Hope Jami gets involved in the underground electronic music scene
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Gil Thorp, 7/28/25
There are two types of Gil Thorp summers: the wacky ones, with plotlines like “Kaz punches his way to a bodyguard job for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Carole King” or “Gil gets involved with a pro wrestler who might have dementia or that might just be his latest angle” or “a sadistic warden forces juvenile delinquents to battle each other on the gridiron for their freedom,” and the boring ones, like “let’s just get a head start on football season or whatever.” Obviously you know which kind I prefer, and while it’s early yet, I do think “Coach Ex Mrs. Coach Thorp takes their son to Berlin, where he’s vlogging mean stuff about his sibling while dressed like one of the guys from The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou for some reason” has potential. Who is he vlogging at, by the way? Where’s the camera? Are we holding the camera? In some high-end French literary theory sense, are we the camera?
Dick Tracy, 7/28/25
Look, when you come to the conference room to present the evidence you’ve been gathering on the latest case to Dick Tracy, you’d best come correct, and by “correct” I mean “with the logo of the company or government agency you’ve been assigned to investigate printed, in color, on the manila envelope you use to hold the documents you’ve compiled about said company or government agency.”
B.C., 7/28/25
You’d think that when the POV “camera” pulls back to give you a wider view of the gym in the final panel, you’d see a pull-up bar, to reinforce the punchline. You’d be wrong, though! It’s hard to draw a pull-up bar outside, honestly, so these weights are going to have to do.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/28/25
“So you’re saying you’re not very observant and are pretty easy to trick, huh? Interesting. Just filing that away. Might be useful information at some point.”
140 replies to “Hope Jami gets involved in the underground electronic music scene”
Rex Morgan: A light comes on somewhere in that beehive on Wanda’s head. “Hmm. Truck’s oblivious to cucking. I won’t have to try hard to hide keeping Mud Mountain as my side piece. That works!”
Let’s say hypothetically, I was a criminal. And I ended up being arrested by a ventriloquist dummy wearing a enormous red bow-tie, the humiliation would prepare me for anything prison has to offer.
“Cody has two half-siblings?”
“Yeah, Spuds Moron’s kids — Tater and Julienne.”
RMMD:
“As it turns out, it was an affair to remember. At the very end of it, Varla was sittin’ down when Spuds came callin’. He hadn’t known that she needed to sit down.”
BG&SS: Sous vide arrives in Hootin’ Holler, but further instructions are necessary, such as “dress the chickens for dinner”.
Gasoline Alley: Where’s a Moby Dick joke when you need one?
H&L: Ditto must be preserved, as he’s the last kid in America who doesn’t know comics are on the internet.
@Baja Gaijin: God, I miss when Mud Mountain Murphy was drawn to look like a towering giant.
That made him unique and interesting, adding with his brusque callous attitude.
Rex Morgan M.D where personality goes to die.
@Pozzo: Julianne became a prostitute in her later years.
She took on the moniker of I-da-Ho.
Gil Thorp:
“If it hadn’t been for the U. S. of A;, it would have been ‘Der Rathskeller’ in Paris instead of ‘La Maison’ in Berlin!”
I never thought I would say this, but… can B.C. go back to the era when there would be a rock labeled “Stupid Joke” and a character behind it would tell a stupid joke? Or commit a hate crime?
@The Rambling Otter: But then again, being Neo Chigago, chances are I’d die before I’d even set foot in a prison.
Gil Thorp:
” ‘Kreuzberg’ — wasn’t he The Grateful Dead’s drummer?”
GT I see that the art in Gil Thorp has not regressed to the middle ages, where the concepts like ‘perspective’ and ‘relative proportions of children’ are starting to fade away. Looking forward to a year from now when this whole strip will be stitched into tapestries.
DT I would have thought that an attack by an assailant with weird glowing gun would have garnered more attention when first reported, but I guess cases don’t get referred to the Tracy team until there is a confirmed facial disfiguration.
BC Dang, I was going to guess ‘unconscious homoerotic desires’. Honestly, I think it makes for a better punchline.
GT: Teenagers these days just naturally assume that they’re being filmed and recorded at all times, day or night.
@The Rambling Otter: There was a fantasy novel series, Redwall with animal characters in a medieval fantasy setting.
It was very violent for a kids novel (Oddly PBS of all networks aired the animated adaptation) it was almost a meme of how much a death world it was.
What I’m getting at it, there’s an old joke. The difference between Redwall and Lord of the Rings.
