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Panel from One Big Happy, 4/9/08

While the joke in today’s One Big Happy isn’t really worthy of note, there’s something very disturbing going on in the background of the first panel. Can you see it? Here, let me blow it up for you:

My God, is that … some ponytailed individual running through the park? Carrying a knife in ready-to-stab position? Is he or she fleeing from the scene of a vicious murder? Or running towards a hapless victim with the intention of committing one? Or are we seeing the midst of a multi-corpse stab frenzy? This panel will go down in history as the Zapruder Film of the modern comics.

Gil Thorp, 4/9/08

Stepping back from the total insanity for a moment … ha ha, just kidding, this is Gil Thorp, and under the new regime the total insanity is back, baby. To get a sense of this, look no further than panel three, where the pitcher is apparently making that ball hang in mid-air with just his mind. I think Milford has found its new pitching phenom … in outer space.

Meanwhile, it appears that the Very Special Spring Storyline is going to involve Gil throwing himself wholeheartedly (and disastrously) into his student-athletes’ lives to make up for years of disinterested coaching. It’s only now that it’s occurring to him that letting a deranged old man spouting obvious lies basically coach his baseball team may not have been the best idea last spring. Anyway, this year’s first victim of Gil’s new over-involvement is apparently going to be “problem child” Tyler Jay. Here’s a hint, Gil: If you want Tyler to keep on the straight and narrow, don’t let him play on the baseball team, where he’ll have ready access to many club-like objects.

Hi and Lois, 4/9/08

The innocence of youth is apparently a myth, as baby Trixie seems to imagine a future where people are forced to desperately stitch up the bleeding, mangled bodies of their loved ones as a matter of routine.

Dennis the Menace, 4/9/08

Usually, the Mitchells roll their eyes or loosen their collars in awkward humiliation when Dennis says something inappropriate, but here they’re positively gleeful at his suggestion that his aged grandfather is old and feeble-lunged. I’m not sure whose father he’s supposed to be, but Henry and Alice are obviously both lacking in filial piety and deserve to have Dennis foisted on them by the universe in karmic retribution.

Pluggers, 4/9/08

don’t think about a plugger’s prostate don’t think about a plugger’s prostate DON’T THINK ABOUT A PLUGGER’S PROSTATE

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Gil Thorp, 4/7/08

And so the Frank Bolle era, which was always intended to be transitional, passes on into history, and we meet the new permanent Gil Thorp artist: Rod Whigham! Rod’s reign of terror begins, naturally, with Gil thrusting his ass at his wife as he roots through the refrigerator, desperately looking for some sweet, sweet booze to take the edge off of his Andrew Gregory-blighted existence. I heartily approve of Gil’s awesomely chiseled flattop, manly nose, and protruding Adam’s apple, along with the return of the detached hideous claw-hands (gripping the cold one in panel two), Mimi in a vest for some reason, and a bowl full of unidentifiable ovoids sitting on the kitchen table. Yes, sir, Rod, you and I are going to get along together … just fine. There’d better be some damn earrings on Coach Kaz, though.

Dick Tracy, 4/7/08

One thing I don’t approve of in the new Gil Thorp is the use of Comic Sans for the dialog text, an affliction that seems to have metastasized into Dick Tracy today. While I don’t harbor the same animosity towards the font that some do, I do think that using a font that’s available on just about everyone’s home computer makes a strip look less polished. Admittedly, it’s not my hand cramping up from writing out the completely demented dialog in Gil Thorp or Dick Tracy, but I think the handwritten text looks better.

On the other hand, having Dick Tracy’s dialog all computer-y does makes it look like it was automatically and badly translated from the Chinese, which sort of makes the strip easier to enjoy, for some reason. Also, I think IN ANOTHER ROOM may be the lamest narration box ever. If you really need to make that clear, you always could just, you know, draw it differently.

Mary Worth, 4/7/08

Oh, man, Donna Amalfi in room 305, Mary Worth is going to meddle the hell out of you. She’s probably not actually bereaved at all, but just interested in learning more about a potential new career path while she recovers from routine surgery, but that won’t stop Mary’s relentless attempts to make her realize that life is still worth living, and that inside every cloud is a silver lining, and tomorrow is another day, and blah blah blah YOU CANNOT STOP HER SHE IS A MONSTER.

Family Circus, 4/7/08

“I only know how to think and feel in terms of references to products and corporate marketing! I’m the bastard, malformed spawn of late-stage capitalism!”

Apartment 3-G, 4/7/08

Now that Frank Bolle is done with his Gil Thorp stint, he’s free to dedicate his full attention to Apartment 3-G. Today, using only Blaze’s wordless expressions, he masterfully captures what it feels like to watch some junkie grope your cousin while prattling on with a bunch of nonsense that nobody in the room actually buys.

One Big Happy, 4/7/08

“And the bodies we hid in the shed are starting to smell!”

Dennis the Menace, 4/7/08

[uncontrollable shuddering]

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Beetle Bailey, 2/8/08

I’m a man of great complexity and great misanthropy; thus, while I always complain when boring legacy comics like Beetle Bailey are stupid and painfully obvious, I also reserve the right to complain when they’re stupid and completely opaque. Is this supposed to be some kind of cutting commentary on “modern art”? Is the wall-squiggle supposed to be what the already stylized medium of graffiti art would look like rendered in the stylized, cartoonish world of Beetle Bailey? Is there in fact something wrong with the mouth? I’m confused. Confused and angry.

Gil Thorp, 2/8/08

Gil Thorp, meanwhile, remains a pure, soothing delight. I hope that the whole town of Milford bands together to help track Andrew’s every movement out of a sort of exasperated affection for his obviously unhinged stalkee. The A-Train will eventually be driven to madness and suicide by the constant feeling of being watched by everyone he encounters. Remember, it takes a village to stalk a child!

One Big Happy, 2/8/08

I can’t believe it’s been more than a year and a half since the last appearance of Earl the Weird Vacuum Cleaner Lovin’ Kid, possibly the greatest One Big Happy incidental character in history. Today’s strip mainly seems dedicated to using the word “suck” in a way will shock the bluehairs but technically won’t be the least bit dirty, but I’m much more unsettled by just how amorous Earl’s getting with the vacuum in the final panel.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/8/08

It’s OK for me to enjoy Rex’s usual look of smug dickishness being replaced in the final panel here with one of pure sliding-down-the-mountain terror because I know he’s going to come out of it more or less unharmed. I mean, his name is on the strip, right? It’s not like they’d rename it Rex Morgan, Mud-Caked Mouldering Corpse, would they?