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Gasoline Alley, 7/27/07

For the last several years — or, oh, let’s say decades — Gasoline Alley has been guilty of crimes against humor, the comics medium, and its own storied history; the “Slim keeps his neighborhood white with a meteorite he bought on eBay” is only the latest outrage, though it is by no means the worst. Much of these transgressions are unforgivable, but perhaps we can accept as a mitigating factor the fact that this hippie/’Nam vet/militia type just referred to a course of action that might lead to incarceration as “jaily”, which may be the most delightful new adjective I’ve encountered all week. I don’t really live a life of danger on the edge of the law, but I will try to use the word “jaily” in conversation as often as possible — or, if circumstances dictate, “finey” or “community servicey”.

Gil Thorp, 7/27/07

Never mind Coach Kaz’s false modesty, or Kelly’s brutally honest assessment of his earning potential. What the hell happened to our soda jerker’s chin in panel one? It looks like he’s all bandaged up there. Did Kaz get him with an uppercut just to keep in practice for when the next drunken lout comes along? Or did he hit his chin on the counter when he emerged from the time vortex that brought him and his little paper hat here from 1958?

Mary Worth, 7/27/07

Dawn’s sitting on the world’s smallest saddle, but that’s OK because she’s also sitting on the world’s smallest horse. I’m no equestrianologist, but I’m pretty sure that a horse’s head is usually larger than a human’s head. I do note that you can’t see the horses from the withers down, which may indicate that they’re made of fiberglass, perched atop a giant spring, and sitting in front of a Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, in panel one, Mary waves at a total stranger in a desperate attempt to stop talking to Wilbur.

Mark Trail, 7/27/07

Ohmygosh, do you think he’s going to release more birds soon? THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!

Hey, everybody, my mom’s coming to visit for the weekend, so posts might be a little sparse on the ground for the next few days. COTWs coming on schedule Sunday, though, don’t you worry about it!

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Apartment 3-G, 7/26/07

I know you’re not supposed to think about Apartment 3-G too much, but I can’t help it; it’s what I do. So I’ve been thinking, and I’ve got some questions. Here are the starters: Did Lu Ann and Alan rekindle their love on the adjustable bed in her shared hospital room? Does Lu Ann not realize that Alan’s the one who set her up with the poorly ventilated studio in the first place? Did Alan do it deliberately because he likes his girlfriends dumb, and somehow pre-carbon-monoxide-poisoning Lu Ann wasn’t dumb enough? Was Ghost Albert Pinkham Ryder, whose phantasmagorical svengalisms we had to endure for months and months, entirely a product or Lu Ann’s oxygen-starved brain cells? Are we going to have to endure some kind of carbon-monoxide-poisoning-awareness storyline for months and months? Will there be a telethon? Will Margo plan the telethon? Is “Yay, you may or may not have permanent brain damage” the most gruesome theme for a party ever? Is that why Margo looks so chipper in panel one?

Speaking of Margo (and God yes let’s speak of Margo instead of Lu Ann “Cascade of Noble Tears” Powers), in panel one you can sort of see around Lu Ann’s addled head that our favorite bun-headed brunette is being sized up by cousin Blaze. In a storyline from several years ago, back when she was pretending to be a publicity agent in an attempt to meet a rich man instead of pretending to be an event planner in an attempt to meet a rich man, Margo was supposed to be doing publicity for an off-off-Broadway play Blaze wrote or was directing or producing or something (yes, he’s not just a moron who wanders around wearing ludicrous cowboy clothes, he’s also involved in the legitimate theater!). Only Margo got distracted by something — I don’t remember what, it was probably a rich man or a shiny object or her reflection in the mirror — and she completely forgot to do any publicity at all, and the play flopped. Naturally Blaze was somewhat peeved. Presumably Margo has now completely forgotten who Blaze is, but I’m hoping he’s is sitting there in a state of cat-like readiness, awaiting the perfect moment to lunge and strangle her. And then the noble tears will really start flowing.

B.C., 7/26/07

I don’t believe that fruitcake actually exists. I suppose there are still physical fruitcakes here and there, but I think those real-world manifestations of this traditional holiday treat are hugely outnumbered by jokes about their inedibility, told by and laughed at by an audience that for the most part has never seen one. I accept that ritualized jokes like these, ones everyone gets even though they’re several steps removed from the thing being joked about, are part of the landscape of humor, but in this case part of the ritual is that you make the joke at Christmas time, not in the last week of fucking July.

