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Apartment 3-G, 7/7/07

Spider-Man? For all his web-slinging and super-strength and relative [fill in the blank] of a spider, we know him to be a self-absorbed, useless mope. The Phantom? A guy who openly admits that his main “power” is messing with his opponents’ heads. No, today we learn that Ruby Wright has the most incredible superpower in the funny pages: the power to shut Margo up. Admittedly each panel is just a frozen instant in time, but that vision of Margo, her mouth a perfect O of surprise, stunned into silence, is one that no ordinary human could bring about. Still, no matter how powerful Ruby is, Margo will counterattack; the Professor, who a moment ago was eager to get back to his own apartment to continue servicing Gina, now looks eager to stick around and watch the fireworks.

(By the way, Lu Ann’s maiden name is “Wright”; “Powers” is the name of her husband, a fighter pilot who was shot down over Vietnam, which incident has presumably been retconned to Grenada Libya Iraq Somalia Kosovo Afghanistan Iraq stay tuned!)

Gil Thorp, 7/7/07

The first panel of today’s Gil Thorp, in which the Milford baseball team lets loose a mighty, fist-pumping cheer in salute to willful ignorance, may be one of the most simultaneously sad and delightful things this strip has ever presented — and it’s presented a long list of simultaneously sad and delightful things.

Now that we know that Otha earned the “Clambake” nickname during his Navy days, I really, really don’t want to know the origin story. Really.

Mark Trail, 7/7/07

There’s been plenty of wacky animal action in Mark Trail this week, including yesterday’s memorable talking moose, but none pegged my disturb-o-meter like today’s strip. The idly munching cow seems innocuous enough, despite the fact that its horns are the exact same color of milky brown as the rest of its coat. But then you see Sam’s suddenly enormously dilated pupils in the next panel. Her eyes have the exact same numb, soulless look as the brutish bovine’s. And then you realize that something very, very bad happened on that plane.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/7/07

I’m going to ignore the subtext here and just focus on the flat-out ludicrous text. Look at Rex in panel three, with his fist clenched and and that look of steely determination in his eyes. “As God as my witness, Niki, we will! If it’s the last thing we do!” They’re going to hang out by a river and catch a damn fish or maybe not, not climb Everest or cure cancer. There’s no point in being … so … oh, hell, who am I kidding. TROUSER TROUT TROUSER TROUT TROUSER TROUT TROUSER TROUT TROUSER TROUT

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Beetle Bailey, 7/6/07

Sarge is completely unimpressed by this rampant display of heterosexuality, showing no more interest in the mating ritual between Killer and Random Brunette Nurse than the average person might in baboons showing each other their big red asses on the Discovery Channel.

Pearls Before Swine, 7/6/07

But if you do want to get Sarge interested, you mess with his territory. Zero’s trip home is quickly going to turn into a trip straight into the middle of Anbar Province.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/6/07

Help each other Commitment You ready for that? I don’t know much about this stuff JESUS GOD THIS DEFIES PARODY

Apartment 3-G, 7/6/07

Damn it, I was really on a roll there. Hmm, let’s see … if the Apartment 3-G girls were actual young women living in Manhattan, they’d almost certainly have some gay male friends, whose encounters with Ruby would be good for some larfs. “Ah do declare, Jason and Cory are just as thick as thieves! And so handsome! Ah can’t believe none of you young ladies have made a play for one of those boys!”

Anyway, I mainly wanted to comment on this strip because, as several of you pointed out, it provides further evidence that this woman is a relative of Lu Ann, as she apparently doesn’t know how to read.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/5/07

Oh, please, please, please let this be Lu Ann’s mother. Please. It only makes sense that Lu Ann’s wan, boring, unobtrusive personality grew up in the shadow of a larger-than-life southern belle, with her bright orange suit jackets and matching hair ribbons. It explains a lot, like why Lu Ann puts up with Margo’s constant stream of haughty abuse. Heck, if Lu Ann Senior and Margo start to bond, I will have officially died and gone to heaven.

Just because I like to make things even funnier in my mind, I’m imagining that Big Tipper is handing her cabbie a crisp dollar bill. “Now don’t spend it all in one place, sugar!” Of course, since the driver seems to be wearing an old-timey hat with a little button on it that presumably says “TAXI”, perhaps $1 does go pretty far back in his home decade.

Crankshaft, 7/5/07

Actually, from everything I’ve heard, the replacement of a brutal but essentially secular dictatorship with an elected coalition of religious-based political parties has resulted in Western dress becoming less common, not more, in Iraq. But if the Surge was abandoned and replaced with a strategy based on dressing Iraqis like the members of the Village People, the resulting political and diplomatic shitstorm would be 100 percent worth it, due to the extreme hilariousness that would result.

Mary Worth, 7/5/07

Dawn’s word balloon in panel two makes exactly zero sense. “I already wanted to study medicine — and now that I have made the entirely novel discovery that doctors are sometimes handsome, my choice becomes even more sensible!” Dawn, the more realistic attitude would be as follows: “Wait, I don’t have to go through the grueling process of earning a medical degree to net a doctor — there’s one standing right here in front of me! Now I can use the money Wilbur saved for tuition to help pay for the doves we’ll release at the end of our elaborate wedding ceremony!”

I know it’s impossible to tell from the Mary Worth art, which makes everyone looks like they’re in their 40s and it’s 1978, but anyone who’s gotten all the way through medical school and is now boasting at snoresville parties about being a doctor has got to be at minimum, what, 26? 27? FYI, kids: people in their late 20s who hit on college undergraduates = SKEEEEVY. I don’t want to see the funny pages lead a young generation astray on this.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/5/07

OH MY GOD FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLDS READ AND/OR SUBMIT ENTRIES TO TDIET EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS IS WRONG

I do have to say that Junior’s “Wha’-?” may be the most subtle expression of ironic bafflement in this feature’s history.