Wednesday is for the afterlife, the underworld, and so forth
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Six Chix, 7/29/26
So purgatory is a place where … angels can have sex? Or the souls of the dead, who may also be angels, in this scenario, can have sex? But then in heaven, they can’t have sex? I know the Catholics have a lot of extra-biblical lore about all this, but I haven’t really kept track of it. Maybe the joke is supposed to be something else, but I dunno, I think we’re all on board with “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” referring to sex stuff, right? Unless purgatory is supposed to be a casino, which honestly makes even less sense.
Gil Thorp, 7/29/26
A thing that always bothered me about the end of Clueless is how many of the high school characters are in attendance at their teachers’ wedding. Seems inappropriate? Anyway, there were a bunch of Gil Thorp prom strips last month that I didn’t really talk about, but now that the teens of Milford have turned Gil’s wedding into Prom (Extended Remix Edition), I need to take a stand: these kids are having too much fun.
Hi and Lois, 7/29/26
Trixie! You have lavished too much affection and attention on the Sun! You have neglected the primordial chthonic deities, and by angering them … have doomed us all.
165 replies to “Wednesday is for the afterlife, the underworld, and so forth”
Oh guys, it was just Thirsty! Doin’ Thirsty stuff! Man, that Thirsty, what a character!
I hope these two were a couple, a line of black people being guided around by a white guy sounds a lot like the bus station.
GT: The couple in panel 3 seem to be recreating the opening of “The Lion King.”
Luann: If you’re wondering what that thundering grinding sound was, it was my brain seizing within my cranium. Luann as a role model? Divide by zero error. ABEND. Blue Screen of Death.
RMMD: So don’t mess with Sarah Plain and Tall and risk antagonizing the dogs, just mow ’em all over with your big honkin’ SUV. That would be pretty good revenge, wouldn’t it, Baby Face?
Luann: I’m less peeved at Evansii attempting to play this ‘revelation’ straight than at the fact that they’ve already played this card at least twice before. There was the now memory-holed poor little rich shy girl Luann was secretly hired to ‘mentor’ and then those daycare kids that Luann was *such* a good example for she allowed her friend to bring deadly weapons for unauthorized show n’ tell. Third time’s the charm or three strikes and Phil’s out?
Ph: That stupid alien mask must be cutting off Schmelon Schmusk’s oxygen. He can’t remember that if you ‘end’ someone, you kill them dead. Does he want that, or does he want Stripeypants to wear his little doohickey? Does he think if Stripeypants wears the doohickey he can take over the whole of Africa or something?
JP: And at last we come to why ‘Ann’ inexplicably came to this meeting, so she could serve as Ces’ virtue-signalling hand puppet about ‘grrl power’ and so forth. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned out to be CIApril with dyed hair at this point. The pissyfaces make them all look the same anyway…
It does bring me to something I’ve thought about a lot lately. Through 100+ years of constant production, and now AI slop and corporate consolidation, Hollywood appears to have exhausted every possible story there is to tell. What if they just *stopped* and turned all their billions towards simply maintaining the vast, vast, VAST library of material they already have?
What bothered me about the end of Clueless was not so much “The high school characters are at their teachers’ wedding” as “I know it’s faithful to the source material but Paul Rudd should not be dating a high school student.”
This seems to be out of a Pluggers’ manual to jerking off.
H&L: It’s OK, it’s just that Slick Rick asked the mirror who is the top choice of them all.
Hi and Lois / Mary Worth
Yessss!!
This is how it ends!
Actually, I’m OK with Hi and Lois, and hope the earthquake/gentrification/chthonic retribution thing works out for them. Ultimately I wish I was exulting the long, drawn out, excruciating, and utterly humiliating end of Wilbur Weston.
Chix (sic): What does middle angel keep in his pockets? Gum? Loose change? Frankincense?
Mary Worth Mashup: How about we add a slightly NSFW panel to show what’s distracting Tommy from Dawn’s phone call?
Six Chix:
“And there’s no reason for you to be in limbo about it!”
Gil Thorp:
All these couples seem oblivious to the fact that dancing is simply displacement behavior.
GT: Credit where it’s due, this is probably the best looking strip of the new artist’s tenure. The blonde girl’s dress in panel 3 is a bit of a blob, but otherwise I think it’s alright.
6C – What fun! A necromancy gag….
GT – Timely and topical! The latest earthquake photos from Japan….
H&L – And the sixth seal was broken….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
H and L:
“It felt like an earthquake.”
“Nah. That’s just Link Wray doing his hit instrumental!”
Well, Luann, identifying cause and effect isn’t something you’re good at. What does being shy have to do with being apprehensive about milking a goat? How does performing the basic job tasks of a camp counselor define what you’re good at? Especially when we saw none of it?
CS: It says a lot about Tom Batiuk that he thinks the world needs Ed Crankshaft’s permission to make a generic video game about exploding barbecue grills. Batiuk routinely uses copyrighted characters, the name/image/likeness of real people, and in one case a child’s drawing, in his own comic strips, without so much as a “thank you.”
MW: I hope Tommy goes into hiding and lets everybody think he’s dead, like a certain character I could name.
Pluggers: Oh, come on, every plugger owns a power washer.
