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Mary Worth, 8/15/11

The comics have presented us with many wonderful images today, but none are more delightful than young Gina and her boyfriend taking in the world’s most wholesome skateboard kid and his ludicrously clean-cut cheering section. “Look, Gina!” Bobby’s saying in panel two. “This guy’s doing some awesome tricks, and yet he’s wearing khaki shorts and has neatly parted hair! Have you ever seen the like?”

Gil Thorp, 8/15/11

This is the kind of sensitivity that makes it so easy for Gil to really connect with his young students. “So, Kenny, I hear your mom’s a lush! What’s up with that?”

Apartment 3-G, 8/15/11

Oh my goodness, it looks like Lu Ann is going to join Luann in teaching the kids today about the importance of resisting sexual pressure — only in this scenario, it’s Lu Ann who’s the insatiable lust-monster and her boyfriend who’s saving himself for … when he’s older? Like, how much older? Because I’m pretty much assuming he’s about 35 now, based on appearances. I guess he’s saving himself for marriage, unlike that harlot Lu Ann, who, just look at that face in panel three that’s supposed to be “crazed with desire,” it’s almost as hilarious as the skateboard kid in Mary Worth.

Panel from Mark Trail, 8/15/11

Mark Trail strips often seem to be pieced together out of pre-existing bits of art, and today’s first panel is probably a good example. “That was a good story you did about the mountain man!” That could be the summary about every fifth Trail storyline for the past thirty years.

The Phantom, 8/15/11

Meanwhile, the Phantom is getting satellite TV. ACTION! ADVENTURE!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/31/11

Today’s Snuffy Smith demonstrates how complicated it can be using visual signifiers in a strip that’s nearly a century old and that takes place in some difficult-to-pin-down time and place. Obviously the joke here is that our rustic hillbillies are living a lifestyle that very modern environmental and local-food advocates would endorse. And yet the only way the strip can depict someone as a fancy city-dwelling type is to dress them up in clothes that seem to date from roughly the Coolidge Administration, a time during which a flatlander would be much more likely to head up into the hills looking for precious coal to strip mine, not researching sustainable agriculture. Of course, it’s wholly possible that there’s a Brooklyn subculture of young lefty hipsters for whom bow ties, suspenders, and straw hats are the height of fashion, so maybe I’m just not with it enough to get what’s happening here.

As a side note, I’m pretty impressed that the strip managed to sneak in a joke about mule farts in the middle there.

Mary Worth, 7/31/11

I love that Mary has to consciously remind herself not to stiff the waitress on the tip. “Normally I assume that the trampy young women the waitressing lifestyle attracts just spend all their free cash on prophylactics and reefer, so I leave them nothing. But this one gets the full 10 percent!”

Phantom, 7/31/11

High-tech superhero lairs sure seemed a lot cooler before the Internet, didn’t they? It’s not as exciting to see the Phantom get a crucial piece of information from a Google News alert.

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Phantom, 5/9/11

Ooh, it’s a new Phantom adventure, everyone: “The College Kid!” And I am loving panel two, as the college kid taps away on that circa 1995 PC, ignoring the vaguely menacing jibes of the men around him and maintaining a look of withering contempt all the while. “These cretins seem to believe that just shouting can bring about a successful Internet money-making scheme! Soon I’ll produce a victory that will force them to acknowledge my importance to this criminal enterprise, and stop them from making fun of my blazer!”

Apartment 3-G, 5/9/11

Ha ha, the A3G makeover storyline may have flopped due to the artist’s inability to depict clothes that are remotely flattering or interesting-looking, but give him this: when called upon to draw the sort of hideous, unflattering dresses someone like Ruby would force upon her hapless bridesmaids, he fucking nails it.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/9/11

Hey, everyone in Les’s life: won’t you please shove a comforting metaphorical boob of reassurance into his mouth? It will probably shut him up!