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Does it take a man to analyze the gender politics of the funny pages? Maybe it would be more accurate to say that only a man — a cranky, obsessive, underemployed man — would bother. This weekend, Gil Thorp made the political personal (or is it the other way around?), while Mary Worth subtly buttressed the patriarchy.

Gil Thorp, 8/5-6/05

You know, I wondered earlier what those kookie Gil Thorp kids would get up to with no high school sports to distract them. Well, the strip’s A-plot, involving the buying and selling of promising athletes like so much cattle, is par for the course. But I don’t think any of us expected freakishly square-headed Von to be cheerily taunting his thirty-year-old not-girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend/stalker come early August. You can tell the villain aims only to persecute his ex because, while her cart is full of flat cardboard boxes, his is empty — so what else could he be doing at the supermarket? Our pushbroom-mustached copper in the middle panel of the second strip, with his aviator glasses and jaunty grin, serves to show how broken the system is when it comes to protecting women from stalking threats. And our Mrs. Robinson-esque heroine, who goes from anger (strip one, panel one) to near-panic (strip one, panel two) to withering contempt (strip one, panel three) to, um, poorly drawn blankness (strip two, panel one) clearly illustrates the roller-coaster ride that is the life of the stalkee.

Seriously, though, there’s all sorts of intriguing questions on how this one will play out. Will the thuggish, hairy-armed stalker manage to do violence to our star-crossed non-lovers? This being Gil Thorp, where off-the-field action tends to be fairly low stakes, I kind of doubt it. Hopefully Officer Delaney Bebow will step in and start taking these threats seriously. Still, kudos to Gil Thorp for at least taking this issue seriously.

If we can not take this issue seriously for a moment, though, I think we need to pause for a moment and ask: Just what did Gary spray-paint on that window? The only naughty word I can think of that ends with “le” refers to the human body’s more important and yet unpleasant orifices, but the only way I can think of that the name of said orifice might reasonably be misspelled would involve switching the “l” and the “e” around. Unless he had too many “s”s? Or not enough of them? The mind boggles. It’s too bad it’s a “word,” and not a phrase, because it might be amusing to imagine that it was something like I WIL STUF MY FIST DOWN YER BOYFREINDS PIE HOLE.

Mary Worth, 8/7-8/05

Meanwhile, here’s Mary Worth’s advice to women in trouble: no matter how bad your situation, no matter how badly your husband or your parents beat you, no matter how intolerable your life behind the graciously weathered walls of your suburban condo may be, for God’s sake, don’t go to the Women’s Shelter! Mary seems to be under the impression that a women’s shelter is meant to shelter us from the thieving, violent, criminal women who no doubt use it as their lair. Like Dante, Mary passes through the gates of her everyday life to descend into the brutal slum that is “downtown,” where, in rapid succession, she comes face to face with:

• A beatnik
• A jaundiced man with a tattoo
• A muscle-bound man wearing a powder-blue tank top, possibly homosexual
• Slightly cracked plaster
• Garbage protruding from the top of a trash can

Apparently Mary believes that a merciful death, drunk and face-down in Charterstone’s beautifully landscaped pool, would be preferable to this degradation.

On the other hand, in today’s strip, residents of the Women’s Shelter seem engaged in nonspecific, but definitely non-robbery-and-violence-related behavior. Maybe it’s Mary who’s going to learn a Valuable Lesson this time around — and she’ll find out who the real sheltered woman is.

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Mary Worth, 6/30/05

All bets and Comics Curmudgeon conventions are off as long as Rita’s drunken rage persists, folks. Forget the rest of the comics. There’s just all of you, and me, and Rita, and this poor, terrified waiter. And why shouldn’t he be terrified? Rita’s just sort of waving her arms around drunkenly, but she’s managed to manifest some sort of telekenetic surge of power that’s blasting out of her collarbone and right into the tray. This energy, no doubt a living expression of sheer pettiness, seems to have enveloped our server in a glowing nimbus of mysterious luminescence, and transformed what was a harmless highball into a liquid creature that’s reaching hungrily for his face. More than anything else, it looks to me like the origin story for some kind of booze-oriented superhero. “Brett thought that he was working an ordinary dinner shift. He couldn’t imagine that by the end of that fateful evening, a brush with a toxically alcoholic patron would transform him into … The Cocktail!”

