My little friend is not so little anymore, Toby! In fact, she's quite large! Enormous, in fact! Nine foot six and getting taller by the day! It's actually quite alarming! We're getting into I'm a Virgo territory here! Did you watch that miniseries, by the way? It was on Amazon Prime a couple of years ago! Jharrel Jerome is a treasure! Some great performances by Elijah Wood and Walton Goggins as well, which reminds me that I need to start my Justified rewatch. Oh, Margo Martindale is another treasure, especially as a voice in BoJack Horseman. Anyway, Olive is a giant, is the point I'm trying to make.
Mark Trail, 6/1/06
Aw, look! The love a little orphan boy has caused Evil Bald Dude to change is ways, and admit his villainy in open court the County Commission chambers. The road won’t get built, Lost Forest will be saved, and the freakishly oversized animals will get to frolic in peace.
You know what this means, right? It means that Mark isn’t going to get to punch anybody. Damn it damn it damn it.
Shoe, 5/31/06
Let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that the “joke” emanating from the TV set in this comic is funny and worth publishing in newspapers around the country. Does it add anything to American life to have said joke presented in comic strip format, with the bleary-eyed Perfessor staring at it expressionlessly from his easy chair? Why not jettison the cartoon aspect altogether and just have a feature called “Jokes We’ve Heard”, where amiable fellows share little riddles and bon mots from their repertoires with readers, eliminating the need to do all that tedious drawing? That’d be much easier.
Unless … the joke is that the Perfessor has had a massive heart attack hours before, and that, while he’s watching this funeral ad, he’s actually dead. Now that’d be funny. No, wait, actually, it wouldn’t, but at least there’d be a point to it.
Slylock Fox, 5/31/06
5) Undead fiends stalk the night, desperately thirsty for the blood of the living! (Answer: All too true!)
Remember when vampires had huge mountaintop castles in the Balkans and mysterious magical carriages to carry them and their victims to and fro? Whereas now they apparently have to take the bus with the rest of the puds. Jeez, vampires are losers.
Gil Thorp, 5/30/06
“For the love of Christ,” you’ve probably been saying for weeks, “What in God’s name is going on in Gil Thorp?” Well, the sad answer is: not much. We’ve been treated to two or three boring storylines involving surly teenage athletes that have been getting in the way of what we all really want: more of Brent Raptor’s mom. But today’s strip promises big moves in that department. The lady rounding out this coachy foursome joined our cast of lovable misfits last summer, when she used her feminine wiles to get Milford grad/polka disc jockey Von to take care of her little stalker problem. Now she’s going to take on the She-Raptor, which heralds another wacky summer in Gil Thorpistan. Does the “horizon broadening” she has in mind involve getting avocado facials together at the local day spa, or forcible kidnapping at knifepoint? Tune in to find out! I find the whole prospect positively delicious.
Wizard of Id, 5/30/06
Can I admit something to you all? Since I started reading the Wizard of Id on a regular basis last month, I’ve found myself sort of enjoying it some of the time. Admittedly, my expectations coming into it were set very, very low, though this hasn’t enhanced my appreciation of Crock, which I took up again at the same time. The Wiz by my estimation is funny maybe a third of the time, which is a lot better than some strips I could mention but won’t because it would be deeply embarrassing for them.
Anyway, today I had the realization that the installments of this strip I like the best are the ones involving the stablehands, whose conversation inevitably revolves around horse feces and the shoveling thereof, and, in the larger sense, the level of degradation that this brings into their lives. Make of this what you will.