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Pluggers and Slylock Fox, 7/12/07

Pluggers are xenophobes. Hungry, hungry xenophobes.

I feel like there must be something of this dynamic going on in today’s Slylock Fox six differences, too. Why does Buzzy McFlatop harbor such simmering resentment towards the pizza delivery fellow? Presumably he rages inwardly because his children can’t get enough of that ethnic food imported to this great country by unwashed papist immigrants from the filthy Mediterranean countries. If only he could get decent, wholesome American fare delivered, like … um … venison? Turkey? I’m kind of at a loss.

Gil Thorp, 7/12/07

YEAH, BABY, I’M DIGGING MY GIL THORP SUMMER OF TOTAL INSANITY! Why won’t she give you a little kiss? Maybe it’s because she doesn’t feel like smooching the smooth, featureless skin on the front of your head, you no-faced freak. Fortunately, Walter Cronkite is here to come at you at a spatially baffling angle and smack you right in the spot where your mouth should be.

Blondie, 7/12/07

“Also, the front and the back are entirely different colors. Trust me, it’s all the rage this year. The Japanese have been wasting their time on lowering gas mileage, but Detroit’s been investing in the two-tone look.”

Mary Worth, 7/12/07

“Or, to put it another way, what can I do to you … with my penis? Wait, did I say that last part out loud?”

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Gil Thorp, 7/11/07

Ha ha! Oh, man, the Gil Thorp summer hijinks are getting started even more quickly than I could have hoped! I’m totally in love with Gail Martin, the “rock and roll Carole King,” as she was called yesterday; truly, nothing shouts “rock and roll” like a collared shirt and a long braid that you clutch dramatically to your chest while you belt out your non-hits and your banjo player grooves behind you. This looks exactly like the kind of scene where a brawl would break out, and I look forward to tomorrow’s weirdly proportioned and strangely angled fisticuffs. Since Kelly has a troubled past with guys with rage issues, this should provide excellent fuel for one of the eleven rapidly crosscut dramas that will be entertaining us until football practice starts up again.

Apartment 3-G, 7/11/07

Ruby’s dialogue says “funny Texan with more realistic ideals of beauty than these supposedly sophisticated New York City girls,” but her solemn expression in panel three, along with Tommie and Margo’s panicked exchange of glances, says “violent feederism.” In two weeks, look for the two of them to be tied to their chairs, their faces smeared with tangy barbecue sauce, begging for mercy, as Ruby says, “Nuh-uh, Maggie, you still only got one chin!”

Ziggy, 7/11/07

If you thought that the sight of a desperate, insane, bald dwarf with no pants jabbering about the dishonesty of inanimate objects while thrusting a fifteen-year-old household appliance at bemused service worker wouldn’t be funny, well, today’s Ziggy is here to be prove you wrong. I actually laughed aloud at this. Ziggy may continue to exist, as far as I’m concerned.

As I look at it more, I’m sort of hypnotized by the text in Ziggy’s word balloon. The symmetry between the sentence-initial “i” (lowercase, in defiance of all known typographical conventions) and the final exclamation mark, makes it look like he’s actually shouting “T lies!” in Spanish. Which, for my money, is even funnier.

Luann, 7/11/07

I’m only marginally less sick of Brad-Toni than I am of Curtis-Michelle, but this sequence is growing on me. If Toni ends up running off with uberskeeze TJ because of his cooking (or “cooking”) skills, I will be willing to forgive a lot that’s happened in the last few years.

Dick Tracy, 7/11/07

It just wouldn’t be Dick Tracy if the payoff didn’t include somebody writhing around in pain. This isn’t the optimistic fantasy land of Mark Trail; those eyes aren’t growing back.

Family Circus, 7/11/07

Hmm, what’s the most alarming part of this? Yeah, I’m going to have to say that it’s Big Daddy Keane’s little smile.

Gasoline Alley, 7/11/07

Gasoline Alley: the one comic strip that isn’t afraid to show you how the system is stacked against the white man.

Spider-Man, 7/11/07

In a strip that brought us such epic battles as Dr. Octopus vs. his television, Spidey vs. a bowl-hatted butler, Spidey vs. his own outdated ideas of economics and gender, and, of course Spidey vs. a brick, today’s struggle between J. Jonah Jameson and Larry King may represent a dramatic zenith.

And, finally, I’m sure sexy toast-eating is somebody’s fetish, so:

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/11/07

Go to town, perverts!

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Gil Thorp, 7/9/07

Unlike most of you naysayers, I unabashedly love Gil Thorp, and I particularly love Gil Thorp’s summer storylines. As regular readers know, while the strip is pretty demented plotwise at all times, during the school year it at least is obligated to stay within the stately rhythms of high school athletics: football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball and softball in the spring. In the summer, though, without the structure of the traditional American team sports, anything can happen to the denizens of Milford. Here are some past summer storylines:

• Von worked as a late night DJ, had a weird on-air romance with a 30-year-old, and saved her from a stalker.
• A gymnastics team full of elementary school girls descended into racial hatred and fisticuffs.
• Marty Moon lost thousands of dollars in ill-advised golf bets to a Ben Franklin lookalike grifter, and ended up passed out drunk in his car.

And that’s just off the top of my head! You can understand why I’m very excited to see where the next few months will take us. As we begin, Coach Thorp and Assistant Coach Kaz are celebrating the fact that they don’t have to be around teenagers anymore by getting ripped at the local PUB. Hopefully once they get drunk enough, Gil will work up the nerve to finally ask Kaz why in God’s name he wears pearl earrings.

Crankshaft, 7/9/07

I was a little disappointed when I saw that the ’Shaft was reading Readers Digest; I had thought he’d get his versifying from Adirondack Review or maybe the Inkwell Journal. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve had piles of Readers Digests in the bathroom I frequent, but in my memory that publication focuses less on poetry and more on funny but true-to-life anecdotes from the workplace and common-sense features on the liberal lies that are destroying America. But I do really like the look of languid blankness on our hero’s face in the second panel. He captures the ennui of the modern cultural consumer, always looking for the entertainment that requires the absolute minimum of psychic energy, but vaguely aware of his dissatisfaction when he’s done.

Apartment 3-G, 7/9/07

Cousin, eh? You ever notice that all of Lu Ann’s relatives, like Ruby and Blaze and Mim, are vaguely-defined cousins and nieces? My theory is that her home is actually a sprawling polygamist compound in Wyoming foothills of the Rockies, where, after two or three generations of isolation, everyone is related to everyone else by marriage or blood in one way or another. It would explain the squishiness of the family ties, and the stupidity.

I love the imperious command in panel one. Margo’s victories over her enemies have no meaning if there is nobody present to witness them. The combat must be memorialized in the form of epic verse for the generations yet unborn.