@Bob Tice: How low can you go?
@The Quiet Man: Hollywood is out of ideas, but they refuse to take my script about a talking marsupial founding a Mars colony, only to be undermined by both the KGB and CIA!
GT: Nobody puts Keri in a corner. But, it would be great if they did.
H&L: As she drops into a huge crack, Trixie speaks her first words: “Good bye, Sunbeeeam!”
RMMD: Sarah may not be the sharpest knife in the block, but she’s going to recognize identical, orange-haired twins whom she last saw committing the unspeakable crime of fake violining.
Right?
Six Chix:
“It’s 9 in the morning, and you’re already telling us what we can and can’t do up here? W-who are you, anyway, Mister?”
“Just call me ‘Angel of the Morning’ !”
@Comically Challenged:
You needed to use a rabbit, man! Marsupials make people think too much!
6C: Even in heaven, it’s men’s robes that have pockets.
H&L- this is what you get when you put the strips too close together- the collective stomach rumblings of Dagwood and Wilbur.
Curtis: Tomorrow’s Strip: “Greg, it’s real creepy how you can be tracked around and not even know it!”
JP Writer’s a bit upset at criticism of “CIApril’s One Last Job – Again!” stories?
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
The reference to hoes sounds like he’s paying.
H&L: I thought Trixie was supposed to be talking to her stomach in the second panel. As if her stomach rumbled so loudly that her parents mistook it for an earthquake. Granted, the sound appears to be coming from the opposite direction of Trixie, but maybe her organs are capable of ventriloquism.
MW: So, to recap, Tommy overhears Wilbur saying he’s bad news and Dawn defending him. He then has a crisis of faith and buys drugs, only to flush them upon remembering Dawn’s advice about sobriety. And so, having proved Wilbur wrong and stayed strong in the face of temptation due to Dawn’s encouragement, he proceeds to…ghost Dawn? I guess that must make sense in Brigman’s world.
Hi and Lois-Your cutesy ways have upset the gods, Trixie. You must sacrifice your Uncle Beetle to appease them.
RMMD-“Make sure you take out the dogs on the first pass.”
MW-From being around Dawn Tommy has somehow turned into Wilbur.
Yeah, sure…bus station…right.
6C: Isn’t Purgatory a place you’re working to get out of? So if what’s happening in Purgatory is sinful, then it and the sinner(s) would have to stay in Purgatory longer. So that’s my theory as to why this guy is turning down the offer to participate in a threesome.
Hi and Lois: [Chortles darkly] Sorry, Flagstons, just me moving around.
Sick Chicks — I’m no theologian, but shouldn’t it read “what *happened* in purgatory stays in purgatory? Because there’s no going back, if what my 10th grade canon law class told me is true. . . In Heaven, no one judges you–that’s why it’s heaven. . .
@But What Do I Know?: People can’t be kicked out of Heaven? Fallen angels and all that?
Six Chix: Speaking of extrabiblical lore (as who does not), there is a large and gnarly body of literature speculating on the nature and origins of angels, ranging from nephilim mating with human women to angels being emanations of the divine being, which if horny is big news. You know what? Yes, what happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory, let’s just leave it there.
JP: “How about this, a family goes back in time and reconciles with a long-lost relative?”
@But What Do I Know?: In Heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here > What happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory
FC: Tonight at dinner, Big Bil tells a Polish joke. Billy puts down his fork and glares at his mom in silence.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: (Slightly) more serious comment: The joke depends on the confusion and mixed messages about the afterlife in Jewish and Christian tradition. Angels are from Jewish tradition, while Purgatory is a development in Medieval Christian thought, particularly as a means of explaining the nature of salvation. What is very clear, no matter the theology, is that angels are not humans and generally do not act like it, nor do humans progress through Purgatory to become angels. In this article I will describe the category errors demonstrated by this one-panel comic…
The femme is lifting the butch? I’m all for wokeness but this is too radical even for me.
***
Look at how Trixie is holding her stomach! Feed your damned baby, Hi and Lois! Her rumbly tummy shouldn’t be shaking nearby houses!
Thirty-some years in the future, climate activist Trixie Flagston will point to this moment as the start of her lifelong obsessive fear. What she doesn’t tell the audience is that it’s not fear for the planet, oh no. It’s fear for her life.
H&L: Are you mad at us?” says Trixie as she stares at the signature of Eric Reaves. Just as Trixie asks her creator for clarity, Eric questions the motives of a silent god through his child avatar as he struggles to make sense of an increasingly violent modern world.
Was the world really crying out for this particular remake of Dirty Dancing?
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Good luck countering the decades of Hallmark Greetings-level understanding of angels :-)
Arlo and Janis: That’s rather sweet, actually.
@The Quiet Man:
What?! That’s all the entertainment has been doing lately, what with their never-ending supply of remakes and rehashes and reboots and remixes and the like. They could probably find “new stories to tell” if they actually to a risk toward exploring new things out of their comfort zone and stop strip-mining their “vast library of material” and being slavishly devoted to profit.
@Tabby Lavalamp: The writer seems to be channeling the cartoon “Rugrats” here.
But seems to not realize that the “whimsy” in Rugrats wasn’t the parental neglect, but rather the adventures the babies went on when their parents weren’t watching.
