trail Wearing A Suit contest was “sick,” but we didn’t know that she was suffering from a broken heart (or, as the DSM-IV refers to it, “296.2x: Major Depressive Disorder, Single Episode”) due to her parents’ divorce. Fortunately, she’ll soon be getting just the cure for that: individual and family counseling under the care of a licensed therapist who specializes in working with children a free puppy! She will frolic and play with him all day, and name him “Zoloft.”

Actually, little Madeline has been lying there like that unmoving for the entire duration Mark’s conversation with her mother; her mom, not a trained medical professional, may have mistaken death for sadness (a common error). That would be something that not even a free puppy could cure, but maybe Mark could leave the puppy with Madeline’s mom to cheer her up a little.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/24/08

No matter what the medical crisis or the task force, Rex always volunteers to check out the high school locker rooms first. You can never be too careful!

Slylock Fox, 3/24/08

SCANDAL! Today, we learn that Slylock only maintains his reputation as the greatest detective on the force by reckless use of home-brewed and experimental performance-enhancing drugs. Is this the lesson we want to give our children: that if you want to be the smartest, you’ve got hit the books — and the needle?

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Apartment 3-G, 3/21/08

Ha ha, Margo fleeing in panic from human affection will always be hilarious to me. Lu Ann is really making a go of it, though — it looks like this is less an attempted hug and more a running tackle. Margo has her deadly pointing finger deployed in defense, ready to take out an eye if that’s what it takes.

For Better Or For Worse, 3/21/08

What’s the best reason to pledge a lifetime commitment to someone, and to have a big, expensive wedding with several attendants? A desire to share your love with your family and friends? Ha ha, no, silly, it’s revenge.

Gil Thorp, 3/21/08

That’s supposed to by Tyler Jay? Say what you will about the previous artist, but he was at least able to conceive of two spit-curled characters in the same strip. On the other hand, maybe Tyler’s new ’do, which appears to be heavily shellacked, is meant to serve as a final defense measure if the urge to club himself again became overwhelming.

Marmaduke, 3/21/08

Marmaduke has recently killed and eaten a leather daddy, a go-go dancer, and an aerobics instructor, and is wearing a few items of their clothing as grisly trophies.

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Gil Thorp, 3/18/08

OK, ever since the Gil Thorp artist change, I’ve been able to accept that the vaguely flat-topped Robert Mitchum lookalike in the COACH sweatshirt is supposed to be Gil. But you will never, never convince me that the skinny, brush-cut dude in the COACH sweatshirt in panel two is Assistant Coach Kaz. Never, you hear me? Where’s the classic Heat Miser ‘do? The pearl earrings? The hairy forearms and brutish fists? This is a travesty beyond imagining.

Oh, also, Andrew and his little siblings are about to be put into foster care because “the man” says that it’s not OK for children to raise themselves. Presumably the Gil and Kaz stand-ins will cook up some web of lies that will prevent the sinister social services fascists from caring for the kids’ well-being; perhaps it will involve convincing them that Andrew’s “teenage” friends in panel three are actually his 35-year-old aunts, which from the looks of it shouldn’t be hard.

Apartment 3-G, 3/18/08

Margo is no doubt backstage chewing her single glove in rage and frustration as Lu Ann wastes her coveted Girl Talk slot by blathering on all moon-eyed about how swell her talentless junkie boyfriend is. Still, it’s really Margo’s own fault for trusting her air-headed roommate to go on TV without careful coaching. And for using Lu Ann’s embarrassing carbon monoxide poisoning as the selling point for her bland art in the first place. When things go spectacularly wrong, it’s usually a safe bet to blame it on Margo’s desperate scheming, is what I’m trying to say.

Mary Worth, 3/18/08

“For the moment, the mutant super-breath power we shared was a secret between the two of us. But we knew that someday, it would be the instrument of our revenge against a world that had been cruel to us for too long.”

Pluggers, 3/18/08

Pluggers are subject from birth to relentless propaganda and conditioning, so that by the time they’re eight, they suffer from crippling nostalgia for a world they never knew.