He just loves airplanes. He loves them so much
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Gil Thorp, 6/23/26
I love the abrupt emotional turn Gil takes in panel three: he lowers his sunglasses over his eyes to hide the flash of anger, but we can still see the bitter scowl on his face. Jet fuel is a miracle, making it possible for machines to hurtle through the air at hundreds of miles an hour and bringing the world within reach of ordinary people in just a few hours. Major geopolitical actors have been unable to resolve their disputes peacefully and have disrupted the flow of this amazing substance, raising the price of air travel beyond many people’s ability to pay, and frankly, it makes Gil sick just to think about it.
Archie, 6/23/26
Cell phones may have destroyed human attention spans, filled public spaces with inescapable, annoying noise, and even sabotaged our species’s ability to reproduce itself, but at least we no longer have to suffer the indignity of missing a phone call as depicted in this 1990s Archie rerun, so who’s to say if they’re good or bad?
Luann, 6/23/26
Look, I dunno man, Brad and Toni are still having sex in the shower, right here in the funny pages in front of the children, so what am I supposed to do, not tell you about it? I do kind of like how prominent Brad’s wedding ring is in panel one. They’re married so this series of erotic drawings is tasteful and wholesome, actually.
39 replies to “He just loves airplanes. He loves them so much”
It makes Gil so angry that he briefly turns into the Max Headroom signal pirate from 1987 with a dye job!
I guess being a sports coach upset about the price of jet fuel is pretty 80s. About one step down from gushing about business cards.
GT: I feel like the final panel is meant to be a CSI: Miami reference, but they forgot to include a pun. Or coherence. CSI: David Lynch, maybe.
“Don’t get me started on the cost of… (Gil puts on sunglasses) …jet fuel.” (guitar power chord, Roger Daltrey screams)
JP: We’re never seeing these two again after this week, at least until we need some DRAMA!! to ejection seat out of whatever corner Ces has written himself into.
RMMD: Anyone else hearing the Doobie Brothers?
RMMD 2: Everyone yesterday made note of the apparent time warp that hit RootsCountry-Stadt and aged up Sarah, and I just had a horrifying thought. What do her *brothers* look like now??
Phantom: I’m imagining that under that stupid mask everything Schmelon Schmusk says is muffled to the point of near-incomprehensibility.
MW: Wow, the narration box is doing some heavy ellipsis-ing today. How much Dawommy boinking do you think it’s covering up?
Luann: Okay, I’ll grant I did not see this escalating that quickly, or at all to be perfectly honest. Then again, this just makes me a different kind of frustrated seeing this and then looking at my own partner-less existence (six years and counting!!) and resisting the urge to go over to GoComics and comment and succumb to TruFann-ity
Gil Thorp:
Hey, the art looks a lot better than it usually does! It’s always good to see an artist improvi—oh.
Luann: Not that I need a reason to be angry at “Luann,” but the fact that it now has me trying to figure out what kind of contortions Brad and Toni would have to go through to have sex in that confined space really has me steamed (and not in a good way).
GT I know its been a while since CSI:Miami but usually those David Caruso gags require a bit of wordplay, Gil.
Luann Oh no, turns out that Brad and Toni were sugar-based and are circling down the drain! Well I for one will definitely
missnote the absence of these characters in future Luann adventures.Gil Thorp:
“It’s great to look like normal people again, isn’t it, Coach? I mean, we don’t look anything like we used to look way back when in the strip, but at least we look human!”
Luann: Yeah, it’s gonna be a Easter Baby, but that’s not how you do it in the shower. Try Vertical and Up Against the Tiles. Sheesh, Have the Evansii never seen Skinemax Noir?
Archie:
“No caller I.D. on this phone, so I can’t tell who just rang! — this phone belongs in a museum!”
Luann:
Brad and Toni, standing in the spray
They are both deshabille
MW: (ALTERNATE SCENE: Mary is underneath her treasured Jaguar XKE in her white mechanics overalls, tools and parts surrounding her. Top caption reads SEVERAL WEEKS LATER.)
DAWN: Hi Mary – working on the car, huh? Can I help you out?
MARY: Sure can, Dawn! Can you hand me the 3/8″ ratchet with a 16mm socket?
DAWN: What? Sockets and wrenches? Jesus, Mary, I asked what can I do to help, not be your intern for foreign car repair. I was thinking more like watering the plants … oh wait, I don’t have a green thumb, either. Well …. damn …
Dustin: Two whole nostrils! That up-nose shot proves Dustin isn’t in the Family Circus bloodline.
Luann: While I have no experience in such matters, I had always thought that shower sex occurred while standing up. Was I mistaken?
GT: Does Gil fly? Does he fly jets? Or is he mad because the honeymoon has to be within driving distance, where they’ll run into annoying people that they know?
ARCHIE: The people who wouldn’t get this will never see it.
RMMD: Can we stop asking what they’re up to? They have an incredibly detailed sign.
MW: I do have a green thumb, and those zucchinis are mutants.