GIL THORP: Hey, speaking of pointless unneeded remakes….
“Prom Night/No more feeling uptight/Prom Night/Everything is all right”
6C: So Purgatory is where angels go to let off a little steam and indulge in the vices they can’t get away with in Heaven? There’s a Good Omens-esque fantasy novel in that concept…
GT: In the recently released proshot for Hadestown Patrick Page, the actor who plays Hades, had recently come off surgery for a blown Achilles tendon and performs using a medical boot and cane–a fact which is so seamlessly integrated into the staging and his performance that it feels like it was always meant to be there. Certainly he handles himself more gracefully than Disabled Girl in panel one.
H&L: Trixie, in her innocence, does not realize that the earth has a great many reasons to be angry with humanity.
BG&SS: If this is anybody but Gearhead Gertie, you’re stealing my bit!
RMMD: There’s never a stray rabid dog around when you need one.
Gil Twerp: Is Ted Striker talking about Gil’s wedding to some bored 747 passenger?
@GarrisonSkunk: Gil Thorp is giving us “all” drinking problems.
No? Just me?
Next week in Pluggers: “A Plugger’s car may be old, but his power washer is always up to date”.
I have to say I initially read that as Trixie having farted loudly, or perhaps taken a giant noisy poop. If this were Marvin, that would totes be the punchline.
@TheDiva: In “The Sims Medieval” you play as, pretty much God. With Patrick Stewart giving the opening narration.
About how you created humanity, then the people left to their own devices end up fighting amongst each-other, starting wars in your name that you never asked for, and just all around being idiots.
Patrick Stewart: You have come to the conclusion that, PEOPLE ARE DUMB
@The Quiet Man: If Luann is as fundamentalist as I think it is, one of two things will happen next:
1. Phil proposes marriage to Luann. “Oh, you found your life path? Screw that. Your life path is to be a broodmare stay at home mom.”
2. Phil breaks up with Luann. “Oh, you found your life path? Screw that. Your life path is to be a broodmare stay at home mom, but you rejected that to arrogantly pursue your own path. We’ll pray that you come to your senses.”
Dirk Twacy Hollistic Defective: Clara Peller was certainly a lot more lovable in those Wendy’s™ commercials!
@2+2=7: No, you misunderstand me. I mean stop production *entirely*. No more sequels, remakes, rehashes, remixes, etc. *Nothing*. Send all the production people and actors home, and hire librarians to safeguard the collective culture they’ve built* over the past century to ensure the films don’t crumble to dust and the digital files don’t get corrupted.
Before Disney sank into the remake/reboot/sequel swamp, they would simply reissue their movies every 10 years or so, and made plenty of profit. Every year hundreds of thousands of people are born into the world for whom everything they encounter will be new. What difference does it truly make to them if a piece of media was made a year, or ten years, or 100 years before they were born? Only if we tell them they should only want the latest AI-powered junk.
Even *if* Hollywood stopped making sequels and remakes tomorrow, I still question what new stories they could tell. Hero’s Journey? Love Conquers All? Life Sucks and Then You Die? The Lone Stranger Stands Up to the Machine and Wins/Loses? It’s all the same, just the costumes and color of the performers’ skin changes.
*Even maintain the stupid remakes and reboots. Let them stand as an example of the depths we sank to before we came to our collective senses.
@2+2=7:
I think he meant STOPPED “stopped”, as in “no more new art or content created, period”.
Like in an indie comic I read where aliens abduct every single artistically-inclined human (and every plumber, too, for some reason), promising to return them “once they’re done with them”, and humanity ends up alleviating boredom by simply doing stuff like listening to their old Creedence Clearwater Revival albums on loop, with the only real problem being that the viewpoint household is getting REALLY antsy about how they’re NEVER getting that new kitchen island they want installed (no more interior designers to make it, no more plumbers to install the sink).
That’s a whole lotta dystopia. I do happily still listen to a whole lotta Creedence.
@The Rambling Otter: They kind of kicked themselves out. . .
And they didn’t go to Purgatory, if my memory of a graduate level Milton seminar is correct. . .
Six: It’s interesting that some angels wear robes with pockets. For what? Keys? Do you still have to lock up your belongings in heaven?
GT: Here’s the weirdest part: the song being played right now is “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot.
H&L: There’s something about Hi’s pose that strikes me as stilted and unnatural. And I think it’s that his hands are clenched into fists. Or maybe he just has really stubby fingers, I don’t know.
6C: What bothers me is the “Sorry. ” Funnier: “Good news, guys–what happens in Purgatory, stays in Purgatory!”
GT: The guy in panel 1 is clearly the Joker, so, good news: bloody mayhem is moments away!
Hi and Lois: The Flagstons are about to slide into a Hellmouth, from which, unlike Purgatory, no one escapes. Good news for us!
C’shaft: I initially assumed the developers wanted to make a game based on Crankshaft’s bus-driving exploits, Crazy Taxi-style. I should have known that idea made too much sense for Batiuk to run with it.
DT: Nerdy gamers/hackers talk like thugs in a noir movie, right?
