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Gil Thorp, 5/18/07

Gil Thorp continues to be unspeakably filthy. In panel one, Brynna “mishandles” Lisa’s “sinker,” if you know what I mean (and I think you do); as a result of that “collision,” her shoulder is sore the next day. Fortunately, she still has use of her right arm.

Hi and Lois, 5/18/07

Young Chip Flagston, sittin’ in a tree
down-load-ing porn-o-graph-y.

Mary Worth, 5/18/07

Mary loves her pithy little bits of advice, but there has to be some kind of internal house rule that a pearl of wisdom, once used, can never be repeated; that explains why, after 67 years in the meddling business, her sayings have gone from the helpful to the platitudinous to something at odds with everything we know about how time and space work. I don’t care how at peace you are with the past, people: you cannot astrally project yourself back in time and change what happened. Mary Worth is right in that white doctors shouldn’t trouble themselves with charity work in filthy foreign countries, but she’s off-base here.

Slylock Fox, 5/18/07

To me, the look on the dog’s face doesn’t say “lazy” so much as “has lost the will to live.”

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Crankshaft, 5/17/06

For the no doubt depressingly large number of you who are biblically illiterate, the ’Shaft here is deploying a variation of the Judgement of Solomon, as described in 1 Kings 3:16-28. Two women came before King Solomon with a baby, both claiming to be its mother.

Then the king said, “Bring me a sword.” So they brought a sword for the king. He then gave an order: “Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.” The woman whose son was alive was filled with compassion for her son and said to the king, “Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!” But the other said, “Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!” Then the king gave his ruling: “Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother.”

Interestingly, many historians see this episode, which came early in Solomon’s reign, as being a metaphor and veiled warning to his enemies. Solomon’s father was King David, who had usurped the throne from King Saul; now that David was dead, Saul’s family felt that they should rule, not Solomon. In the parable, the baby is the Kingdom of Israel, and Solomon is the false mother: he’s willing to tear the kingdom apart with civil war if his rule is challenged, so if you love the country, you should keep your mouth shut about who the legitimate ruler is.

Using this interpretation, Crankshaft clearly believes that he’s the king of everything (the strip has his name on it, after all) and that the comics belong rightfully to him. He’ll probably tear that comic book in half in front of everyone else’s horrified eyes, then take the collection home and let it decay in his moldy basement, just to be a dick. He’s like a Solomon of spite.

Mark Trail, 5/17/07

I know I keep coming back to Mark Trail this week, but I don’t know how you can expect me not to fall head-over-heels in love with this awesomely hilarious conversation. I don’t know what makes me happier: the image evoked in the first panel of Commissioner Tweedledumb and Commissioner Tweedleverydumb wearing ski masks and carrying huge bags of birdseed, flinging handfuls of the stuff around as they run around on the tarmac one step ahead of enraged TSA agents, or the description in the third panel of a hunting guide who would do “just about anything for enough money” — up to and including, one hopes, putting on a bird suit and getting run over by a Boeing 717.

Apartment 3-G, 5/17/07

Wait, are we about to find out that It Was All A Dream, the lamest, dumbest, clichéest cliché in the history of modern narrative? I think I liked it better when it didn’t make any sense.

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Beetle Bailey, 5/16/07

I’m pretty sure I don’t get this. Is it supposed to be funny that General Halftrack is all excited about his “fan club,” only to find to his disappointment that it consists of a single person? But really, wouldn’t having someone form a fan club composed only of himself still be kind of flattering? It would have at least made sense in the context of the Beetle Bailey milieu if the “General Halftrack fan club” had been founded by Lt. Fuzz as another outlet for his loathsome sycophancy, but adding a third panel in which the towheaded kissup actually appeared would have apparently required too much additional painstaking detail work on the background to make it worthwhile.

Kudzu, 5/16/07

Ha ha! Man, Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson only broke up, what, six months ago? How do these guys come up with zingers like these so quickly?

Judge Parker, 5/16/07

Wait, I knew that the Cabots were rich, but … Cabot Island? “Oh, it’s just a little place … they used to call it ‘Sicily’ before we bought it.”

By the way, Roger, I don’t care if you do you own your own island, no man with a mullet as stringy as yours should wipe his mouth with a napkin that daintily. It’s just against the natural order of things.

Mark Trail, 5/16/07

Man, I sure hope panel two gives us a hint about the Wicked Commissioners’ secret airport bird-attraction scheme: they’re going to regurgitate worms and grubs all over the runway in a bid to woo their feathered friends and disrupt air traffic! That’s why the dude’s taking his jacket off in the final panel. You don’t want to get half-digested larvae all over your nice suit.

Phantom, 5/16/07

Oh, by the way, the Phantom has started a new storyline that involves bickering wealthy white people on a huge yacht. And thank goodness for that, really, because the other serial comics have been terribly neglectful of the dramatic possibilities that could be built around money and the dilettantes who squabble over it.

Gil Thorp, 5/16/07

I had some kind of juvenile “pitcher/catcher” joke ready to go here, but then I realized that nothing I could say about this strip could possibly top Dean Booth’s take on it.

Ziggy, 5/16/07

THIS COMIC HURTS MY SOUL.