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Funky Winkerbean, 7/11/09

NOOOO! DON’T OPEN THE DOOR! DON’T OPEN THE DOOR! IT’S … ZOMBIE WALLY, COME TO EAT YOUR BRAINS HAPPINESS!

No, seriously, this whole week has been full of foreboding and doom, and since we all know that nobody in the history of Funky Winkerbean can ever be happy, and since there’s been all sorts of weird hints about it, obviously Wally has been held secretly captive in Iraq for 10 years, or 5 years, or whatever mishmosh of space-time has passed since the big jump, and now he’s come back to find that his wife has remarried, and everyone involved — Becky, Wally, John, Wally Jr. — is going to be absolutely devastated no matter how it all plays out. It’ll be just like Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Enemies, A Love Story, except not good.

Mary Worth, 7/11/09

NOOOO! DON’T LOOK BACK, DELILAH! DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT! YOU’LL BE DOOMED! DOOMED!

God bless Mary Worth for really bringing the laughs this week. Today’s second panel is particularly hilarious. The gears in Charley’s head are spinning furiously; he seems to have consulted some mid-century text on how to have a socially appropriate interaction with someone that doesn’t make it obvious that you’re just trying to bang whomever you’re talking to, and he suddenly remembered, about 45 seconds after the conversation actually ended, that you’re apparently supposed to mention that you look forward to your next encounter with your interlocutor. Meanwhile, Mary looks like a grim-faced Marine escorting a civilian prisoner out of some sort of war zone. “Don’t worry, you’re in good hands now. Once we get back to base, though, you’ll have to undergo an extensive debriefing to see we can glean any useful intelligence from your contact with that enemy subject.”

Dennis the Menace, 7/11/09

The real menace here, of course, is the suffocating nanny state, which has filled Dennis’s head from birth with such emasculating nonsense as “steps should be taken while traveling via motor vehicle to reduce the chances of being horribly killed.” Now Dennis can’t even enjoy red-blooded American sports like being trampled to death by horses!

Oh, and hey! Even though I didn’t post yesterday, it still was a very important moment: it was the fifth anniversary of the very first post on this blog. Have I really been doing this thing for five years? Mercy! Huge thanks to all of you, new readers and old alike, for your constant support and affection, without which I surely would have given this up in despair long ago. And special thank for the reminder of my agedness to longtime faithful reader Mooncity, creator of the Autumn Lake Webcomic, who whipped up the following charming graphic for the occasion:

To be fair, it’s also possible that people aren’t following the site because they haven’t heard of it — yet. If you know some non-ninny who might enjoy it, send them the link, won’t you?

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Mary Worth, 7/10/09

Bless you, Charley Smith! Bless your stripey shirt and your $11 haircut and your transparent attempt to work your way into Delilah’s insane pants! Bless you for showing us a side of Mary Worth that we’ve never seen before — something bordering on flustered panic, as she sees her meddlee slipping out of her grasp and, in desperation, physically drags her to safety. I love the fact that Mary is continuing with the verbal niceties of a normal, polite conversation, despite the fact that she’s practically breaking her poor boarder’s wrist in a desperate attempt to save her from her own horny misjudgment. I’m pretty sure in the final panel she’s on the verge grabbing Charley’s phone number away from Delilah with her teeth and eating it to prevent the two of them from ever communicating again.

Gil Thorp, 7/10/09

This, on the other hand, I do not care for. You want Gil to coach baseball? Don’t you remember how boring that was during actual baseball season? The whole point of the summer storylines are to get away from that sort of thing. I suppose it might be acceptable if Gil is put in charge of a team of impoverished, ill-mannered youths with sassy mouths, and if an embittered Shep Trumbo comes to games dressed as a hobo just to harass them.

Apartment 3-G, 7/10/09

Even with all the Tibet-themed madness that’s been going on in this strip for months, if you had asked me what celebrity would make a special guest appearance in Apartment 3-G, the Dalai Lama would not have been my first guess. I don’t buy his claim that his English not so good — he’s deploying a semicolon, after all, which is at least an intermediate-level move. No, I think that the real reason for his quick exit is that’s he’s afraid to share narrative space with Margo, and with good reason. I imagine that the powerful combination of arousal and terror that anyone would feel in her presence would make it very difficult to maintain a Buddhist sense of non-attachment.

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Gil Thorp, 7/9/09

Despite my many gripes about it, I genuinely, unironically enjoy Gil Thorp for any number or reasons, one of which is its tendency to bring back beloved characters from deranged storylines past. Today’s returning guest star is the wonderful Ted Pearse, first discovered in the ghetto of Milford in late 2005 teaching the kids straight-up streetball, which it turned out he was well acquainted with because he lived on those very streets, as a homeless person, which caused the Mudlarks’ rival schools’ fans to taunt him by dressing up as hobos at games. Anyway, it now appears that he’s gotten a haircut and moved up in the world, to the extent that he can make Gil’s eyes go wide with the prospect of gainful employment. Perhaps Ted has graduated from Oliver Twist to Fagin, and Gil will be forced to spend the summer picking pockets and running petty scams to earn his daily bowlful of gruel.

Judge Parker, 7/9/09

Speaking of beloved characters from the past, did you know that global warming prophet/awesome cheerleader Sophie has a hotter, older sister named Neddy? You wouldn’t if you’ve only started reading Judge Parker in the last two years! Neddy has been studying art in Paris for all that time, living in a fab French apartment that Abbey bought for her from one of Neddy’s bio-relatives on a whim for a seven-figure sum (don’t ask). Now she’s returning … and with a friend! This makes Sam look concerned, because he hates people and is suspicious of your so-called “friendship.” Who will this mysterious friend be? If we’re lucky, it will be Cedric, who was working as a temp butler in said Paris apartment when Abbey and Neddy arrived (DON’T ASK); Cedric is handy with a gun and had a 21-year-old wife who was jealously stalking Neddy because of his admitted thing for teenage girls. If we’re really lucky, it will be this charming sociology grad student/hooker.

Mary Worth, 7/9/09

Mary Worth, in contrast, exists in an eternal, timeless present. The current storyline happens, and is all that ever happens, and when it ends the guest stars are hustled off into the grey mists that hover at edge of Santa Royale. While some, like Aldo, are literally killed, others, like Chester the dog, and Von and Vera, and Ron the city councilstud, and what’s-their-name, the couple where the husband kept trying to keep his wife plump, simply vanish, never to be heard from or thought about again, while new victims are drawn out from the same ether that surrounds Mary’s reality. Are we honestly expected to believe that Delilah and Charlie are real people who existed before they walked on stage this month, despite the fact that those of us who’ve been reading the strip for nearly seven years now have never once heard of them? Poppycock. There are certain themes, certain moments of eternal return that do recur, however. We know, for instance, that deep beneath Mary’s helpful facade is a terrible rage waiting to be unleashed, and that, when you see the anger lines radiating from her as we do here, an awful vengeance is brewing. Mary, stuck in her timeless world, may not even know what she’s capable of, but we know. We know, and we wait with eager anticipation.

(Speaking of things that we faithful readers remember, those with fond memories of Aldomania may enjoy today’s Something Positive strip, though be warned that after viewing it you’ll never be quite right again.)

Crankshaft, 7/9/09

In other news, Crankshaft is using his summer job as an ice cream truck driver as an excuse to follow scantily clad young women around while furtively masturbating.