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Gil Thorp, 6/26/10

Ought I apologize to you for keeping you criminally out of the loop on happenings in Gil Thorp? Perhaps! (I’m not going to say that I yearn for the day when a lack of basic knowledge of the current Gil Thorp storyline is an offense punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment, but I’m not going to say I don’t yearn for it either.) Anyway, long story short, Milford sports teams continue to play in the final week of June, long after virtually every school in the country has knocked off for summer vacation, and alt-country sensation/fiery pitcher Slim Chance has made a video for his band, which he’s uploaded to YouTube. And now, in a moment that will change both Slim’s life and the face of popular music forever, some chinbearded dude in Chicago is presumably forwarding said amateur YouTube video to some other dude named “Geoff,” because that, apparently, is how the music industry works, in 2010, chinbearded dudes in hipster glasses just stone cold forwarding YouTube clips to each other, all day, every day.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/26/10

Herb desperately hopes for some unimportant daily minutia to distract his friend from his own thoughts, because those thoughts, as is customary for characters in this strip, inevitably turn to death.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/26/10

You know, I can get away with running gags like “Marmaduke is a demon-beast who eats children and torments his supposed ‘owner,’ who is Hitler,” because I can be pretty sure that, no matter how close the subtext is to the surface, the strip will never actually show a child sliding down the dog’s gullet, or depict Phil giving a rousing speech exhorting the invasion of Poland. But trying to make up exaggerated versions of Funky Winkerbean’s next ultra-gloomy plot twist is a more dangerous game. I swear to you that my Friday proposal that Funky is dead and doesn’t know it was meant entirely in jest, but now … I’m not so sure. Either he really is already a specter, or, as the now-classic YouTube montage “No Signal” teaches us, he’s about to be murdered by an ax-wielding maniac.

Oh, and have we been a little short on Rusty-horror lately?

Panel from Mark Trail, 6/26/10

Rusty does not weep saline tears as the humans do; instead, when sad or overjoyed, he cries tears of melting flesh.

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Herb and Jamaal, 6/24/10

With a single (seemingly) misplaced word balloon stem, the tempestuous relationship between Herb and Eula (recently voted in a reader’s poll America’s sixth-favorite comics parent-in-law/child-in-law tempestuous relationship, just ahead of Momma’s Momma-Tina battle, but just behind the implacable hate between Leroy Lockhorn and his wife’s nameless bewigged mother) takes on an entirely new complexion. Is Eula a secret psionics master, controlling Herb’s thoughts and speech whenever the prospect of doing so amuses her? Or — even more disturbing — does that word balloon indicate an act of ventriloquism, because the tiny Herb is actually just a ventriloquist dummy that she forced her daughter to marry for her own twisted reasons? In this scenario, the familiar bickering that provides much of the humor for the strip is actually a decades-long vaudeville act for a select audience of Herb’s “wife” and the kids — OH MY GOD THE KIDS WHERE DID THE KIDS COME FROM???

Apartment 3-G, 6/24/10

I know I haven’t discussed Apartment 3-G lately, but I thought you might enjoy this strip in which Lu Ann and Margo have it out. Margo, let me assure you that a lot of us men like a gal with a forceful personality more than some nicey-nice little blonde! Now, please don’t hurt me.

Crock, 6/24/10

Good lord, that’s not the expression of a man who’s just had what he thinks is a clever idea; those are the eyes of a dangerous maniac. I’m assuming that editorial complaints resulted in the original dialogue here, which involved our captain lovingly describing the dismemberment of his enemies, being swapped out for a more run-of-the-mill “ha ha, Captain Preppie is a fop” joke.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/24/10

Wow, uh, somehow even though I was joking about this prospect yesterday, I honestly did not think that Funky Winkerbean’s next hilariously grim twist would be a terrible car crash. Kudos for keeping us on our toes, I guess, even though we’re standing on our toes so we don’t step on the rusty knives and infected hypodermics lying around everywhere. Meanwhile, let’s all enjoy that third panel at full size, shall we?

This panel will be the punchline for between 15 to 35 percent of all Funky Winkerbean strips from here on in.

Luann, 6/24/10

Yes, I will continue to bring you the Gunther-horror as long as it keeps happening! Today we learn an exciting new euphemism for “I saw your cock and ass,” but, as those are parts generally found on opposite sides of the human form, we must ask ourselves how Luann was able to see them during the two star-crossed losers’ brief moment of AHHHing. Did Gunther react in panic to his suddenly discovered nudity by twirling in place while shrieking? If so, we can be glad that there are horrors the strip has spared us (until next week, when Luann obsessively revisits the episode in her mind, in slo-mo).

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Apartment 3-G, 6/7/10

Ha ha, did you think that Ari was talking to his pill-popping love Bobbie, who he just weeks ago bundled off to some private upstate nuthouse? Don’t be silly; obviously he would recognize her voice on the phone, and surely no facility that specializes in making the problematic relations of rich people conveniently go away would allow its patients any method of communication with the outside world. No, I think we have to assume that the Professor has been sending out thousands of emails that begin with “Dear One: Do you want h1gh-quality prescription MEDZ, cheap?” and has finally managed to snag a customer.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/7/10

We’ve already established that Herb’s marriage fills him with nothing but dread, so it’s probably to be expected that Herb will plunge his living room into total darkness not so that he can get amorous with his wife, but so that he doesn’t have to see her.

Marmaduke, 6/7/10

A “face-off” with Marmaduke generally ends with somebody getting his or her face bitten off.

Oh, and hey, you know what? If Mark Trail is going to keep showing us day after day of Rusty face-horror, then I fully intend to keep sharing it with you, at full magnification:

Panel from Mark Trail, 6/7/10

Rusty’s eyes, having once shone with a terrifying inky dark light, have now shriveled down to tiny pits, and his cheeks have grown hollow with grief. He pretty much looks like the guy from “The Scream,” after he’s stopped screaming.