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Gil Thorp, 11/18/07

I know that, what with snoopy English teacher Bob Roth listening from the next room, this is supposed to be some kind of “test”, where if Cully agrees to be Gil’s instrument of death it will prove that the he’s rotten to the core, but if he says no it goes to show that he’s basically a good kid and who cares if he and his sketchy friends steal a TV or six, amiright? But wouldn’t it be great if Gil was dead serious, and his whole purpose in recruiting this hulking, troubled teen onto his football team was to silence the Milford athletic department’s most strident media critic? I imagine that Gil Googled Cully’s criminal history and his mind lit up with lovely images of Marty’s neck snapping from one fallaway slam too many. This would also explain why Marty has been uncharacteristically reticent to criticize Coach Thorp’s leadership of a 1-4 team whose standout player is a kid with one leg — he knows that with a murderer on the team, he’s marked for death. But even his silence won’t save him now, as there’s too much bad blood between them! As for why Gil would be allowing Bob Roth to listen to the hit being ordered in this scenario … well, maybe Gil thinks that in doing so he’s implicating Bob in the crime? No, it doesn’t make sense, but then again Gil isn’t very smart.

Apartment 3-G, 11/18/07

In case you’re baffled by this pile-up in the hallway, Neil is the caddish director of Gina’s play who cruelly toyed with Tommie’s affections (among other things) at the cast party, Gina was, I swear, being set up to be the Professor’s girlfriend, and Gina’s hair somehow even looks worse than it did before.

Archie, 11/18/07

Why has the living room suddenly been plunged into inky blackness in the final panel? Has the AJGLU-3000 discovered German expressionist film? Does the darkness represent that bleak state of Mr. Andrews’s soul, as he contemplates the gulf that lies between him and his son, and his own part in creating it? Or was “Hey, Dad, do you want me to leave the light on in here?” the question that Archie planned to ask?

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Apartment 3-G, 11/16/07

And then Apartment 3-G, was all like “Oh hey didn’t we have this whole thing going where we were broadly hinting that the Professor had this obnoxious much younger girlfriend?” Now of course, the man in the camel-hair suit must choose between a pair of unappealing extremes, which should make for good fun for a day or two. I’m hoping for a Fatal Attraction style scenario myself. “Oh, Ari, I was screaming at the top of my lungs because I thought that maybe you were stepping out on me and I was going to have to stab you to death. But now that you’re here, I know it was just a silly figment of my imagination! Say, who’s the touring-company Blanche DuBois over here?”

Judge Parker, 11/16/07

OK, this has been bothering me ever since the bottled water angle came up and I haven’t said anything because it’s not funny but … but … HEY SOPHIE! YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE REALLY ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY? IF WE HAD SOME WAY TO GET CLEAN, POTABLE WATER TO JUST ABOUT EVERY HOME IN AMERICA THAT DIDN’T INVOLVE BOTTLES OR TRUCKS AT ALL! LIKE, IF IT COULD JUST FLOW THROUGH PIPES OF SOME SORT! HUNDREDS OF GALLONS LITERALLY ON TAP AT ANY TIME FOR A COUPLE OF DOLLARS A DAY! WITH NO BOTTLES TO THROW OUT AND NO FOSSIL FUELS USED IN TRANSPORTING IT! I KNOW, PIPE DREAM, RIGHT?

Okay, no more of that, I promise. But still … edible fucking bottles? Honestly.

Family Circus, 11/16/07

“Mothers are supposed to beat their children when they disobey. You’re weak, Mommy, just like Daddy says, just like your crying little daughter over there. Weak.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/16/07

“And always wet your hands before you handle a trout!”

…

“And always wet your hands before you handle a trout!”

…

Honestly, I … I don’t even know what anybody expects me to say about this stuff anymore. At least the unpleasant pederastic overtones have been removed, since Niki now appears to be approximately 25 in that final panel. Fish on, fellas.

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Zits, 11/15/07

So it appears that Funky Winkerbean has jumped ten years forward from the present to … the present. And you know what? It really doesn’t bother me that much. It’s just an extreme manifestation of the comics chronology problem that only For Better Or For Worse has avoided — everybody stays the same age, but the strip goes on for decades and the cultural references remain more or less current. Funky Winkerbean’s original cast was in high school for something like twenty years, which at least as much a violation of laws of time and space as the current age jump.

For whatever reason I’ve been kind of fixated on the problems that arrested chronology is causing in Zits lately. It’s definitely been discussed that Jeremy’s dad Walt, at least, is an ex-hippie, and I think they’ve gone as far as to mention that he actually went to Woodstock. My parents are part of the first wave of baby boomers (mom born in ’46, dad in ’48) and were both at Woodstock (separately, before they knew each other); at 23 and 21, I have to imagine that they’d have been among the younger people there. So, even if Walt had managed to sneak up there at 16 or 17, that’d make him at minimum 55 today, and probably more like 60 — starting to push it just a bit for someone with a 15-year-old son. This was a non-issue when the strip was launched 10 years ago, but it’s only going to get more unlikely as time goes on. Retconning the ages can have its own jarring effects. When I first began reading Sally Forth, I was the same age as Hillary, and so naturally assumed Ted and Sally were the same ages as my parents, an assumption that went unchallenged in my mind despite obvious evidence until a flashback-to-college storyline a few years ago that featured Sally (or was it Ted, I forget now) wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt.

While I think this series of Zits strips have been cute, I also have to say that I find it a little unlikely that even a contemporary teenager interested in rock music to the extent that he plays in a garage band is only now discovering the Beatles. There was a funny story in the paper here a couple of years ago about the high-school aged rockers of today and their ongoing love of dinosaur acts (and honestly, who doesn’t like to get the Led out? I ask you).

None of this monkeying around with time in any way justifies the concept of Walt and Jeremy “hav[ing]” Connie “in common.”

Slylock Fox, 11/15/07

Oh, brave Max! Noble Max! Stupid, stupid Max! I know you’re desperate to do something useful for once in your life, but trying to catch an enormous red-suited gorilla-pimp who probably weighs 20,000 times as much as you do is not the answer.

I love that the gorilla-pimp is carrying his money around is the classic burlap sacks with dollar signs on the side. Do you think he carries the sacks around and makes the ladies in his employ dump his cut of their earnings into them? Does it make him feel like a big man?

Mary Worth, 11/15/07

…aaaand here’s the moment where absolute power officially corrupts Mary absolutely. “I’d hate to make it obvious that I am the unquestioned dictator of this joint, and that rules don’t apply to me! It might make it more difficult to force everyone else to obey the arbitrary laws I’ve laid down if they saw that I can just have them changed on a whim. Who’s a good dog? Yes, you’re a good dog!”

B.C., 11/15/07

Ho ho, there’s nothing zanier than ecological disaster! See, it’s funny because he dumped viscous oil on those seals to shut them up. Soon they will be dead! Mercy.