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Hey kids! Comments of the week coming up, but two items of interest first:

• Over at This Week In Milford, the Internet’s premier Gil Thorp-focused blog, the results are in for the Best Panels of 2007! And now voting is open for the Worst Panels of 2007. What distinguishes a “good” Gil Thorp panel from a “bad” one is a debate best left to professional art critics and philosphers, but you should nevertheless make your voice heard.
• Though the earlier tech difficulties seemed to have cleared up for most, I’m still getting scattered reports (well, OK, one report, but such a report usually presages more out there) of problems posting. Feel free the e-mail me if you’re one of the unlucky few and I’ll try to figure out what’s up.

And now, without further ado, this week’s COMMENT OF THE WEEK! It just slipped in under the wire:

“Only two cookies? Girl, if I could hold a knife I’d cut you.” –Johan

And the ever-funny runners up!

“Man, what a fishing trip. I bet Niki’s mom’s skanky meth-cooking boyfriend is starting to look pretty good in retrospect. And once Rex blows up the still, in an uncanny echo of the meth lab explosion that nearly killed his mother, post-traumatic stress disorder and a phobia for (or rather a rational, well-founded fear of) grown-up men is going to be Niki’s inescapable destiny, if he survives at all.” –mcmc

“But what I really want to know is how you can play basketball when your entire school is built on a 25-degree slant. Is this what’s known as a ‘home court advantage?'” –Electro

“[Gil Thorp] has amply represented neurotics and sociopaths. Andrew is a venture into psycopathy. Marty Moon will die.” –prospero

“Hey there John, buddy, as a former bachelor married to a busy woman I want to introduce you to a startling new Culinary Development. It’s called ‘chips and dip’. You can buy these in the store, and they are easy to serve. Open the bag. Open the jar. If you are feeling ambitious, pour one or both of them into a bowl. Problem solved, my friend. Oh, and you can also buy wine or soft drinks at a store. You can even purchase ice, my friend. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about some specialty store in New York. There are a whole bunch of conveniently located stores that populate most neighborhoods. We’ll call them ‘convenience stores.’ Just pop into one of them and pick up these items. It should only take five or ten minutes. Your guests will thank you!” –Poewar

“This ‘Jungle Patrol’ plot promises to be as chock full of twists and turns as Peter Parker shopping at an Old Navy for seven months while his Spidey sense goes haywire because he forgot to leave his costume at home and can’t try on cargo pants.” –Benicillin

“In the Winkerverse, perhaps ‘band directors’ widows’ is not a euphemism. I wouldn’t be surprised if band directors drop like flies there, succumbing to cancer, freak accidents, and diabetes, the latter of which would explain the beer and M&Ms … it’s an altar.” –Frinkenstein

“I had the same thoughts re: public transportation when I read the strip this morning, but then I remembered: have you ever tried to deal with the crowds in a busy city 16 days after midnight on New Years Eve? Impossible.” –LogopolisMike

“To me, the fact that Maureen caught fire — and that the ‘fire’ is covered up by a narration box — means only one thing: She really caught fire. She’s going to go to the ER with her hands burned beyond repair and that alien looking girl with chopsticks in her hair is going to irreparably injure her hands in a gesture of solidarity.” –pleinedepoisson

“Apparently Dr. Drew speaks to himself in cliches and adolescent angst, always an attractive quality in a man.” –Burning Prairie

“I like the narration box in the first panel of Gil Thorp, and I hope other strips start adopting the formula ‘[name of character] catches fire, and [resulting consequence]’ for their own narration boxes. ‘Tommie Thompson catches fire, and no one notices for several days.’ ‘Mary Worth catches fire, and thousands emerge from their decades-long enslavement, blinking and hesitant, as if waking from a dream.’ ‘Mike Patterson catches fire, and jubilant throngs flood the streets.’ Wouldn’t that be neat?” –OtherOpus

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Mark Trail, 1/19/08

That plane, for those of you not keeping up at home, is circling Mark because its passengers plan to kill him, and really, why wouldn’t they. Not only is he slowly making his way back to the nearby town that everyone keeps creepily referring to as “the community” (which makes it sound like some vaguely hippie-like cult compound) in order to drop a dime on the suddenly-not-dying-of-brain-cancer Luke Wilson, but he’s also annoying as hell, with his word balloon in panel two being representative of the sort of idiot patter he’s been keeping up for the benefit of nobody in particular. If Mark Trail were the sort of strip that provided animals with thought balloons, Andy’s would be saying “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP” right about now. He’ll no doubt come to Mark’s rescue anyway, but Luke Wilson’s henchmen (fun phrase you probably won’t see in People magazine anytime soon: “Luke Wilson’s henchmen”) would do well to try to make the enormous canine a better offer. Since we’ve had hints that their “hunting and fishing camp” is a cover operation for some kind of monstrous crime, perhaps Andy can be wooed with the promise of all the human flesh he can eat, starting with that of his erstwhile owner.

Phantom, 1/19/08

“…uh, who I just remembered has kind of a thing about remaining unknown! Don’t worry, girls, they’ll be able to identify your bodies from all the skull marks.”

Gil Thorp, 1/19/08

Oh, Andrew! I know you’re no Clambake — you’re not even a self-clubbing Tyler — but I am beginning to fall for you a little bit. Look, he even refers to himself as “the A-Train” in his own internal monologue! Mercy.

I think the text in panel two was accidentally left in Narration Box Italic. It’s kind of surprising that the rigorous Gil Thorp quality control team didn’t catch that.

Lockhorns, 1/19/08

I’m not sure what’s sadder: that Leroy and Loretta’s social life is based around a dollar-a-day DVD rental from the public library, or that she thinks that a three-dollars-a-day DVD from Blockbuster would be a sign that they had finally arrived.

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Gil Thorp, 1/15/08

I’m pretty sure this is the most effort ever put into painting some kind of psychological portrait of a Gil Thorp character. Usually these demented cubist weirdoes just do bizarre stuff like cut off their legs or hit themselves in the back of the head with a stick without any obvious motivation, but for some reason we’re getting the full backstory on what makes the A-Train tick. Sure, it’s nothing ground-breaking — oh my God, a star high school athlete is kind of competitive! — but I have to admit to really liking the final flashback panel, where Andrew savagely crumples up his own paper when he discovers that his girlfriend is smarter than he is. His twisted, angry face makes it look like this is the moment when Lex Luthor decided to become a genius supervillain. “I’ll show her who knows more about American history … when I rule America! MOO ha ha!”

Judge Parker, 1/15/08

This is a good example of how having different people writing and illustrating a strip can result in an amusing disconnect. Gloria is Sam’s longtime legal secretary or personal assistant or something non-lawyer-y, and it’s totally possible that the dialog as written is supposed to be taken at face value and Sam really does think of Gloria as his real partner in the lawyerin’ business. But his heavy-lidded smirky expression in the second panel pretty much makes him look like the most condescending citizen of Smugville, U.S.A., and Gloria’s little insert closeup seems to indicate that she isn’t buying it. “OK, he’s a prick, but at least I don’t have to worry about him sexually harassing me,” she seems to be thinking.