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Mary Worth, 5/23/13

Uh oh! Looks like our Worthian lovebirds, who were going to get around to telling Elinor about their hot sexing any day now, are about to find out that the coverup is always worse than the crime, now that Elinor has been clued in by Random Charterstone Nosey Old Lady #4. I am 100% in love with the shouty orthography in Marie’s word balloon in panel one, as she throws elder solidarity to the wind and assumes Elinor must be deaf, not betrayed.

Gil Thorp, 5/23/13

Oh, wow, I take back what I said about Gil Thorp not being nuts anymore, since Gil has apparently decided to convene a kangaroo court right here on the bleachers and impose Coach Law on his charges. Even if Jimmy’s dad loses everything in the lawsuit in the so-called courts of the so-called United States and Jimmy becomes poor and homeless, Coach doesn’t want to hear any jawing about it, because we already settled this in the gym, guys.

Family Circus, 5/23/13

Ha ha, for once I find Billy’s smug, sullen little slouch is perfect. “Hey, sis, they’re called shoes, you might want to look into ’em.”

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Gil Thorp, 5/22/13

Guys, remember when Gil Thorp plots used to be bonkers crazy insane? Well, those days seem to be long past, which is why I have been studiously ignoring the spring plotline for months. Here it is, in a nutshell: baseball player Foley Knox is the son of a lawyer and an aspiring lawyer himself, and his lawyer dad is suing the gas station owner father of another player because some guy fell down while pumping gas there, and Foley is being a dick to the other kid about it, the end. The other kid and his dad are Chaldean Christians from Iraq, and it briefly looked like that was going to be a plot point somehow, but it was dropped in favor of a B plot involving Foley’s delusional romantic pursuit of Darby, the softball team’s star pitcher who has a toddler because she was previously teen pregnant, which was briefly controversial last spring. Anyway, today at last these plots collide when Foley decides to win the heart of his fair beloved by defeating her tortfeasor in judicial combat! This will also fail.

Wizard of Id, 5/22/13

So Wizard of Id, which is usually not funny on any level, actually made me laugh in two distinct ways today? WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO? I appreciate the fact that the joke hinges on grammatical ambiguity — haha, you think “[a]re protesting” is a verb in the progressive aspect, but in fact “protesting” is a deverbal adjective modifying “drones”! But what really made me laugh was the sign that just says “NOT COOL”. It’s a sign that you can use at any protest and one that lets everyone know that, yeah, you’re politically engaged, but you’re also pretty chill.

Mark Trail, 5/22/13

Meanwhile, the AMAZING FOREST BEAR INFERNO is still going on in Mark Trail! I’m a little confused by the positions of everybody/thing in this comic, but, comparing the perspective in the two panels, if Cherry and Shelly are looking at the water and the tree is directly behind them, won’t they have to run sort of towards the bears in order to get to the tree? I mean, I get that they’re right on the shore and their options are limited. This is like the time my wife and I were in Stanley Park in Vancouver, and these raccoons emerged from the trees and wanted to go drink from the pond we were standing at the edge of, and they were heading right for us and didn’t seem scared of us at all, and we were in their way but there was no way for us to go that didn’t involve getting closer to them at least to start. Sure, they were raccoons, not bears, and nothing was on fire, but I don’t believe I ever pretended to be a brave man.

Heathcliff, 5/22/13

One of the things I didn’t expect when I recently worked Heathcliff into my comics rotation was the feature’s not infrequent expeditions into the inscrutable. I like this one, even if I don’t really understand it. Ha ha, Heathcliff is voyaging home via hot air balloon! It’s whimsical!

Pluggers, 5/22/13

Yes, I’m sure the automated recording that delivered this platitude really feels bad after this sick burn! Basically, pluggers have very little control over their own lives and will sullenly lash out at anybody about it, whether they can hear them lashing out or not.

Family Circus, 5/22/13

“Billy and Dolly and Daddy and PJ are in the basement, right, Mommy? With all the sand? And time’s up for them? They won’t bother us ever again? Oh, also, this hourglass ran out, I guess.”

Spider-Man, 5/22/13

Spider-Man’s high school science teacher always hoped he’d kill or terribly injure himself in a lab accident.

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Herb and Jamaal, 5/21/13

I don’t expect naturalistic dialogue from Herb and Jamaal, but wow guys this is some badly-translated-from-the-Slovak weirdness right here. Herb’s facial expressions as he stares at the money and then ever so slowly pulls out his wallet and slips the cash inside it are also pretty creepy. Especially his heavy-lidded zonked-out look in the final panel. Pretty sure he plans on “blocking out the memories of the experience” with powerful opiates, which are what he needs the money for.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/21/13

Speaking of unnatural dialogue, “Another anniversary, Elviney?” is certainly a weird way to offer congratulations to your best friend and her husband! “Another anniversary, Elviney? I thought you swore you’d be widowed or divorced by now?” “I married Lukey fer life! An’ I assumed that our community’s poor medical care and unusually short life expectancy would either kill off my husband or leave me in the sweet embrace of death long ago!”

Marvin, 5/21/13

Normally when someone brings a baby to a movie theater — which, let me just mention, is one of the worst things you can do as a movie goer, what the hell could you possibly be thinking — you can’t blame the baby. You should blame the parents, for being thoughtless morons. But … look at Marvin’s face. That evil smile. He’s looking forward to disrupting the cinema experience for everyone involved. The question is, will he start off by crying, thus driving everyone around him into a rage right away? Or will his opening move be a massive diaper dump, filling theater patrons with disgust and nausea?