(Also I love that the nagging landlady is called Mrs. Kvetchman, perhaps the best Yiddish pun name since Siddie Shiva, the serial funeral guest from the original Little Shop of Horrors movie.)
Dustin: “So, do you have any recommendations for improvement? Tips on handling interviews, or how to find jobs that are a better fit for me…?”
“No, I’d rather just waste my time and yours by insulting you.”
JP: “Unless the woman is from a pre-existing IP with marketable Gen X nostalgia, sure.”
Luann: Emphasis on “unlikely.”
MW: I like trying to copy how people in Mary Worth hold their phones to see how difficult it is. Dawn’s position today is only manageable if I hook my index finger into the case’s camera hole.
Phantom: Please, you think your little AI ankle monitor is going to stop the Ghost Who Regularly Hallucinates Burning Skeletons?
RMMD: Once again I must ask: how old is Sarah supposed to be? She talks and acts like she’s in early grade school tops, but is repeatedly shown to do things like watching her younger brothers for a couple hours or walking the dogs by herself, tasks which indicate she’s at least a tween-early teen. Meanwhile the Doublemint Twins are supposed to be serial con artists whose activities (drinking wine in a restaurant, passing themselves off as corporate inspectors) indicate they’re old enough to at least pass for adults, but they look and act like middle school mean girls.
SH: Look, I’ll accept mermaids and hybrid human-animals of every kind and even offspring from said hybrid human-animals, but I absolutely drawn the line on being able to pinpoint a birth date that accurately.
WC: “So I’d never have to worry about getting run over by a car or eaten by a coyote? Still not seeing the down side.”
Purgatory is a state, not a place, and it is in the Bible.
Gil Thorp:
“We asked Gil to ‘do the Mashed Potato’ with us, but he misunderstood, so now he’s over at the buffet table!”
Luann-Phil wants to be milked like a goat?
@Pozzo: I thought they were performing the belly-to-back suplex they saw at the wrasslin’ show the other night.
H&L/GT: Trixie is stunned as she feels a tremor as Horse Girl slam Peanut to the gym floor in nearby Milford. “Or was that Dorothy who smells good who broke Keri’s shins? They look alike. No matter. Jack Berrill is rolling in his grave again. The earth is angry.”
Gil Thorp, All American: I guess the Reverand Shaw Moore was right after all. Dancing IS a mortal sin and a one way ticket to Hades.
Hi and Lois: Trixie is NOT ready to RUMBLE.
@TheDiva: re:RMMD – add to it that she’s drawn POSTpubescent now, for extra confusion.
@But What Do I Know?: Was that the Milton seminar taught by Dave Jennings at Faber College?
Gil Thorp: That is more diversity in one lone strip than I’ve seen in a dozen others this week.
@Anonymous: Yes, that’s what I meant, thank you. That comic you brought up sounds intriguing too.
@UncleJeff: C’mon, people, this is my job!
@The Quiet Man: I choose to ignore the reboot/remake/adaptation business model, and appreciate the versions I do like. No crappy Ghostbusters reboot will ever make the 1984 original any less awesome.
Hollywood’s dependence on making huge profits, and their use of familiar stories instead of new ones to do that, are symptoms of our culture.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I feel the same way. I ignore the remakes, and also the people who make a lot of noise about how [insert remake of IP they revere] is somehow ‘woke’ and how it is therefore ‘killing my childhood’.
People, your childhood is already dead. These remakes aren’t ‘killing’ your memories of enjoying what you enjoyed as a kid.
Gil Thorp: Gil’s wedding is taking a weirdly long time for this strip. Usually they’d speed through this shit like they have a gun to their head demanding they go to the next scene as fast as possible.
Hi And Lois: The family is too busy guffawing like seals over Trixie’s schmaltzy, cutesy tripe that will be glued to lonely grandmothers’ fridges everywhere to realize the rumbling is actually a giant monster that will burn them and their neighborhood to ash with it’s atomic fire. Sad!
@Baja Gaijin: Shame on you!
BB: Nah, he’d be working for the post office.
DT: If Wideass is making seven million dollar scores, why hasn’t he moved them to a less annoying domicile? Mrs. Kvetchman is going to get all three of them put in jail, one way or another. Either for grand larceny or for foyer clutter in the first degree.
JP: You tell ‘em, Ann! Finally, a voice of support for all the rich white ladies trying to get back on their feet and piece their lives together. You might be some sort of saint, if sleazy rich crooked white ladies were allowed to be saints.
@Baja Gaijin: Luann milked a billy goat?
Don Abundio, translated:
“Will the boat sit higher in the water after you throw out that huge anchor?”
“No…”
“At this depth it will actually sit a lot lower in the water”
Phantom: “Oh, and I’m going to handcuff you together, like Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis in The Defiant Ones. For the melodrama and the lulz.”
@Ukulele Ike: I’m guessing our Big Boy for the 21st Century is doing this not for the money or stuff, but to pwn the n00bs and gooble their gigabytes or whatever.
To put it in words Dick Tracy would understand, he’s doin’ it for the kicks, man! The Kicks!!
@Lord Flatulence: A male billy goat, no doubt. Such hilarity! Such ‘tee hee’ wackiness!
Phantom — going to call it now — this Vindicta guy is going to end up wearing 3 of these ankle bands, and his brain will be melted by the AI.
