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Gil Thorp, 8/14/17

Oh, so that’s what Jaquan meant by “backwards!” It looks like instead of the summer wackiness we crave, we’ll be getting … a 31-year-old pro basketball player with a bum knee suddenly deciding he wants to play an insanely physically punishing game that chews up its players’ bodies and destroys their brains? Sure, why not! At least he’ll have Heather on his side, a high school student and coaching dabbler who in just a few months last year helped linebacker Kevin Pelwecki achieve his dream of becoming a fifth-string quarterback, probably just so Gil wouldn’t have to listen to him whine anymore. Maybe this summer will be wacky after all, if you consider a long prelude to a debilitating concussion “wacky!”

Hi and Lois, 8/14/17

I find this comic honestly delightful! Look at how happy everybody is! I’m really enjoying the image of Lois explaining to Thirsty in a soothing voice, possibly while holding an ice-cold beer just out of reach, how four to six hours a day spent in a pleasant PBR haze on the couch flipping through the channels of the Flagstons’ premium cable package could be plausibly spun to Irma as “house-sitting.”

Crankshaft, 8/14/17

You know, I have to admit, while Crankshaft wasn’t at the top of my list of widely syndicated newspaper comic strips that I thought might do a piss-drinking joke, it wasn’t exactly at the bottom, either.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/13/17

Oh my God, somehow I just now remembered that June and Rex’s pal/former household employee Heather is agonizing over the fact that her agèd, Alzheimer’s-afflicted millionaire husband is in no shape to father the baby she’s always wanted! When last we heard from her, more than a year and a half ago, June was broadly hinting that Heather knows how sex works so Heather should probably just do sex with someone and get pregnant that way. I largely forgot about this because it was a plotline from the substantially wackier Woody Wilson era of the strip, and most of those got dropped when Terry Beatty took over writing duties on the strip. But now! An adorable little baby has just fallen right into June’s lap, and surely she won’t neglect to reward Heather for her years of faithful service. The only question is: will June actually tell her desperate childhood friend that she’ll be fobbing her orphaned son off onto a gold-digging white-collar criminal who lives with her agitated and demented husband in a drafty castle in England somewhere? Or will she just wait for her friend to drop dead and then put little Johnny in the mail?

Family Circus, 8/13/17

You know, the Keane house is really a character in today’s strip! Specifically, it’s like some huge, sedentary beast, its maw open and ready to feed, and Big Daddy Keane is responsible for its excretory processes.

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/13/17

“Tearin’ off chunks of my flesh to devour, and I’m still capable of feelin’ everythin’! It’s a nightmare from which there’d be no escape!”

Spider-Man, 8/13/17

So, just to emphasize here: an immortal supervillain is leading an army of awful subterranean monsters to the Earth’s surface … to ruin a wedding, and the monsters have to be quiet, because otherwise they’ll wake up his wife, who loves weddings. I take back every mean thing I ever said about Newspaper Spider-Man. This is literally the greatest comic ever made.

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Gil Thorp, 8/12/17

“Or maybe I’ve got that backward! Maybe, I wish basketball … coached her!” Or … right? Not sure what that means, and I’m also hoping pretty hard that it doesn’t mean that Jaquan has taken a liking to Heather, what with him being like 31 and her being in high school and all.

Panel two is yet another egregious colorist error, what with Trey being assigned Jaquan’s skin and jacket color in panel two despite the fact that he literally says Jaquan’s name in his dialogue. Then again, Jaquan’s right eye is also being swallowed up by his skintone in the final panel. Perhaps the very nature of the reality of the Thorpiverse is glitching, and everyone is about to find themselves swallowed up in sea of pleasing burnt umber.

Crock, 8/12/17

Hey, kids, don’t give up if the mysteries you submit to Slylock Fox get rejected! They can still use them in Crock, apparently?

Hi and Lois, 8/12/17

Like many teenage boys, Chip has little by way of sexual experience or skills, and his partners rarely achieve orgasm during their encounters.

Six Chix, 8/12/17

Today’s lesson from Six Chix: little kids are assholes!