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Gil Thorp, 7/9/09

Despite my many gripes about it, I genuinely, unironically enjoy Gil Thorp for any number or reasons, one of which is its tendency to bring back beloved characters from deranged storylines past. Today’s returning guest star is the wonderful Ted Pearse, first discovered in the ghetto of Milford in late 2005 teaching the kids straight-up streetball, which it turned out he was well acquainted with because he lived on those very streets, as a homeless person, which caused the Mudlarks’ rival schools’ fans to taunt him by dressing up as hobos at games. Anyway, it now appears that he’s gotten a haircut and moved up in the world, to the extent that he can make Gil’s eyes go wide with the prospect of gainful employment. Perhaps Ted has graduated from Oliver Twist to Fagin, and Gil will be forced to spend the summer picking pockets and running petty scams to earn his daily bowlful of gruel.

Judge Parker, 7/9/09

Speaking of beloved characters from the past, did you know that global warming prophet/awesome cheerleader Sophie has a hotter, older sister named Neddy? You wouldn’t if you’ve only started reading Judge Parker in the last two years! Neddy has been studying art in Paris for all that time, living in a fab French apartment that Abbey bought for her from one of Neddy’s bio-relatives on a whim for a seven-figure sum (don’t ask). Now she’s returning … and with a friend! This makes Sam look concerned, because he hates people and is suspicious of your so-called “friendship.” Who will this mysterious friend be? If we’re lucky, it will be Cedric, who was working as a temp butler in said Paris apartment when Abbey and Neddy arrived (DON’T ASK); Cedric is handy with a gun and had a 21-year-old wife who was jealously stalking Neddy because of his admitted thing for teenage girls. If we’re really lucky, it will be this charming sociology grad student/hooker.

Mary Worth, 7/9/09

Mary Worth, in contrast, exists in an eternal, timeless present. The current storyline happens, and is all that ever happens, and when it ends the guest stars are hustled off into the grey mists that hover at edge of Santa Royale. While some, like Aldo, are literally killed, others, like Chester the dog, and Von and Vera, and Ron the city councilstud, and what’s-their-name, the couple where the husband kept trying to keep his wife plump, simply vanish, never to be heard from or thought about again, while new victims are drawn out from the same ether that surrounds Mary’s reality. Are we honestly expected to believe that Delilah and Charlie are real people who existed before they walked on stage this month, despite the fact that those of us who’ve been reading the strip for nearly seven years now have never once heard of them? Poppycock. There are certain themes, certain moments of eternal return that do recur, however. We know, for instance, that deep beneath Mary’s helpful facade is a terrible rage waiting to be unleashed, and that, when you see the anger lines radiating from her as we do here, an awful vengeance is brewing. Mary, stuck in her timeless world, may not even know what she’s capable of, but we know. We know, and we wait with eager anticipation.

(Speaking of things that we faithful readers remember, those with fond memories of Aldomania may enjoy today’s Something Positive strip, though be warned that after viewing it you’ll never be quite right again.)

Crankshaft, 7/9/09

In other news, Crankshaft is using his summer job as an ice cream truck driver as an excuse to follow scantily clad young women around while furtively masturbating.

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Momma, 7/7/09

Oh, let’s review the biography and career of Nero’s momma, shall we? Agrippina the Younger was born into Rome’s first imperial dynasty, the Julio-Claudians. She was married off to an aristocrat at the age of 13, and gave birth to her only child at 22. After her brother Caligula became emperor, rumors were that he was sleeping with all three of his sisters and offering them up to his friends at orgiastic dinner parties. Later in his reign, Agrippina and her sister Livilla conspired with their cousin Lepidus (who was sleeping with both of them) to assassinate Caligula; the plot failed, and the sisters were stripped of their fortune and exiled to a small Mediterranean island, where they had to learn to dive for sponges for a living. When Caligula was successfully assassinated, they were recalled to Rome, and Agrippina eventually seduced the new Emperor Claudius (who was also her uncle) and became empress; the emperor adopted her son Nero. Claudius eventually died — poisoned by his young wife, it was rumored — and 17-year-old Nero became emperor. Mother and son quickly became embroiled in a power struggle, as Agrippina had apparently thought she would be running the empire; she tried various tactics for keeping him under her thumb (including, it was rumored, sleeping with him), until he finally decided to kill her. He arranged for her to take a sea voyage on a booby-trapped boat, which sunk, but Agrippina’s swimming talents allowed her to swim safely to shore, so Nero just sent assassins to stab her to death. Later, he viewed her corpse and remarked on how beautiful she was.