The Familliar Mucus: ….no, its species-ism,Thel.
@87 Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: Were this drawn by the previous Dick Tracy team, that’d be true.
@anon: Gil Thorp does have a bit of a rep for being the woke newspaper comic, due to it’s fair amount of diveristy and attempts to tackle topical issues. It’s ultimately only to a marginal, “will support minorities as long as it’s convenient or they don’t get too uppity by challenging God King Thorp” degree, as highlighted recently by it’s treatment of Mimi after she left Gil or how it’s resolution on a storyline about ICE was basically just letting immigrants be arrested and going “oh well, we tried”. But it’s still more than be said for, say, Mary Worth, where there’s frequently not a single non-caucasian person in sight except very rarely as extras, usually in servile roles.
@TheDiva: Regarding Sarah’s impossible-to-determine age, that’s been a problem for years, arguably decades, and it says a lot that her current state of “suddenly drawn like a kid’s head on an adult body but still acting like a kid” is an improvement on her previously being some kind of freakish mutant supergenius savant. Something that eventually got so out-of-control that Beatty quite literally lobotomized her via car crash to justify making her act more her age, and even that was only barely noticeable. The current art and writing style of Rex Morgan in general cannot handle kid characters AT ALL. They act and often look indistinguishable from characters that are supposed to be in their twenties at least and the attempts to remind you they’re kids makes them weird and creepy as all getout, raising the question of why Beatty includes them at all if he clearly doesn’t want to even try and replicate how kids talk.
And I mean, like, shit, I get it, I hate kids (it’s not their fault and I’d never be mean to them, but they are frequently insufferable by nature unless you’ve got the personality to handle it and I would prefer they stayed on the other side of the planet from me so I don’t have to deal with it) and as a writer I know it’s often a total pain in the ass trying to recreate their manners of speaking without making them either even more annoying than real kids can be or sounding like space aliens, so I wouldn’t blame him for not wanting to bother (I basically never do in my writing). And I understand that Beatty inherited Rex and June having kids from the previous writers. But he could’ve easily either written them out and/or aged them up via a time skip to get them to college.
RMMD: Wait until the twins get a sight of Eddy’s ugly dog. They’ll flee the neighborhood screaming and never come back.
Sex Organ, V. D.: “Get the dog costumes out of the trunk, Thing#2, this gives me an idea!”
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: It is interesting to speculate what wish-fulfillment fate DePaul and Manley have in mind for Schmelon Schmusk. Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be very fulfilling for everyone who goes on and on so very eloquently and righteously about how ‘someone should DO something’ about the power tech and wields over the many for the ‘lulz’ of a few but wouldn’t in a million years ever countenance stepping away from their pens and keyboards to actually *do* ‘something’.
@The Quiet Man: re: DT: He needs lots of cash for his Italian sandwich habit.
Incidentally, I googled “Peccadillos,” or whatever it was, since there are at least a dozen establishments in Real Chicago with similar names. Turns out the place does exist. In Peabody, Massachusetts. This throws the entire Dick Tracy universe into chaos. Pretty soon we’ll be watching Tracy hanging witches, or pahking his patrol cah in Hahvahd Yahd.
Six Chix: Josh, I am a practicing Catholic (and I plan to keep practicing until I get good at it), and this made no sense to me at all. But it is Six Chix, so what were you expecting? A joke?
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Coming to the newspaper comics looking for accurate theology is like going to your dog and asking him to solve quadratic equations.
@Lauralot: Yeah, like, what the hell is going on with Tommy here? Is he trying to recreate Wilbur’s “let people think you’re dead so you can surprise them” trick? I guess to show how much he’s recovered? Who knows with this comic.
“Oh, that was just Thirsty falling over! He is so fat and drunk, lol!”
Mark Trail.Mix: “…But not the gorilla his dreams….” – Missing Narration box.
In Paradise Lost Milton has the archangel Rafael inform Adam that angels do have a form of intercourse. IIRC he says they change color.
@Baja Gaijin: Mary Worth Mashup: How about we add a slightly NSFW panel to show what’s distracting Tommy from Dawn’s phone call?
________________________________________________
His neighbors starting a pickle ball game? What’s NSFW about that?
Hi and Lois: I always thought Hi and Lois were Northeastern suburbanites, but is it possible that they live in the coastal West? Sure, it’s more earthquake-prone, but that would also mean that their huge tract of land — with a backyard so large that you can’t even see where it ends — would be even more valuable. It’s a little strange that they have to rake up so many deciduous leaves in the fall, but then again, so did the Peanuts gang, while Charles Schulz famously lived in Northern California. Anyhow, it’s a good thing they have so much space, because it’s hard to see Chip ever moving out once rock & roll is completely taken over by AI, and the twins don’t exactly seem like geniuses either. (On the other hand, Trixie will move to Arizona to be closer to her beloved sunbeam, and will visit her parents once a year at Christmas, in between sessions with her therapist to talk over her neglect-filled childhood.)
Beat Up Bailey: “Sometimes I wonder where I’d be today if I hadn’t taken that brown acid at Woodstock.”
