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Gil Thorp, 5/17/23

How is Gil’s arch-rival Luke Hernandez dealing with Gil’s secret baseball weapon, a blind pitcher teaching the Mudlarks to open their third eye and achieve cosmic oneness with the universe? Well, he’s flying to Korea with his assistant Coach Kim to try to recruit one of Kim’s relatives, who’s apparently some kind of baseball superstar. I’m assuming he’s going to pull a picture of Gil out of his wallet and show it to Kwan and say “See this man? He deserves death. He must be destroyed. You shall be the instrument of my vengeance.” Kwan doesn’t speak English, but just the power of Luke’s simmering hatred will be enough to get him onboard.

Mary Worth, 5/17/23

God, can you imagine how much Mary wishes she could just stare at her phone rather than listen to Jeff blather on about whatever it is he thinks is interesting or important? She’s just a little too old and polite to do it, but she envies the freedom of the young.

Hi and Lois, 5/17/23

I didn’t think we could get sadder than “Trixie is left on her own for hours on the floor to stare into the sun,” but I think “Trixie is left on her own for hours on the floor to stare at the TV, which is not turned on” might do it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/17/23

Uh oh! Looks like word’s gotten out that Mud Mountain Murphy is extremely easy to trick. At his next concert, he’ll still be singing “Muddy Boots,” but he’ll also be asking if his fans would be interested in helping him launch MudCoin, his own namesake cryptocurrency, with the help of his new best friend here!

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Mary Worth, 5/16/23

Look, I’m a guy who likes to eat out, and LA has an great food scene with amazing high- and low-end restaurants, but definitely at the places I go to regularly, I have one or maybe two go-to dishes, because … I dunno, they’re good! I already know they’re good! Why would I get the thing that may not be good, when there’s something I already like? Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that you either die a hero or live long enough to find Mary Worth relatable. Also, are they stretching out the “Mary and Jeff go on a date” transition between storylines into a second week? Whatever, who cares, this is representation for me, as established.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/16/23

Do I want to keep making jokes about the obvious desperate poverty that the residents of Hootin’ Holler suffer in? I’m ambivalent about it, but when they keep doing strips about things like people stealing badly needed useful tools from their own children just for a few dollars, it’s pretty hard not to.

Daddy Daze, 5/16/23

OK, we’ve all just sort of accepted that the bit of Daddy Daze is that the Daddy Daze daddy pretends that the Daddy Daze baby can talk, but I think we should draw the line at the Daddy Daze daddy pretending that the Daddy Daze baby can write.

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Hi and Lois, 5/14/23

This is truly one of the wildest throwaway panels I’ve ever seen. Readers of space-constrained newspapers are just getting a classic Mother’s Day strip about how a mom’s work is truly the hardest of all, but those whose comics pages have room to spare know that just moments before he and the kids got assigned a bunch of chores, Hi thought that he was going to get a chance to give Lois a very special Mother’s Day gift (sex, with him).

Mary Worth, 5/14/23

OK, look, you have to approach today’s Mary Worth not in the context of this blog, where I’ve been making off-color jokes about the strip for going on 19 years now, but in the context of Mary Worth, the soap opera comic strip, one of the squarest forms of media ever created, and in that context the panel here where Mary says, in so many words, that Estelle thinks the sex with Dr. Ed is a lot better than the sex with Wilbur ever was, is positively pornographic.

The Phantom, 5/14/23

Way back in 2005, the Phantom had his Bandar henchmen erase the memory of a young woman who had inconveniently fallen in love with him using “Bandar medicine.” Anyway, turns out this practice, in addition to being obviously unethical in a number of ways, also doesn’t really work! Whoopsie! Awkward!