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Gil Thorp, 1/7/08

One of my favorite terrible things about Gil Thorp is the way its narration boxes and exposition characters just hurl the full (and almost invariably WASPy) names of characters at you willy-nilly. I guess it’s supposed to keep you up on who’s doing what, but for me it has the opposite effect, as anyone who isn’t the main thrust of the storyline invariably gets lost in a sea of badly drawn faces. Was Grant Sanders an important player in the recently concluded football storyline? Has Bill Hawkins ever appeared in the strip before? Who the hell knows? I’m not very good with names in real life, and generally the people I encounter there don’t have facial features that move around and change shape from moment to moment. The only thing I’m sure of is that the dude at left in panel three was a prominent member of the Lollypop Guild.

Five bucks says that “Let’s get the A-Train involved here” also features prominently in Andrew Gregory’s foreplay banter.

Hi and Lois, 1/7/08

Hi is regarding his son with goggle-eyed horror not because they actually had some kind of upcoming vacation to St. Moritz — after all, this is the family whose idea of a dream trip was a week in cheesy faux Old West mining town, and even that apparently drove them to the verge of bankruptcy. No, the Flagston patriarch is stunned that Chip can actually summon up a phrase in a foreign language. For obvious reasons, they had always pegged him as the dumb one, and long ago spent his college fund on trips to cheesy faux tourist attractions.

Slylock Fox, 1/7/08

I hate to sound like I’m kissing up, but today’s Slylock is really a perfect little noir vignette — and while Reynard Noir is on vacation, too! I love the look into the Rats’ depressing home, with crumbling plaster covered over with Reeky’s wanted posters. The neat stack of photocopied bill sheets on the stool and the paper cutter in the foreground remind us that counterfeiting is exactly the sort of crime that fits the manic, obsessive energy of a meth fiend like Reeky. And I love the way Mrs. Rat is sitting at her vanity in a sexy slip (no doubt it’s 95 degrees and they don’t have AC), while her loutish hubby bellows commands from the other room. If only it ran in my newspaper, I could see it in black and white as it was clearly intended to be.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/7/08

Ha! It’s Funky Winkerbean! Even the exposition is cruel!

Judge Parker, 1/8/07

“So, I masturbated into your underwear drawer. Hope you don’t mind!”

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Hi and Lois, 12/7/07

I’m the sort of guy who always looks on the bright side of things. Take, for instance, the bursting of the housing bubble in the United States. Sure, it’s causing a lot of problems for anyone trying to sell their house, as well as those employed in the housing and construction industries — and the associated implosion of the subprime lending market is probably going to destroy the world economy and have us eating old turnips and beans out of a can by 2009 — but, thanks to the recent (in legacy comic strip terms) move to have Lois of Hi and Lois get a job as a realtor, it adds a nice occasional note of contemporary desperation to this otherwise bland and hoary feature. Sure, today it’s gimmicks like apple pie and cash incentives, but surely it won’t be long before Lois has to choose: either she offers her lovely fortysomething body as a “sweetener” to close the deal on an exurban four-bedroom, or she has to decide which of the twins gets to go to college.

Mark Trail, 12/7/07

Hmm, Mark seems to have decided to challenge Rex Morgan for the coveted Dick of the Month Award. He’s finally getting around to finding out whether or not Bull Malone has any surviving kin — not because he gives a rat’s ass about how bereft they are over having just lost a handsome and successful loved one, who, for the record Johnny Malotte obviously killed — but because he’s trying he’s trying to find some other poor sap on whom to hang this cold-blooded murder. Obviously Andy was brought along for his expertise in evidence tampering.

Mark is allowed in Johnny’s holding cell because of the sacred bond of Outdoorsman Advocate-client confidentiality. Mrs. Johnny is there because the schedule for spawning more raven-haired Malotte offspring cannot be altered by any mere legal proceeding. I note also that Johnny has been allowed to keep his suspenders in the clink; perhaps the local authorities hope that he’ll save them the expense of a trial by hanging himself with them.

Mary Worth and Marmaduke, 12/7/07

Good Lord, could Mary get any smugger? Even her fantasies are thick with loathsome self-regard, as she imagines Chester positively vibrating with delight at the sight of the largest, cheapest bag of dog food she could find at the discount supermarket. On the other hand, at least ACME dog food is probably just bland and lacking in nutrients, as opposed to the actively disgusting BARFOO food that Marmaduke’s owner is feeding him. Of course, Mary claims to actually like Chester, whereas I have to imagine that Marmaduke’s owner’s attitude towards his enormous, destructive pet is a toxic mix of hatred and terror.

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The Phantom, 11/4/07

I’m not a big defense policy expert or anything, but I’m pretty sure the US Air Force is not in the business of handing out free jet fuel to random Vietnam War-era aircraft, no matter how friendly the country is whose flag is painted on the tail. Perhaps Bangalla is willing to turn a blind eye “enhanced interrogation techniques” (likely, if the slap-happy antics of the Unknown Commander are any indication) and demands payment in sweet, sweet petroleum products.

The Phantom NEXT! boxes are pretty generally awesome, but few have brought me as much pleasure as today’s. “Avast, swabbies! Be sure ye be wearing yer film badge dosimeter, lest ye suffer from radiation sickness! Ahhhr!”

Zits and The Middletons, 11/4/07

At last, two Sunday comics that aren’t afraid to admit the hard truth about teenagers: that they’re nothing but barely controlled hormone-soaked lust-beasts. Today’s Zits honestly hits a little too close to home for me, as one of my high school’s guidance counselors was a primary subject in my teenage fantasy life, which I’m sure was also true for most of the other boys and several of the girls. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, in the interests of me having coherent conversations about college application essays), I was assigned the other guidance counselor, who was a avuncular fiftysomething dude, and who was very nice but whose naked lower back I was frankly glad to never see unprompted in my mind’s eye.

Today’s Middletons is an instructional example of how the throwaway panels at the beginning of a strip (so named because some newspapers remove them to make layout easier) can really change the tone of a comic. The complete strip today offers a poignant look at that moment when young people are on the cusp of adulthood, beginning to think of grown-up matters while still clinging to childish things. But the version in my paper started with the “Cool clouds” panel, and thus was basically two teenagers talking about girls they want to bang. On the bright side, Baltimore Sun readers were spared the unsettling undertones of the “do you want to see the frog in my pocket” exchange.

Judge Parker, 11/4/07

Speaking of raging hormones, I’m getting pretty tired of every improbably proportioned female in this strip hurling herself at Sam Driver. His wife I can sort of understand (though you think she’d have given up by now), but what Sam’s got that justifies, say, Trudi lunging at him lips-first in the next-to-last panel is beyond me. It’s like he’s doused himself in some chemical that makes him irresistible to women (“reverse alcohol,” in the memorable formulation of Dinosaur Comics) — not because he wants to seduce them, but because he enjoys rejecting and humiliating them. If I want twisted, passive-aggressive psychodrama in a serial strip, I’ll read Mary Worth, thank you very much.

Spider-Man, 11/4/07

Not being evil myself, I wasn’t aware that a lack of sleepiness was one of the benefits of pledging one’s allegiance to the dark side. Think of all the extra sinister plotting — or, alternately, dusting and laundry — you could do with that extra eight hours a day! It does not, however, come as a big surprise to me that Peter Parker would rather snooze than fight evil.

Hi and Lois, 11/4/07

The creators of Hi and Lois do not appear to understand how and by whom municipal tax rates are set.