You don’t get a lot of chances to drag a guy off by the collar like that, so you gotta take advantage
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Gil Thorp, 8/4/26
I have thought for some time now that Gil is universally considered the most important person in Milford, and perhaps even in whatever geographic region is covered by the whole Valley Conference (“the Valley,” I guess). Today’s strip is more evidence: I simply don’t believe that an ordinary person could call the cops and say “Uh, this guy at my wedding is being weird” and they’d show up in less time than it takes for said guy to finish his supervillain monologue.
Judge Parker, 8/4/26
The fun thing about Judge Parker is that there are two potential ways this could play out — April is furious that Neddy has left their child in the care of her perfectly capable adult sister, with a family rift and endless boring emotional processing to come, or the “April” calling Neddy is actually an AI deepfake voice program and this is part of a larger plot to kidnap Charlotte — and I’m not sure which it’s going to be.
Hi and Lois, 8/4/26
Hey, Irma is married to Thirsty, and Lois, her only friend, recently (in 1980, 1980 is recently in comic strip time) got a job as a realtor and can’t spend as much time hanging out with her as she used to. Let her have fun on her dang phone! Are a few afternoons lost to an infinite scroll through one AI slop reel after another really that much worse than watching her claw desperately at a block of wood like an animal?
127 replies to “You don’t get a lot of chances to drag a guy off by the collar like that, so you gotta take advantage”
High & Lower – That’s the only wood Irma is going to get.
Gil Thorp:
“You’re going to lose everything.”
“But I don’t have all that much to begin with — so what’s your point?”
Lack of backgrounds really working in Gil Thorp’s favor today. Is this stirring tuxedo-clad showdown taking place at a high-stakes casino? A James Bond-type situation? Anywhere that would make sense?
Gil Thorp:
I think that this coach needs to have Robert Young pay him a visit and get him to try decaffeinated coffee. It has to be caffeine that is making him so jittery and antisocial.
Judge Parker:
“Just kept wanting to see Charlotte! — just not enough, though, to do what any remotely sensible person would do under the circumstances: go to your house and knock on the door; or, if you wanted to do something that required less logistically, maybe send a text if the person you’re calling isn’t answering the phone. And isn’t Charlotte old enough now that she might possibly have her own cell phone?
Hi and Lois:
“That’s just a block of wood. Reminds me of Hi in a way, actually.”
GT: The art here in general is…something… but I really love that first panel in which Coach Wassisname is looking and pointing in two completely different directions. He is so full of rage that he has lost all motor skills and/or forgot who he was angry with.
H&L: What’s really funny about this strip is that Irma seems to be talking to her wood block in the first panel. “I’m trying to cure my cellphone addiction. Is it working? Chat? ANSWER ME!”
Hi and Lois: Irma holds her not-phone more naturally than anyone in the Mary Worthiverse holds their actual phones.
Gil Thorp : Is that some kind of Throbbing Anime Forehead Vein of Anger(tm), or did the cops hit Coach Gerads with their nightstick prior to the first panel?
**************
Hi & Lois : Lois is incapable of understanding the concept of using a prop to try to wean yourself off the object of your addiction, as she herself is currently holding a cellphone (in a way that’s even less natural than the way they do over in Mary Worth)
**************
Judge Parker : weirdest possibility : this is a misunderstanding that requires the reader to not remember April and Randy (and Charlotte) live in their own home that’s separate from the Spencer-Driver-Parker Compound, and that April doesn’t know the Parker’s home number, only Neddy’s personal cellphone number. Charlotte is fine, she’s drawing dicks in permanent marker on a passed-out drunk Judge Parker (Elder)’s face.
**************
Safe Havens : “You almost NEVER show affection to anyone, EVER!” “That’s because I withhold it to manipulate and control the feeble minded” …Things fiancés should be saying about each other!
GT: Would have been a nice touch if the officer dragging Coach Gerards away was the former student that violently assaulted him.
Irma is pining for a berter life, oke?
Garfield – What is that area in Garfield’s scrotal region (if he still has said region)? It looks like an open elevator door with some kind of genitalia protruding upward. And down below it looks like a camel toe. I’m so confused.
