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Gil Thorp, 11/15/10

When Milford’s police chief says that pleasure isn’t the word he’d use, he must be referring to Gil’s pleasure, because, like a selfish lover, he appears to be deriving a great deal pleasure from this midday office encounter — smug, smug pleasure, as his little smile in panel two indicates. And why not? Every Gil Thorp plot in which one of Gil’s charges is accused of wrongdoing ends up with the poor Mudlark exonerated in completely unrealistic fashion; now we’ve got this season’s hero Cody Exner — the poor foster kid who tries so hard to be a good team captain — on video selling “dope” (which I assume in whatever decade Milford is in still refers to boring old marijuana rather than heroin or something awesome). Will Gil finally have to admit that his judgement was wrong? I mean, he shrugs off each year’s failure to win a championship with remarkable aplomb, so maybe he’ll just take the attitude that, eh, we pick two team captains every year, statistically one of them was going to be a drug dealer eventually.

Judge Parker, 11/15/10

Hey, Judge Emeritus Parker! Remember that $100,000 advance check you got? See, in the publishing industry they call it an “advance” because they’re paying you in advance for money your book hasn’t earned yet. So, you shouldn’t be getting those $850 royalty checks until your book or books have made $100,000 worth of royalty money for you, which, for a first-time author writing what I assume to be dull legal thrillers, should occur sometime around 2081. My best guess is that this check is actually money Sam found under the cushions of one of the lesser-used sofas in his vast mansion and he’s giving it to Judge Emeritus Parker in a (failed) attempt to get him to stop complaining. If it is a real royalty check and his book has miraculously already earned him a six-figure sum, whatever those initial promotional expenses cost couldn’t possibly be enough.

Mark Trail, 11/15/10

Mark Trail is the serial strip with the loosest grasp of how humans actually think, speak, and behave, so naturally it also puts the least effort into making the shift from one plotline to another seem even remotely naturalistic. “Mark, a man is waiting for you at the house! He will tell you what will happen next, to all of us!”

The Lockhorns, 11/15/10

Wow, this, coming so soon after this, implies that the Lockhorns is moving tentatively towards the third rail of Lockhorns narrative: Leroy and Loretta’s sex life. By next April, each day’s panel will find them in the midst of some depraved sexual act. They will of course still sport expressions of heavy-lidded weltschmerz and will emotionally devastate each other with cutting remarks.

Archie, 11/15/10

The horrifying vision of a nauseated Mr. Weatherbee in panel two, combined with Archie’s fries-spewing from last Saturday, leads me to believe that the AJGLU-3000 has found some particularly depraved pocket of the Internet dedicated to puke porn. “Is this what the hu-mans want to see?” the cybernetic humorist thinks to itself, whirring softly. “It seems unappealing to me, but I have no digestive tract, so who am I to say?”

Comment of the week update! Guys, I’ve decided, for scheduling reasons of my own that are really far too boring to go into here, that I’m moving the COTW post from Monday to Friday. I’m going to skip a week this week, giving Black Drazon pride of place for another five days. ENJOY YOUR EXTRA TIME AT THE TOP, O NOBLE COMMENTOR!

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Beetle Bailey, 11/12/10

I know I should be way, way past the point where I get discombobulated by arbitrary, contextless things happening in Beetle Bailey in order to set up a cheap laugh, but something about Donna here doesn’t strike me as right. Why does she have a “Donna” nameplate on her desk? Doesn’t the fact that Killer addresses her by name in the first panel establish her identity and adequately lay the groundwork for the hilarious URL-based punchline? Also, why is her desk empty but for a single tiny slip of paper, but she has two computers sitting uselessly on the shelf behind her? Is this to establish her “computer savvy,” since obviously anyone who knows how to create a terrifying “web-site” must be surrounded by advanced computer equipment at all times? This comic seems like what happened when the crew at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC heard the phrase “Internet dating” in passing and tried to extrapolate what that might mean without doing any further research.

One of the things that rings false about the appearance of Donna is that the Beetle Bailey is actually fairly stingy about the introduction of named characters, only bringing them in once a decade or so when some great shift in society seems to demand it. The last such character introduced was actually computer nerd Chip Gizmo, which leads me to believe that “Donna” is actually Chip in fairly impressive drag.

Judge Parker, 11/12/10

In the latest in a long series of Judge Parker storylines to focus on the problems of the wealthy and attractive, it seems that ex-Judge Parker is chafing at the confines of his extremely comfortable retirement and wants to go back to his old job of deciding who lives and who dies. But now that his son has been declared Judge Parker for Life in accordance with Spencerville law and traditions, how will he get back into the courtroom? Will he start a whisper campaign impugning his son’s heterosexuality? Or will he settle for his own syndicated judge show on daytime television, where he’ll get to berate and insult defendants unrestrained by the niceties of judicial ethics?

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Your comments of the week in a moment, but first, an exciting photo of a reader wearing Comics Curmudgeon merch! I have been terribly remiss in keeping up my store — surely some t-shirt worthy catch phrase/publicly available clip art combo is out there for the making? — but that hasn’t stopped faithful readers from donning classic merch! For instance, faithful reader KarMann is here modeling a classic “Work them like a claw and call me Randy” t-shirt, made all the more appropriate by the fact that his non-Internet name is, in fact, Randy!

