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Gil Thorp, 3/20/09

Well, it looks like it’s that time of the season again, when Gil realizes that whatever squad he’s doing a half-assed job of coaching at the moment won’t be going to the playdowns, so he needs to make a half-assed attempt to intervene in the most egregious of the stupid dramas playing out among his charges in order to vaguely justify his existence. (If he doesn’t do this at least once every three months, they’ll take his name off the strip entirely and call it The Magical, Boozy Antics Of Marty Moon.) This spring’s crisis involves the Larsons, who are quite reasonably worried that they’ve moved their kids from the warm, nurturing environment of New York City into some kind of degenerate hellhole where they’ve become romantically entangled with vest-wearing fans of wacky, theatrical surf-rock bands. Gil needs that coffee, as he’s almost certainly come straight to Chez Larkin from PUB, as his drunken logic indicates. “See, Ashley and Dylan are all right kids … but, uh, don’t judge Milford based on them! We’re better than they are! Not that they’re … bad … per se … uh, what’s with those rays coming out of your eyes? Are you trying to use your mind control powers on me?”

Luann, 3/20/09

Well, there you have it. The big TJ mystery that’s been percolating since at least last Thanksgiving has been … solved! All thanks to a paragraph of exposition crammed into a single panel during a porch-based conversation. That should prove wrong everyone who thought the resolution to this plot point would be prurient, or interesting.

Slylock, 3/20/09

What kind of message are we sending to the young people of today? Look at this irresponsible bird, giving birth to an out-of-wedlock egg and then just strolling casually off! Where is this supposed to be, the ladies room at Parrot Prom?

Family Circus, 3/20/09

The way this little mob of melonheads is gathering at the open doorway, all staring silently at their teacher in her new short skirt and listening to Billy’s slander, is making me nervous. Miss McElfresh is about to find out how they deal with the Sin of Pride here at the Keane Kompound. (Hint: It involves rocks. Many sharp rocks.)

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Mark Trail, 3/18/09

Thank goodness Mark Trail has given up on its attempts to depict all-too-realistic and depressing human behavior and is going back to its bread and butter: attempting to depict hilarious and completely incomprehensible human behavior. Because the following list of activities is in order of increasing conspicuousness, obviously:

• Two dudes hanging around in a restaurant in broad daylight, drinking coffee and wearing hideously colored shirts.
• Two adults accosting a child they don’t know and offering obscene sums of money buy his camera.
• Two random people appearing in the background of a terribly composed picture, which will be printed automatically from a machine and put into a sad little scrapbook by a neglected orphan who lives in the woods and has no friends.

Luann, 3/18/09

OK, so Luann is clearly never going to give us less of … this, so from here on in, I want more. More, do you hear me? The only way this strip’s never-ending stream of queasy sexuality will become palatable to me is if it just goes completely over the top, turning the whole thing into some ludicrously repulsive French sex farce. I want to see Mrs. DeGroot seducing TJ for information (“TJ, I can’t stop thinking about the other day in the bathroom … but my fantasies would be so much hotter if I knew what you did for a living!”). I want to see Brad accidentally invite Toni to dinner at an S&M club (“Gosh, I thought that meant they served salad and macaroni!”). I want to see Bernice arrange a tryst between her soldier brother and Delta — and then retreat back to her room to watch via the hidden cameras and masturbate furiously. I want to see Gunther at the San Diego FurCon ’09 after-party, grinning bashfully while being serviced by dozens of obedient piggies. I want to see Luann and Elwood … no, wait, never mind, even I have my limits.

Hi and Lois, 3/18/09

Sunday’s neglect-o-thon made the case for a Child Protective Services visit to the Flagston residence, and today that case just got a little bit stronger. As Trixie sits alone in the middle of the floor, surrounded by scattered toys, she notes that her family “disappears” every day, but doesn’t mention anything about anyone coming to her house in their place.

Curtis, 3/18/09

Barry is right to be concerned. Curtis does not have the right attitude to find much financial success as a prostitute.

Ziggy, 3/18/09

Even Ziggy’s computer is repulsed by his sexual advances.

Pluggers, 3/18/09

Sure, they eventually put on the belt, go to their soul-killing jobs, then come home and eat pizza and drink beer in front of the TV until they doze off; but for most pluggers, that moment in the morning when they contemplate suicide is, perversely, the high point of their day.

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Dick Tracy, 3/12/09

The just-started Dick Tracy storyline involves not hideous villains embarking on a difficult-to-follow crime spree, but rather Dick intervening with one of his loser friends who has a gambling problem. I’m not certain exactly how this will lead to a graphically violent denouement, but surely our hero will find a way. In the meantime, for everyone who feels the comics should be more educational, I submit for your approval panel three, which shows us what would have happened if famed abolitionist John Brown had lived long enough to join Devo, then star as Scrooge in a community theater version of A Christmas Carol.

Luann, 3/12/09

Oh, look, it’s more tales of ribaldry in Luann! For most of this week TJ has been impressing (and arousing?) Luann with his pointless trivia knowledge about Argentine and Italian exports. (No, really.) Yet today’s oops-I-“accidentally”-walked-in-you-in-the-bath-Mrs.-D. might lead to our boy’s fancy settling on the older Ms. Degroot, setting up a possible mother-daughter-boarder romantic triangle! And wouldn’t that be delightfully ribald? And by “delightfully ribald” I mean “repulsive.”

Mary Worth, 3/12/09

WRONG MOVE, CONFEY! You probably thought that “identity theft” was a good sob story that would cover your inability to pick up a restaurant check until you and your Queenie were legally wed and what’s hers was yours. But upon hearing the very phrase, Adrian no doubt is thinking, “Oh my God, he’s no smarter than that idiot blonde Tobey that Mary’s always palling around with, and mocking behind her back! I can’t be tied to such an obvious dimwit! MUST … ESCAPE …”

I like Ted’s rust-colored suit jacket/black turtleneck combo, but I love the dude in the background’s black-and-white checked pullover/baby blue cardigan outfit.