Now, much of this — particularly her supposed intimate relations with her son, and the story that she killed Claudius — is thought by modern historians to be propaganda put out by Agrippina’s political enemies. But still, it adds an interesting bit of deep historical background to the strip’s typical Oedipal horrorshow.

Mary Worth, 7/7/09

Wow, there are exactly two instances I can remember when Mary looked this mad, and that’s when she dropped the capisce-bomb on Aldo and when drunken Rita broke her precious swans. Clearly Mr. Smith is going to end up either at the bottom of a gorge in a heap of twisted metal or exiled to the hellscape that is the Downtown Women’s Shelter. But by the way the two adversaries are sizing each other up in panel two, I’m hoping that first there’ll be a no-holds-barred martial arts battle, with lots of Hong Kong-style wire work.

Crankshaft, 7/7/09

Ha ha, Crankshaft is an angry old dick with no customer service skills! Actually, though, he’s subbing for a friend in the ice cream truck for the summer; I think he might find if he checks some of those unmarked boxes in the back, that the truck is in fact funded by pixie dust, or other two-word phrases that end with “dust.”

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Crock, 7/6/09

When you have a narrative form like a syndicated comic strip that runs on and on for decades, there are some interesting results. For instance, there may be features of your strip’s universe that made some sort of sense, or were at least explained, at the time of their introduction, but which have either slowly mutated with time or had all knowledge of their significance lost, and whose existence today is taken as a given by all concerned despite their baffling nature. Take, for instance, today’s Crock. Obviously the presence of tiny hotboxes just outside the Legion’s fort, in which prisoners condemned for some forgotten crime sit hunched over day after day for years, slowly going mad from the hot sun and the isolation, is easily parsed. But why exactly are the sides of these portable torture chambers marked with giant keyholes? Wouldn’t the key required to operate such a lock be over three feet long? Wouldn’t the mechanism for such a lock intrude onto the prisoner’s already miniscule living space? Is it perhaps not a real lock at all, but just some sort of symbol of the State’s ability to imprison on a whim, and indefinitely? Perhaps this reminds the cook of his complicity in the workings of this monstrous dictatorship, which would explain his otherwise baffling anger at having to walk approximately five feet outside to dump some greyish glop into the prisoner’s bowl.

Gil Thorp, 7/6/09

Oh, Gil, if you’re going to openly acknowledge what I asserted last week — that summertime is for wackiness in Gil Thorp — then you’d better be prepared to follow through on your promise, or you’ll just break my heart all the more. Gil having lunch with vintage clothing aficionado and former teen hobo Ted Pearse is a good start; having some kind of gangland shooting happen right outside the Thorps’ front door (involving Marty Moon? please?) is even better.

Mary Worth, 7/6/09

You know, every once in a while even Mary Worth can surprise me. For instance, yesterday I could have only thought of two possible outcomes to Mary’s weeks-long attempt to browbeat Delilah back into her loveless marriage: acquiescence or suicide. Never did I imagine that she had the strength of will to shrug off the onslaught, put on her sexiest/most insane halter top-yellow fishnets combo, and go cruising the Charterstone grounds for all her ex-boyfriends, determined to rip their stripey shirts off and have her way with them right there on the concrete (which is already cracking only a few years after it was poured, thanks to Mary’s insistence that they go with the lowest bidder). Mary looks like she’s having a stroke in the second panel, and why wouldn’t she: she’s discovered someone immune to her meddling powers! I’m surprised she isn’t just melting into a puddle.