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Mary Worth, 7/27/15

Welp, the good news is Adam and Terry are finally out of the water, but the bad news is that’s all the Pool Party we get this time around. However, the great news is it looks we’re starting Ian-centric story arc, and those are the best.

“University Directors” are usually directors of something, like athletics or media services. We don’t know what Hilton Berkes directs, but judging from how hard Ian is sucking up to him it must be pretty important. Maybe UCSR got tired of all the Ian-related accidents, lawsuits, and media embarrassments and appointed a full-time Director of Professor Ian Cameron to shadow him day and night and tell him what to do. That explains Ian’s enthusiasm — he’s hoping the guy will give him real-time sex guidance during his next squalid, doomed attempt to make love to his wife.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/27/15

OMG you guys it’s beloved ancillary Rex Morgan character Heather! Heather used to be Sarah’s nanny, until she married captain of industry Milton Avery way the heck back in 2004. Since then, Heather has overcome every obstacle put in her path, while Milton has strangely declined in both mind and body. It’s pretty clear she’s been poisoning him to take over his empire, and she’s going to keep at it ’til it stops being fun.

Apartment 3-G, 7/27/15

Say, you know who else is making a new beginning? Lu Ann! What, did you think “Margo,” how can that be, do you see Margo anywhere around?

Anyway, Lu Ann wants to make a new start, so obviously the first step is to give somebody her share of the apartment, but the Professor somehow won’t let her do it. Now, the three women somehow collectively own their building. So I don’t why Papagoras has any say in the matter, unless he directs her life like he’s Hilton Berkes or something, or all Svengali-like got her hooked on drugs. Which he totes could do, he’s done it before.

Blondie, 7/27/15

Hey, you know those lazy comic strips that end with one character telling another one how funny their joke was? Well, this is the passive-aggressive inverse of that, and it’s no better.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Lots of comics testing their traditional boundaries today. Check it out:

Mark Trail, 7/23/15

Slowly, with predator-like stealth, Mark Trail’s Sunday Nature strips have moved beyond their traditional range to invade and conquer the week. Tiny steps, at first – panels just a little larger, audience distracted by an African vista or boat explosion. Then the wildlife — foreground animals starting with bugs, then rodents, a comical lynx, then POW! A fin whale, right in your face!

Next comes dialog, and (like most dialog) this won’t go well for Mark: “They are known for attacking their own kind. Not like the FIN WHALE, a peaceful member of the RORQUALS, all of which have dorsal fins and throat grooves! Ken has been fishing these waters a long time … I’m confident he knows THE WHALE IS NOT A FISH … or else he wouldn’t be a fisherman but a WHALER, BRINGING THESE MAGNIFICENT CREATURES TO THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION, right? Hahaha wait what’s happening? Are those villains at NOAA behind this? I bet they are!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/23/15

Doc Pritchart is a dentist? Why?

Mary Worth, 7/23/15

Huh? A change of mind can’t be forced? Mary, have you completely forgotten what you’ve been doing for the past seventy-seven years? It is your brand, lady.

I sure hope this isn’t a move toward a kinder, gentler strip in which Mary minds her own business, keeps more and more to herself, and gradually withdraws into privacy of her room until a passerby notices that the talc-and-salmon smell outside her door has developed a distinct undertone ….

Meanwhile, AdamandTerry, get a room, wouldja?

— Uncle Lumpy

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Gil Thorp, 7/16/15

Huh, for some reason I had thought football phenom True Standish was a senior, and had just blown into town to help Milford win the Valley Conference title trophy, aka “the Golden Cock,” before graduating to become a backup quarterback at a second-tier Big Ten school for the next three years. But it looks like we’ve got another year of his laid-back, good-natured antics to go! Today I mostly like the way True’s less-talented teammates are laughing it up in panel two. “Ha ha, you’ll be courted by important people who can advance your career, while we’ll hang out here drinking off-brand soda and watching other people jet-ski! High five!”

B.C., 7/16/15

The idea that our beloved (?) B.C. characters comprise the entirety of a tiny, isolated band of hunter-gatherers is probably the most accurate depiction of paleolithic humanity in this strip to date. Here’s hoping the accuracy continues and we get a good look at what happens when power relations in a society without organized political structures shift: fratricidal violence.

Mary Worth, 7/16/15

Oh, OK, maybe this will be the drama behind this mysteriously still ongoing Mary Worth storyline: Adam is psyched to be working with Terry, while Terry is only kind of enh about it! This strip can squeeze another three to five weeks out of that for sure.

The Lockhorns, 7/16/15

One of the main appeals of zombie apocalypse fiction — of apocalypse fiction of all types, really — is this: that though the world depicted is one suffering from terrible trauma, it’s also one where the constraints of our current lives have suddenly been swept away. In all likelihood you’d be killed in the opening hours of the plague or uprising, of course, but there’s a visceral thrill in imagining yourself in a new situation, with your boring money troubles and domestic squabbles vanished along with the restraints of traditional social morality. But the Lockhorns are so dead inside that even this mental escape is impossible for them. They know they live in the worst of all possible worlds, and that this is the only one there is.

Pluggers, 7/16/15

You’re a plugger if you’re extremely careful to respect the trademark rights of patriotic American companies like Johnson & Johnson, but the French communists who run Chanel can go fuck themselves.