Dustin – This was done much better in Dilbert when the pointy-haired boss tells his people that his motto is “Go big or go home.” The next panel shows the room empty except for the boss, who’s now thinking, “I shouldn’t have made that sound like a choice.”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
On what the heck is going on between Garfield’s legs : that’s his tail being visible through the gap between his legs. It DOES look really… WEIRD, I’ll give you that.
MW: Now that this storyline is in the “characters telling one another what happened” phase, we should soon be moving on to the “Mary telling Dr. Jeff what happened” phase. That would usually lead to a reset, but this time I think there’s a small chance Tommy and Dawn will remain an item. However I’m fairly sure we won’t see the Charterstone Supplemental Nutrition Zucchini Garden again.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Dilbert on its worst day was better than Dustin on its best day.
And Dilbert on its worst day was pretty damn bad.
RMMD: Set fire to the house with the girls inside! It’s a good idea!
9CL: Here I’ve been hoping and praying SO hard that Brooke wouldn’t get into foot-sucking, and decide to share with his dozens of readers.
GT: I think it’s a great idea, when screaming about destroying your rival’s life, to do so in the presence of police officers. Ideally, wait until they’re physically confronting you, just to make sure their body cameras are switched on.
Gil Thorp:
The art in the current iteration of the strip is shockingly crude, but given its admittedly substantial limitations I do have to give it credit for doing a halfway-convincing job of the tricky perspective involved in a “Lord Kitchener Wants You!” shot in the first panel there.
Gil Thorp: ACAB (All Cops Are Born to serve gil thorp)
GT I expect cops would show up very quickly for kidnap-in-progress, but I don’t think they’d just be dragging off Gerads like bouncers…
MW … And this was Tommy’s first real temptation, and he was fine, and that’s it, he will always be able to resist going back to his addiction by remembering Dawn, whew! That was easy!
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: “Businesses today don’t train new workers, setting them up to fail and reducing career opportunities for young people. And whose fault is this? Why, the young people of course!” This is the purest example of the Dustin mindset yet.
GT: The way this strip is pinballing between zany and serious is giving me whiplash. Gerds is supposed to be an over-the-top archrival for Gil, but now he seems to have gone actually insane and assaulted and detained two bar tenders. That could’ve been played off as wacky comic strip hijinks, but now he’s being hauled away by Milford PD’s Gil Thorp Patrol to face an unknown fate, probably execution for threatening their immortal god-coach.
And they’ll still miss the playdowns.
MW: The magnanimous Wilbur is still unaware that Tommy knows that he, Wilbur, started this whole thing. Revenge is a dish best served cold. With extra mayo.
GT: “Thorp, you #@%$! I bought my own bow tie for this!”
H&L: How long has it been since poor Irma has had fully opened eyes?
GT: Of course there’ll be cops present and ready. The Gil/Beth wedding was bigger than the Swift/Kelsey deal. Half the Milford PD was there, just like half the NYPD was guarding Madison Square.
RxMD: I am neither a lawyer nor a professional criminal, but I’m pretty sure kidnapping is not considered a “con” or a “grift” or a “scam” or what have you. and will result in serious hard time, as Coach Gerads is about to learn.
Also Gil Thorp! Arthur “Killer” Kane was the gnomic bassist and organizer of the New York Dolls who later (improbably) joined the Mormon church. It’s nice to see him get a bit of acting work. It’s less nice to see him get a bit of acting work after dying in 2004, but like the Hell’s Kitchen punk scene, the comic business just ain’t what it used to be.
GT: Now, granted, I have no experience in coaching and I don’t live in a Milford-adjacent area where high school sports are so important that students are routinely sacrificed on bonfires, but I feel like if someone is arrested for kidnapping, a felony, they’re not going to be allowed to continue coaching even if they manage to stay out of prison.
FC: Well, for you, Billy, it’ll be several rungs to climb on your way to becoming an award winning animator. As for Jeffy, it’ll be barely one as I just hand him my legacy, a good photo copier, and a bottle of typewriter correction fluid.
H&L: “Ah” says Lois. “That explains the wicker effigy of Thurston in a lounge chair on the lawn.”
MW: The hell is going on with Wilbur’s arm?
