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Gil Thorp, 2/12/09

You know, Gil gets a lot of crap for not actually coaching his players as such. And sure, he doesn’t spend a lot of time on what lesser minds call “the fundamentals” of any of the sports in which his teams compete; but then, that’s why he has assistants like Coach Kaz (whom I don’t think we’ve seen since around the middle of football season) or random old coots who just wander by. No, Gil instead spends his time psychologically manipulating his players to turn them into finely honed sports-playing machines. Whether he’s ordering his athletes to kill or publicly humiliating them with exaggerated “sit your ass down”
pantomime, he seeks to break their wills in order to build them up again.

Pluggers, 2/12/09

Number 1 Thing That Is Awkward To Bring Up When Your Comic’s Characters Are All Anthropomorphic Animals, And Sometimes There Are Mixed Carnivore-Herbivore Marriages: the food chain. Still, the vagaries of evolution and geography have prevented us from enjoying an epic bear vs. kangaroo battle to the death, so perhaps we should be thankful if our bear-plugger goes crazy and start mauling half the restaurant.

Apartment 3-G, 2/12/09

You know, when I was in college, I worked at the library, which was a great job for a number of reasons, not least of which was the fact that I could use the checkout computers to look up the address and phone number of anyone associated with the university, along with the books they currently had checked out. While this was fun (oh my gosh, the dean of students likes books about the 19th century British navy! that cute girl in my English class appears to be a chem major! Greg Graffin never has anything checked out!) it did not, in fact, drive me mad with power, nor did it cause me to keep the people I loved at arm’s length. In other words, this is one of the worst it’s-not-you-it’s-me speeches ever. I could see if Gary had run into Tommie unexpectedly that he might come up with something this weak (“Uh, yeah, I can’t hang out with you at work because of the … computer … information … that I know?”) but presumably he’s had a while to think this up. I give you a D+, Gary. The aggressive pointing isn’t helping.

Momma, 2/12/09

Oh, that Momma and her chronic constipation/diarrhea/flatulence/some other distasteful digestive problem that is no doubt being implied here! The really sad thing, of course, is that whatever it is, it isn’t the most unpleasant topic that’s ever been used as a Momma punchline. It’s probably not even in the top five.

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Mary Worth, 2/11/09

The last time Mary Worth decided to build a story around this new-fangled “Internet,” was last summer, when Tobey Cameron foolishly decided to engage in e-commerce rather than patronizing one of her local shabby strip malls. Obviously she immediately fell prey to a terrible phishing scam, which gave her nightmares about Ian leaving her because of her foolishness. (In the end, the punishment was much worse: he decided to stay.) The takeaway, obviously, is that the Internet is nothing more than a four-lane highway for deceit that good, honest people should stay away from at all costs, which means that Adrian’s new guy will be one or more of the following:

• Married
• An con artist
• A World of Warcraft addict/shut-in
• A furry
• Wanted war criminal Ratko Mladic, wearing a “very clever disguise”

Not that there’s anything wrong with at least two of those things! But let me say this: my wife and I met on an Internet dating site, and, perhaps more relevant to this strip’s demographics, so did my father-in-law and his fianceé, and if this plotline ends with Mary narrowly preventing Adrian from being made into a lampshade by her maniacal online paramour, leading many lonely Mary Worth devotees to hurl their devil-computers into the street in terror, then I will be very upset! If, on the other hand, the Internet is shown to be a fun and exciting way to meet new people, I will be pleased, even if the result is a surge of new users on Match.com with screen names like DrJeffLover.

Family Circus, 2/11/09

Possible sets of individuals that Billy might be encompassing with the pronoun “we”:

• Billy and Mommy
• Billy and Jeffy
• The entire family, together, in some kind of horrifying pollen-mingling process that takes place in the Keane Kompound’s secret underground breeding chamber

It’s a sad day when the alien plant-monster hypothesis is the least disturbing.

Judge Parker, 2/11/09

“Also, seeing as the only people who ever dressed like this were FBI agents, circa 1964, I need you to tell J. Edgar Hoover that I’ll be out of the office for a few days.”

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Gil Thorp, 2/10/09

Shocking developments in Gil Thorp! We’ve learned that Dylan was a teenage stick-up artist, and that Brenda is trying to have it both ways: she wants to imagine that he’s reformed (“But that was more than 30 months ago! Now you’re a slightly older teenager, and somewhat less immature! After what I presume to be some kind of punishment, surely you’ve completely changed!”) while he gives her the sort of half-assed tough-guyisms that keep the girls coming back. YOU KNEW HE HAD A SOUL PATCH WHEN YOU MET HIM, BRENDA! WHAT SORT OF MAN DID YOU EXPECT HIM TO BE?

Meanwhile, Bryce is making himself noticed in the locker room, if by “making himself noticed” you mean “rambling on egomaniacally while literally every other person in the room ostentatiously ignores him.” Frankly, more sarcastic narration boxes can only help this feature.

Gasoline Alley, 2/10/09

I’m not interested in rehashing the last God knows how many weeks of Gasoline Alley, which have mostly served as a primer for diner lingo; just take my word for it that, as a side benefit, they have also involved Slim’s humiliation and failure. Slim is the only Gasoline Alley character for whom I can work up any feelings whatsoever, and those feelings are equal parts distaste and disgust; still, I do have to respect the sadness of the second panel of today’s strip, in which the food-addicted man-child’s suddenly crumpled face reflects a moment of terrible self-knowledge. Because of said disgust and distaste, though, such moments are like catnip to me, and Slim reasserts his usual mode of being (belligerent ignorance) in panel three, reinforcing my prejudice against him.

Apartment 3-G, 2/10/09

You might think that Tommie and Gary’s incredibly awkward verbal sparring — it’s like Tracy and Hepburn, if both Tracy and Hepburn were half-thinking about something else, and neither was a native speaker of English — isn’t going to lead to romance, and you’d be right. Still, it appears that Gary has fulfilled his primary mission: to distract Tommie with his clumsy banter, and use her distraction as an opportunity to steal her tea. Presumably he’ll soon be on his way.

Mark Trail, 2/10/09

OH MY GOODNESS! BUCKY IS THE RISEN CHRIST-DEER! AND PATTY IS MARY MAGDALENE! AND … you know what, I think I’m going to stop riiiight about there.