-In Lord of the Rings, you’re walking through the forest, you hear someone say FIRE! and you’re killed by an arrow.
-In Redwall you’re walking through the woods you’re killed by an arrow and then somebody says FIRE!
MW: Well, Mary’s still alive and now there’s a broken air conditioner. They’re starting the disappointment early though our expectations were already low to begin with.
RMMD: At this point, I just want to see how long they can milk this. I want to see Roots Country Guy still sitting in the diner talking about not being some rando’s father in November.
Luann: So I guess Camp Skye never happened for Luann? Next week will be August.
Pluggers, feel free to lie down for a nap any time you wish to. Someday soon, you won’t get back up.
Frazz: I like how Random Elementary School Student #12 just assumes Frazz is going to be snobby about e-bikes.
JP: “An unconscious April is driven out of Dobrak” made me wonder if I should have been paying more attention to this story. Then I looked at the previous day’s strip, where April is conscious, and not in the presence of anything that would make her unconscious. I was right to ignore it.
Panel two in Dick Tracy reminds me of how all the young women look today. They are all getting facial treatments!
RMMD:
“I guess I shoulda been more suspicious when she would say ‘This Spud’s for You’ in a Lou Rawls voice durin’ that beer commercial!”
MW: Olive saved Mary’s life. Are they even now, or has the relationship gotten even more creepily complicated?
RMMD: “Spud is gone, but I owe his oldest kid an ass-whuppin’. It’s the code of the hills.”
BC: If they’d just migrate to somewhere that’s NOT an arid wasteland, there would be trees for pull-ups.
In the evolution of crime stopper folders, printed trademarks were the halfway point between Avery labels and descriptive emoticons. “Ugh, not the shit emoji again;” says Sam.
MW: I’m no HVAC professional, but I know R-22 freon when I see it, and that’s definitely not it. That there is what you call ectoplasm. Looks like that AC unit is giving up the ghost.
@MKay: Watch Mary try to spin the story so that she’s the hero who triggered Olive’s “gift.”
DT: Logos check, file folders check, okay, now we can start a proper investigation.
Phantom: RIGHT, what is keeping these poor people imprisoned is their job application info, and not the many armed guards that encircle the mine and compound. Tyrants, despots and dictators of the world! Take note! No need to have a private expensive militia of heavily armed soldiers to control the masses through fear and intimidation – just use their application info! More power to school management!
MW: Most people when a heavy object smashes at their feet, would look up and wonder where that missile came from. Not Mary, she has her focus on the AC!
Slylock: maybe if he painted over the labels stating “COPPER WIRE” and hoisted them on a crane. Like what many sites will do with a generator.
RMMD: Spuds was pretty philosophical. “I think, therefore I yam.”
DT: “L, like the letter?”
“No, Dick, the El is Chicago’s elevated rail system.”
“Really? Never heard of the thing.”
“It gets over 100 million riders a year, and is widely acclaimed as one of America’s best mass transit systems.”
“Mass transit? Sounds communist to me. Is this “L” what we’re gonna shoot this time?”
MW: Seems like a missed opportunity for a reformed Shovey Shovington to push Mary out of the way of that AC unit. “I now use my shoving skills for good not evil;” He says while Mary looks on approvingly.
Crankshaft: I call shenanigans. No way a misanthrope like Ed would have gone to the time and effort to get a passport.
JP: ‘You’ve been here before?’ ‘You bet! This is where the stupid Americans come to stay. Do you know how much guilt-free ass I’ve gotten here?’
Pluggers: Claude, you’re a CAT! Napping is your default state. There’s no need for any “thinking” about it.
Dick Tracy: Jesus, Josh (but I guess I repeat myself)! Those are clearly manila file folders, not envelopes!! You’ll never take over writing Slylock Fox at this rate.*
*I kid, I kid.
@pugfuggly: Listen, you try drawing through the lens of a telephoto lens left over from the Stasi…
Everyone knows when you’re vlogging about your trip to an exotic location, you set up the camera across the street to film yourself in a wide shot so that you’re barely visible and when your mothers show up to lead you away you just leave the camera there, right?
If you’re going to reuse old Johnny Hart artwork could you at least make sure the joke fits it?
Dick Tracy: Gosh, that coffee cup sure is curious. Why don’t we let it run this investigation?
Gil Thorp: There is I think a nice, subtle joke built into the art here. Jami declares he’d rather stay in Berlin, the home of freedom, and gradually steps aside to reveal why: a chair marked with what seems to be a rainbow flag. Of course, he’s also happier without his older non-binary sister, but little shits are going to little shit, right?