Hi and Lois moved so gradually from “skipping the punchlines” to “checking to see if we need to call the Crisis Hotline for our friends” I hardly noticed.
JP: Neither woman has mentioned Randy. Has he been retconned out of the strip like a Soviet non-person? Because if that’s the case, I’m down with it.
“I’m taking you to task next school year,” says the scraggly-haired Howdy Doody ripoff, pointing in the direction that only one of his eyes is looking. It’s a shot that takes away any vestige of menace he may possibly have had up to this point. The only way he can salvage any real form of villainy is if it turns out he killed and ate the real bartenders.
GT: Okay, I don’t care if you’re friggin’ Dr. Doom, there’s no way you can say ‘I’m taking you to task!’ and make it sound sinister or threatening.
Ph: Wait, I thought this place was some seedy dive bar off the beaten path. Now it looks like a diner and… oh, oh NO!! The enschulbification virus from RMMD is spreading!!! Stay away from mayo and the jukebox, girls!!!
JP: Either this is a deepfake as Josh posits, or CIApril is about to become very, *very* *VERY* angry.
MW: ‘I’m glad… for YOUR sake, Tommy, otherwise you would have had to face the wrath of… WILBURMAN!!!’ [plays theme on kazoo]
Luann: Wimmen, amirite? Don’t get between them and their laundry style, otherwise you’re eating cold dinner out in the doghouse, fellas!
“Whatcha in fer?”
“My boss made us pretend to be waitstaff at a wedding so he could make vague threats to the groom.”
“Dat’s nuts! Dey gonna throw da book at him?”
“Nah. The cops crushed his windpipe dragging him by his collar. He’s never going to utter another threat again.”
@Guillermo el chiclero: I’m not convinced that’s a real cop; his “badge” is clearly a crude cut-out made by their eight-year-old child.
@Lauralot: Yeah, this is the kind of thing that usually results in an opaque e-mail from the district informing you that a staff member’s employment has been “terminated effective immediately,” and you have to search the local news to figure out what crimes they’ve committed/been accused of.
FC: An outsized mallet comes down on Jeffy’s head from stage right.
That’s my line you idiot! Says Dolly. No one’s gonna believe you know what a ‘rung’ is.
Hi and Lois: She’s also trying to cure Thirsty of his sports addiction. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a block of wood the size of a 75-inch TV.
“Make Charlotte sit on the phone” is whoever’s impostering April’s fetish, I suppose.
JP – “Yes, we’re home! And finally safe! Our enemies at the CIA are no longer a problem. Thanks to Bogdan. With his bare hands. And he only asked for one favor in return! That’s probably him at your door right now.”
Six Chix-“I’m really starting to question why we hired you.”
Hi and Lois-Carve that block of wood into a humous shape and it will be more useful than Thirsty.
MW-I guess twelve step programs have yet to reach these people.
FC-There is only one rung of success and it’s called copying and pasting.
GT: Luckily for Gil, the Chippendale dancers he hired for the reception were actual cops who were moonlighting.
“Yeah, but it’s wood from an apple tree! Get it? . . . Apple? Like Apple Incorporated, makers of the iconic iPhone, named after the apple, which comes from an apple tree? So . . . nothing? A block of apple wood taking the place of an Apple iPhone? Christ, subtle humor is just wasted on you, isn’t it, Lois?”
RMMD-“Wait a minute. When did we go from plotting scamming to plotting kidnapping?”
GT: Coach Gerards fascinates me. His single-minded thirst for revenge is on a level usually found only in Shakespearean tragedy and James Bond villains–what crimes, real or imagined, has Gil committed against him to inspire such white-hot fury? Is it just that since Gil’s supporters love him to such an irrational degree, his detractors must be equally extreme?
GT – I have grudges I’ve held for years. Decades even. I have one classmate from all the way back to 3rd grade who I still consider my nemesis – though I haven’t seen her in 15 years, at least. But there’s nobody I hate enough to go crash their wedding and declare vengeance. Maybe I’m doing it wrong…
I personally think that the best revenge is something small that acts as a mind-f*** but can’t be tracked to you.
