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Gil Thorp, 1/14/10

Feast your eyes on panel one, everybody, because you’ll see that rarest of sights: Coach Thorp engaged in actual coaching! Assuming, of course, that you consider responding to desperate pleas for guidance with irritating, unhelpful gnomic pronouncements to constitute “coaching,” which, you know, Gil clearly does!

Since it includes the creepy, menacing figure of Steve Luhm sitting in the bleachers, panel one is also setting up an extremely common Gil Thorp sight: Gil finding some random community member who’s willing to take on coaching duties (without pay, naturally). First it was the mother of a member of the girl’s basketball team, who couldn’t stop shouting suggestions from the stands; then it was some crazy old man who just started showing up at baseball practice one day; so now, sure, let’s let the janitor do it, why not. And what intriguing advice he has! Micah, the key to basketball glory is to be loud and obnoxious, like your sister! You know, one I was just hitting on! Yes, you’re right to be sweating freely.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/14/10

OK, this is officially the saddest and weirdest Funky Winkerbean yet, and it’s a strip that pretty much specializes in sad and weird. “Crazy” Harry lives up to his nickname, telling Mopey Pete that only here in this dingy pizza parlor is he allowed to verbalize any happiness whatsoever, because otherwise They will have some kind of unspecified but unpleasant vengeance to dish out. Briefly he imagines himself to be Linus in the pumpkin patch, with … an expression of happiness being insincerity, and the “happiness police” being the Great Pumpkin, I guess? Point is, the guy’s clearly insane, but somehow this rambling madness will convince Pete that Montoni’s is the place where he wants to wile away the time until his death from a massive coronary.

Mary Worth, 1/14/10

Meanwhile, over in the comic strip that specializes in weird and hilarious, we finally learn what drove apart Wilbur and Abby: a sinister gang of scowling pompadoured Richie Riches. Look at them, striding around with their jackets on and their collars defiantly open! What free-spirited young lady (or dead-eyed zombie, if panel two is an accurate depiction) could resist them, even she was already carrying another man’s child? Particularly if it was an unlikeable, Wilbury man’s child?

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 1/14/10

I’ll tell you right now: I’m kind of a fan of classic old radiators! We have them in our house, and I love ’em! And Bobbie, those radiators are nothing special. Come on, there’s not even any decorative work on the metal! Also, I used to kind of be a fan of crazy ladies! And relationships with them generally lead nowhere good. So I think “Um” is really the best response in this situation.

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There are few things that give more of a thrill than coming home and finding a large padded envelope in your mailbox with “Karen Moy, King Features” as the return address. Trust me on this, because that’s exactly what happened to me this afternoon. Eagerly tearing said envelope open, I found … this:

And this:

And a note that said:

Hi Josh,

Thanks for reading “MARY WORTH”!

Karen Moy

www.cafepress.com/maryworth

That’s right, everyone: there is now officially licensed merchandise featuring our favorite meddling biddy. And the designs featured above aren’t the only ones available, not by a long shot. Do want to drink your coffee out of a mug in which Mary is startled by Aldo? Do you want to drink your liquor out of a mug in which Mary admonishes Rita for drinking liquor? YOU KNOW YOU DO! And there’s more … so much more.

Please note that I gain nothing financially from this, other than the free shirt and bag; I merely supply this information to what I imagine is the largest interested audience for this paraphenalia, as my way of giving back to the comics I mock. Of course, if while you’re doin’ your CafePress shopping you wanted to buy some Comics Curmudgeon stuff featuring my new logo, I surely wouldn’t object!

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Garfield, 1/13/10

I’m near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other, which means that when I was growing up my eyes never really learned to work together properly, which in turn means that my depth perception is quite poor. This has had effects on my life large — I long ago gave up driving for the safety of myself and those around me — and small — 3-D movies generally don’t have the same impact on me as they do on other people. Whether the technology is what they use in Creature From The Black Lagoon or what they use in Avatar, to me it just basically looks like an ordinary movie — except for brief moments when something comes flying terrifyingly right at me.

Anyway, I don’t know about anyone else, but Odie’s tongue in panel two is providing me with just a nightmarish 3-D moment, with the leading edge of it appearing to be freakishly out of proportion to its apparent distance from the slobbering beast’s mouth. There are few things I want less when reading the comics in the morning than to even briefly worry that I’m about to be licked by some cartoon dog, and I resent the flash of panic that this induced in me.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/13/10

As you probably learned in your introductory English class, narrative is total snoresville if it doesn’t include conflict of some kind; but the inhabitants of Westview are generally far too morose to actually have competing goals or desires, so the only conflict comes when the doomed characters must do battle with their own cruel universe. Thus, I’m vaguely intrigued by the rivalry being implied here between the town’s only two vaguely ethnic downscale restaurants. I hope the Toxic Taco is a mirror image of Montoni’s, with the original Tacoteer having long since retired to Arizona, leaving the restaurant and its cast of regulars (including the zany UPS delivery guy and a single mom who overparents her only son) in charge of the manager, a bitter, burned-out recovering cocaine addict.

I’m not entirely sure what Mopey Pete’s sentence in the first panel is supposed to mean, actually. Is he saying that, since he’s not working on anything, he’ll have time to really focus on his favorite hobby, taco eating? Is he short of cash because of the lull in his work, and thus the only food he can afford is the Toxic Taco’s meat-style food substance topped with cheese byproducts? Or are the Toxic Taco’s wares literally poisonous, and his career failure is driving him to commit suicide in the most grotesque fashion he can imagine?

Mary Worth, 1/13/10

I love the look of mounting panic on Wilbur’s face as all his idle daydreams of what life with Abby would have been like are shattered by Kurt’s terrifying talk. Like all characters in Mary Worth, Wilbur values stability above all else, and if that means a life where the only “moving from place to place” happens when you move from the computer to the counter where you make your sandwiches, then so be it. Thank God he and his erstwhile lover broke it off when they did, or he might have been forced to grow as a person or experience joy.