MW: So Olive is….psychic? We’re really going to go with she’s got some sort of supernatural gifts and not that the other stuff was just an overactive imagination of a child? In the hands of a good writer this could be a fun plotline, but since we don’t have that luxury, this is definitely going to end with Mary saying something along the lines of “Make sure you tamp that gift down and never let anyone see it. You wouldn’t want to upset people, dear…”
FC: “Yes, and I’m tired out from it. Frankly, dad, this whole ten commandments thing is quite a drag. How about we give the five major vows of Hinduism a shot?”
Dustin The Waffle House waitress has zero interest in hearing this crap from a guy who’s going to hand her a 20 dollar bill for a 19.75 meal and say “Keep the change “.
@Banana Jr. 6000: RMMD: At this point, I just want to see how long they can milk this. I want to see Roots Country Guy still sitting in the diner talking about not being some rando’s father in November.
Heck, wait til Truck finds out about all the other kids he’s not the father of. This could go on indefinitely.
GT How old is Jami? The only way I can make sense of this (I know, I know) is if he’s a little kid pretending to vlog and the adults are indulging his fantasy while reminding him about manners.
Phantom Despite “the pen is mightier than the sword”, information on a job application shouldn’t trump cordons of armed guards. Again trying to make sense of this, if they were asked about relatives and friends as contacts or references, threats of harm to them could keep workers there. But I don’t see how the Bangallan equivalent of a social security number would scare them – oh no! they’re going to do online identity theft! I’d better stay and work in a dangerous mine rather than risk *that*!
S4th Vandalism On the Orient Express continues…
“I will hold my manila envelope in this weird underhand way to impress Dick Tracy!”
“You fool! All the papers will fall out at that angle! Hold it in that weird underhand way like this!”
***
Wanda and Truck, just two people with normal hair for 2025 having a conversation.
The SPLORT in Luann could mean the kid spilled his drink (since they refer to a spill) or vomited.
But since the kid’s name is Jeffy, of course I figured he shit his pants.
Not the crossover anyone was every hoping for.
“Gil gets involved with a pro wrestler who might have dementia or that might just be his latest angle”
Clicking that link took me down a rabbit hole back to the wonderfully bonkers Mary Worth storyline about One-Armed Jim, who wanted to date/have sex with Dawn because she looked just like his dead sister, had creepy rage issues and was aquaphobic. All that was too much even for Doormat Dawn.
Lots of classic, Grade-A Funny Josh commentary there had me laughing in my Cheerios. In one presicent remark, Josh predicted Dawn finding pictures of herself with her eyes crossed out. Which reminds me, did Wilbur or Dawn *ever* find that picture?
Gil Thorp – “I’m…Vlogging mothers.” sounds like something an odd Victorian child would say in a revisionist novel about an upper class family of eccentrics upending the 19th Century social order.
Dick Tracy – The artist behind this strip did a refresher course on graphic design that included an elective on the history of corporate logos from different eras. In pursuit of realism, Neo-Chicago’s traditional monopoly and municipal logos are out of date, due to not facing the competition that requires rebranding every five years.
Central Edison last updated during the Y2K era, tying their electricity to the “e-era” of e-mail, e-commerce, e-dating, etc.
“The local municipal transit organization uses the 1960s New York Transit Authority logo combined with the 1980s Chicago Transit Authority motion lines.
B.C. – Men go to the gym to brag about a pull-up count to other men, or to vlog about it to their social media followers. The only men who still think women are impressed by pull up counts are too old to do a pull-up, too out of shape to do a pull-up, or to anti-social to have ever talked to a woman in the last 30 years.
Rex Morgan, MD – Wanda: “You had no idea Varla and Spuds were..?”
Truck: “None at all”
Wanda: “Despite the fact that Spuds wrote a whole thinly veiled album about it called I’m Cheating with Carla, Buck’s Estranged Wife, that you sang on, on a track titled ‘Cuckold Blues’? ”
Truck: “The man had a way of hiding his crimes behind his art, what can I say?”
JP: April is slowly (44mph) driven out of Drobak. Can’t this thing go any faster? She asks.
Today’s Dick Tracy is “red and green should never be seen,” illustrated.
“Well, I will have to come to terms with the fact that my secret bastard son is not mine and that my ex-girlfriend, about whom I had cherished memories, was actually cheating on me. Luckily, there’s a support group for people like me! Later, I am meeting with this guy, Wilbur Weston, who can teach me about stability and mature acceptance”
Divorced drama in Berlin? I’m looking forward to Ex-Mrs Thorpe recreating the infamous tunnel scene from *Possession*.
