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Hi kids! This is Josh, back behind the wheel of the blog. Just wanted to thank Uncle Lumpy for his inimitable filling in (and, to reply to a few questions in the comments, I try to pay him, but he won’t let me!). Friday comics coming Friday, but a few random comics-related items of interest have come in that should be brought to your attention now!

We begin with our very first photo of Jungle Patrol-themed merchandise! Faithful reader Michele is proud to proclaim that lady cops and waitresses are in fact tougher than pirates, and indeed to prove it in this photo. Look at how cowed and nonthreatening that pirate looks at the mere sight of that fine t-shirt!

Also! The always awesome This Week In Milford blog alerts us to an exciting development! Comic artist Steve Bryant has a blog named Atomic Tiki Studio, on which he says that he recently tried out as the new artist for Gil Thorp. He didn’t get the gig, but this does reveal to the world that the syndicate is in the market for a new Gil Thorp artist — so, aspiring comic drawing-types, start your submissions! Bryant also posts some of his tryout strips, which are drawn based on scripts from the current A-Train story arc. Interesting to see the gang with an entirely different look, though Gil himself looks a little too meaty for my taste. Damn it, the man’s supposed to be defined by a series of impossible straight lines!

Also! A faithful reader deep within the Sanford Herald of North Carolina points me to a blog post from his boss about the trials and tribulations of attempting to add new comics to a newspaper. It’s pretty revelatory as to why exactly there’s so much legacy cruft out there.

Also! And finally! Another faithful reader sent me a link his own Apartment 3-G fan art. Yes, it’s safe for work, you sickos. Enjoy!

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Gil Thorp, 1/29/07

I dare you to try to explain panel two of today’s Gil Thorp without using the words “physically impossible,” “insanity,” or “mescaline.” I dare you. I’m not a big expert on basketball or anything, but I’m pretty sure that “setting a screen” does not entail lunging at the dude with the ball and attempting to karate-chop him so that the ball goes flying up into the air and then bounces off of the featureless void in which you find yourself floating. Seriously, if I were the A-Train, I’d steer well clear of that whole scene too.

Panel three may look like an instance Coach Gil’s magnificent wrath, but in fact he just has to appear to care about his teams for the first few weeks of each season so that he doesn’t get fired. Don’t worry, by the time the playdowns roll around, he’ll have retreated to the bleachers, more than willing to let some hobo offer incomprehensible advice about pick and rolls or whatever.

Six Chix, 1/29/08

Hats off to one-sixth of Six Chix for sharing one of my pet peeves. To expand on this complaint, I offer this piece of advice to expectant parents: In all probability, your child upon birth will already have a perfectly good last name. Why saddle him or her with a second one where the first name should be? Especially to be avoided are last names of former U.S. presidents (e.g., “Carter,” “Madison”) or Canadian prime ministers (e.g., “Mackenzie” and variants).

I note actually that the Chic (Chik?) responsible for today’s Six Chix is in fact Margaret Shulock, who also writes Apartment 3-G. Perhaps this is why, for all their other faults, the bland lookalike love interests of that strip at least don’t suffer from the terrible last-name-as-first-name affliction. Though if Lu Ann’s cousin Blaze is any indication, our quizzical bespectacled lady might be about to say, “If it’s a boy, why not name him after a famous lady stripper instead?”

Shoe, 1/29/08

Who is “Charlie Crone”? Why is January 29th his “day”? Why does Shoe alone among all media outlets dare to commemorate whatever he did or whoever he is? Is he still alive, and if so does he appreciate his name floating aimlessly over a sofa from which a bird-man tells a terrible iPhone joke (like there’s any other kind) to his miniskirted bird-lady therapist? Google has no answers to any of these questions, but perhaps you, my faithful readers, do!

Momma, 1/29/08

Look, I’d like to believe that I’m emotionally capable of dealing with Momma cartoons that allude to the title character’s sex life, but as it turns out, I’m not, so let’s not publish any more of them, OK? It would help, obviously, if there were some kind of joke in the strip, since that would keep our minds from otherwise orbiting helplessly around the words “emptiness,” “fill,” and “stuff.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/29/08

Fortunately, I long ago learned to emotionally deal with cartoons that allude to Niki’s sex life — fortunately because I imagine we’re going to keep on seeing them.

Pluggers, 1/29/08

Wow, it’s yet another Pluggers conceptual repeat, this one harkening back to one of my favorites of all time. So, does it turn out that “a classic” means that this is a new submission of an old idea but we’re redrawing it?

I actually spent a little bit of brainpower this afternoon trying to decide which of the two pawn-shop themed Pluggers was grimmer. On the one hand, in the one from July of ’06, you get a better look at the bankrupt man-beast’s face and can see how depressed he is. On the other, in that older panel Rhino-Man is hocking his tiny TV, which, let’s face it, is a perhaps nothing more than an agent of his couch potato-ization; perhaps having to give it up will inspire him to get out of the living room and take chances in life! Bear-Man’s saxophone, on the other hand, probably represents his only creative outlet, or maybe his long-ago dreams of being something more than a plugger, and now he’s realized that those feelings are for people with self-worth, not for him. So I’m going to have to give today’s panel the win.

Oh oh, wait — what if that’s Bear-Man’s kid’s saxophone? And he’s thinking “Now I’ll be able to afford my next payment on our TV, and I won’t have to listen to that racket!” Bonus points!

Unrelated to any of these but awesome: A few threads back, faithful reader ChattyGenes posted a funny Annie song spoof, which faithful reader mollificent then recorded and posted to YouTube! Hilarious and excellent all around! (Note that the YouTube “video” is really audio only.)

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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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