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Gil Thorp, 10/29/07

Uh-oh! In a totally shocking unforeseeable development, it seems that vaguely repentant “accidental” murderer Cully Vale is falling in with a bad crowd! That Mitch “found” that money in some old lady’s purse is obvious not least because he appears to be an Eisenhower-era greaser hood of some sort. Meanwhile in panel two Boyd Henry’s Chameleon Device briefly hit some kind of glitch, revealing his black, alien eyes. What sinister plan does this disguised extraterrestrial have for Cully, and for humanity? Only time will tell!

Cully is too dumb recognize any of the warning signs, obviously. He’s not even very in touch with the way his own body works. “Hmm, discomfort in my tummy … what could make grumbling go away? Food? Sure, food sounds great! I’ll try this ‘food’ of which you speak!”

Mark Trail, 10/29/07

Most of the comics are starting in on their Halloween stories this week, but none have offered a vision as terrifying as Johnny Malotte’s litter of spawn and their eager, smiling faces. It’s frankly a wonder that Mom can even sit up straight after pumping out this brood. I’m guessing the visiting businessmen will find this group of hillbilly Von Trapps more unsettling than enjoyable.

And yes, Johnny has facial hair, but he’s an “old friend” of Mark’s, so he gets some kind of pass. Based on his Captain Renault-style mustache and vaguely Frenchy last name, I’m going imagine him as a comical Quebecois outdoorsman for really no good reason.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 10/29/07

I’ll never forget the day I first visited my Great-Aunt Ruth and Great-Uncle Stan in their retirement community in the high desert about an hour outside of L.A. I was fourteen or fifteen at the time, and while I intellectually understood why they found the golf course directly adjacent to their backyard appealing, I was more impressed by the constant round of barbecues and cocktail parties — any time of day, any day of the week — that their lives had become. I quickly understood why everyone got around the streets of their little subdivision on golf carts and the speed limit was 15 miles per hour: because pretty much everyone had a buzz on all the time. Ever since that day, I’ve had one goal in mind: to retire in style. Thank you, TDIET, for reminding me to keep my eye on the ball.

Judge Parker, 10/29/07

*SPUT* *BLUB* DO NOT TELL ME THAT THIS IS HOW THIS STORY HAS BEEN RESOLVED. IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.

Sam is wearing his sunglasses to bring Extra Dickishness Action to this little conversation.

Hi and Lois, 10/29/07

Ha ha! It’s funny because Hi and Lois are bankrupt!

Lockhorns, 10/29/07

Ha ha! It’s funny because something pop-culture-related Loretta can’t cook!

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Herb and Jamaal, Shoe, and Six Chix, 8/15/07

Oh, hey, everybody! Did you hear that it’s iPhone day in the syndicated funny pages? No? Well, fortunately, these three team players did. Yes, there’s nothing that will help make the comics relevant to young people like jokes about a hot piece of electronic gear that was released to great fanfare and media hype eight and a half weeks ago. Actually, that’s close enough to what I imagine the comics lead time to be that it makes me think that someone got a look at gadget-hungry types waiting camped out in the streets outside Apple Stores and thought “comedy gold!” And thank goodness we’ve finally got to see the results.

Herb and Jamaal has worked its cutting-edge cell phone joke into a storyline involving a hip young priest who’s been sent to clear out the clerical deadwood from the diocese of wherever the hell it is that Herb and Jamaal takes place. This might be interesting, except that nothing that ever happens in this strip is remotely interesting, so this won’t be interesting either. I like the way that “hip” is signified by the earring and the indoors sunglasses — he’s like Herb and Jamaal’s Coach Kaz! Though with less propensity for violence, hopefully. The strip is pandering to the newspaper comics’ core audience of angry old people by making this fellow as unlikable as possible; presumably he’ll be shuffled off to another diocese in disgrace soon enough, once the altar boys start complaining.

Shoe, meanwhile, manages to make no sense at all in its particulars, though it does manage to reflect the higher truth of its characters’ well-established personalities, since the Perfesser is well known for his food addiction. Six Chix thinks that the “a seashell is like a cell phone” joke somehow becomes funny when transformed into an “a seashell is like a particular, much-hyped kind of cell phone that was recently released” joke. For the record, it doesn’t.

