Archive: Gil Thorp

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B.C., 8/27/25

A fun thing that happened in B.C. about halfway through the decade or so when I was ignoring it is that the Cute Chick and the Fat Broad got renamed “Grace” and “Jane,” respectively. So, congrats to both of them! I bring this up because the setup to this strip seems to be that Jane went out onto this boat with Curls and her cat, and she told him something about “catfishing” that he didn’t really understand, but he didn’t ask her any follow-up questions for whatever reason. Would he have been so deferential if she was still known only as “the Fat Broad?” Doubtful!

Gil Thorp, 8/27/25

Football season is underway in the Valley Conference! Glad to see in panel one that the refs don’t let a little light-to-medium face-masking interfere with everyone having a good time. Sure, a few necks will be broken, but the surviving players will be even tougher, and within a few generations we’ll have a whole community full of supernecked athletes! Let’s take the long view here.

Alice, 8/27/25

Panels like this are classics of the “A cartoonist experiences something incredibly mundane in their daily life and decides it would make a good comic for some reason” genre, but when Alice does that, it really makes me worry about the origins of the strips with the aliens.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/27/25

Oh, I’m sorry, did you not want to explore your newly discovered familial connection to Cody? Well get ready to be struck dead by an angry God, buddy!!!

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Gil Thorp, 8/19/25

When Gil says he’s “trying not to take it personally” that his ex wife is now “play[ing] for the other side,” you probably think he’s referring to the fact that his wife left him for her female golf coach, but that’s old news: in fact, she’s going to be coaching for the other side, by which I mean she’s taken the job of athletic director at hated Milford rival Valley Tech. Anyway, more important question: what’s happening on top of Kaz’s head? Is that a man bun, or some kind of fascinator attached to his hairband? The strip colorist seems to be refusing to grapple with this and is trying very hard to make whatever it is blend into the background.

Andy Capp, 8/19/25

This is definitely a curious sequence of events, as in the first panel Andy is walking along a very broad canalside path, so spacious that the canal isn’t even visible in the frame, and yet in the very next panel, one word’s worth of lyrics later, he has tumbled into the drink. My theory: despite the fact that we see Andy in that first panel, we are actually meant to understand that we’re seeing things from Andy’s drunken perspective, in which he has infinite space to meander back and forth as he likes. Sadly, in panel two, hard physical reality intervenes.

Hi and Lois, 8/19/25

Wow, I guess Trixie died? Or is no longer a baby? Or Hi and Lois have realized that Sunbeam really is her best friend, and is perfectly capable of looking after her, so they no longer need to take such a hands-on parenting approach? Any of those developments honestly would merit further exploration, though I guess it’s also interesting that Irma thinks she’s finally going to catch Thirsty jerking off on camera but actually she’s just going to see him crying quietly to himself.

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Mary Worth, 8/2/25

Not sure what’s funnier here: That Olive says it’s hard to “ignore the critics,” as if there’s a Yelp category specifically for tweens and Olive has received a series of 1- and 2-star reviews referring to her as “weird” and “subpar” and “is she psychic or what, I don’t get it, she hints at it a lot but mostly doesn’t do any cool stuff,” or that Mary urges her to “keep on shining,” as if she were vaguely aware that there’s a book and a movie about a little psychic kid called The Shining that she’s never seen but it sounds like such a pleasant and optimistic title that she assumes everything works out pretty well for him.

Hi and Lois, 8/2/25

“What this beach needs is fewer little kids coming up and talking to you,” the lifeguard thinks. “I should make a sign telling them not to do it.”

Gil Thorp, 8/2/25

Ha ha, Gil is totally sanguine about the possibility of his ex-wife taking a job as AD at his hated rival school! It’s all good! Holding a big cup of lemonade at the top in a vice grip where it looks like you’re going to crush it with your bare hand is normal and a sign that you’re just relaxing and having fun, actually!