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Mary Worth, 7/18/10

All you whippersnappers out there, finding love on the so-called “Internet”: Does Match.com provide this level of service? Does it provide a bony, leathery shoulder to cry on after your date fails to follow up a little light beach dancing with nonstop attention? Does it provide rock-solid references and assurances about the character of your potential inamorata, based on about ten minutes of awkward, twitchy conversation? Does it promise to pursue that caddish failure of a human being to the depths of hell itself if necessary to make him love you?

The final panel of this strip shows the proper attitude to take towards a cell phone that might at any moment attempt to broadcast Mary Worth’s voice at you. Hold it at arm’s length, watch it warily, and hurl it as far away as you can at the first sign of trouble.

Mark Trail, 7/18/10

Look, kids, if you get eaten by a bear or shark, don’t come crying to Mark, OK? These majestic beasts don’t follow your so-called human “morality” or “law.” This may be Mark’s own way of justifying his insatiable desire to punch hairy people; his violent actions are governed entirely by instinct, and have no more relation to an ethical code than a skunk’s spraying.

Panels from Apartment 3-G, 7/18/10

Oh, God, it’s even more delightful than I could have imagined! I particularly like Lu Ann regarding that bottle of delicious, delicious gin with her eyes crossed. Can we just jettison the whole makeover plot and get two weeks of “Margo and Lu Ann get blotto”?

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Gil Thorp, 7/14/10

Hey, Gil Thorp! We waded through like six months of baseball season because we were all psyched for summer, and you know why? Because summer is when awesome things happen in Gil Thorp! Awesome things like Kaz kicking ass and Marty Moon getting grifted and Milford students saving grown-up ladies from stalkers and and little girls getting into fistfights and Kaz chillin’ in his dojo! What we specifically don’t want is the same stuff we get during the school year, namely Gil doing a half-assed job of coaching today’s youth in some sport or other, which appears to be what we’re getting. Still, it’s kind of amusing to see how limited his set of coaching techniques is. “So, let’s do some laps to build up your endurance!” “But coach, this is golf, and…” “I SAID LET’S DO SOME LAPS!”

Mary Worth, 7/14/10

At last, the drama in this Mary Worth plot has been revealed! It’s been a week since Jenna and Mike got high on the beach, and he apparently hasn’t returned her calls or emails or texts or whatever other forms of misspelled communication she’s been bombarding him with. Tonight it’s time for her to mourn, alone with her circa-2003 Danger Hiptop and her bottle of fortified ketchup wine; tomorrow she seeks out and destroys the person responsible for her emotional devastation (Mary).

Funky Winkerbean, 7/14/10

One of the striking features about Funky Winkerbean over the decades has been that its title character had receded in importance in favor of Les Moore, who bore the brunt of the strip’s grimness but still, despite terrible psychological damage, managed to remain mildly optimistic (if creepy). But since the most recent time jump, it seems to me that Funky’s narrative focus has come back more often than not to Funky. And why not? He’s an angry, bitter recovering alcoholic on the verge of relapse, who’s managed to screw over or alienate his son, his mentor, and at least one wife. This time travel storyline actually started out sort of whimsical and interesting — I’ve had a lot of people writing me to say that they can’t believe that they’re looking forward to seeing how it turns out — but naturally it’s quickly come to this, a prematurely old man wandering about his own past, raving like a crazy person about Elvis’s corpse, and unleashing a string of metaphors whose incoherence (his issues are baseball-playing sharks on a road?) can’t mask his essential awful self-loathing. The sad thing is that in his current state he’s probably still happier than he’ll be if he wakes up in the present.

Apartment 3-G, 7/14/10

Oh, how convenient of Kat and Kitty to list all the people who helped further the humiliation of our gals, right here on TV! It will make it easier for police to link what might otherwise seem like an unconnected series of brutal stranglings committed by an unknown assailant’s ultra-powerful “quoting fingers.”

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Apartment 3-G, 7/5/10

Oh, God, Tommie’s humiliation is going to be even more delicious than I might have hoped. “Tommie, get out here! What are you wearing, a sweatsuit? You’re letting down everyone, with your ugly clothes! God, you make me want to puke. Let’s turn the house lights up, so you can see everyone’s disgusted faces!”

Mary Worth, 7/5/10

Dear Mary Worth Creative Team: I know you submit your strips weeks in advance and all, but I can’t help but feel a bit miffed that you’ve followed up my “Jenna and Mike are on drugs” funny with a strip in which our lovers are talking in oddly lucid and detached terms about their weird, altered emotional state and the “strange buzzing” they’re experiencing, all while rubbing up against each other. Has Mary so lost faith in her meddling skills that she’s resorted to spiking her victims’ meals with Ecstasy?

Mark Trail, 7/5/10

Since the main point of this storyline is to return Sassy home so that Rusty can make another horrifically overwrought facial expression, I fail to see the point to any of this sordid unlicensed animal shelter drama; people are just competing for the Sassy reward money, as is natural and healthy in a capitalist society. “Yes, Mr. Trail, your little dog is here somewhere… wait, where is he?” “Why, is this the dog you’re looking for, sir?” “Why, yes it is, mysterious mustachio’d man! Here is your reward!” “But … but … that man stole the dog from me!” “Whatever, lady, I stopped caring about this the moment the wayward puppy was returned to me. By the way, does the zoning board know you keep all these animals here?”

Dennis the Menace, 7/5/10

Mrs. Wilson has paid Dennis and Joey to induce the heart attack that will finally free her.