B.C., 8/15/07

Just in case anyone’s wondering, the new, post-Johnny Hart’s death, assembled-from-existing-drawings B.C. is terrible. I’ve never been a huge fan of the feature, and I sort of have been waiting for the new team to find its bearings, but it’s kind of shocking how much worse it’s become. Today’s strip practically boggles my attempts to enumerate criticisms of it; I’ll start with the weird, mangled look of the figures in panel one (is this what happens when the new team deviates from pre-drawn templates?), the actively crude looking baseball and blimp, and the bizarre orthographic choice to end “Lookie, the blimp” with a period rather than an exclamation point. The saddest thing, as I’ve noted before, is that zombie B.C. is occupying space in hundreds of papers that could be used by someone trying to break into the comics business, or, failing that, by a nice ad for an auto dealership that would help the newspaper afford to buy more comics, or pay its copy editors.

Mark Trail, 8/15/07

Check out where Andy’s paw is going in panel three! Ha ha, Cherry, you’ve been rude-synonym-for-vagina-blocked! She knew that her one chance to have relations with her husband for the fifth time since their wedding was to hop on him the moment he got out of the car, while he was still disoriented; fortunately, Mark’s trained his faithful St. Bernard well to save him from the unpleasantness of physical love. Looks like Cherry’s got another night of furious masturbation in store while Mark blathers on about duck innards to her father!

The Lockhorns, 8/15/07

Actually, “Leroy” is French for … oh, you know what, just forget it.

Oh! And! Faithful reader Flipper earned that virtual penny and more with this utterly amazing Mark Trail squirrel montage. Are you ready to have your mind blown?

Also, faithful reader loudfan shares this evidence that Spider-Man is whoring himself out for the postal service. Thrill as he runs errands for Aunt May! Gasp as he surfs the Internet! Boggle as he puts a cold compress over his eyes, for some reason!

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Apartment 3-G, 8/11/07

WOO-HOO, ALAN’S BEATNIK BUDDY IS BACK! If you don’t remember this bad-news countercultural type, check out his first appearance, from more than a year ago. Crazy kick! I don’t know if we knew before today that his name was “Jones,” though. I wonder if this fellow is actually the Archie gang’s resident nonconformist, Jughead Jones, all grown up, who’s traded his first name and his felt crown for a soul patch and a gig dealing weed (“good”) and smack (“bad”).

Momma, 8/11/07

I was going to write a screed about how if you weren’t a dedicated Momma reader, you wouldn’t get the “joke” of today’s strip, which is that Francis doesn’t really have a steady job and so “getting up and going to work” probably means putting in applications or working at one of his various menial but otherwise not particularly stressful jobs and that based on the level of dishevelment in his hovel, you might assume that he did literally work in a salt mine, albeit one with complimentary wake-up calls, and that furthermore this meant that nobody would get the “joke” in today’s Momma because there was no such thing as a dedicated Momma reader, but then I realized that I was a dedicated Momma reader and that I got the “joke” (keeping in mind that “getting” is not the same as “being amused by”). Then I was sad.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/11/07

Good news, everyone! Hugh’s conscious and his histrionics levels are back to normal!

Judge Parker, 8/11/07

All right, Judge Parker, you’ve been waving those things around all week trying to get my attention, so here it is: boobs. BOOBS. Boobs boobily boobs boob. BOOBS. Are you happy now?

Mark Trail, 8/11/07

Speaking of boobs: You’d think that Sam, who’s been through a lot with Mark, would take the lead in thanking him for his help in saving this small-town airport, which help mostly took the form of violence and threats of the same, but it’s her dad who’s doing all the jawing here. Still, in panel three it does sort of appear that she’s about to thank him … visually.

And now, a little something for the ladies…

Gil Thorp, 8/11/07

Legitimate questions were raised about whether yesterday’s crotchtastic Gil Thorp was really as crotchy as all that, or if it was perhaps just the view through Bill Ritter’s boxing gloves. There’s really no doubt today, though. No, sir. That’s quite the crotch shot. Yep.

By the way, if Bill were holding a pack of cigarettes and wearing chaps, panel three would look uncannily like an enormous Marlboro billboard that loomed a mere two blocks from my high school when I was a kid, I swear to God.

The Lockhorns, 8/11/07

Ha! It’s funny because Leroy has a crippling problem with alcohol! Funny!

Beetle Bailey, 8/11/07

Ha! It’s funny because General Halftrack has a crippling problem with alcohol, and is so drunk that he’s managed to intoxicate his golf ball, in defiance of all the laws of biology and physics! Funny!