See, this is why zombie B.C. pisses me off much, much more now than it did when Johnny Hart was writing it and reminding me that I was going to hell. At least then I could say, “Oh, it’s the idiosyncratic output of a somewhat deranged old man who’s been doing this so long he’s in his own little world.” Whereas now I have to imagine the current team saying, “They’ll run this crap for decades no matter how nonsensical the jokes. Ka-ching! Tee time, everybody!”

For Better Or For Worse, 7/26/07

Helpful tip to MCs everywhere: if you have to explicitly tell everyone that the event you’re MCing is great, it’s probably not actually great. (This does not apply to hip-hop MCs, since boasting of one’s own greatness is an well-established convention of the genre.)

Given the strip’s recent unsettling obsession with bathroom matters, I’m a little anxious about the “#2” on the wall in the third panel. Hopefully Gerald has not just interrupted April in the telethon’s poopatorium.

Gil Thorp, 7/26/07

Coach Kaz is going to jump at the chance to switch careers; after all, he’s a coach at a public school, and they have all these liberal namby-pamby rules now that say you’re not allowed punch your students in the face. Since he’s being hired for a delicate and sensitive position based entirely on his proven ability to hand out savage beatdowns, I look forward to the shocking climax of this storyline, in which “Thorpstock” becomes synonymous with “Altamont.”

Mary Worth, 7/26/07

For a brief moment, Wilbur demonstrates that he’s well aware of the thick, choking layer of anguish that is the atmosphere of Planet Weston. But he’s so used to life at the bottom of the well of despair that he sees even the tiniest flicker of happiness as a threat that must be brought to light and then destroyed.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/26/07

Ha ha! Snuffy Smith got mauled by a bear! Good times.

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Gil Thorp, 7/24/07

My mom is retiring in the fall after thirty years as a teacher, and I have to imagine that, if one of her erstwhile students had shown up on a hot day in July and said, “Hey, remember me, the kid who accidentally chopped off his own leg with a chainsaw last fall? Could I hang around the school this summer and maybe you can teach me stuff? My dad will buy you supplies!”, her reaction would be — well, not rude, since she’s not a rude person, but firm, and negative. In fact, she didn’t spend her summers hanging around the school at all, possibly to avoid just such an awkward confrontation, though more likely because she has a life, unlike Gil Thorp, apparently.

I’m pleased to see that Coach Kaz has chosen to take time out from his exciting summer to brave the horrifying stench that lingers in Milford High’s gym and hang out with this cavalcade of losers. Mostly I’m hoping that he’s going to teach Bill Ritter that if you believe in yourself enough, you can punch a dude right in the hypothalamus no matter how many legs you have. But Coach Thorp is lucky to have someone else around right now, too, because he’s obviously rapidly deflating. In panel two, he and Coach Kaz both look like ’roided out He-Man extras, threatening to burst right out of those cotton t-shirts with their manly chesteses. But in panel three, slouchy, scrawny Gil looks more like the guy from the famous Charles Atlas sand-kicked-in-his-face ads before dynamic tension worked its magic. Even his flattop is kind of droopy.

Mary Worth, 7/24/07

Good God, what kind of world do we live in where the action in Gil Thorp stays with the same two characters in the same room for three consecutive panels, while the Mary Worth chronology leaps forward “several weeks” willy-nilly? I suppose we’re going to find out that Dawn has been sneaking off to the horse stables to “ride” with Drew for the past few weeks under the pretext of studying. Since it makes absolutely no sense to conceal this fact from her father, we’re just going to have to accept that “horseback riding” in Mary Worth should always be understood to mean “illicit sex.”

Shoe, 7/24/07

Do you ever get the feeling that a cartoon is drawn by someone who’s working off of a script and who almost, but not quite, speaks English? Our random brunette says “I love mysteries!”, but with the little hearts floating over her head and the way she flings her body halfway up the counter, it seems more like she should be saying “I love your hot body!” or “I love crystal meth!” Because this is Shoe, the Perfesser manages to kill this puzzling but genuine enthusiasm with a terrible joke.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/24/07

As a work-at-home type, I can tell you that this is a pitfall of the home office lifestyle. That’s why I refuse to answer the phone or the doorbell, and frequently insist that my wife lie about my whereabouts as I labor feverishly in my office with the door barricaded. What puzzles me about the scenario depicted here, though, is the presence of two adult women in the Ragweed household. Is this some weird amalgamation of the modern world of the home office and the TDIET 1950s sensibility, where every male white-collar worker has a female secretary? Or is Ragweed a polygamist as well a freelancer?