GT: The problem with this strip (that is to say, one of the many problems with this strip) is that it wants to eat its cake and have it too. It seems to be attempting some form of heightened reality: Gerads crashes weddings in the most obvious disguise ever and smashes basketballs with his bare hands, Martinez hosts a seance, Jami walks around in daily life cosplaying Wes Anderson characters. But then it also wants to have realistic consequences for its actions: Gerads is arrested, Martinez is suspended, Keri and their friends go to jail for vandalism, and so on. The two do not work together. Maybe they would in the hands of a more skilled writer or in a different format. But here it’s just a mess.
C’shaft: And that was how the wildfire that took out most of Centerville started.
Dustin: So, Dustin left a job because they expected him to jump in without any proper training, and…this is a bad thing, apparently?
FG: The way this strip constantly nails the Brian Blessed “no indoor voice” for Vultan never ceases to amuse me.
MW: So, we’re just going to ignore the fact that Wilbur’s brusque dismissal of Tommy’s ability to overcome addiction is the reason why Tommy even felt tempted in the first place?
Pluggers routinely ignore their spouses.
Phantom: Credit to Manley for letting Wheezy dress like an actual 20-year old woman. Those weird granny dresses and skirts the JP gals have been sporting the past few weeks were making me wonder whether Cavelton is situated in Mormon country.
Hi and Lois: My grandmother had a knicknack, I think it was called a do-nothing
It’s literally just a block of wood with a handle on it that you spin around. That is literally it.
It was useless and kind of boring, but I’m still nostalgic for it in this digital age.
@TheDiva:
I *THINK* it goes like this :
1. Coach Gerards is a gentle, mild-mannered coach, as kind as the sheep his giant poofy hair evokes.
2. Coach Gerards ignores a bunch of his rougher players’ plea to be substituted in during a game, leading to their team’s loss. The players in question wait for him in the parking to beat him up. This causes Coach Gerards to become afraid of his own students.
3. Gil Thorp finds out about it, and something happens*
4. Coach Gerards, now driven mad, swears vengeance on Gil Thorp. He begins taking supplements and hormones to turn himself into a REAL ALPHA MALE. His giant poofy hair regresses into a hair curtain because all the performance-enhancers he’s taking are making him bald.
*I don’t know whether what happened is that Gil Thorp tried to help Gerards overcome his fear and regain control of his students (and Gerards took it as an insult), or that Gil Thorp tried to take advantage of Coach Gerards phobia to win matches. The former makes more sense if we’re supposed to see Gil Thorp as a good guy, but I’ve heard the latter is what actually happened?
@TheDiva: If I recall correctly, this weird obsession with destroying Thorp started after Gerads got drunk at a Coach of the Year award ceremony (neither he nor Gil won) and accused Gil of pitying him for being beaten up by one of his students. Gil’s response was, essentially, “Go home, you’re drunk.” When they next played against each other, Gil decided to use psychological warfare by sending the student who had assaulted Gerads onto the field, which gave Gerads a panic attack but did not win Milford the game.
And ever since then it’s been Snidely Whiplash antics.
@Lauralot: Wait, I forgot. Before the drunken ceremony thing, Gil had said Gerads used to be a force to be reckoned with. And that was apparently the grievous insult that led to all of this.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Oh, I noticed. I noticed.
PHANTOM: Is Kadia afraid of her father, and if so, why? Or is she just disgusted the DoJ is releasing a man who does evil?
JP: Judge Parker : weirdest possibility : this is a misunderstanding that requires the reader to not remember April and Randy (and Charlotte) live in their own home that’s separate from the Spencer-Driver-Parker Compound, and that April doesn’t know the Parker’s home number, only Neddy’s personal cellphone number.
I think it’s 50/50 at best that the writer remembers any of that.
@Lauralot:
Oh snap! Is this all setting up Kaz to be the next target for one of Gerads’ insane, one-sided rivalries? “I’ll show you who the king of correctional-league sports is, Kaz! My Milford Penitentiary Motherstabbers are going to destroy your puny pathetic Delinquents at the exhibition game on the White House Lawn!”
Gerards: (paraphrasing): I HATE YOU THORP!!! I WANT YOU TO DIE AND BURN!!! I’LL SABOTAGE YOUR ENTIRE FUTURE, YOUR CHILDRENS’ FUTURES!!!
