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Gil Thorp, 4/17/09

One of the many charms of Gil Thorp is its punctilious attention to the names of players, teams, and incidental characters whom we may never see again and will certainly never care about! Rich, here, for example, or WHCC, the fictitious one-step-above-public-access Milford TV station (and not the actual Bloomington, IN country FM radio station). But “Spartans” seems a little off for the St. Mark’s team — shouldn’t it be the “Lions” or the “Friars” or something? Hey, the “Notaries” would be a great name for a ball team!

Shoe, 4/17/09

Shoe ups the ante on “that is not how birds work” humor.

Beetle Bailey, 4/17/09

When does anvil season start? Soon, right? Please?

Mary Worth, 4/17/09

“That’s not love — that’s not even coherent.” But hey, do you suppose Doc Jeff ran a background check on his beloved Mary? And if so, what dark mysteries did he uncover?

Judge Parker, 4/17/09

I basically got nuthin’ here — a little more exposition on the The Fabulous Ledge-Danube/Rasmussen-Akermans to run out the clock on a slow week, tempered as always by Eduardo Barreto’s handsome draftsmanship. But thanks in no small part to determined rabble-rousing by faithful reader Dave and others, and a rousing response by us cookie-clearin’ survey-stuffin’ rabble, Judge Parker has been reinstated by The Washington Post. Way to go!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Luann, 4/13/09

After a week of Gunther “Clueless Doofus” Berger and Luann “Woo Me!” DeGroot, we’re back at last to Brad “Clueless Doofus” DeGroot and Toni “Woo Me!” Daytona. This strip sure does know how to mix it up! You’ve got to admire how Brad slips in that a) this invitation is for breakfast only, so there will be no squicky sex going on, and b) TJ will be there, so the wall-to-wall squickiness will have nothing to do with sex.

Shoe, 4/13/09

Pluggers, lacking only the good taste, restraint, and simple human compassion.

Slylock Fox, 4/13/09

Ah, Casa Shrew, just as we’d imagined it. Looks like Sly will be rethinking this part-time gig as building inspector, as soon as he takes a moment to hurl.

And, in other news . . .

Garfield, 4/13/09

Hmm. Garfield minus Garfield, with Garfield. Not quite clear where this is headed.

Dick Tracy, 4/13/09

. . . and a big hand for new Dick Tracy artist Jim Brozman — just like the one he gave us in panel three there.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Apartment 3-G, 4/9/09

This, combined with this, makes me think that we should add “outfits that people wear while cleaning” to “drug paraphernalia” and “men who don’t look like the two or three dudes that every dude in Apartment 3-G looks like” on the list of things for which the Apartment 3-G team could use some reference photos. My alarm bells are pinging, of course, as to why Ruby might be in desperate and immediate need of some industrial-grade solvent. “Hey, look at that lady over there in that vacant lot! It sure looks like she’s burying someone in a shallow grave and then using some sort of potent cleanser to accelerate the corpse’s decay, doesn’t it? But that can’t be right — nobody dressed like a Colonial Williamsburg re-enactor could possibly be involved in anything shady!”

Family Circus, 4/9/09

I’m all for Billy rotting his mind with comic books, as he’ll clearly never amount to anything anyway, but can’t we expect him to pay attention to the details? As far as I know, Peter Parker doesn’t even have a mother; he was merely created spontaneously when Aunt May and Uncle Ben came down with nephewism, a common affliction in fictional characters. But maybe I’m being too hard on Billy; his larger point — that it would be amusing to see one of Peter’s loved ones beat him to death with a shoe or a rolled-up newspaper — is one that I can heartily endorse.

Mary Worth, 4/9/09

Oh, look, I guess I was wrong: it seems that Ted really is a scammer, and now we’re going to get to watch the Spanish Prisoner con in action, for certain limited definitions of “action.” Meanwhile, I’d just like to offer this bit of advice to noir-aspirant villains everywhere: though it is important to keep your victim in your sexual thrall in order to prevent her from thinking too much about the details of your fraudulent scheme, creepily drawing her onto your lap in public and gently caressing her cheek, all the while telling her how much she reminds you of your sister, is not the best way to go about doing that.

Shoe, 4/9/09

There is exactly one character in Shoe at whose antics I laugh in a non-ironic fashion, and that is Buzz, the elderly dyspeptic bird. Today, he’s spent hours wandering around aimlessly, angry and confused, because he’s old and losing his mind! Ha ha! Oh, I’m going to hell.