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Panel from One Big Happy, 4/9/08

While the joke in today’s One Big Happy isn’t really worthy of note, there’s something very disturbing going on in the background of the first panel. Can you see it? Here, let me blow it up for you:

My God, is that … some ponytailed individual running through the park? Carrying a knife in ready-to-stab position? Is he or she fleeing from the scene of a vicious murder? Or running towards a hapless victim with the intention of committing one? Or are we seeing the midst of a multi-corpse stab frenzy? This panel will go down in history as the Zapruder Film of the modern comics.

Gil Thorp, 4/9/08

Stepping back from the total insanity for a moment … ha ha, just kidding, this is Gil Thorp, and under the new regime the total insanity is back, baby. To get a sense of this, look no further than panel three, where the pitcher is apparently making that ball hang in mid-air with just his mind. I think Milford has found its new pitching phenom … in outer space.

Meanwhile, it appears that the Very Special Spring Storyline is going to involve Gil throwing himself wholeheartedly (and disastrously) into his student-athletes’ lives to make up for years of disinterested coaching. It’s only now that it’s occurring to him that letting a deranged old man spouting obvious lies basically coach his baseball team may not have been the best idea last spring. Anyway, this year’s first victim of Gil’s new over-involvement is apparently going to be “problem child” Tyler Jay. Here’s a hint, Gil: If you want Tyler to keep on the straight and narrow, don’t let him play on the baseball team, where he’ll have ready access to many club-like objects.

Hi and Lois, 4/9/08

The innocence of youth is apparently a myth, as baby Trixie seems to imagine a future where people are forced to desperately stitch up the bleeding, mangled bodies of their loved ones as a matter of routine.

Dennis the Menace, 4/9/08

Usually, the Mitchells roll their eyes or loosen their collars in awkward humiliation when Dennis says something inappropriate, but here they’re positively gleeful at his suggestion that his aged grandfather is old and feeble-lunged. I’m not sure whose father he’s supposed to be, but Henry and Alice are obviously both lacking in filial piety and deserve to have Dennis foisted on them by the universe in karmic retribution.

Pluggers, 4/9/08

don’t think about a plugger’s prostate don’t think about a plugger’s prostate DON’T THINK ABOUT A PLUGGER’S PROSTATE

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Hi and Lois, 4/4/08

Hi and Lois is the last strip you’d expect to see bucking any sort of comic convention or cliche. But usually when a comic strip mom discusses the withering of the last few social institutions that keep high school from becoming a nonstop orgy, they usually look worried or upset, not like they’ve just taken a large hit of Ecstasy, as Lois does in the first two panels of this strip. Maybe in that way that moms “just want you to be happy,” she’s pleased to know that Chip is experiencing as much sexual pleasure as possible without any of that buzkilling emotional attachment, just like she does with half the neighborhood. Of course, no matter how enthusiastic she is about her son’s slutting it up, she still shows the appropriate amount of outrage over the terrible, terrible “punchline” of the strip.

(Unrelated, but: in panel two, Lois appears to have freckles. Did she always have freckles? Or are they a sign of the new, freaky Lois?)

Luann, 4/4/08

Say what you will about TJ, but the boy never stops thinking strategically. While most guys would have been satisfied to let their roommate rest on his laurels and share some tales of triumph (“A definite, meaningful kiss.” “And that definitely means…?” “Tongue, dude!”), TJ is already plotting to make sure his friend gets to the next level. Brad will touch a boob by 2009 if TJ has anything to say about it!

Marmaduke, 4/4/08

I’m not sure why Marmaduke’s owner is so desperate to believe that he didn’t just come from the museum. If that were the case, at least the original owner of that enormous bone would have already been dead by the time Marmaduke found it. The other possibility is that there’s a freshly killed and dismembered rhino somewhere nearby, probably on her front lawn.

Ballard Street, 4/4/08

Striker may be a whore, but by God he’s not a cheap whore.

Pluggers, 4/4/08

Pluggers know that you have to be ever-vigilant if you want to make sure that nobody leaves the compound.

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Hi and Lois, 4/1/08

Poor Hi! Sure, he hasn’t gotten more than a meager cost-of-living wage increase from that tightwad Froofram in years, but he’s gotten used to the lifestyle that his realtor wife’s huge commissions made possible during the go-go housing boom of the mid-naughts. Now that she hasn’t sold a house in months, Lois can only stare cross-armed at Hi’s $16 bottle of wine, knowing that it’s put a substantial dent in this month’s grocery budget. Only Sterno will help the Flagstons drink away their pain for the foreseeable future.

Judge Parker, 4/1/08

Poor Gloria! All she wanted to do was live out her lifelong fantasy of making it with a guy with no legs, but it turns out that hero Steve is not only damaged physically, but mentally as well. Sure, you can forgive a guy who had a mine planted outside of his hut and gets mysterious packages in the mail for being a little paranoid, but it’s clear that he’s going to see conspiracies in every nice gesture anyone does for him — and that he’s not ready for a relationship. Gloria will just have to console herself with her back issues of Stump Humper a little while longer.

Marmaduke, 4/1/08

One of the fun things I like to do with the comics is to come up a whole hidden backstory behind the gag-a-day features. For instance, I like to imagine that Marmaduke’s owner is actually Adolph Hitler, who faked his suicide, escaped from his command bunker to post-war American suburbia, and got a Great Dane. His former position as absolute ruler of a continent makes the petty indignities of life with Marmaduke all the more infuriating. Today, for instance, we can see on his hate-twisted fate that he would like nothing more than to send the impertinent policeman and the damn dog to a concentration camp, but as it is all he can do is wave his hand in the air and rage impotently. Is it a fitting punishment for his monstrous crimes? Not really, but it’s kind of fun to see.

Gil Thorp, 4/1/08

The “drama” of today’s strip — Gil sends hapless assistant to hush up overbearing parent, hapless assistant fails miserably — is lame even by Gil Thorp standards. Still, it’s always nice to see some Milford kids on the verge of tears.