Um… it’s high-school sports. I don’t even see Major League players get this worked up/excited.
Even when Major League players DO get into fights, it’s usually a one-time, spur of the moment thing, not a blood vendetta like depicted here.
Again, HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS. (Who even cares?)
@The Rambling Otter: You’re Canadian, we have a lot of trouble understanding how much Americans care about high school sports, but this is still insane.
Coach Gerads breaks into into a public event he was not invited and as revenge cast a curse on the person being celebrated. Is Gerads Maleficent?
“Its only function is uselessness. Just like my husband! [Sobs uncontrollably] I’m so unhappy!”
Irma, do you know that often people get addicted to scrolling because they try to drown their unhappy thoughts in mindless distraction but this does nothing but reinforce their depression? What I am saying is, you should be able to empathise with your husband’s alcoholism
“I was in a meeting with some producers… wait a minute, I think they have not yet left the building. Do you what me to sell your life story as spin-off to Ann’s series?”
LOL, Irma is so me! Which is bad, because even finding Thirsty relatable would be less pathetic than Irma!
Irma: “I call it the Amish phone addiction”
@Ettorre:
…Neddy already sold April’s life story to make into a Netflix series. To the very same producer she just met with! The producer lady flat-out said her reason for rejecting their pitch for Ann’s life story was that it was too samey to April’s, which they had already done!
GT: So wait, faux Simon and Garfunkel actually kidnapped the bartenders? Won’t they be off to prison next? Maybe Mimi can coach Goshen too. Meanwhile, in Jack Berrill’s grave, the earth is spinning.
H&L: Give Irma credit, people are paying a lot of money to “brick” their phones. Maybe “wood” will allow her to make some money and finally dump her alcoholic husband.
@TheDiva: The “crime” he committed was the wing-T offense.
@Anonymous: Thanks for the clarification. However, I still refuse to learn anything about Judge Parker
@TheDiva: On CS – Are we finally going to see how ‘The BURNINGS’ [!!!] actually started?
That whole ‘Dinkle’s Daddy Issues’ storyline did make me wonder if Batiuk is finally calling it a day…
BLONDIE: Dagwood’s been working for (and regularly been verbally and physically assaulted by) Mr. Dithers since, what, 1940? Why would he still need GPS to find his way home from the office? Actually, the strip explains why: It’s therapeutic for him after a(nother) day of being berated, throttled and kicked down the hallway.
CS: Oooooohhh….A burner phone!
LUANN: Seriously, slap him. I know you’re not gonna do it, but you really should.
GT: Speaking of “losing” things, I’ve never seen a guy go bald so quickly. I’ve heard of receding hairlines, but that one is in full retreat!
JP: Please, Judge Parker, I don’t ask for much. But it would be hilarious if Neddy spent the next couple of strips taking in a high-pitched voice and pretending to be Charlotte. Could you maybe make that happen?
H&L: “And why I say it’s useless, I mean it. Of course I tried chucking it at my husband. Didn’t even feel it, Lois. Didn’t even feel it.”
GT: Coach Gonads and his accomplice refuse to tell were they stashed the abducted bartenders. Years later their skeletal remains are found by a construction crew.
@Joe Blevins: That line in the MST3K riff on Soultaker, where the drug-addled friend had a receding hairline in the front, yet his hair reached all the way down past his shoulders.
Crow: He’s going to have one hell of a combover.
Luann: “No roommate of MINE is going to be walking around with a grass stain on her pants!”
A&J, panel one: The simple fisherman should have tried picking up women born with two eyes.
(The panel with the canned sardines a couple days back was extremely cute. I am less charmed by today’s worm-eating.)
Gil Thorp: Gerad, you dumb fuck, you can’t outcompete Gil in sports if you’re fired for from your job for committing a felony, which is what your combo of kidnapping, trespassing, stalking and harassment is going to add up to.
Judge Parker: I think it says a lot that to this day I still have no earthly idea what April’s dark and sordid past and current life as a mysterious spy is supposed to entail or why she’s constantly disappearing and reappearing as part of it. Everything the comic says about her is so vague and laconic as to be incomprehensible. “I’m doing and have done things, Neddy. I know people. There are people who don’t like me. I go places. You understand the gravity of all that, yes?”
