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Oh, look, it’s Earth Day, and once again many comics are awkwardly leaping on the environmental bandwagon! Let’s check out the oddest strips:

Beetle Bailey, 4/22/09

Ha ha, it’s funny because “earth” can mean the planet or dirt, and also because Zero is stupid! Of course, this is infinitely preferable to another tree-fucking strip.

Phantom, 4/22/09

You might think it’s kind of weird that Mrs. The Phantom has a special Earth Day briefcase that she just happens to have prominently displayed on the day that she will parachute onto a cargo ship bearing her family and a bunch of lizard men. (If you’re not following this strip, she’s doing this to keep the ship’s sexy lady captain from putting the moves on her spandex-clad husband, FYI.) But since she works for the UN, and the whole environmental movement is just a cover for the brewing one-world-government conspiracy, it all makes perfect sense that she’d be required by her job to tote propaganda around with her at all times.

Spider-Man, 4/22/09

You have to hand it to Spider-Man (the comic strip) for constantly working on new and innovative ways of making Spider-Man (the character) completely unlikeable. The buffoonish, semi-competent Electro has been given one, and only one, redeeming characteristic: his sincere love for his son. So naturally Spider-Man is using this fatherly affection to entrap him, keeping it foregrounded in the story and making Electro seem more sympathetic; as if realizing that this is the case, Spidey apparently has decided to just go all out with the dickery and make some cheesy joke about Earth Day while the villain desperately tries to break free to find his injured child. Naturally, Spider-Man cares not a whit for the environment: to generate all the electricity that his unceasing television-viewing requires, whole West Virginia mountains must be leveled to extract the precious coal within.

Curtis, Marvin, and Dennis the Menace, 4/22/09

Meanwhile, these three strips are here to show us the true meaning of Earth Day, which is that children of all races are filthy, disgusting monsters.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/22/09

Speaking of filthy and disgusting, in non-Earth Day news, today’s Funky Winkerbean features one character telling another about vomiting, and, as a “punchline,” the second character recoils in disgust. Funky Winkerbean, ladies and gentlemen!

Family Circus, 4/22/09

Yup, she sure is making life grand! By sitting there in the living room, quietly reading the newspaper. While the kids gather in the doorway, watching her, enraptured. Seriously, this family creeps me out so God-damned much.

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Curtis, 4/21/09

Ah, the innocence of youth! Way back in 2004, I found it unrealistic that Barry Wilkins would drop the word “chutzpah” into conversation. That, of course, was before Barry’s elder brother belched out the nonsense word-sequence “Say, they’ve set up a children’s biodiversity crafts and games stand,” making any quibbles about culturally specific vocabulary very much besides the point. At least I’m sure that some human somewhere has actually said “chutzpah.”

Apartment 3-G, 4/21/09

Tommie, if you defend yourself from sinister Dr. Joe by turning that can of HAIR SPRAY™ brand hairspray into a makeshift flamethrower, à la Rorschach from Watchmen, I will take back every bad thing I ever said about you.

And speaking of bad things, let’s look at just exactly what it is that Tuesday’s comics thought would make good grist for some light-hearted humor, shall we?

Crock, 4/21/09

Starvation.

Hi and Lois, 4/21/09

The naked exercise of economic privilege.

B.C., 4/21/09

Treasonous collaboration with a murderous oppressor.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/21/09

The gradual but unstoppable physical decline each one of us faces as we age, every new day being another step towards the grave.

Marvin, 4/21/09

The pungent odor of human excrement.

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Gil Thorp, 4/8/09

Yesterday I was mildly amused by Gil getting hit in the head with a pop fly, but nothing could prepare me for the sheer awesome madness of … this, whatever this is. A baseball improbably rapping our favorite flattopped coach in the flattop twice before landing neatly in his hat? It’s one of those terrifying moments when you suddenly realize that the safe narrative confines to which you’ve grown accustomed have fallen away and ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. Perhaps Gil will be on the receiving end of any number of bizarre events, good and bad and escalating in oddity, with the spring storyline turning into some kind of Latin American magic realist novel. Of course, everything after that first whack on the noggin will be just a dream percolating in Gil’s polyhedronical skull; in reality, he’s lying unconscious on the field, and his players are trying to figure out if they can get his wallet out of his pocket without waking him up.

Beetle Bailey, 4/8/09

You know, sometimes I have little moments when I think to myself “Maybe it’s gone a little too far with this whole comic strip thing.” Those moments come when I, for instance, spend fifteen minutes poking through my archives trying to figure out the deal with Beetle Bailey’s hats. Someone once told me that the hats the soldiers in this strip wear are a mishmosh of different uniform styles from different decades (which is true for just about any visual cue in a Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Enterprises LLC strip, I suppose); while everyone else seems to get just one designated bit of headgear, though, Beetle actually gets to change hats now and then. In the iconic image of Beetle that I have in my mind, he’s wearing this mushy baseball-cap-type thing, but lately he generally wears a slightly more military looking cap. The hat he’s wearing today is the one I usually associate with Killer, though perhaps it is the Army-approved lady-sexing cap, because Beetle seems to wear it on his dates with Miss Buxley and other environments where ladies might be romanced.

In other news, Miss Buxley apparently lies around her house disheveled and wearing only sleepwear in what I assume is the late afternoon or early evening. This is also true of me, but I’m guessing nobody gets all hot and bothered about that.

Marvin, 4/8/09

Good lord, what is that inky black puddle Marvin’s mom is cleaning up? Does the awful tyke piss out pure evil?

Momma, 4/8/09

Wait, did that guy just offer to donate a kidney or something to Momma? Because I can’t see what else he might mean about Momma needing a couple of orgAUGH UNTHINK IT UNTHINK IT UNTHINK IT