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Gil Thorp, 7/18/12

At last, this summer’s wacky Gil Thorp storyline comes into focus! And it involves … one of Gil’s former students, who joined the military and then was physically maimed and mentally scarred in combat, and has become a recluse? Damn it, that’s not wacky at all. Though surely whatever non-board-certified tough love therapy Gil will unleash on him will be good for a laugh or two. One also wonders if the particular nature of the poor young man’s injury is meant play to the strip’s artist’s strengths, since there’s guaranteed to be one fewer hideous flipper-hand per panel whenever he makes an appearance.

Pluggers and Marvin, 7/18/12

Ha ha, old people, they sure hate the computers and the social networking, right? Oh, wait, that just seems a little at odds with all the old people I know who love Facebook and the many pictures of grandchildren it provides to them. Anyway, mostly I would like to point out that (a) these pluggers have found reporting of plugger-esque exploits on the society pages, which in most newspapers are usually dedicated to fancy parties thrown by the wealthy and beautiful, which means that in Pluggerville there are people even lower on the social ladder than these guys; and (b) I would like a comic about Marvin’s grandpa and his cranky old friend cruising for sexy grandmas in the park a million times better than Marvin’s current Marvin-pooping-focused iteration.

Shoe, 7/18/12

Whoops, looks like Roz served the Perfesser a meal intended for one of the many insectivorous birds who patronize her diner! Also, she is extremely sarcastic.

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Marvin, 5/30/12

At this point in my life I’m pretty deep in the throes of Marvin Derangement Syndrome, so I don’t really ever expect to find satisfaction in this feature’s panels. But I have to admit that I feel a certain amount of validation in knowing that even the other characters in the strip are disgusted at the thought of looking at more images of Marvin.

Ballard Street, 5/30/12

Ballard Street is a generally amusing one-paneler that depicts a mostly interchangeable cast of characters engaging in insane and inscrutable activities, so I usually leave it alone, but I thought that today’s installment, in which the punchline basically boils down to “Chip got drunk and passed out on the couch,” was worthy of your attention.

Six Chix, 5/30/12

I was going to huff that a plant needs the energy it derives from sunlight via photosynthesis in order to engage in the metabolic processes that this woman is demanding, but then I just decided to respect this panel for what it is: the melancholy tale of a person who feels so powerless in her everyday life that she comes home and bullies her plants.

Pluggers, 5/30/12

A plugger’s life is an awful charnel house in which everyone around them is dead or dying.

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Marvin, 5/10/12

Some people probably think I’m little harsh on poor li’l Marvin, repeatedly calling him the “world’s worst baby,” just because he isn’t potty trained, and glories in not being potty trained, and poops and pees in his pants constantly, for fun. Nothing the kid won’t grow out of, right? Well, it may concern you to learn that once he does finally learn to do his business in a toilet, like an adult, he plans to become a brutal dictator who will starve his own people if they refuse to support him politically. (Also, once he has obtained absolute power, he’ll probably just start crapping himself again, because who’s to stop him? You? Do you want your entire family sentenced to work in His Lordship’s diaper-processing plants?)

Mark Trail, 5/10/12

Uh-oh, you guys, Mark Trail’s gotta clear a guy on murder charges, so it looks like his fishing trip with Rusty has to be postponed, forever. Sure, a man had to die and another man had to languish in prison for a crime he didn’t commit to keep the horrible notion of Rusty-Mark bonding at bay, but I think everyone would agree that the sacrifices were worth it.

Judge Parker, 5/10/12

Hmm, since one of the main things we know about April is that she is extremely capable with firearms, perhaps Sam’s “I’m afraid April will have something to say about that” presages a full-on shotgun battle for control of Randy’s wedding. But that will have to wait until the strip cycles around to this plot again, sometime in 2014! Right now we have to worry about the mysterious Avery Blackstone. Something WASPy this way comes!

Mary Worth, 5/10/12

I’m sorry, the notion that this wedding reception would involve demure, well-dressed women applauding Mary’s meddling prowess has pushed it completely beyond the realm of believability for me, even by this strip’s rather lax standards. I’m now convinced that Mary never left California at all, and that this is just one of her masturbatory fantasies.