It’s a well known fact that gym exercises and gym bodies impress other males more than women. But given the ratio of male/female characters in “B.C.”, encouraging homosexuality might be necessary
BC: Before you scoff, yesterday on Drew when asked what attracts her to a man, Gwyneth Paltrow replied; “Abs.” The women in the audience cheered.
Slylock Fox-And while they are at it Slylock will have Max buried too.
RMMD-Truck fills Wanda in on what the readers had to sit weeks through.
FC-“How much longer til I can be a naughty girl?”
BC is funny today cause it reminds me of when Hugh Jackman appeared on the covers of both Good Housekeeping and Men’s Fitness at almost the same time, illustrating to the world the difference between what women generally find attractive about men’s bodies and what men think they do based on what they themselves do. I think around 2017? Could the strip have been written as late as that decade?
Gil Thorp: A+ dialogue! “I’m… vlogging, mothers,” is exactly the way a contemptuous teen would talk to his parents about videos in the age of TikTok.
It’s also the way a kid who’s caught in the act pretending a camera crew is recording his every move would try to explain himself to his mom. I don’t think I’ve learned anything about Thorp the Younger or his relationship with his moms, but I’m here for it.
@Amelie Wikström: Oops, that was Muscle & Fitness. Men’s Fitness actually has a very different Jackman cover from 2013 that adds another layer to the joke.
@The Quiet Man: I also call shenanigans. There’s no way any country on earth would allow Ed Crankshaft entry. Unless he wants to join the Russian military, North Korean nuclear weapons program, or Taliban leadership, all of whom would all be delighted to gain his explosives skills.
@Ettorre:
As a very longtime gym-goer, in my experience there is a considerable percentage of 25-and-unders who are definitely trying to impress other males.
But, for the vast majority of us, to answer the question posed in B.C., the answer is “because it makes you feel better and you can do more things.”
@Banana Jr. 6000: April was pistol-whipped from behind in Saturday’s strip. Normally this kind of pertinent information is repeated in the Sunday recap, but apparently we really, really needed to see Randy yelling on the phone to some poor customer service rep.
Luann-I guess we know what Luann has decided to do for the rest of her life.
Luann-“This is why I don’t let you out of the circle.”
GT – The way it reads, Ma Thorpe-Bell could be saying both that he is right about Keri’s absence and that it is rude to say it. That is my interpretation, because I am pretty done with Keri myself. And since I’ve never been to Berlin, I’m going enjoy this nice vacation.
And , duh,, every time I visit a new city with a lot of cool things, I think I could see myself living there. Come on, Jami – dig a little deeper!
B.C: Given the comic’s setting, you’d think women would be more impressed by a man who can bring down the biggest woolly mammoth or whatever.
GT: There is a general consensus that America is experiencing or will experience a “brain drain” as its best and brightest seek out countries with affordable higher education, stronger social programs and less hostility towards the sciences. Jami here is proof that this impulse is not limited to the “best and brightest.”
RMMD: Truck’s ignorance of Varla’s affair would make more sense if it was happening during the long periods when he was touring around the country chasing fame, but she was banging (pun not intended) his own drummer. Did he just assume she was hanging around his band despite their rocky relationship because she was really, really into the roots country scene?
C’shaft: “….Dad, this passport expired in 1987.”
Dustin: Is this the same sour-faced, definitely-not-getting-paid-enough-to-deal-with-Dustdad waitress that took his bacon order last week, or a different one?
JP: Aksel is the frontman for the tribute band Vapen og Roser.
Luann: So, the camp councilor thing fell through? (“Fell through” here can mean anything from “someone explained to Luann that summer camps usually don’t hire in mid-July” to “she got bored and forgot about it” to “Clan Evans got bored and forgot about it.”)
@TheDiva: Oh, is that what that was depicting? I thought she tripped over a movie theater promotional standee for a James Bond movie. And she was conscious again Sunday.
@TheDiva: “Fell through” could also mean “the summer camp hijinks were embargoed due to the real-life Kerrville incident.”
@TheDiva: Did Truck just assume Varla was hanging around his band despite their rocky relationship because she was really, really into the roots country scene?
This being Rex Morgan, M.D., “really, really into the roots country scene” is the default state of all things.
