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Mary Worth, 7/27/09

Faithful reader Baka Gaijin has been agitating for folks to come up with a nickname that will forever serve as a shorthand for this Mary Worth plotline; I’m always hesitant to prematurely elevate any plot to Aldomania status, but today’s first panel, in which Charley lunges forward ravenously as his purple-jumpsuited lust-object-of-the-moment hesitates coquettishly on the threshold of his badly decorated apartment, goes a long way towards convincing me. I have no idea why he’s assuming this particular position — presumably one of his previous conquests told him that his chin and his chest were his best features, so he always tries to lead with them, and damn the consequences to his posture. Also of note is the bizarre perspective in this panel; it’s as if we’re watching our lovebirds through a camera mounted on Charley’s ceiling. That’s probably because we are watching them through a camera mounted on Charley’s ceiling, and the whole sordid coupling will be uploaded to CharleysLoveDen.com in short order.

Meanwhile, in panel two we get a hilarious view of Delilah crossing her fingers behind her back. Because everyone knows that if you keep your fingers crossed as you methodically work your way through the Kama Sutra with some dude who isn’t your husband, it isn’t really cheating.

Judge Parker, 7/27/09

But hey, Lawrence, even though seeing your wife making a pass at stripey-shirted Charley may make you question her judgement, look at this way — at least he isn’t, you know, a horse.

Gil Thorp, 7/27/09

OH MY GOD GIL THORP’S STALKER IS … uh … this guy? Whom Gil apparently recognizes (‘You?”), meaning that he’s probably a beloved character from the past, but maybe from before the current artist took over, which is why none of us can recognize him? And even when we’re talking about characters drawn by the same artist, it’s kind of hard to tell all the teenagers apart? See, Gil Thorp team, there’s a reason your characters are referred to as something like “five foot eight left guard Dan Grabowski” the first twelve times they appear in the strip. On plus side, though, this strip does present us with the image of Coach Kaz pedaling up the street all stealthy-like on his silent ninja-bike (a low-rider? maybe? please?), which is deeply pleasing to me.

Apartment 3-G, 7/27/09

Oh, I can see where this is going: Eric refused to put on his hat to protect his ears from the frigid Himalayan air and caught his death of cold, just like my mother always warned. Fortunately the young lama has his magical Buddha powers to protect him.

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Gil Thorp, 7/22/09

You know how sometimes you get wind of the fact that they’re making a sequel to a movie you loved, and you allow yourself to get all excited about it, even though you know, deep in your heart of hearts, that it will probably never live up to the magic of the original? And you go to it and pay good money, hoping that among the Terminator: Salvations and Ghostbuster IIs you’ll have stumbled upon that rare Godfather: Part 2? Well, that’s how I sort of feel about the bubbling storyline here, in which Coach Kaz, P.I., is being urged to reprise his role from the utterly awesome summer of 2007, in which he stopped rock-and-roll legend Gail Martin from being harassed by her Ben Franklin-esque drummer. What Kaz, doesn’t mention, as he and Kelly enjoy their mid-up-scale dinner at Ricoze (called “Rico’s”, back when it was only mid-scale), is that he didn’t crack the Martin case by luck — he cracked it by hiring an actual detective to do the work for him. Perhaps he never admitted this to Gil in all the grandiose tales he told about that fateful summer?

Anyway, if there’s anything that makes me hopeful about a return to ’07-level awesomeness, it’s panel one here, in which Coach Kaz is lounging casually around in his Wayfarers, enjoying summer to its fullest. But remember, back in those heady days, Gil was teaching a kid who had accidentally cut off his own legs to box, and that was only the B-story. It’s going to be a tough act to follow.

Dennis the Menace, 7/22/09

This would be a good time for Mr. Wilson to be portrayed with his archetypical single bead of sweat; instead, his brow is dry and his eyes are thoughtful, if shifty. It’s almost as if he’s broken through years of anxiety and emotional turmoil on the subject of his irritating neighbor, and has reached a place of clarity; now, he’s attempting to apply rationality to the problem, beginning by contemplating the best places to stash the body.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/22/09

While the punchline in today’s Snuffy Smith is easy enough to parse — “Ha ha, the residents of Hootin’ Holler are subsistence farmers living in a pre-industrial economy” — I’m not sure what to make of the visual in the second panel, in which we see that the Smifs’ shack is perched at the end of a rocky, isolated outcropping. Are we meant to understand that relying only on local food sources and cutting ourselves off from the larger industrial food chain is like wobbling precariously at the edge of a cliff of starvation? Or that if these simple hill folk can extract sustenance from their boulder-strewn soil, surely we can too?

Judge Parker, 7/22/09

“I’m also concerned that your life vest is inflating! That shouldn’t happen until you’re out of the plane and in the water!”

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Luann, 7/14/09

You might think that being a big-shot semi-professional comics-mocking blogger is all fun and games, but I suffer for my art, and for you, my faithful audience. If you doubt the extent to my suffering, consider this: while most of you probably read today’s Luann and allowed an icy shiver to travel the length of your spine for a moment before moving on to something that didn’t make you doubt the existence of a loving God, I’ve spent most of today trying to figure out something to say about it, because, despite my previous declaration of disgust on this point, I sort of feel obliged to do so. Here’s the best I could come up with: I dearly hope that Brad and Toni are unable to back away from the implications of their cut-rate ham-handed “suggestive” dialogue and end up screwing right there on the sidewalk, at which point they’ll be arrested for public lewdness, thrown in jail, and murdered by revenge-minded but dimwitted criminals who can’t distinguish between firefighters and police officers. Next, a similar sequence of events polishes off Luann and Gunther, Tiffany and Quill, and most of the rest of the cast, with the strip being refocused on the adventures of Puddles the dog and, oh, let’s say Knute.

Beetle Bailey, 7/14/09

By comparison with the above, it’s been a joy to contemplate the pink tubelike form of naked General Halftrack. Ha ha, the general doesn’t like it when the doctor puts skin cream on his anus!

Judge Parker, 7/14/09

Long-time faithful readers of Judge Parker and this blog will remember that Randy’s ascendence to the position of Judge-Dictator of Parkerville, USA, began three years ago with an election race against the sleazy Reggie Black, whose main campaign strategy was to imply that Randy was gay. Randy emerged victorious, of course, by focusing on the issues, specifically on the issues that Reggie’s wife Celeste had with alcohol and rage. Anyway, poor Reggie, wherever he is, would probably love to have heard Randy admit that he doesn’t have any lady friends. Presumably, having learned well from his sensei Sam Driver, Randy has taken April to this romantic spot so that he can gaze wistfully out over the vista, with April eventually attempting to force his nose into her cleavage, to no avail.