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Gil Thorp, 5/18/07

Gil Thorp continues to be unspeakably filthy. In panel one, Brynna “mishandles” Lisa’s “sinker,” if you know what I mean (and I think you do); as a result of that “collision,” her shoulder is sore the next day. Fortunately, she still has use of her right arm.

Hi and Lois, 5/18/07

Young Chip Flagston, sittin’ in a tree
down-load-ing porn-o-graph-y.

Mary Worth, 5/18/07

Mary loves her pithy little bits of advice, but there has to be some kind of internal house rule that a pearl of wisdom, once used, can never be repeated; that explains why, after 67 years in the meddling business, her sayings have gone from the helpful to the platitudinous to something at odds with everything we know about how time and space work. I don’t care how at peace you are with the past, people: you cannot astrally project yourself back in time and change what happened. Mary Worth is right in that white doctors shouldn’t trouble themselves with charity work in filthy foreign countries, but she’s off-base here.

Slylock Fox, 5/18/07

To me, the look on the dog’s face doesn’t say “lazy” so much as “has lost the will to live.”

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Archie, 4/25/07

I defy you to offer an explanation for the third panel that isn’t totally insane. Since no fungus (or fung-us) I know of looks like that, or attracts flies, I have to assume that Archie has been hoarding his excrement and building a lingam out of it in his hamper. And that Jughead chose to touch it. And that when Jughead arrived, Archie was just lounging in his chair, looking at it with a big, satisfied grin on his face. The awful thing is that the other explanations I can think of are worse.

Hi and Lois, 4/25/07

This strip is funny (by which I mean “funny”) because Lois is baffling her little kid with her high-falutin’ vocabulary. Which would make this a middling Family Circus-style gag if it weren’t for the fact that Trixie is entirely pre-verbal. Yeah, I know, thought balloons, whatever, but the fact is that she doesn’t know those words because she doesn’t know any god-damn words at all. Maybe her thought balloons are just ideas other people project on to her, and her eyes have gone wide like that because she’s wet herself again.

Marvin, 4/25/07

This strip is funny (by which I mean “horrifying”) because it’s about the sex lives of babies. I actually kind of like Carl’s wide-eyed look of shock and horror, because that’s exactly what you’d feel if your girlfriend left you for an infant.

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Crankshaft, 4/8/07

A while back, I suggested that the name of this strip be changed from Crankshaft to the somewhat wordier but more accurate Jesus Christ, Ed Crankshaft Is Such An Asshole. I now think it should be stretched out to Jesus Christ, Ed Crankshaft And All The Other People In This Strip, Who Are Associated With Him In Some Way That I’m Not Clear On Despite The Fact That I’ve Read It Daily For Years, Are All A Bunch Of Assholes. I know your mom is a difficult and crotchety old lady, but dude. I hope you didn’t tell this heartwarming little anecdote to her aide right in front of her.

Hi and Lois, 4/8/07

Meanwhile, it appears that Hi and Lois’ pastor is a dirty rotten filthy hippie. Liberals!

Mary Worth, 4/8/07

I keep hoping — and keep being dissapointed, but hope does spring eternal — that each new character that comes into this strip will finally be the one that allows the Charterstone Mafia to see themselves and evil, petty, self-absorbed individuals that they are. Sadly, we all know that Vera will submit to the will of Mary and allow herself to be meddled into self-actualization by Mary and her minions, but I’d like to believe that the sneering young man in the final panel is meant to represent us, the readers. “Wait … you don’t know? Just look at the three of you lined up there. Why wouldn’t she run?”

And a couple of one-off panels:

Panel from The Phantom, 4/8/07

Most of this week’s Sunday Phantom just treaded water after last week’s, with this well-dressed trio being hassled by the Presidential Security Dragoons, but it was all worth it to see this awesome final panel, in which one of those ubiquitous executive rolling suitcase turns out to be filled with SCARY BONES AND STUFF. One might wonder how exactly this made it through the x-ray machines that are compulsory at airports everywhere now (yes, even in Africa), though if the NEXT box is any indication, perhaps they just laughed it off by telling airport security, “Oh, it’s okay — I’m in the death trade.”

Panel from Cathy, 3/8/07

Dot-ack? Dot-ack? All right, I admit it: this is a Cathy in-joke, and I found it funny. I would be willing to petition ICANN to create a .ack top-level Internet domain, which would be dedicated to Cathy-related content.