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So I slacked off the whole weekend, going off “having fun” and “enjoying myself” instead of posting comics for your amusement. O the shame! And during such a wacky weekend for the serials, too. Here’s a quick recap, one panel at a time:

Tommie and Lu Ann showed off their synchronized head bobbling.

“Brick” House showed off his vocabulary.

Mimi let her cloaking device briefly disengage and showed off the steel hair and terrifying, alien visage that keeps her EON minions in line.

Dr. Jeff showed off his mastery of platitudes.

And Spider-Man showed off … well, I’m not really comfortable talking about what Spider-Man showed off.

Meanwhile, in da hood…

Curtis, 10/17/05

Holy cow, Curtis is getting interesting! First it gets rid of one side of the comics’ least interesting love triangle, then it takes on gun-fueled school violence! No doubt by the time you read this you’ll know who’s holding that gun, but right now I’m on tenterhooks. Is it Chutney? Gunk? Barry? Or just another kid who listened to a little too much “Fortyounce” or “Bullet-Wound,” which is going to result in a Valuable Lesson About Media Violence?

Oh, and speaking of boring love triangles and violence:

Luann, 10/17/05

Yeah, just visiting a pal … in the back seat of his moving car! Seriously, did Dirk just materialize behind Brad completely unbidden and announced? Am I missing something here? Is the Dirk storyline going to be resolved in the only way that will make it all worthwhile: with the revelation that “Dirk” is a figment of Brad’s imagination, a representation of his untrammeled, unrepressed id combined with his repressed homoerotic fantasies? A guy can dream, can’t he?

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Judge Parker, 10/13/05

So Judge Parker has moved on from stultifying jungle adventures to stultifying domestic drama. See, “Randy,” our current blue-haired protagonist, just spent all of last week being berated by “Horace,” an amusingly freakish Wilford Brimley look-a-like:

To make an agonizingly long story short, Horace thinks Randy should be a judge, but the only thing holding him back (other than his obvious total disinterest in the idea) is that he isn’t married. Yes, in order to get the high-profile, high-pressure job he doesn’t want, Randy needs to finally tie the knot with “Mimi,” the fianceé that he doesn’t really seem inclined to marry. So you can understand why he looks like he wants to shoot himself in panel two. There’s some other details that I can’t really keep straight right now about Randy’s blonde secretary, who has what appears to be a little mustache and may be a CIA agent in training or something and no doubt really loves him. I’m sure we’ll get it all straightened out in relentless, repetitive detail over the next few months, and may even learn why Randy decided to propose some sort of sham marriage to Mimi rather than immediately reporting Horace to the EEOC.

But what I want to know about — what’s shamefully actually got me interested in Judge Parker — is this “Eon” thing. CIA-Secretary-True-Love girl mentioned it in passing too. What is Eon? Is it like EST? Is it like Scientology? Please let it be like Scientology! Please let the minister performing their Eon wedding be a thinly disguised John Travolta, or perhaps Beck! This being Judge Parker, it’s going to take forever for it to actually come out, and then it will be boring and we won’t care, but for the moment I’m clinging to my dreams.

Update: Yes, Beck is a Scientologist.

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OK, kids, as a penance for my long, lame absence, here’s a very detailed dissertation of what’s been happening in the serial strips so far this week. There’s quite a lot to cover, so let’s get started. (I think I actually used the previous sentence in my aforementioned printer Webcast script, by the way. Oh, the shame.)

Panels from Apartment 3-G, 6/27-29/05

We’ll start simple. Who can’t get enough of Tommie’s new sunglasses? Me! I can’t get enough of Tommie’s new sunglasses!

Your headband is nice too, Lu Ann, but … it’s no Tommie’s new sunglasses. Sorry.

Gil Thorp, 6/28-29/05

You know, I’m not ashamed to admit that I really … well, “like Gil Thorp” might not quite be the sentiment I’m looking for. Let’s say I’m really glad it exists. The WDIG Polka Parade may make up for any number of past Thorpian sins, and it confirms my suspicion that it is alone among the serial strips in having an actual sense of humor about its own existence.

One of the strip’s trademark features is that it actually keeps up with the seasons and matches the pointless high school athletic contests it portrays to the pointless high school athletic contests that would be going on in real life. But, this being my first summer as a Thorp follower, it never occurred to me that, like real high school coaches everywhere, Coach Thorp will be spending his summer gardening and presumably avoiding teenagers at all costs. Will there be any nail-biting contests of skill or strength to amuse us until football starts up in August? Or are the boys going to have nothing better to do than to lounge casually and homoerotically around on the beach?

Panels from The Phantom and Judge Parker, 6/28-29/05

What with all the media consolidation going around these days, I’m guessing both of these features are trying to build “synergy” in advance of the upcoming Indiana Jones sequel, creating anticipation in the public mind for red-hot tomb-exploring action. On the theologico-philosophical tip, though, I thought these two comics offered an insight into how wussy religion has become. I mean, props to the Old Kingdom: your civilization has to be pretty bad-ass if you have a god specifically dedicated to abject violence. Meanwhile, David’s proposed ancient-artifact-switcheroo illustrates what a soft touch Jesus is. Do you think Babi would let someone get away with trying to pass off a lesser Babi-related trinket as some priceless icon? I think not.

By the way, if I were Sam, and I found out that I had been dragged through the jungle with the snakes and the tarantulas and the hey hey to find some stupid old cross when a perfectly acceptable stupid old cross was just sitting in a box back in the air-conditioned mission, I might be ready to perpetrate some abject violence myself.

Mary Worth, 6/29/05

Ah, saving the best for last. Jeff’s head-swivel in panel one and look of total panic in panel two are priceless. Why are you looking to Mary for help, Dr. Cory? She got you into this, after all. Meanwhile, Mary’s suddenly caterpillar-like eyebrows are ratcheting tighter and tighter with each passing moment. I think tomorrow we’re going to be treated an explosion of Marian rage the likes of which the comics have never seen, a diatribe that even Smitty Smedlap couldn’t break loose. Use your aggressive feelings, Mary. Let the hate flow through you!

Here’s a conundrum for you to consider: Is Rita the greatest Mary Worth character ever? I know, when we’re talking about a strip that produced Tommy the Tweaker, that might sound like heresy. But tattooed, long-haired meth dealers are easy targets for mockery. In this storyline, Mary Worth has taken a member of what I am assuming is the strip’s target demographics — a white, middle-aged, middle-class woman — made her bereaved by the death of her daughter to boot, and then had the guts to make her an incredibly unsympathetic foul-mouthed drunken sponge. Rita Begler: we salute you. Below I present a montage of Rita’s obscenity-laden outbursts, which I dearly hope to be able to add to in time.