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Gil Thorp, 7/21/17

AHHHH TREY DAVIS! Trey Davis is the ex-Mudlark who got name-dropped last December, which sent me into such public paroxysms of joy that I have to assume that his appearance now is entirely fan service, which is to say service for me, one of Gil Thorp’s twenty or so fans. I’m thrilled that we’re going to find out about his last decade or so of backstory! Did he get recruited to play college ball? Did he join the army? Did he dye his hair blond as part of the total transformation of his identity that accompanied his military service? Did he found Mudlark Force, an elite, secret special-forces unit comprised entirely of former Milford athletes who wage an undercover war against America’s enemies and learn lessons along the way? Are Heather and Kevin going to be in the Pakistani Federally Administered Tribal Areas less than 24 hours from now? I’M SO EXCITED!!!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/21/17

“Ah yes,” says Rex. “People who were popular in high school and got involved in ‘music scenes’ might be charismatic, but they’re generally bad people. You should really tell everyone you named your kid after the the sci-fi character who went to Mars to make love to their sexy princesses. It’s much more respectable.”

Gasoline Alley, 7/21/17

Oh, goody! One of Gasoline Alley’s least appealing regular characters will be engaging in some good old-fashioned sexual competition with a thoroughly unappealing newcomer! It’s a story that will have audiences saying “let’s talk about scrapbooking for seventeen weeks again!”

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Spider-Man, 7/20/17

It’s true that whatever media conglomerate owns the film rights to the Marvella franchise botched the initial rollout. What with the notoriously troubled production of the first movie in the series, the studio naturally decided to dump it straight to DVD — but surprisingly strong sales got people excited enough to do a theatrical release for Marvella 2. But for a big rollout like that to succeed, you need a huge marketing machine. So yes, MJ is going to have to do publicity not just in San Francisco but also Denver. The studio has just that much riding on the success of this film. Don’t be surprised if they try to jam in an appearance in Phoenix on this junket too. No expense will be spared!

Speaking of sparing no expense, one of the fun things about living LA is that it’s incredibly expensive but it’s also full of transplants from New York, an even more expensive place, who assure you that $2,000 a month for an unassuming two-bedroom bungalow in a marginally sketchy neighborhood is “a real bargain, you’d pay twice that much for a studio in Manhattan and you wouldn’t even have a yard.” So yeah, I can see that planning a SoCal wedding might seem like a bargain if your frame of reference is the tri-state area, but neither Aunt May nor Mole-Man have any family in the region (his being enslaved by the foul Tyrannus miles beneath the Earth’s crust and hers being, uh, Peter and MJ), so they might want to look further afield. I hear Denver is nice!

Family Circus, 7/20/17

The Family Circus, being largely pieced together from decades-old art, preserves an earlier America where we were much less paranoid about safety, especially when it came to children. For instance, in a post-Harambe world, would anyone let a kid climb on a short fence separated from a potentially dangerous elephant by just a few feet of level grass and another, equally short fence? They might, if that kid were Billy, and they got to know him for a few minutes.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/20/17

Haha, whoops, sorry to rain on Rex’s nerd dreams, but li’l John Carter was named after something actually cool. I assume Rex will be angrily muttering that Margie is a “fake geek girl” under his breath for the remainder of her visit.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/19/17

This strip has gone through a lot of changes over the years, but one constant that I appreciate is that Rex is always being a smug dick about something. “Oh, sorry, June. Edgar Rice Burroughs. It’s his initials. E-R-B, get it? I thought you were up on your classic pulp sci-fi. But I guess I didn’t marry you for your literary taste, am I right? Ha ha! Margie, your husband, who I’m almost certainly about to learn ran off and left you in dire emotional and financial straits, sounds like a real cool guy. Where my ERB-heads at?” (Wait till Rex finds out that little Johncarter was named not after the Barsoom series of books, which his father never read, but after the 2012 film, which was a spectacular flop.)

Mark Trail, 7/19/17

OH SNAP it looks like I was right about the hostage lady being one of the bad guys! This is a solid twist AND gave us the chance to see Agent McHairisland’s complete shock and surprise. What do you suppose this was about, then? Did our fake hostage just need some time to get into character? Is she known across the whole Midwest as the “Method” Bank Heistrix?

Gil Thorp, 7/19/17

Speaking of things I was right about, I guess I was right about this being Heather and Kevin from last football season! But weren’t they seniors last year? Is it really still summer? Are these tall dudes emissaries from an alien species who hope to harness Kevin and Heather’s on-Earth skills for use in a long-running interstellar war, à la 1984’s hit film The Last Starfighter, but for jocks? WHAT’S GOING ON

Mary Worth, 7/19/17

We all know the greatest Mary Worth plots begin with Mary working in her rose garden, so I have great hope for this one. Someone gave Dawn a job, guys! What a terribly misguided decision, which I hope we’ll see acted out in graphic and comical detail over the next several months!

Hi and Lois, 7/19/17

Traditionally this strip has featured an adorable and loving relationship between the infant Trixie and her pal the sunbeam, and I have to say I’m not on board for this gritty reboot. “I’M NOT GOING TO BE IGNORED, TRIXIE” –literally the sun