Eros/thanatos
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Gil Thorp, 12/15/25
It’s often unclear to me how old anyone in a comic strip is supposed to be, and Gil Thorp in particular has historically had a quirky implementation of comic book time where the kids get older but Gil and the adults seem to stay more or less the same age, but I’ve always assumed that Gil is in his mid-to-late 40s while Beth is somewhat younger? Anyway, I get the feeling that most of my readers, like me, are or are rapidly approaching A Certain Age, so you probably won’t like being informed that the Golden Girls actresses were all in their 50s in the early seasons of the show. What I’m trying to get at is that Beth thinks what’s going on here is “cute” but in fact Gil is slurping ramen and, through a feverish haze, getting hornt up in an age-appropriate way over Rue McClanahan rather than her.
Slylock Fox, 12/15/25
Slylock faces the dilemma familiar to any more-or-less honest cop working within an authoritarian regime: you get into the game to protect small businesses from thieves or stop sideshows from defrauding innocent customers, but you do have to spend a certain amount of time humoring an absolute dictator sitting on a gold throne about their extremely specific problems, which have no real-world impact on anyone’s lives. I’m sure that Slylock figured out the answer to this riddle as soon as the situation was described to him, but I appreciate that he’s humoring Max by taking the magnifying glass from him momentarily before calling for the royal scales. What do you think happened to the thief who came up with this botched scheme, by the way? Probably being tortured to death in the palace prison, right?
138 replies to “Eros/thanatos”
Gil Thorp:
He seems to be getting better. That’s a shame.
Gil Thorp:
SLURP
“God’s going to get you for that obnoxious mouth sound, Gil.”
Slylock:
I’ve got it! — the real one will end up on eBay! How’d I do?
Mary Worth:
“With the thunderous sound that I just heard now, that can only be my prized tome The Philosophical Musings of Li’l Wayne!”
Slylock Fox: “Eureka! I’ve got it! I’ll ask my pal Archimedes.”*
* Archimedes the Aardvark
Slylock Fox: Aw, this is just some Cassandra Cat-style erotic roleplay, later they’ll bat Max around for a few hours before smoochytimes.
Slylock: Max discreetly hides the magnet used to figure it out a half hour ago as Sly roles in a complex scale to play up his ratiocination game to impress the princess.
MW: Not my Dick Butkis commemorative plate!
RMMD: Good lord, we’re STILL doing this…
DT: What the f—…
Luann: Three houses and the hospital burned down while we doing these menial tasks instead of our actual jobs, but who cares about that. We’re *tired*! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
GT. This is the new, political, Gil Thorpe. “Bea Arthur and her wacky friends” probably refers, not to ”the Golden Girls,” but “Maude.”
Blondie-“I’m considering not giving you bonuses.”
RMMD-Big enough that Summer can over look Auggie’s shortcomings.
Slylock Fox-Slylock hands the crowns to Max and tells him to test them.
GT Oh no, Gil’s got the avian flu, in that he’s dunking his whole head right into that ramen like a duck.
GT: You know what they say: starve a fever, feed a cold some hot pantyhose.
MW: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Battle Royale from Santa Royale! It’s man vs bird in this epic dust-up! Who will emerge from the wreckage?
RMMD: “How did it go with your and Augie’s sensitive, emotional ethical dilemma that we wasted a day of work listening to?”
“Screw that! We’re gonna be rich and famous!”
DtM: Dennis had actual dirt for lunch? Good for Mom to know the next time he trashes her cooking.
GT – I don’t get the last panel – is that a stream of puke…yes…final answer…stream of puke….
SFx – It’s such a bitch, this being part of the ruling class. Just one problem after another….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
GT: What does it say for the art in this strip when I thought the claw-like smoke rising in P2 was supposed to be Beth’s arm?
I was gonna say I wouldn’t swear that even Bea Arthur’s parents ever called her “Beatrice,” but I looked it up and her real name is Bernice, so. I’m learning a lot about Bea Arthur today. More than the Gil Thorp team bothered to learn, at least.
Wrecks Moregone:
“Big. Why, if they increase the bidding any further, it might even reach twenty dollars!”
Wary Morth:
Oh no! Ian can’t blame the aeroplane that CRASHed into his living room on Sunny!
Luann:
Who was hoarding the kids and why?
FC: PJ felt Santa’s erection when he sat on his lap.
GT- When has anyone not referred to her as “Bea Arthur”? Are the writers from Herb and Jamal moonlighting?
FC: It’s funny because PJ thinks Santa is from child protective services.
MW: Sunny invited a few of his magpie friends over to trash the place when he was left home alone.
The problem of personalist rule is that it weakens that bureaucratic institutions with much better knowledge and memory. For example, Rodney Rat already tried this scheme during the Obama administration, but neither Princess Pussycat nor Slylock remember this. I do, on the other hand, because the Comics Curmudgeon has stored this information and made it retrievable, something that would be useful to impose the iron fist of the state as much as it is to do dick jokes
GT: No fork, no spoon, no chopsticks. I assume Gil’s face is so yellow and damp not because he’s got a fever, but because he just slammed his face straight into the bowl of noodles and pulled them out with his mouth.
“You’re so cute when you’re sick.” Gil is getting the mildest form of Munchausen by proxy
Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids: Judging by the size of that utterly indefensible picture window in the background, the Princess spends far more time worrying about thieves than a human counter-revolution led by Slick Smitty or Viscount Weirdly, who has been co-opted into the regime with a title and a grant sufficient to cover lab expenses.
@Ukranazi Stepan: Don’t forget the magic beans!
@Schroduck: It’s like a cheap knock-off version of the now iconic (?) ramen eating scene from ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ where they forget to add in crucial elements of the scene.