@Die Rosenkavalieren: Thanks for the tip! Wasn’t on the syllabus. Who knew there were mildly NSFW parts in Paradise Lost. . .
@Baja Gaijin:
Well I suppose that is better than an image of him nodding off after shooting up!
FG: As a relatively new reader, I need some backstory. Did Ronan’s first wife and son get slain by this Vultus, or whatever the cowards name is?
@Anonymous: @The Quiet Man:
I’m not quote down with that either though. To prevent the risk of derailing the boards (we have more important things to do after all, like pointing out about how much Wilbur Weston sucks), I’ll truncate it to two basic reasons:
1) As a reader of a blog dedicated to legacy comics and the characters within them, I can assure people that retreating to old art and entertainment would not “alleviate boredom.”
2) This would silence a generation. After all, art, when boiled down to is purest basic compund is people expressing themselves creatively. We should give people, especially the younger generation the chance to do that so we can “listen” to what they are trying to tell us. Time bring about change after all, so that’s always going to be the “new” element brought about to the table. It brings new perspectives, new unexplored context, and certainly a snapshot of the time it was created if nothing else. There is art that is “allowed” to be created now that wasn’t able to before. Even if the basic structure of a lot of these stories remain the same, the devil is in the details, you know.
Don’t worry, I said my fill and I’m done with this topic now. Now back to the crucial elements of life, like talking about how much of a dumbass Luann is.
LOLA: of all the dog comics, is today’s pick up an original?
PEANUTS: Thursday is Chuck’s D-Day.
PHANTOM: Oooo, sweet. Freaky has reframed his abuse so he can think Nomad and Cobra are in HIS debt
6CX: as I see it, Vegas, like purgatory, is a place to cut your losses and repent. But then, im protestant.
S4th: fossils explained! Now we see why dino bones are deep in the earth tho some claim dinos precede us by only a hundred years.
Crank: Foxtrot, The Simpsons, Tim Allen, Dave Barry and all others are hereby served notice that Tom Batiuk invented Wacky Grill Hijinks. (C) and TM, all rights reserved, nobody can portray a grill blowing up in any medium without his written permission. Or, in universe, that of Ed Crankshaft.
FxT: Speaking of… You know, at around the time these strips were current, Maw Broon invested in her own DS. (Not for Nintendogs though, she was into JewelQuest and similar games.)
GT: Rachel Merrill realises that she actually has to put some effort into this one, in order to make it very clear that these kids are the absolute squarest bunch of dorks you can imagine. Seriously, I feel embarassed for them, and I once attempted to show off my Highland dancing skills at a school disco. (Which would have been pretty cringe even if I actually had any Highland dancing skills.)
JP: It’s absolutely hilarious how fast Ann has gone from “Hard pass” through “I don’t know how you talked me into this” to “How dare this woman stand in the way of my show?” based on absolutely nothing Ronnie and Neddy have said.
OTF: We appear to have moved on from the speech-to-text “gags”, but something occurred to me about them earlier today. I’ve said there’s two kinds of Fastrack tech metaphors — the kind that doesn’t quite work, and the kind where you’re not even sure what Holbrook’s trying to say. Well, there’s a third kind, which is so ubiquitous that you can forget it’s even there until it gets too blatant, and that’s when he forgets it’s even a metaphor. Apparently, Holbrook’s criticism of speech-to-text really is that it gives another job to poor, hard-working autocorrect. Autocorrect isn’t really a person, Holbrook.
Phantom: This is going to be like one of those B—n stories where the villain has the power to make someone relive their greatest fear or the worst moment of their lives and when he tries it on the Dark Knight, Bruce is just “Yeah, just like every time I close my eyes,” isn’t it?
DT: Old dick is showing his age. Today’s slick cyber crooks don’t need to room at home or some crotchedy landlady. They can have a dummy office equipped with a high speed internet hook up and on the surface do “consulting” work while actually hacking away. They have Uberdash and Doordash for food and with their business address they can have most of their stuff from “Nyle” sent to them without any hassle.
GT: The sequence of events was: Ceremony – Flight with banner – land at reception. I guess it makes too much sense to end the night flying off with the banner behind them, like the stereotypic newlywed couple driving away with tin cans dragging behind them with a just-married sign on the trunk.
JP: Actually the TV studio executive would say – “Good, I understand the basic idea and we just need to tweak it little. Previously it was a woman trying to escape her secret agent past and now it is a woman trying to escape her criminal past.” Everyone knows it took two pilots for Big Bang Theory to work (new Penny, more naive Sheldon). New ideas are hard for the execs to understand and aren’t easily encapsulated into one sentence. Give them some thing they can appreciate in a few seconds.
MW: So, are we going to see a ‘misunderstanding’ – Tommy is actually resisting shooting up and getting hi, but Dawn thinks he is wobbling. Then Wilbur appears and confuses everything?
Phantom: Where are the rest of the guards and warriors? They brought down that drone with a spear!
RMMD: The skill of the twins as spies are equally poor as they are grifters! Just park across the street and sit there and stare. Anyone with door bell cams or garage door cams at the neighbors have them recorded. And Sarah surely must have noticed.
@2+2=7: Thank you for sharing that. I want to say my final piece too, and then we can all move on. I’m not disputing either of your points, just clarifying my own position.