Archie:
From Betty’s blush in the last panel I assume she was being called for some pre-arranged phone sex, so no wonder she was desperate for them not to hang up. Don’t worry though, back in the ’90s when this strip took place there were plenty of 1-900 numbers for her to fall back on to relieve her frustration.
MW: Remember our mockery of the usefulness of that tiny garden as a “supplemental food supply”? Well, it’s been deftly countered. Mary has planted zucchini. Every Charterstone resident already has twenty pounds of squash on their kitchen counter, and Dawn’s task will undoubtedly be to leave bags of them on random doorsteps throughout Santa Royale.
GT: What’s the point of owning a nice pair of aviators if you can’t do any aviation.
GT, the missing panel 4: “Someone is making a killing.” “YEHHHHHH!l”
GT, alternative panel 4: “And that’s why I’m leaving for the Strait of Hormuz today.”
Luann: Oh, that wedding ring is very, very intentional. Only married people are allowed to make love, and for procreation purposes only! That’s what the TrueFans love to see!
Luann “Careful, careful… angle that soap awkwardly over to the other shoulder – it’s not enough for Brad to show his ring, you must *both* show our wedding rings to demonstrate this is Pure And Wholesome and not some tawdry affair!”
RMMD Well, they’re standing in a parking lot holding a sign asking for donations. You drew that. Oh, you meant in the larger scheme of things?
So when did McEldowney take over writing Luann?
@Ken: this is reminding me of the summer my parents planted zucchini and as usual my mother had us kids at the lake cottage for months while my dad came up for weekends and a couple of vacation weeks. So my dad was in charge of keeping the garden going and he had *no* idea that zucchini are best small and tender, they were growing great! We get back and we’re eating bland gigantic zucchini for *ages*. I even got tired of zucchini chocolate cake.
Archie: Does Betty have super hearing? Does she leave all the windows open every time she goes into the yard in case the phone rings? Or does the phone have roughly the same volume as a tornado siren?
Luann: Comic Strip Censor says; “It’s missionary style so I’ll allow it.”
Luann: Even though the days when comic strips couldn’t portray two people in bed unless each one had a foot on the floor are long behind us they do at least still keep both arms visible so we know there’s no hand stuff going on.
Luann:
Greg Evans: You know, I’ve been doing this strip for 41 years, and there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to do but never have
Karen Evans: Oh? What’s that, Dad?
Greg: Well, it’s kind of naughty
Karen: Go for it
Greg: I’ve…I’ve [whispers] always wanted to draw Irish Spring
Karen: Oh God
Luann: The way the shower spray is drawn, it looks as if loose hair is raining down on them. And somehow, that’s the least disgusting part of this.
@The Quiet Man: MW: Wow, the narration box is doing some heavy ellipsis-ing today. How much Dawommy boinking do you think it’s covering up?
I have the uneasy feeling the answer is none, but Dawn has begun to get those feelings, so (as any normal 20-something does) has turned to a septuagenarian for romantic advice.
On the positive side, with weeks having passed I think we can finally stop wondering if Brandy is coming back.
Ugh, I clear my cache and forget to save my details, and then all my comments are anonymous.
@Ken: I was just thinking of a story from the Simpsons comic book where Krusty attempts to found his own micro-nation, Krustonia, as a tax dodge. Most of Springfield moves in to take advantage of Krusty’s claimed utopia. The gambit falls apart because their planned food supply of zucchini (or some zucchini-like substitute) didn’t grow on the timescale Krusty said it would.
The story ends with everyone going back to their normal homes while Krusty stares bitterly out over acres of zucchini (which finally blossomed into a bountiful harvest) that he now has no need for and no way to get rid of.
Semi-serious note on Luann: at Vanya’s suggestion, I went to look at the TruFans melting down over Brad and Toni, and it is truly a sh*tshow of trainwreck proportions. Some people are thrilled, some people are horny, some people wonder why no one will think of the children, and they’re all very, very angry at one another. If you’ve ever wanted to see a bunch of people being not okay together and displaying the worst in online commentary, now’s your chance.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: That’s why I like it here. We keep that from happening.
MW: [guest commentary by Joel Robinson of MST3K]
Mary: “Would you like to water the zucchini, dear?”
Joel: “Oh woooooooooooow”
Archie-Damnit. That could have been an obscene caller.
RMMD-And so day three of asking who these girls are continues.
MW-“Would you like to water the zucchini plants?” Is that a euphemism?
Gil Thorp: It’s all fun and games until you realize Gil’s talking about lunch at Taco Bell, not the stuff that makes planes go vroooooommm…
GT – So…Gil is a rich douche’. Well…it’s not like Judge Parker has a monopoly on it….
Archie – The modern equivalent is Archie called, but it’s buried under crap in my room and she can’t find it. Now that would be gold, baby….
Luann – In a family paper…just to snare voyeurs. Have our moral standards slipped, or what….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Gil Thorp – This is your occasional reminder that Gil Thorp – a high school sportsball coach – and his Fiancée – a bartender – are both pilots. Transphobia and kidnapping of immigrants, he can take in stride, but making the civilian aviation hobby more expensive? Now you’ve made him mad!
@Tom: It is, they’re just melting.