Hi And Lois: Irma is just bullshitting about trying to break a screen addiction. That hunk of wood is actually an ancient talisman of dark, arcane power that she’ll be using to control Thirsty’s mind to make him stop drinking.
GT – Apoplectic Andrew Jackson wants YOU for the Anti-Thorp Army!
Don Abundio, translated:
“Drat! Even my imagination won’t believe that one!”
GT: Now there are many possible explanations for this turn of events. (1) The simplest and most obvious – Gerards and his minions have lost their grip on reality and truly believe it is okay to kidnap, tie and gag the bartenders so they can prank a friend’s wedding. This is so clearly not a rational thought that any lawyer can get an insanity plea to work, (2) Everyone is actually in on it. Gil through his elaborate network of spies heard of this scheme and got the bartenders to go along with this crazy idea. He also got the police to go along with the gag since like Mr. Nimbus, Gil controls the police in Milford and of course (3) NONE of this is real. Beth and Gil flew off in that old biplane, their oxygen tank failed and this is all some weird hypoxic dream. They are about to die and their plane on auto-pilot will continue to fly until it runs out of fuel and spiral down to crash.
JP: I like the idea of someone spoofing April’s voice but this is Judge Parker. So it is just April and she is trying to trap Neddy in a lie because she knows Charlotte is drawing quietly in the kitchen.
RMMD: So did the twins read Gil Thorp and think kidnapping is now OK?
@Rover Berkeley: I think the actual reason Dagwood needs a GPS is because he suffers severe memory loss from the brain damage built up over years of his boss beating his head in.
@Anonymous: Neddy just kinda alternates between selling April’s story and Ann’s story depending on the meeting. Just those two, nothing else.
@The Rambling Otter: It’s just another expression of what I’ve observed before; that modern Gil Thorp treats high school sports like Hollywood show business or even politics. Gil is treated like he’s an ultra-rich film star and behaves like he controls the entire town, which he may as well. And Gerads acts like defeating Gil professionally will make him (Gerads) inherit all that power.
@Lauralot: So, from your two comments combined and the memory refreshing I’ve done, my conclusion is that literally this entire situation is Gil’s fault and the result of him purposefully antagonizing, insulting and re-traumatizing a man until said man went completely insane with wrath. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen!
JP-“I’m in a house. I don’t know whose house. There was a lot of screaming and then suddenly silence. I’m going to have to run off again.”
Gil Thorp-For revenge he is going to steal Gil’s bicycle.
Luann-I bet you he also dries his clothes one item at a time.
@TheDiva: Oh but you forgot, our bless saint Wilbur realized he bravely overcame addiction himself, thus proving he is actually a good guy and does not need to apologize for anything, he just has to offer platitudes to Tommy to show he supports him now.
@Lauralot: It’s cuz the comic is inconsistent on applying it’s comedically-realistic results. All the stuff you cited happened, but all the outrageous shit that Gil has pulled over the years that would’ve gotten him reprimanded or fired in real life are allowed to slide because the comic worships him. Other times, it only goes partway with it’s realism; Gerads is getting arrested right now, but chances are pretty good that we’re gonna see him coaching again next week, even though something like this would kill his career dead in reality.
@Rube: That sentence and it’s truth is pretty damn sad when you consider how low Dilbert sank by the end with Scott Adams burning his career and rep away.
Hi and Lois: Nice to see the strip branching out from sun worship to… I guess we’re doing cargo cults now? Interesting.
Judge Parker: Fun to read this one in juxtaposition with today’s Hi and Lois, and imagine Neddy’s statement, “I… I was in a meeting and had my phone off” as an attempt to come up with something that sounds better than “I wasn’t checking my phone because I was holding a piece of wood instead.”
@Liam: And Gil looks for it in the basement of the Alamo.
MW; why does AA need a 12-step program when all they need to is talk to Mary?
A&J: Kissing someone who’s just eaten a nightcrawler? That’s love.
Zits: Someday soon, Jeremy will be Dustin’s
bossapplication rejector.H&L: Let Irma have her phone. Four decades of her best friend having a job later Irma has witnessed numerous soap operas die. She can’t even get distracted the way a housewife used to back when she was created.