GT: Even when sports are not being discussed, I find GT bewildering, and that’s fine. You followers of GT deserve to feel that you are part of something very special that is not readily accessible to outsiders. Enjoy! *tiptoes away*
Gil Thorp: …Wait a minute. I barely pay attention to Gil Thorp outside of Josh’s commentary, so I don’t remember if this was established already, but Gil’s ex-wife actually DID hook up with the hot lady she was constantly having extremely gay interactions with? To the point that Gil’s kids now regard said hot lady as a second mom? I am genuinely, no-joke shocked by that. I’m so used to that kind of homoeroticism being done accidentally by newspaper comic writers who are totally clueless about anything non-traditional at best, potentially straight-up homophobic at worst. I guess if any strip would portray LGBT people in an at least halfway normal manner, it’d be Gil Thorp (which had a trans character who notably WASN’T the punchline of a bad joke). Say what you will about this comic, it at least can say its not trapped in a miserable aging bigot’s idea of a perfect world like, say, Mary Worth.
Dick Tracy: Sam and Redhead-Lady-Whose-Name-I-Can’t-Be-Assed-To-Learn were both hoping to impress Dick with their information gathering and maybe snag promotions. Their rivalry is futile of course – the only criteria that Dick judges for that kind of thing is body counts. And not the fun kind.
GT – I honestly thought the rude part was meant to be either (1) calling those unidentifiable human-like figures “mothers” (short for motherfuckers), or (2) “vlogging.” And I don’t care what the intended meaning was, I stand by my contention that “vlogging” is a very rude word indeed. I mean, it just sounds dirty!
RMMD – That white thing on Wanda’s head has got to be part of her superhero outfit, but I can’t figure out what her schtick is. Tetris-Woman? With the superpower to pack the maximum amount of luggage into a car trunk?
Don Abundio, translated:
“Do you get recognized in public a lot, Juan?”
“Yes, Abundio, and I must say I rather enjoy it”
“I don’t suppose that ever happens to you?”
“All the time”
“People mistake me for the Monopoly guy!”
@Sequitur (yesterthread):
Ether is an element now? What’s next, nitrous oxide? Laudanum? Absinthe?
BC: So all these “primal,” “paleo” or “caveman” training programs — which claim that cavemen were naturally fit because they had to chase after their food and lift and carry heavy objects in their everyday life — are pure BS? Apparently our ancient ancestors were just as doughy and poorly conditioned as us modern folks, and were already paying hucksters to let them play with weighted steel bars in a specially designated area — all in hopes of attracting a mate, because they weren’t actually strong enough to bop someone on the head with a club.
JP: The action and dialogue on Sunday did not make sense when compared with the action and dialogue on Friday and Saturday. Did Randy hear April tell him that she is not in DC, or did he not hear that? It’s another Schrodinger’s JP plot point. Get off this bus now, uncommitted readers, because there’s gonna be much, much more. *settles in and opens water bottle and packet of crackers*
Today’s Gil Thorp is a wonderful example of how the strip has become a rough draft of itself. You can see the individual layers of the Photoshop images; nothing appears to be interacting with anything else. The font is so cheap and computerized that it might as well be Comic Sans. There’s a huge white space after La Maison, as if leaving room for a less generic French name to be thought up later. The facial expressions and poses are small and generic, and don’t match anything going on. Is this like Food Fight where they ran out of money and tried to make the movie out of the animatics?
LUANN: So long-ago Luann was just left on Saturday with an urgent need to pee and no clue as to how to do it while arrayed as a giant pad of paper. Or was that Bernice? Either way, works for me. Just suffer, girl, whoever you are, until the next time the Evansii want an extended break.
RMMD: Spuds wasn’t the type to mess with someone else’s old lady but they’d been a’ drinkin’ and he was really smashed I guess.
B.C. So Peter’s Gym provides an opportunity for valuable Vitamin D absorption or an opportunity to enjoy some combination of heat exhaustion and sunstroke, depending on how you want to look at it.
@The Rambling Otter: #6
“Rex Morgan M.D where personality goes to die.”
…and where readers’ enthusiasm goes to die…
BC: Peter’s Gym appears to be the boulder with “Peter’s Gym” written on it and three barbells in an iron frame. If Clumsy wants to do some braggable pull-ups I might suggest this exotic organism he might nevertheless have seen around him. They’re called “trees.”
GT: Out of context, “I’m vlogging, mothers” sounds like a line from the broadcast-friendly cut of a movie starring Samuel L. Jackson as a social media influencer.
RMMD: “Sometimes after a gig he’d say he had to go get to his next session. The other guys in the band would all laugh but all I could think was what a hardworking musician he must be.”