I didn’t mean to suggest I wanted a world like the one in the comic Anonymous referenced. I understand that there’s a whole galaxy of entertainment that is currently being made by people outside the mainstream entertainment ‘industry’ as represented by Hollywood. That’s where the new, original stuff is being created, and wouldn’t it be nice if they were given more room and resources to do that? If instead of spending half a billion dollars to create the umpteenth sequel/remake/reboot, those millions were instead to those small creators?
It’s discussions like this that make me glad I found this place!
SlyF – In the first panel, the non-uplifted rabbit is Rachel’s mother, right?
@Dennis Jimenez: 6C – What fun! A necromancy gag….
I know right? And it isn’t even Tuesday!
Purgatory is the place where the faithful are punished for their sins, which cleanses them so that they may be allowed into Heaven. The idea that angels do things (possibly sexual things) there that they’re reluctant to talk about has dark implications for the Christian afterlife. I’m looking forward to the political satire/cosmic horror storyline the Six Chix have in store for us.
GT: What a bunch of butt-ugly jerks.
@The Quiet Man: RMMD: So don’t mess with Sarah Plain and Tall and risk antagonizing the dogs, just mow ’em all over with your big honkin’ SUV. That would be pretty good revenge, wouldn’t it, Baby Face?
No, no, no. Revenge plans must be based on a theme and be over-the-top elaborate, as dozens of Vincent Price movies have taught us. We’ve already established that the twins’ theme is scams, so merely running Sarah down is completely out of the question. Unless — could they somehow fake an accident and use that to scam Rex out of free medical services? That would also work with the broader plot requirements, since the villains would get their ironic comeuppance when Rex botches the operation..
@richardf8: @Dennis Jimenez: 6C – What fun! A necromancy gag….
I know right? And it isn’t even Tuesday!
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“If its Tuesday,This Must Be Necromancy” isnt that a 1969 comedy film starring Suzanne Pleshette?
@Activist: Pretty much, yeah. We had a flashback sequence a month or so ago while there was a guest artist and it showed the Hawkmen launching a surprise attack on the palace. At the time, Ming was a general for Ronan.
@Ken: If the Doublemint Twins scammed the Morgans ten times with intricate cons inspired by the Plagues of Egypt, à la Dr. Phibes, I would plotz.
@Activist: @Comically Challenged: I find it sweet that Ming still has a soft spot in his heart for his old boss, King Ronin, and his family. Now grind that old fucker’s bones to make your bread, Emperor. And save the wings to serve up with Bleu cheese dressing and cold beer.
@richardf8: I don’t know if Rachel would mourn her mother not being like her, or long for the days where she herself was feral.
Either way, she’ll blame the neighbors for it.
B.C./Wizard Of Id :Finally, something interesting happening in the small bodied legacy comics! A “B.C.” caveman escaped his comic zone and dug his way up into “The Wizard of Twits”!
@GarrisonSkunk:
I think that’s Spook, the guy who’s held chained up by his arms in the King’s dungeon. (I thought they had phased him out, though)
@The Rambling Otter: @richardf8: I don’t know if Rachel would mourn her mother not being like her, or long for the days where she herself was feral.
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She’d complain to Slylick about something leaving tiny teeth marks on her prized carrot plants.
@Pozzo: GT: The couple in panel 3 seem to be recreating the opening of “The Lion King.”
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…or the scene of Elaine dancing with Ted from “Airplane!”
Barney Googled And Snuffed Out Smith: That ain’t rocket fuel,thats Snuffy’s home brew!
@118 Ukulele Ike: I’m pretty sure you don’t have to worry about bursting or fainting from the twins’ devious revenge plot.
@The Quiet Man: I was just thinking about comic-grade irony, nothing else.
@GarrisonSkunk: Slylock: Obviously the culprit was the Crocodile!! (Locks up the nearest Croc and throws away the key)
RMMD-“We’re from animal control. We need to see both dogs’ license, registration,and vaccination records please.Now.”
Late Thread Cuisine: Can you believe this is just celery, a single beef bouillon cube, Italian salad dressing and pimiento strips? Nothing more. Seriously. That’s all.
@Baja Gaijin: I can’t believe its
Not Butter!@ectojazzmage: Look, the dog can’t possibly know less about quadratic equations than I do.
GT: Oh, right, the girl in the first panel walks with a cane. She’s hanging onto the head of her cane. For a second I…never mind.
H&L: The earth is about to swallow the Flagstons for their many iniquities, and you can’t even guess how smug the Keanes will be about it.
Six Chix is usually bad, and today’s is more incomprehensible than usual.
C-Shaft: It would be something if the official cause of death on Crankshaft’s autopsy report was “overwhelmed by jazz hands.”
DtM: Okay, Dennis, but if Margaret is telling you that if you’ve completed your insult in one sentence, you should just drop the mic, she’s right.
Dustin: Employment Agency Lady pushes herself at her job about as much as Dustdad does at his. The unintentional lesson of Dustin continues to be that the Youth of Today think they can succeed by floating through life while
Boomersokay, Xers actually can.JP: Well, bad news, KD Lang. Ann used to run with the Piranha Brothers. She knows all the tricks: dramatic irony, metaphor, pathos, puns, parody, litotes and… satire.