Romance in the funny pages:
SF: I’m with Ted here, sure it’s a nice fancy rock, but look at that flexion…
A&J: Come for the mermaid love, stay for the tantalizing hints of side-boob.
Luann: This generation’s Oscar and Felix, for sure.
GT: Um, yeah, he’s not gonna get a pardon and forced to work with Not!Elmo Indicta.
JP, meta: Yeah, the Deep Fake AI is one possibility I never considered, with the family taken hostage (do they qualify for an upgrade to the Presidential Suite of Prisons?) and Anne needing to rescue… oh, wait. That talking-head exec said that if Anne leaves, the deal is off the table. Which means only one thing — the exec is working with the mobsters.
@Vulpes: I don’t think Merrill even tries anymore.
@Hibbleton: As far as I know that student is still at Milford, after Our Hero offered him a spot on the basketball team, supposedly to help him get his life back together after juvie, but actually as stage one of a plan to deliberately trigger Gerard’s’ PTSD, something I will never ever stop bringing up when appropriate.
To be fair, Coach Gerads is the sort of fellow who needs to be violently assaulted on a regular basis.
Phantom: This is confusing – Wheezie asks who “they” are, and where they let him out, but not who “he” is. But if she knows that, she surely knows the other two, considering she helped put him there!
@Little Guy: On JP – oh boy, I just bet you’re right, this has got ‘too good to be true’ written all over it. The Pavel Jr. Mob strikes again! Thankfully they have a spare Psycho Blonde Woman on hand to go apeshit on the bad guys when they menace the raspberry-haired brat by tearing up her horsie pictures.
@Horace Broon: She’s worried Kadia is referring to her brother and the Tibetan monastery — the Wheeze is always more comfortable when her twin brother is on the other side of the planet. He uses far too much toilet paper and never replaces a roll.
Gil Thorp: I’m taking you to task. Fuck yeah!
@MKay: But what revenge could you take on Wilbur that would not leave you worse off than you were before?
RMMD- I’m still totally confused here. How do you tell them apart? Is the one with the sunglasses Hane or is Hean the one with the sunglasses? What are they up now that they know Hune isn’t around? Where the Hell is Lex?
Low And Hi-Less: “Its completely useless.” “Oh, the Thursty Thurstan model?” “That was uncalled for, Lois!” “So, don’t call for it,Irma!Oh I forgot, you cant call for it, you just have a useless block of wood there.”
Knives come out at The Algonquin Kitchen Table!
GT: “Of course I’m about to do a hefty prison sentence for assault and kidnapping, after which I’ll be unemployable in any school system. So you’ll have to lose to someone else. But you’ll still lose!”
H&L: Is Irma feeling well? After P2 she really should say, “Just like Thirsty.”
JP: Not too much drama here. Just track down Charlotte with Sophie at the horse ranch and then she can hear mommy’s rendition of Bobby Lewis’s “Tossin’ and Turnin’.”
C-Shaft: “Here at the Crankshaft Institute we’re always looking for new and better forms of massive property damage.”
Crock: Since babies are at a different stage of physical and mental development, it’s not bothersome to see a topless infant girl in the comics. Unless the writers are dumb enough to put adult relationship speak in her mouth, natch.
FC: Pro tip: if you’re going to have a character ask a question that starts with “How many…” while their nose is turned up, try to give them the requisite number of nostrils.
Luann: Phil will advise you to pretreat a grass stain, which is what he means by, “Just the tip.”
MW: I hope that Tommy is off drugs for real and this isn’t just an “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” hallucination while he ODs in the gutter. Mainly because having their final vision while alive be Wilbur Weston isn’t something I’d wish on anyone.
Phantom: Sorry to harp on this, but by no meaningful standard has the Nomad been set free. He’s currently in servitude to a loony tech guy. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
RMMD: The twins haven’t expanded their checklist to determine if Sara has pepper spray, so that’s one way this little caper could end.
I see that not only has Gil Thorp reverted fully to its now-standard terrible art, but said art doesn’t even fit properly into the frame boxes.