@ectojazzmage: That’s pretty much the sum of it–Gil’s wife divorced him and ran off with her hot lesbian golf coach, and he hooked up with the much-younger bartender who was crushing on him and who he was having vampire fantasies about (or maybe she was the one having vampire fantasies? It was confusing), and his kids were pretty cool about their dad dating someone who was closer to their age than his, maybe because she kept buying them presents, which seemed to be a bit suspicious and might have even hinted at a source of income beyond her bartending job, possibly in the lucrative world of online sex work, but then Gil had a heart attack which caused the art to get much worse and everyone kind of forgot about that along with a lot of other things and the bartender moved in with him and quit her job to be a full-time trophy girlfriend, except she’s since been seen at her job so maybe she didn’t quit at all.
Oh, and Coach Luke’s been seeing ghosts.
GT: Pro tip: If you draw people really far away, you don’t have to learn how to draw faces.
Phantom: jots down memo: “Make Bandar fill out job applications”
Baldo: “Mashed potatoes? When did Tia Carmen start cooking these weird foreign foods? Where’s my lengua guisado?”
@TheDiva:
In any other comic strip–any other context, really–I’d say no. Here, though…
Phantom – Job applications? Wouldn’t it be easier to just put a slavery-for-life clause into one of those “Terms & Conditions” popups? Get with the 21st century, Phantom!
@Charterstoned: #24
No…no…no…GAAAA!!!
@TheDiva:
Well…yeah, given that being “really really into the roots country scene is the primary character trait of like 90% of Rex Morgan M.D. characters nowadays. I think this is the only reason Wanda’s still sticking around.
Phantom-“I must implement this myself.”
Gil Thorp-I’m glad that they told us they are in Berlin. For a moment I thought they were at the Tavern on the Green in New York.
@Astroboy: Yes, totally agree. I exercise for health and mental health. But if it is to show off your body, you end up impressing other men more than women
GT: “Jami Has Two Mommies,” now available on Amazon.
“Whoa, Berlin is so different!”
“Is it? We also used to have prominent Jews like Coach Kaz and then we got rid of them. We’re basically the same”
DT: I believe the two women at the table are supposed to be Lee and Lizz. They had a girlie date over the weekend and both changed to radically new hairstyles. “Tee hee!” Neither Dick nor Sam notice.
9CL: We all know Brooke’s weird water fetish, but you simply don’t pick a pair of third-level characters, take the eyeglasses off one and put a beard on the other, draw them both in bathing suits, and expect the casual reader to recognize who they are. (They are Chedda and the tall piano guy)
JP: Red Frightwigged Landlady: “I thought I had made it quite clear. No Norwegians in the house.”
@TheDiva:
On Luann, I wonder if they’ll revisit the summer camp thread next summer?
GT: I know there is a lot of criticism on this site about the “big white void” style of background art employed in several strips.
This strip shows how an overly-complicated “realistic” background makes the characters distorted and out of proportion.
(How tall ARE these people?)
@Rover Berkeley: The Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.
@Astroboy: Oh good, some human thinking has evolved beyond some cavemen thinking. Thanks for the reassurance.
The average American associates Berlin with one thing that is not Nazism: weird sex dungeons. Unfortunately, it is wasted on a nerd like Jami!
@TheDiva: Or theoretically, hahaha, the camp director noticed on her application that she has been nineteen for a decade and has been a student in Woohoo Whatever College for all that time, and the director thought “helz no.”
“I’m vlogging, mothers”. Well, “Psycho 2, too psycho” is disappointing
A&J: Gotta hand it to Jimmy Johnson. The “40 year old art revisited” arc has been good. (The insulted look on Gene’s face is funny).
Everybody Hates Ted Forth (formerly known as “Sally Forth”).
MW: Most human females, from what I just skimmed, reach their adult height when they are fourteen or fifteen. So it would appear that either Mary is taller than I had realized, or Olive is shorter. *checks Sunday strip* Never mind, now I see that Mary has an extendable neck. I wonder if Doctor Jeff has ever noticed.
It is actually most often written out as the “L” rather than the “El”, which is admittedly confusing, and I suppose could just be chalked up to differences between Dick Tracy-world Chicago and actual Chicago.
FG: Now there’s a story to share with your ice-fishing friends at the ice-tavern.”Oh, you caught a fish that big, did you? Ever tell you about the time I caught a Dragon Man?”
Garfield: You know, my cat has never once bought me a birthday present, and I have never felt as hurt by this as Jon seems to be in the final panel because she’s a freaking cat.