Also, is it just me, or does our hapless waiter look like a character from Pathetic Geek Stories? The wide eyes, the open mouth with all the teeth … hmm.

Of course, even though I can’t take my eyes away from Mary Worth, this little gem didn’t get past me:

This panel is now my new official heading for the bill-paying section of my sidebar menu. Comedy, thy name is old people in Gil Thorp.

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OK, kids, as a penance for my long, lame absence, here’s a very detailed dissertation of what’s been happening in the serial strips so far this week. There’s quite a lot to cover, so let’s get started. (I think I actually used the previous sentence in my aforementioned printer Webcast script, by the way. Oh, the shame.)

Panels from Apartment 3-G, 6/27-29/05

We’ll start simple. Who can’t get enough of Tommie’s new sunglasses? Me! I can’t get enough of Tommie’s new sunglasses!

Your headband is nice too, Lu Ann, but … it’s no Tommie’s new sunglasses. Sorry.

Gil Thorp, 6/28-29/05

You know, I’m not ashamed to admit that I really … well, “like Gil Thorp” might not quite be the sentiment I’m looking for. Let’s say I’m really glad it exists. The WDIG Polka Parade may make up for any number of past Thorpian sins, and it confirms my suspicion that it is alone among the serial strips in having an actual sense of humor about its own existence.

One of the strip’s trademark features is that it actually keeps up with the seasons and matches the pointless high school athletic contests it portrays to the pointless high school athletic contests that would be going on in real life. But, this being my first summer as a Thorp follower, it never occurred to me that, like real high school coaches everywhere, Coach Thorp will be spending his summer gardening and presumably avoiding teenagers at all costs. Will there be any nail-biting contests of skill or strength to amuse us until football starts up in August? Or are the boys going to have nothing better to do than to lounge casually and homoerotically around on the beach?

Panels from The Phantom and Judge Parker, 6/28-29/05

What with all the media consolidation going around these days, I’m guessing both of these features are trying to build “synergy” in advance of the upcoming Indiana Jones sequel, creating anticipation in the public mind for red-hot tomb-exploring action. On the theologico-philosophical tip, though, I thought these two comics offered an insight into how wussy religion has become. I mean, props to the Old Kingdom: your civilization has to be pretty bad-ass if you have a god specifically dedicated to abject violence. Meanwhile, David’s proposed ancient-artifact-switcheroo illustrates what a soft touch Jesus is. Do you think Babi would let someone get away with trying to pass off a lesser Babi-related trinket as some priceless icon? I think not.

By the way, if I were Sam, and I found out that I had been dragged through the jungle with the snakes and the tarantulas and the hey hey to find some stupid old cross when a perfectly acceptable stupid old cross was just sitting in a box back in the air-conditioned mission, I might be ready to perpetrate some abject violence myself.

Mary Worth, 6/29/05

Ah, saving the best for last. Jeff’s head-swivel in panel one and look of total panic in panel two are priceless. Why are you looking to Mary for help, Dr. Cory? She got you into this, after all. Meanwhile, Mary’s suddenly caterpillar-like eyebrows are ratcheting tighter and tighter with each passing moment. I think tomorrow we’re going to be treated an explosion of Marian rage the likes of which the comics have never seen, a diatribe that even Smitty Smedlap couldn’t break loose. Use your aggressive feelings, Mary. Let the hate flow through you!

Here’s a conundrum for you to consider: Is Rita the greatest Mary Worth character ever? I know, when we’re talking about a strip that produced Tommy the Tweaker, that might sound like heresy. But tattooed, long-haired meth dealers are easy targets for mockery. In this storyline, Mary Worth has taken a member of what I am assuming is the strip’s target demographics — a white, middle-aged, middle-class woman — made her bereaved by the death of her daughter to boot, and then had the guts to make her an incredibly unsympathetic foul-mouthed drunken sponge. Rita Begler: we salute you. Below I present a montage of Rita’s obscenity-laden outbursts, which I dearly hope to be able to add to in time.