The truly fun thing about Judge Parker is that, thanks to Josh, anyone reading this blog must be in the top 1% of people who can follow the storylines, yet I still have no idea who anyone is or what they’re doing at any given time.
Late Thread Cuisine: It was looking pretty tasting until…the spheres.
@ectojazzmage: That seemed to be how Yu-Gi-Oh played out, IIRC
Not just the cast racing to win powerful items off of each-other… nor treating a card game as the greatest/most important thing in the world…
“Oh no, you beat me in a card game, I can’t conquer the world now! I concede!!”
At least the original dub treated it like the joke it was supposed to be seen as.
@Baja Gaijin: Why does the left side look like a Xenomorph mouth? -shudders in horror-
@Baja Gaijin: Cherry filling? That’s just blatantly “the only foodish stuff we have in the house.”
FC – Billy, on the ladder of success you are a NO STEP.
@Baja Gaijin: This is one of those Mad Libs recipes, right? Like Bananas Hollandaise?
@Baja Gaijin: Mace?
@Artist formerly known as Ben: If you are following the news about certain deve Republican congressmen in northeast Ohio, topless female toddler photos now constitute child porn.
Everything else aside, this could be our BIG CHANCE to get Crock off the fucking comics page.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: High & Lower – That’s the only wood Irma is going to get.
Ba-da-bump, ching!
@Ukulele Ike: Phantom: Credit to Manley for letting Wheezy dress like an actual 20-year old woman. Those weird granny dresses and skirts the JP gals have been sporting the past few weeks were making me wonder whether Cavelton is situated in Mormon country.
Or in Hootin’ Holler.
A&J; just a coincidence but the just-announced name of the new WNBA expansion franchise in Cleveland will be ‘The SIRENS”
@106 The Rambling Otter: I don’t know what a xenomorph is. I’m sure I don’t want to after your comment.
@107 Artist formerly known as Ben: Cherries Jubilee it ain’t.
@109 Peanut Gallery: You know, that’s a great explanation for this and so many other Late Thread Cuisines.
@110 Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: They should have used a mace to clobber this meal.
@Baja Gaijin:
My God, this is probably gross, but…the SPHERES. I’m in! I’m good at regret!
The ironic thing is that Coach Gerads clearly has talent. He managed to pose as a bartender throughout most of this wedding, even if he did it for no obvious reason. The best ending to this would have been for him to realize he likes mixing cocktails more than aggressively weaponizing high school sports.
@Navigator: As Ike pointed out the other day, he was making an Old Fashioned in a cocktail shaker, which should have been a give away, but I doubt if the artist knew that
GT – Coach Gonads, your performance so far has been more or less up to “marriage is a sham” level. But to clinch it, you have to deliver that final parting shot through a crack in the doorway as they drag you away.
As the old saying goes, an open bar was not the best idea.
Pluggers – To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, two people can keep a secret if one of them couldn’t possibly care less.
BLONDIE: Dag’s fulfillment on hearing “you’ve arrived!” resonates tonight on at least two levels, 1) due to complications, it took nearly four hours and three buses to get home. Walking in my door was one of the best parts of the day.
2) an app service we all know makes us wait while it verifies we are human. Yet, such relief to be checked out and hear, “Success!”.
@Activist: I mean, if it fails… I would realize in a true Twilight Zone fashion, I was a bot all along… programmed to believe I was human, with memories and such. Wondering why all of my reddit posts keep getting flagged as spam.
Oh, btw Josh, good job on The Enthusiast!
@Navigator: I like that idea. Gerads should end his time in the strip by leaving for a bartending career and getting a cocktail named after himself. The Gerads, one part bourbon to two parts Pernod and two parts Gatorade.
To take someone to task means to upbraid, scold, or hold accountable for an error. Coach Gerad doesn’t talk good Englush.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: it’s a spice from the nutmeg’s outer seed covering, my folks had it powdered in their extensive spice rack and I recall using it in a cookie recipe. Didn’t become a favourite, it’s got a zing I didn’t like in cookies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutmeg#Mace
@125 CanuckDownSouth: Does it belong with canned cherry pie filling?
@Baja Gaijin: I seriously doubt it. I recall it as a harsh almost citrus-y tang