(Take a step into the wayback machine to research the origin of this phrase, though trust me, it doesn’t make that much more sense in context.)

And with that out of the way, brace yourself for your COMMENT OF THE WEEK!

“There’s still time for this to be the surprise uncovering of Milford’s largest underground oregano ring! ‘I just wanted to cook so that I could find someone that loves me!!’ THERE’S STILL TIME!” –Black Drazon

And your runners up! Very funny!

“Shouldn’t there be some kind of, I don’t know, italics or something to show that bird-momma is groaning and not actually saying ‘Groan’? Or maybe she is, and we learn that the birds who rule this upside down world may have learned the art of annoying clichés like ‘Y is the new X’, but they have yet to master the subtleties of the onomatopoeia.” –Francisco Arrowroot

“Given Marmaduke’s aggression and history of willful disobedience, I assume he was never neutered, which makes this image of two children staring up at his airborne scrotum even more disturbing.” –JC

“‘Hard to please and also gross’, huh? Well, welcome to the Internet!” –Tom Allen

“Explain to me again why Lucky has to go to some other forest when the Johnsons live in the very forest where Lucky is from, you know, the one where he lived with his mother until she stepped away for five minutes and he was stolen by a pair of pink-skinned bipeds? Are they worried about Frank seeking revenge? Leave it to Mark Trail to have witness protection for wild animals, but no local law enforcement to arrest people who trespass or commit assault.” –Mr. Goboto

“That independent thinking and competent decision making must stand Adrian in good stead as a doctor. ‘So, Mr. Harris, I was going to remove your gallbladder as planned, but the anesthesiologist told me that was considered passe nowadays, and so we were going to go for an appendectomy but the nurse said if she had to assist at another of those she would just die of boredom, and then your wife chimed in and well, you know how it is, getting everyone to agree on something, so, long story short: you now have a baboon heart and a smaller nose.'” –Violet

“Yes, only cowards don’t go with their heart. You don’t want me to think you’re a coward do you? DO you?” –TheTJ

“Thanks for pointing out the Tommie story lines. My brain has begun to tune her out. It’s like those Magic Eye things from the ’90s. I stare and squint at A3G for the longest time until you lean over and tell me, ‘It’s about Tommie. Her aunt is in town or something,’ and then I pretend to see it so we can move on to making fun of Crankshaft.” –Thinks He’s Brenda Starr

“I don’t really believe that Adrian is obsessed with the opinions of others, though: if that were true, how could she still have that haircut?” –Trilobite

“OH LOOK IT’S ANOTHER LUMPY-FACED WHITE LADY WITH ORANGE HAIR. Apartment 3G is turning into Being John Malkovich, but with lumpy-faced white ladies with orange hair. I guess this one has a double chin to indicate she’s not Ruby (whose distinguishing accessory is dorky bows) or Margo’s shooty stepmum (gun) or Aunty Iris (jaunty turtleneck and ‘That Girl’ flip) or the makeover lady (equally unappealing daughter) BUT JESUS CHRIST WHY DOES EVERYONE IN THIS STRIP HAVE TO BE A LUMPY-FACED WHITE LADY WITH ORANGE HAIR.” –JupiterPluvius

“Apparently Thel was on the phone with Blondie, signing off with ‘Who’s got the most improbable bust-to-waist ratio now, bitch?'” –Uncle Ritzy Fritz

“I’m taking the laughable popularity of Les’s book — I’ve seen shorter lines for Saul Bellow — as an indication of just how awful life in Westview is. ‘Lisa Moore? She’s one of the lucky few who made it out of here, right? What’s her secret?'” –Spunde

“What’s sad with Apartment 3-G is the lost opportunity. You have the perfect setup — ‘Who is Prissy, Mrs. Bloom?’ — and then no punchline at all. Mrs. Bloom could have at least responded, ‘Why, Margo, of course!’ before launching into how she’s actually referring to her cat, who, like Margo, drinks milk from a saucer and frequently bathes and sleeps.” –Dood

“This is why Frank in Mark Trail would be a great governor: complete transparency. Every shady deal or legislative malfeasance would be shouted out an open window to the waiting press below.” –ArchieNemesis

“I’m OK with Frank’s pro-homicide platform, but how’s his prostate?” –Walker of Dog

“I particularly like the way The Greg & Mort Walker Amalgamated Humor Corporation, LLC decided to put ‘doggie bag’ in quotes, as though it’s some obscure, industry-specific phrase that the rest of us who aren’t ‘in the biz’ might not recognize, which could, in turn, lead us to mistakenly assume that Sarge has simply given up all pretense of dignity and is now blatantly raiding Otto’s food bowl in broad daylight.” –Ringo Beaumont III

“That’s the shittiest looking weed ever. Those are totally XXL Chalupas from Taco Bell.” –Hamsterpants

“Dennis appears to be stealing his dialogue from Family Circus. This is a good move for him — few things are as menacing as Jeffy’s dead eyes.” –Master Mahan

“I think the reason Crankshaft is complaining about the local Cleveland football team in the most generic sense is that someone must have realized how bad it would look to have a comic strip with an angry old white man complaining relentlessly about ‘the Browns.'” –Lorne

As ever, big thanks go out to everyone who put some cash in my tip jar! And, while there are no advertisers to thank this week, there have been some exciting updates to our advertising offerings, so please check those out!