Luann: Should we complain that almost none of this stuff happened on-panel or just breathe a sigh of relief?
MW: The last time we saw Tommy he had just started detoxing after X years of sobriety, so he’s a little busy fencing with a 6’8 cockroach right now.
Phantom: That speech seriously needs to be punctuated with a wedgie.
RMMD: The Ginger Twins hesitate at taking on a tween girl and two thoroughly domesticated dogs, which might be the first glimmer of intelligence they’ve shown.
@Horace Broon: Re Phantom: And that’s kinda weird, considering that the Caped Crusader’s greatest trauma is seeing his parents gunned down when he was a child, while Stripey’s greatest trauma is some long-ago ancestor seeing his dad killed back in the time of ruff collars.
I have around ten days of comics to catch up on thanks to some excremental stuff going on, so I’m just dropping in with a news flash – Glen Keane had a medical emergency while hiking in Arizona; he became ill and was unable to continue the hike and was rescued by helicopter. He’s okay now. Glen, of course, is the Oscar winning animator, not the keeper of his dad’s comic strip. I’m sorry that I’m no good at links, but the story should be easy to find for anyone interested.
I did check the comments on Friday – a belated thanks to Baja (Shadow COTW – I’m honored) and to Scratchy.
@Anonymous:
#129 RMMD: Uncle Jimmy, is that is you? I’ll pass idea on to twins
MW: Boring Alert. Brandy couldn’t connect with Tommy either. He forgot to pay his phone bill.
RMMD: anyone who gets his soul stolen by the idiot ginger twins doesn’t deserve it soul.
6chix: are the two on the right supposed to be Virgil and Dante?
@I speak Jive:
#137. Jive, glad everyone (esp. Yourself) is ok
I know everyone else has decided that Vindicta is an oligarch bro dork in a rubber mask, but I am still holding out hope he’s a real extraterrestrial. I’ll take Loopy over Stupid every time.
@Ukulele Ike:
I dream he takes off the mask, revealing a DIFFERENT kind of alien
@137 I speak Jive: “…thanks to some excremental stuff going on…” Are we going to see those exploits depicted in Marvin someday?
@Activist: ditto to the others noting yep, but adding that Ronan wasn’t shown ever remarrying. His surviving son grew up and had Barin and Ronal (Fria’s dead husband, not to be confused with Ronan!)
@Ukulele Ike: Bittersweet, since he executed Ronan himself? (I know, Ming’ll have convinced himself it was The Only Way, that Ronan brought it on himself, that it was a tragic necessity etc etc)
Sweet Treat Time!!
I made cookies today :3
@I speak Jive: Glen Keane was a decent guy, from what I heard.
A very awesome animator.
I hope you fare better soon Jive :3
@146 The Rambling Otter: Yet again, you outshine the Late Thread Cuisine. Wait, that’s not much of a threshold. How about, “Yummmay!”
@Baja Gaijin: Thanks! I am especially proud of these cookies :3
@I speak Jive: I hope that it is SHTF kind of stuff, not cyclospora…
@CanuckDownSouth: I expect there are nights when Ming locks the door, hits the ol’ vokko pretty hard, and sobs OH KING RONAN, YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE I EVER LOVED
@Baja Gaijin: I made Alice Waters’ seasonal minestrone today, feeling the lack of veggies in my diet lately. But I used a pint of leftover homemade marinara instead of the chopped fresh tomatoes, garlic, basil, and parsley. So instead of the bright clear summery broth photographed on the NYT cooking app, mine looks like I based it on dragon’s blood.
@Pozzo: Preferably this version.
@151 Ukulele Ike: Did it look better than the typical Late Thread Cuisine?
@Baja Gaijin: North California hippie Minestrone with venous blood. If you enjoy on-the-dark side tomato soup, are Italian-American, or are a vampire, you would hustle yourself up a bowl or two.
@154 Ukulele Ike: You’re evading the question. You’re making me think I wouldn’t want to see this delicious soup.
@Ettorre: “Oh, that was just Thirsty falling over! He is so fat and drunk, lol!”
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If only he’d listened to Dean Wormer!
@The Rambling Otter: They look tasty.
@Ukulele Ike: Couldn’t have said it better myself.
@Baja Gaijin: It’s called Celery Victor because the cook fought the celery and the celery won.
“The only thing ‘victor’ means to me is Victor Mature.”
(modified quote from “The Boys in the Band”)
@159 Peanut Gallery: I wondered about that recipe’s name, but not so much as to actually figure it out.
@Activist: 138- There will be an impound fee, of course.
@Professor Well Actually:
#140. 6Cx: Virgil and Dante? Excellent name dropping
@JeffMcm: A Simple Guide To Any Six Chix Daily Installment™:
1. This thing is not normally horny nor the object of horniness.
2. This thing is now horny, or the object of horniness.
3. ???
4. Humor!
I hope this helps.
@The Rambling Otter: @GarrisonSkunk: Gil Thorp is giving us “all” drinking problems.
No? Just me?
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Speaking of…how goes the cleanse, Rambling?
FG:
“That proud, cruel prince who laughed at death”
And rocked that fringed leather miniskirt.