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Gil Thorp, 7/5/13

Well, this is it: I am officially allowing myself to get excited about the Gil Thorp storyline, seeing as it’s going to be about the colorful history of professional wrestling! See, Oldguy McFisticuffs is Herk the Mauler, and is a former pro wrestler, as is his son, who apparently has some connection to Gil, so it’s WRESTLEMANIA until football starts! (Not literally.) (WrestleMania is registered trademark of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.) Can you believe we had (I think, I’m not going to bother going back to check because they were soooo boring) two summers in a row about golf when we could have had wacky tales of regional wrestling from back in the day? Pro wrestling is genuinely fascinating, a weird combination of athletics and improvisational theater with a complex vocabulary, and it did indeed emerge from regional scenes in the middle of the 20th century. Anyway, when Herk wasn’t being a heel in whatever the regional wrestling equivalent of the Valley Conference was, he was “Johnny Blaze” “out west” in a wrestling scene that did as little as possible to mask the sport’s homoerotic undertones.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/5/13

You know, if I were going to do a joke about someone who always speaks her mind and has a hard time holding her tongue, I probably wouldn’t have her deliver the punchline in thought balloon form. But Herb and Jamaal chose a different path.

Mark Trail, 7/5/13

Rusty and the Otters: A play in one act

RUSTY: Don’t wander off, adorable otters!

ADORABLE OTTERS: [Immediately wander off]

FIN

Apartment 3-G, 7/5/13

You know, if I were going to do a plotline about one of my soap opera strip characters trying on a bunch of fancy clothes, I probably would actually depict her wearing some of the fancy clothes instead showing her in between bouts of fancy-clothes-trying-on, wearing the same boring clothes she always wears. But Apartment 3-G chose a different path.

Mary Worth, 7/5/13

Oh, man, Toby does not want to go on this vacation with Mary, you guys.

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Momma, 7/2/13

If you somehow encountered this Momma comic in complete isolation, not being familiar with its characters or narrative conventions, you’d probably be pretty confused by it, right? I was pretty confused by it myself, at first. I guess it’s supposed to mean that Momma has been answering the phone, and Ed thinks that Momma is an answering machine, because … he’s a moron? Which I guess means that Marylou lives with Momma? I suppose that I’m one of the very few people in the world who ought to know the living arrangements of the characters in Momma for his job, but I confess that I actually am pretty surprised by this. We all know that Francis lives in a disgustingly filthy apartment and Thomas and his wife live in their own house where they can have sex with each other in private, or so they think. I guess I always just assumed that Marylou had her own place. I think … I think there ought to be more Momma-and-Marylou-drive-each-other-crazy jokes to be gotten out of her still living at home? No, wait, I don’t mean to suggest that Momma do more of any specific kind of joke, or indeed any jokes at all. Forget I said anything.

Better Half, 7/2/13

Hey, everyone, Stanley just read his credit card number aloud, right here in the newspaper/on the Internet, where everyone can see/hear it! Why not try buying things with it? Just change a digit or two! Sure looks like a credit card number to me!

Mark Trail, 7/2/13

Mark Trail … in disguise? Mark Trail in disguise. Mark Trail in disguise you guys OMG OMG

Family Circus, 7/2/13

“But sometimes when you hurt inside it’s because you’re bleeding internally, and then hugging makes it worse. You can tell which is which by the screaming!”

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Mark Trail, 6/29/13

Once upon a time, my dad was driving through one of the more rural parts of Western New York when a deer jumped out in front of his jeep, and he ran into it and killed it; the sheriff came by and told him that because it was deer season, he was allowed to take home the carcass if he wanted to. He demurred on this, but it’s always made me wonder if you could just hunt deer by driving around near those deer crossing signs and then intentionally ramming them with your car. Anyway, Mark Trail has already made it clear that it considers “WHAM” a perfectly acceptable gunshot sound effect, but I’d still like to believe that what happened between panels one and two was Death by Truck.

Mary Worth, 6/29/13

Generally, one of the first things people say to me when they start reading my blog is “Wait, Mary Worth is still being published, how is that POSSIBLE, surely no newspaper is actually using part of its dwindling features budget to pay to syndicate it?” Well, here’s a little known fact: Mary Worth has for the last ten years or so been an “advertorial” product entirely funded by the Association of Condominium, Townhouse, and Homeowners Associations. Some days this is more obvious than others.