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Hi and Lois, 4/1/08

Poor Hi! Sure, he hasn’t gotten more than a meager cost-of-living wage increase from that tightwad Froofram in years, but he’s gotten used to the lifestyle that his realtor wife’s huge commissions made possible during the go-go housing boom of the mid-naughts. Now that she hasn’t sold a house in months, Lois can only stare cross-armed at Hi’s $16 bottle of wine, knowing that it’s put a substantial dent in this month’s grocery budget. Only Sterno will help the Flagstons drink away their pain for the foreseeable future.

Judge Parker, 4/1/08

Poor Gloria! All she wanted to do was live out her lifelong fantasy of making it with a guy with no legs, but it turns out that hero Steve is not only damaged physically, but mentally as well. Sure, you can forgive a guy who had a mine planted outside of his hut and gets mysterious packages in the mail for being a little paranoid, but it’s clear that he’s going to see conspiracies in every nice gesture anyone does for him — and that he’s not ready for a relationship. Gloria will just have to console herself with her back issues of Stump Humper a little while longer.

Marmaduke, 4/1/08

One of the fun things I like to do with the comics is to come up a whole hidden backstory behind the gag-a-day features. For instance, I like to imagine that Marmaduke’s owner is actually Adolph Hitler, who faked his suicide, escaped from his command bunker to post-war American suburbia, and got a Great Dane. His former position as absolute ruler of a continent makes the petty indignities of life with Marmaduke all the more infuriating. Today, for instance, we can see on his hate-twisted fate that he would like nothing more than to send the impertinent policeman and the damn dog to a concentration camp, but as it is all he can do is wave his hand in the air and rage impotently. Is it a fitting punishment for his monstrous crimes? Not really, but it’s kind of fun to see.

Gil Thorp, 4/1/08

The “drama” of today’s strip — Gil sends hapless assistant to hush up overbearing parent, hapless assistant fails miserably — is lame even by Gil Thorp standards. Still, it’s always nice to see some Milford kids on the verge of tears.

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Marvin, 3/27/08

Yesterday, several commentors noted that Marvin and Bitsy (yes, Marvin’s dumb dog is named “Bitsy”) were conversing not with their usual thought-balloon-based psychic powers, but in ordinary word balloons denoting normal audible speech — or as normal as any such speech can be when being uttered by a baby and a dog. Naturally, because this is Marvin, I assumed that it was a result of the strip’s general slapdash halfassery, rather than than some momentous change in the inner universe of the characters. But today, we see that Marvin can in fact speak aloud to adults in complete (and rather pompously phrased) sentences. Why? Who knows? Who cares? It’s Marvin. At least they’ve quietly dropped the stupid text speak.

For Better Or For Worse, 3/27/08

Gosh, Liz, I wonder why it doesn’t feel quite right? Maybe because this whole process has involved you letting go of your own hopes, dreams, ambitions, wants, and personality, and now are just being buffeted along by everyone else’s opinions? Or maybe you’re talking about the dress itself, with its built-in whalebone corset, which feels very much not right as it jabs into your ribs.

Gil Thorp, 3/27/08

Hey, everyone, would you like to get ready for taco casserole at home? It’s easy! Here’s how:

• Dump a dozen hard-shelled tacos, with your choice of cheese, ground beef, salsa, and vegetables, into a saucepan.
• Pour in four cans of cream of mushroom soup.
• Stir over medium heat until mixture becomes a more or less undifferentiated, vomit-like mass.
• Pour into possibly leaky brown paper bag; hold sideways.
• Never, ever eat again, because the process has been made forever repellent to you by your experience with “taco casserole.”

Sally Forth and Pearls Before Swine, 3/27/08

Hey everyone, it’s a Sally Forth-Pearls Before Swine crossover! There’s very little I can say that would be funnier than Sally Forth writer Ces Marciuliano’s original blog post on the subject, so you should just go check that out now.

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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?