GT: I swore a while ago that “attempting to make any sense of Gil Thorp” was something I’d stop doing for the good of my mental health, but I think the pause before “vlogging” is meant to indicate that Jami was just narrating his life out loud for no reason, and decided that vlogging without a phone was the less embarassing explanation.
Also, is “vlogging” even still a word people say? It feels really early-2000s to me, but maybe I’m wrong. It looks like it should be the name of a minor Girl Genius villain. Dr Hans Vlogging, inventor of the Vlogging Pneumatic Airship Ram.
JP: Hey, remember how just before all the April nonsense, Morten Harkett was trying to say something about the house they were staying at? Well, Ces has suddenly found his notes about that again.
MW: “Gosh, Mary, now we’ve both saved the other’s life! That means the debt is fulfilled and I never need to talk to you again!”
S4th: Sigh. Once again, when Ted first noticed the painting was ruined, he specifically and only said that there was mustard on it and the glass was broken. Kevin confessed to both those things. There was no mention of a wine stain until Ralph confessed to it, and there’s been no previous mention of whatever Laura’s mobster friends did as part of their failed heist.
Really gives you hope that the current Judge Parker plot has been planned out properly, doesn’t it?
@Ettorre: See Mel Gordon’s Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin (Feral House, 2000). Gordon also wrote a terrific history of Paris’s Grand Guignol Theatre, including scripts for a few one-act plays.
@LTJpezcore1: Olive’s psychic powers have previously been “explained” as a combination of an active imagination and the incredible intuition provided by her deep connection to her entric nervous system (aka “the tummy brain”), at least according to Mary “I’m not a doctor, but I am withholding sex from one” Worth. I guess this could be more of the same. Then again, Mary lives in the same universe as the Phantom, who lives in the same universe as Mandrake, so who knows?
@ectojazzmage: Yep, Bajaras is kind of good at this stuff, which makes his failure at basic storytelling ability all the more frustrating.
I say “kind of” because, depending on what sort of mood I’m in, I sometimes feel like Keri is just a collection of Very Special Episodes smooshed together (Non-binary! PTSD! Vegan! Abortion! Eating disorder!) while at least Terry Beatty gave his non-binary character a personality trait that was just A Thing About Them (Fan of classic vaudeville).
Rex Morgan, M.D.: “You mean to tell me you have no opinion on l’affair Dreyfus, the courtroom drama that transfixed fin-de-siècle France?! Get out of my diner and don’t come back until you’ve absorbed Zola’s political philosophy, you bastard!”
LUANN: I love how Luann is bragging about how “responsible” she is for doing something that 3/5th of the cast has already been doing anyway.
@Horace Broon:
On Olive’s ESP :
1. So, basically, the explanation is “Olive can somehow tap into a part of her brain most humans can’t use, this gives her amazing subconscious deductive abilities, which she rationalises as being angels confiding secrets to her”?
2. Mandrake’s powers are supposed to be ‘ordinary hypnosis’, but he can set off INCREDIBLY SPECIFIC mass hallucinations by wordlessly waving his hand, and the hallucinations have real world effects as if they were actually happening, so his powers are, for all intents and purposes, ‘actual reality-warping magic’.
@Horace Broon:
Ah, but you’re forgetting a crucial point about this Dork Phoenix Saga storyline: that Mary and Olive have “psychic link” (which-totally-isn’t-a-rip-off-of-the-Scott-and-Jean-psychic-link-subplots-we-swear!). This is the foundation for their (ugh!) “special bond” that they have with each other..
Also Olive apparently has trouble making friends (due to, you know, being a delusional weirdo who lets a matronly control freaks groom her through her “tummy brain”) and and has no one else to confine in (since her parents are too busy making tee-hee innuendo at each other.)
@Anonymous: #106: There’s was a Marvel supervillain, Mastermind, whose power was creating realistic mass hallucinations. He was one of Magneto’s flunkies and strictly a C-lister. If operating on his own he’d make a good opponent for newspaper Spiderman.
@The Quiet Man: Agreed, and to make a joke about dashing to Paris – a very 1960 jet set joke, just clashes with his known history as a semi-literate minor league ball player and all around curmudgeon.
@Anonymous: Pretty much, yes.
@Guillermo el Chiclero: Mastermind had his moment in the sun (almost literally): he used his illusions to manipulate
Jean Greythe Pheonix Force pretending to be Jean Greysome combination of Jean Grey and the Pheonix Force into becoming Dark Phoenix. This was, of course, a situation that got completely out of his control almost immediately, but still.Rex Morgan, MD: It’s one thing his wife had a long affair without him knowing, but she had TWO KIDS without him knowing?
