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Gil Thorp, 4/2/18

Sorry, Marty: while all-high-school-sports radio is more than willing to overlook a little light racism, they cannot abide the ultimate sin in broadcasting, which is accidentally blurting out swear words on the air. Anyway, today’s strip contains one of the greatest things any Gil Thorp can present to us, which is a panel of Marty Moon looking desperately unhappy as he realizes that he is once again the cause of every major disaster in his own life. This is even better than the time he quietly wept in his car after being golf-grifted by a Ben Franklin lookalike, because you can get a much better look at his face. His crumpled, sad, devastated face.

Judge Parker, 4/2/18

Wow, for a strip that has traditionally moved at about the speed of plate tectonics, Judge Parker has leapt from Randy doing some extremely mild flirting to Randy doing some smug and blatantly post-coital smirking in lightning time! Anyway, the important thing is that unlike certain soap opera hunks we could mention, Randy has nipples, thank you very much.

Blondie, 4/2/18

I’ve been a daily reader of Blondie for decades and … I’m pretty much wholly unaware of Alexander’s sports career? I mean, he sometimes wears a letterman jacket but I just assumed that was an ossified visual signifier letting us know he’s in high school rather than some specific reference to his varsity status. The sad truth is that Blondie spends infinitely more time dwelling on Dagwood’s relationship with various fast-food drive through speakerphones than it does on his relationship with his own son — which means that by prompting this chain of thought, today’s strip is really just reaffirming its own thesis, so, well played, Blondie.

The Lockhorns, 4/2/18

Sorry, Loretta, take it from a guy who singularly failed to cash in when he had the chance: the blog-to-book deal hasn’t really been a thing since, like, the mid-late ’00s.

Beetle Bailey, 4/2/18

Beetle definitely murdered someone with that hammer, right?

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Mark Trail, 3/31/18

Ha ha, Marlin looks horrified in that last panel, doesn’t he! “Wow, I thought … I thought I would just come by and deliver some cages, maybe tranq an elephant or two. But apparently, I’m going to have to punch out a rhino. I’m probably gonna die in the process, or at least be horribly injured, but it looks like I don’t have any choice in the matter.”

Funky Winkerbean, 3/31/18

“By which I mean things will soon give rise to a massive explosion that will poison the area around it for years.”

Hi and Lois, 3/31/18

So, uh, Thirsty has been immobile out in his lawn chair in various types of inclement weather for two weeks now? That … that can’t good.

Judge Parker, 3/31/18

Remember the last lady the then-future Judger Parker Jr. urged to “call me Randy“? She was just an innocent paralegal named April who didn’t even know how to use chopsticks, who later turned out to be a CIA assassin and member of a family of arms dealers and international criminals and probably did know how to use chopsticks, very well, and also how to use various deadly knives and other killing implements. What I’m trying to say is that we’re going to find out some real dirt on Toni Bowen sometime in, say, 2023.

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Family Circus, 3/28/18

So all week Family Circus has been doing a “Daddy’s boss is coming to visit!” storyline, which has featured Ma Keane in particular in just a state of constant anxiety about, I guess, the state of the house and the presence of four unruly and (let’s be honest) unattractive children. Her level of freakout seems WILDLY out of proportion to the actual situation, and today’s panel — which would make next to no sense if you didn’t know the context — even more so. Like, can Ma Keane even hear what Dolly is saying from this distance? Does she really think her husband’s boss is going to insist that, now that a five-year-old child has invited her to stay for dinner, the Keanes are honor-bound to feed her? Honestly the only way this all fits together is if Thel has been suspecting for years that Big Daddy Keane was having an affair with his boss, and in this panel he’s just gotten finished telling her that they’re running off together, tonight.

Judge Parker, 3/28/18

Hey, remember Toni Bowen, the network news’s main reporter on the Spencer-Driver beat, who brought America both the “Neddy has violated OSHA rules in so many ways” story and the “April is a international criminal, just not the way everyone thinks” story? And then she got fired? Well, she and Sam have bumped into each other down at the supermarket, and the sexual tension is palpable! The only question remaining is how exactly April, who’s still Randy’s wife and is keeping remote tabs on him via his own security systems and is also a literal assassin, is going to assassinate Toni, to death, until she’s dead.

Dennis the Menace, 3/28/18

I mean … I guess I’m not married to the Dennis the Menace brand, but I still think it’s a little late to pivot to an “old people do the darndest things” model, even if the readership is like 90% old people at this point.