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Gil Thorp, 5/1/10

So I guess the Gil Thorp baseball-season A plot (getting started a little late, isn’t it?) will revolve around how groovy musician Derek Chance is just on a, like, different wavelength, man, and how all the dumb jocks on the baseball team don’t “get” him, leading to Conflict. Never mind that even alt-country, Derek’s chosen musical genre, is fairly closely associated with a persona that’s more ordinary Joe than space cadet. Anyway, hopefully we’ll get a “no-hitter on acid” plotline out of this, which will force Gil to choose between Honor and Victory. (In cases like this he always chooses, “Honor,” the sucker.)

Apartment 3-G, 5/1/10

The hilarious point of this strip is that Grief Cannot Touch Margo’s Icy Heart, but it got me wondering: who actually did die and make Lu Ann curator? I’m ashamed to admit that I can’t keep track. It wasn’t Eric; Eric died and made Margo gallery owner. Was it Alan? Wasn’t Alan curator when he was gunned down by a crazed bald dope fiend? And what’s Jack’s job? Is he just some nebulous “business consultant” or was he actually hired as curator? If so, perhaps he died and made Lu Ann curator when Margo killed him for approving the damn note cards.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/10

Even when it isn’t gruesomely punishing its characters, Funky Winkerbean is depressing, as the prospect of two reasonably nice and attractive women vying for Les’s smirky charms and pear-shaped body ought to sadden all readers everywhere. At least we have the sure knowledge that this will inevitably end badly for everyone to console us.

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Hey everybody, just a quick note that may not mean anything to most of you: I am moving my RSS feed away from Google’s FeedBurner service. If you subscribe to my site via RSS (and this includes subscribing via Google Reader), you will be automatically redirected to the new feed for the next 15 days, but you should change that address now, to:

https://joshreads.com/?feed=rss2

Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience. If anyone has any problems with that new URL, please let me know ASAP, either in the comments to this post or by emailing me at bio@jfruh.com. And if you just get to this site via my updates on Twitter, or by just reloading the page obsessively until I put up new posts, feel free to ignore this.

UPDATE: Did I say I was moving away from Feedburner? I should have said “I am moving from one Feedburner address to another, just to confuse everybody.” Ha ha! But, really, this is all behind-the-scenes stuff — if you use that URL above, you will always be automatically redirected to the appropriate address. And I recommend you resubscribe to that link now, just to be sure. Apologies for the confusion, all.

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Mark Trail, 4/30/10

I know it doesn’t really pay to contemplate the economics of comic strips too deeply, but in these days when newspapers and magazines are cutting full-time staff, cutting back on freelance fees, and trying to smooth-talk eager “new media” types into blogging for free, how exactly is it that Mark and the Trail family have remained solvent? We’ve never even seen him file a story, since when he’s supposed to be writing he inevitably becomes involved in some fisticuff-heavy derring-do that would leave him unable to write with the kind of rigorous objectivity that the strict editorial staff of Woods and Wildlife demands.

What I’m trying to say, Cherry, is that unless your dad holds some kind of valuable patent on a powerful animal tranquilizer, Mark is going to have to scurry off over and over again to afford you the kind of elaborate lifestyle you enjoy, with all the pricey mom jeans and what not. “Oh, Bill Ellis! I’d better go to New York and see what he has to say!” “But Mark, you just said…” “Not now, honey. Bill Ellis needs me!”

Apartment 3-G, 4/30/10

While we all appreciate a good episode of Margo berating and humiliating Lu Ann, might I tentatively point out that Mills Gallery is broke, and that Lu Ann’s cheesy watercolors lend themselves perfectly to cheesy holiday cards (“Happy Fernmas, from the Mills Gallery”), the markup on which is presumably substantial? Jack used to be adamant about not “lowering our standards,” but the harsh reality of the modern art world has forced him into crass marketing. But whatever, Margo is suddenly all about purity of artistic vision now. All of Lu Ann’s bougie prints will be dumped in the back alley in short order — representational art went out in the fucking 19th century, kids — and the gallery space will be given over to a series of challenging and unmarketable performance artists. First up will be Tommie with a wrenching multimedia piece entitled Why Won’t Anybody Talk To Me Why Why Why.

Family Circus, 4/30/10

To nobody’s surprise, Jeffy’s breath carries the awful stench of death.