Hi and Lois – Impressive. Even the unlikely fact that a child is still interested in the comics is a source of misery in Hi and Lois.
GA: A morbidly obese simpleton like Slim is the absolute last person who should be making jokes about someone’s weight.
@Philip: Gee, I thought I was the only transit nerd who noticed that. Perhaps you might enjoy this transit nerd book I read, it’s called The Enthusiast, by Josh Fruhlinger.
Reality Check: What happens when one too many “Late Thread Cusine”s are posted.
Ripley’s: TUMMY BRAIN IS A THING!
Ziggy: Damn cartoonist.
Don’t look at this if you’re a cat person.
Or this.
Poteet, I told you not to look!
How do you all like my Hagar cameo today?
@2+2=7: When it comes to writing characters for children, Moy misses more than she hits. The audience was supposed to find Madi annoying and unlikeable because she didn’t want to stay in Charterstone with a geriatric gnome who has a codependent relationship with his dog. Instead, she wound up becoming one of the most sympathetic characters because she lost both her mother as a baby and her grandmother who raised her just died so she was clearly going through some grief. Mary also decided to downplay all of Madi’s problems by equating them to Greta the dachshund not being able to find a home.
And then there’s Olive. The audience is supposed to see her as cute and endearing when she talks about seeing fairies and having special gifts, a pseudo-Matilda if you will. Except Olive is seen as a delusional weirdo whose best friend is an old woman who is pretty much there to babysit her so that her negligent parents can have raunchy sex since there’s no bigger way to kill the mood than a future psych ward case. She exists only to be a sycophant to Mary and has no personality or interests outside of her delusions.
@119 GarrisonSkunk:
Can I say it stunk? I mean it as a complement.
@Sequitur: Ziggy: Damn cartoonist.
____________________________________
Her line of sight indicates something else on Ziggy’s person got erased as well.
MW – Is this an homage to the safe droppings that happened in the webcomic General Protection Fault decades ago? Or a callback to the Sleaze Sisters dropping TVs off of buildings int the 80’s classic Times Square? Are Olive and Mary just going to have a lovely stroll with random defenestrations of various hard heavy objects. Is Olive ever going to reach the conclusion that letting Mary get concussed by falling appliances is a better outcome than ripping her rotator cuff pulling Mary back every. damn. time?
@Needless Exposition: And you just KNOW Doctor Ed is wearin’ three condoms these days, on top of Evy’s triple shot of spermicide. No way they’re making another one of these little freaks.
@richardf8: After the falling safe and grand piano, they’ll work up to Chaplin’s sidewalk elevator gag from City Lights.
@The Rambling Otter: She took on the moniker of I-da-Ho.She must have been very a-peeling!
Baldo – “Waiter, if this is vanilla pudding, bring me mashed potatoes. If this is mashed potatoes, bring me vanilla pudding.”
— Abraham Camus
Palurdeando Spanish to English.
@Horace Broon: #110: One of Masterminds’s (who was of just average looks) abilities was to make himself appear as a tall, handsome hunk to the ladies. Now that alone is a superpower all of us guys could’ve used! Hubba-hubba!
If I’m the camera in Gil Thorp, good God, I need to focus better. A nice tall glass of wood varnish would improve this.
Blondie Spanish to English.
@Ettorre:
And that “Take My Breath Away” song from Top Gun.
@GarrisonSkunk: Nothing to sniff at. And I, too, mean that as a compliment.
I like how the art makes it look like Wanda is wearing a Pope mitre. A woman can’t be Pope, but she can proclaim the awesomeness of fried steak and hash browns!
Luann-I’m pretty sure the money wasn’t the only thing of Luann’s that dried up.
@Guillermo el Chiclero: That sounds like one of my Favorite Oglafs.
Thank heavens none of us have need of such an amulet.
Hi and Lois-“There’s this website Chip goes to and makes comments about comic strips.”
I cannot accept “Jami” as having any pronunciation other than “jam-ee” (certainly not “jay-mee”).
Also, since I just started really reading it, who’s Dick Tracy’s foxy fellow officer? Should I know this one already, or do I get to joke about Sam realizing “fuck, I’m getting sent to Traffic Enforcement?”
Lastly, can anyone explain to me what the Hell is happening in Mother Goose and Grimm? Is Grimm going to split into two futures, one unfortunate failure, and nobody caring about Mother Goose and Grimm; the other glorious success and victory, and nobody caring about Mother Goose and Grimm?