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Crock, 7/6/09

When you have a narrative form like a syndicated comic strip that runs on and on for decades, there are some interesting results. For instance, there may be features of your strip’s universe that made some sort of sense, or were at least explained, at the time of their introduction, but which have either slowly mutated with time or had all knowledge of their significance lost, and whose existence today is taken as a given by all concerned despite their baffling nature. Take, for instance, today’s Crock. Obviously the presence of tiny hotboxes just outside the Legion’s fort, in which prisoners condemned for some forgotten crime sit hunched over day after day for years, slowly going mad from the hot sun and the isolation, is easily parsed. But why exactly are the sides of these portable torture chambers marked with giant keyholes? Wouldn’t the key required to operate such a lock be over three feet long? Wouldn’t the mechanism for such a lock intrude onto the prisoner’s already miniscule living space? Is it perhaps not a real lock at all, but just some sort of symbol of the State’s ability to imprison on a whim, and indefinitely? Perhaps this reminds the cook of his complicity in the workings of this monstrous dictatorship, which would explain his otherwise baffling anger at having to walk approximately five feet outside to dump some greyish glop into the prisoner’s bowl.

Gil Thorp, 7/6/09

Oh, Gil, if you’re going to openly acknowledge what I asserted last week — that summertime is for wackiness in Gil Thorp — then you’d better be prepared to follow through on your promise, or you’ll just break my heart all the more. Gil having lunch with vintage clothing aficionado and former teen hobo Ted Pearse is a good start; having some kind of gangland shooting happen right outside the Thorps’ front door (involving Marty Moon? please?) is even better.

Mary Worth, 7/6/09

You know, every once in a while even Mary Worth can surprise me. For instance, yesterday I could have only thought of two possible outcomes to Mary’s weeks-long attempt to browbeat Delilah back into her loveless marriage: acquiescence or suicide. Never did I imagine that she had the strength of will to shrug off the onslaught, put on her sexiest/most insane halter top-yellow fishnets combo, and go cruising the Charterstone grounds for all her ex-boyfriends, determined to rip their stripey shirts off and have her way with them right there on the concrete (which is already cracking only a few years after it was poured, thanks to Mary’s insistence that they go with the lowest bidder). Mary looks like she’s having a stroke in the second panel, and why wouldn’t she: she’s discovered someone immune to her meddling powers! I’m surprised she isn’t just melting into a puddle.

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Family Circus, 7/5/09

Like all right-thinking Americans, I have often allowed myself to spend idle moments imagining the death of the Keane clan. However, I see now that most of the scenarios I’ve conjured up — terrorist attack, murder-suicide pact, what have you — have been sadly pedestrian. Never, for instance, have I visualized them being killed by giant mutant ants! If we use grinning, doomed Jeffy as a reference point, the monsters in the lowermost chambers have to be at least the size of a terrier. I’m sure all four of the children will make tasty treats for the Queen of this awful colony.

Judge Parker, 7/5/09

Dear creators of the syndicated comic strip Judge Parker:

If you were working on a sitcom, or other long-form narrative acted out by live performers, you might find yourself in a situation where you had written out storylines that your actors were physically unable to perform. For instance, you might have an episode in which your nerdy heroine wows her school with her heretofore unmentioned prowess at jumping, aerial spinning, and other talents necessary for successful cheerleading, only to discover that the young actress tasked with playing the role wasn’t up the challenges laid out in the script. In that case, it would be acceptable, though rather transparent, to have all the action take place off camera.

However, in the comic strip form, your characters have no such limitations, and thus your decision to not show us any of the triumphant cheerleading routine that this entire ludicrous storyline has been leading up to is deeply puzzling.

Sincerely,
The Comics Curmudgeon

P.S. On the other hand, it is enjoyable to interpret the dialogue in the first throwaway panel — “I didn’t know Sophie could do those things!” “Yeah … the cheerleader moms know they’re finished!” — as meaning that Sophie neutralized the cheerleader moms’ dozens of henchmen with her superhuman martial arts skills, and is now preparing to eliminate her chief adversaries once and for all.

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Gil Thorp, 7/5/09

HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS GIL THORP HAS A TWITTER! GIL THORP. HAS A TWITTER. And before you say, “Oh, the character Gil Thorp has a Twitter within the context of the fictional Gil Thorp universe, how mundane,” let me just assure you that while Gil Thorp may be a narrative construct his Twitter feed is all too real. Just think of the tweeting slap-fights that will soon break out with Marty Moon!

I am a little concerned about Gil’s statement that he has “a whole beautiful summer to figure it out.” Summertime in Gil Thorp is supposed to be about total deranged lunacy like Gail Martin hiring Coach Kaz, P.I. and Marty Moon getting grifted by Ben Franklin and little girls beating the crap out of each other at gymnastics and Von the teenage DJ protecting his older lady friend from a stalker who can’t spell. Last year’s long, boring continuation of the tale of Elmer the Accidental Illegal Immigrant was a terrible disappointment in this regard, but it will seem like a crazed, non-stop roller-coaster ride on PCP by comparison if we spend the next two months watching nothing but Gil laboriously hunting-and-pecking his way through four or five Twitter updates a day.

Blondie, 7/4/09

Underlying the the absurd, low-stakes suburban antics of Dagwood and his friends has always been a sense of ennui, a feeling that there must be more to life to experience that carpools and borrowed tools. Thus, it’s not surprising that Dagwood and Herb have decided to form a two-man anarchist terror cell, determined to spread destruction for its own sake, offering to their neighbors the joy of being alive that only close encounters with death can provide. Today the bowling alley goes up in flames, tomorrow Dithers Enterprises LLC’s headquarters!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/4/09

Good lord, why would Peter ever even consider stepping out on his lovely wife? Estelle the Nutritionist may be fetching enough, but she’d probably look at that plate of lo mein and mutter under her breath about sodium and MSG; Becka, meanwhile, knows just how to drive a man wild, sucking a single long noodle slowly up from the plate while locking her unblinking, reptilian eyes on Pete. Undeniably HOTT, am I right people?

Spider-Man, 7/4/09

If panel three is any indication, the way that Peter Parker makes moments last forever is by crapping in his pants. That way, if someone asks him, “Peter, what would consider to be your greatest achievement as a professional photographer?” he can say “That’s easy! It was the day I got the Bugle to buy my pictures at twice their usual rates!  I remember because that was also the day I pooped in my drawers.”