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Gil Thorp, 5/17/23

How is Gil’s arch-rival Luke Hernandez dealing with Gil’s secret baseball weapon, a blind pitcher teaching the Mudlarks to open their third eye and achieve cosmic oneness with the universe? Well, he’s flying to Korea with his assistant Coach Kim to try to recruit one of Kim’s relatives, who’s apparently some kind of baseball superstar. I’m assuming he’s going to pull a picture of Gil out of his wallet and show it to Kwan and say “See this man? He deserves death. He must be destroyed. You shall be the instrument of my vengeance.” Kwan doesn’t speak English, but just the power of Luke’s simmering hatred will be enough to get him onboard.

Mary Worth, 5/17/23

God, can you imagine how much Mary wishes she could just stare at her phone rather than listen to Jeff blather on about whatever it is he thinks is interesting or important? She’s just a little too old and polite to do it, but she envies the freedom of the young.

Hi and Lois, 5/17/23

I didn’t think we could get sadder than “Trixie is left on her own for hours on the floor to stare into the sun,” but I think “Trixie is left on her own for hours on the floor to stare at the TV, which is not turned on” might do it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/17/23

Uh oh! Looks like word’s gotten out that Mud Mountain Murphy is extremely easy to trick. At his next concert, he’ll still be singing “Muddy Boots,” but he’ll also be asking if his fans would be interested in helping him launch MudCoin, his own namesake cryptocurrency, with the help of his new best friend here!

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Slylock Fox, 5/15/23

I genuinely love the contrast in Max and Sly’s affect here, in line with the tale spun by the mystery. Max is just in the midst of a full-on meltdown, no doubt envisioning these deadly drones emerging silently from the rocket in orbit and heading implacably towards the Animal Kingdom’s vital satellite infrastructure. Sly, meanwhile, is idly contemplating how far Count Weirdly, a known genius who invented a time machine, has fallen if he thinks he can use PROPELLORS to fly in SPACE. It’s sad, really, and if he was driven to incompetent madness by Slylock’s own incessant persecution, well, maybe the fox detective feels a sting of regret. (Slylock isn’t even bothering to calm Max, in the mistaken belief that if he lets this unfounded panic attack run its course, his mouse assistant might decide that he should try learning some basic science facts once in a while.)

Dustin, 5/15/23

No, Dustin, this is good news! I can think of fewer acts better calculated to win back your terrible father’s love than scabbing!

Hi and Lois, 5/15/23

Ha ha, women! So eager to not kill things, amiright folks? Anyway, this comic doesn’t include a “joke” per se, as near as I can tell.

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Hi and Lois, 5/14/23

This is truly one of the wildest throwaway panels I’ve ever seen. Readers of space-constrained newspapers are just getting a classic Mother’s Day strip about how a mom’s work is truly the hardest of all, but those whose comics pages have room to spare know that just moments before he and the kids got assigned a bunch of chores, Hi thought that he was going to get a chance to give Lois a very special Mother’s Day gift (sex, with him).

Mary Worth, 5/14/23

OK, look, you have to approach today’s Mary Worth not in the context of this blog, where I’ve been making off-color jokes about the strip for going on 19 years now, but in the context of Mary Worth, the soap opera comic strip, one of the squarest forms of media ever created, and in that context the panel here where Mary says, in so many words, that Estelle thinks the sex with Dr. Ed is a lot better than the sex with Wilbur ever was, is positively pornographic.

The Phantom, 5/14/23

Way back in 2005, the Phantom had his Bandar henchmen erase the memory of a young woman who had inconveniently fallen in love with him using “Bandar medicine.” Anyway, turns out this practice, in addition to being obviously unethical in a number of ways, also doesn’t really work! Whoopsie! Awkward!