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Spider-Man, 4/21/08

Behold … the VULTURE! The latest in the rogue’s gallery of sinister, inhuman supervillains to plague the newspaper strip version of Spider-Man, the Vulture terrifies us with his powers … or, um, menacing costume … uh, actually, he just appears to be some ordinary dude in jail mumbling vague threats of vengeance. Since this is Spider-Man, the prison guard is threatening him with the ultimate act of torture: the withdrawal of television privileges.

Blondie, 4/21/08

Attention Amalgamated Blondie Humor Industries LLC: if you are going to do a close-up on one of your characters, as you do in panel three here, please actually draw the character in close-up, rather than just increasing the scale of their face in Photoshop. Otherwise it looks strange and disturbing.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/21/08

Any public official will tell you that there comes a time in a town hall meeting when the thread is simply lost, never to be found again. Rex Morgan, M.D.’s MRSA meeting has hit that point, as angry townsfolk begin to demand that the county health commission bring their loved ones back from the dead.

Pluggers, 4/21/08

Pluggers have no idea what an enormous pain in the ass they are to everyone around them.

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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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Hi and Lois, 4/4/08

Hi and Lois is the last strip you’d expect to see bucking any sort of comic convention or cliche. But usually when a comic strip mom discusses the withering of the last few social institutions that keep high school from becoming a nonstop orgy, they usually look worried or upset, not like they’ve just taken a large hit of Ecstasy, as Lois does in the first two panels of this strip. Maybe in that way that moms “just want you to be happy,” she’s pleased to know that Chip is experiencing as much sexual pleasure as possible without any of that buzkilling emotional attachment, just like she does with half the neighborhood. Of course, no matter how enthusiastic she is about her son’s slutting it up, she still shows the appropriate amount of outrage over the terrible, terrible “punchline” of the strip.

(Unrelated, but: in panel two, Lois appears to have freckles. Did she always have freckles? Or are they a sign of the new, freaky Lois?)

Luann, 4/4/08

Say what you will about TJ, but the boy never stops thinking strategically. While most guys would have been satisfied to let their roommate rest on his laurels and share some tales of triumph (“A definite, meaningful kiss.” “And that definitely means…?” “Tongue, dude!”), TJ is already plotting to make sure his friend gets to the next level. Brad will touch a boob by 2009 if TJ has anything to say about it!

Marmaduke, 4/4/08

I’m not sure why Marmaduke’s owner is so desperate to believe that he didn’t just come from the museum. If that were the case, at least the original owner of that enormous bone would have already been dead by the time Marmaduke found it. The other possibility is that there’s a freshly killed and dismembered rhino somewhere nearby, probably on her front lawn.

Ballard Street, 4/4/08

Striker may be a whore, but by God he’s not a cheap whore.

Pluggers, 4/4/08

Pluggers know that you have to be ever-vigilant if you want to make sure that nobody leaves the compound.