I’m less disturbed by the fact that Gil dunked his face in the ramen than by the fact that he still retains enough lung strength in his debilitated state to suck up the noodles like a vacuum cleaner in one solid chunk. Are they even cooked?
@Ettorre: FTFY:
“Ah Princess, this is a very famous problem given to Archimedes. Gold is denser than iron, so the same volume weighs more. But how do we calculate the volume of an irregular object? We will submerge it into the water and measure…”
“There are no tiny enough characters to write this solution in the limited space”
“Fine, the two crowns weighs the same. Anyway, kids today are dumb”
Also Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids: BRB, dialing up chiaroscuro to 11 so I can submit this to r/accidentalbaroque
Gil Thorp:
[logs off internet for the day]
[Closes laptop]
[Shoots laptop just to be on the safe side]
RMMD They’re no longer talking about the “advance”, it’s become a cover to discuss Augie’s *ahem* “attributes”
GT — To (mis)quote the late Bea Arthur, “I’ll not have what he’s having!”
ShyFx — Shylock has obviously never heard of tungsten. . .
I’m suddenly obsessed with tails. How does Slylock put his pants on? If there’s, like, a tail hole in the back, does he have to poke that big bushy appendage through, pushing all the fur backwards? Or can he double up his tail somehow so the fur is smoothed the way it grows? Or maybe there’s a thing like a fly, that buttons or zips, and he doesn’t have to push his tail through at all? And how the heck is that cloak not draped over the tail — is there a hole in the cloak as well? Wait — maybe the tail is detachable? Oy. Princess Pussycat, having an extremely bushy tail herself, is facing the same problem but in a dress (there MUST be a tail hole in her skirt, or she’d be flashing her panties at anyone behind her.) Max, eh, Max is fine — that skinny littly rat tail is much easier to manipulate. BUT WHAT ABOUT THOSE DOG FOOTMEN??? Where are their tails??? Don’t tell me Princess had ’em lopped off because this whole thing is Too Much Trouble… That’s taking autocracy way too far!
Beth is rubbing Gil’s age in his face my calling Bea Arthur “Beatrice,” as though she has only a vague of who she is. She better not call Betty White “Elizabeth,” though, ’cause them’s fightin’ words!
Gil Thorp is a sports coach at an American high school. It’s not like he’s a teacher or janitor or something. Surely he can afford to upgrade from a 4×3 television by now for his annual watching of the Star Wars Holiday Special.
***
Huh. Slylock Fox living in a monarchy has turned everything I thought I knew about his world upside down. Their criminal justice system works because nobody stays imprisoned based on the flimsy “evidence” he provides, but maybe because they’re living under a benevolent ruler. The royal family are cats, and Max is walking around uneaten, so maybe this largely post-human civilization isn’t so bad after all.
crankshaft: Is the red cardinal going to be a MW Sunny figure and torment Crankshaft? Tear apart any old baseballs he has? Rip up old photographs? His old bowling shirts? Please let this happen.
DT: Okay, did those uniform cops show up on their own or were they called by DT? Either way, how does DT explain Catmandon’t or doesn’t he care and risk Deputy getting shot by accident? Anyway, he now gets to chase Rojo Ozob and in a bit of irony run him off the road to his death.
GT: Be careful Gil! Beth may like you helpless like this – tomorrow she’ll have a block of wood between your ankles and a sledgehammer!
JP: Are the horses back?
MW: Please let Sunny have smashed the collectible case where Ian keeps his beloved crystal glass figures of great acting moments he has heard about.
RMMD: By BIG, does she mean 3 figures? What is the going rate for a new fiction book by an unknown never published writer who is NOT a celeb (no Prince Harry or actor tell all) ? $10k, ?$50k?? Really curious.
Slylock Fox: Ah yes, the old Archimedes problem reframed. The original problem if I recall was the crown was thought to be a mixture of gold and silver. Did the crafters use more silver and less gold. Simply weighing would not work because the original problem had one crown not two. How to non-destructively test one crown to see if it was pure gold. The solution is clever and not as easy as it may seem – displacement is involved by the accuracy of the available methods limited a simple dunk test. See https://math.nyu.edu/Archimedes/Crown/CrownIntro.html
Slylock Fox: Given how often criminals seem to return to put together new extremely poorly thought-out crimes, and the general lack of concern that they have, I think we might have a Samurai Pizza Cats situation. Justice is extraordinarily flimsy, with people arrested and convicted based on flimsy evidence with no trial by judge or jury, but no one cares because the Princess simply banishes you to Prisoner Island and the island is quite nice and also has no guards and no one tracking when you leave so people just treat being arrested as a short vacation.
I see that Mary Lawton’s “don’t start drawing until the DT’s are in full throes” approach to art has spread to Gil Thorp.
@T.H. Steady.: “Bea Arthur and her wacky friends” probably refers, not to ”the Golden Girls,” but “Maude.”
I’m choosing to believe he’s watching the Star Wars Holiday Special.
I dreamed last night that the last Sunday of this year was the last Judge Parker strip. Alan died and went to Hell and was damned to watch his own pathetic life eternally. To the demons’ dismay, he enjoyed it.
Make of it what you will.
GT – “I love this show. My favorite is Rufus McClanahan!”
@Twinkles the Elf: I concluded a while ago that Slylock’s tail goes over his pants and under his jacket but that seems incompatible with today’s drawing. Maybe he has a special jacket slit up the back for audiences with Princess Pussycat.
@treetown: You helped me put it together. I thought the presence of the beat cops and regular squad car meant we’d inexplicably gone back to the police garage where some accomplice (or even some completely different villain) had come to trash the joint before jailbreaking Jason Lee, and somehow this will help spring all the rogues currently being held in Stateville Prison (except for Silver Nitrate, because screw that guy).
So, thanks for helping make a little bit of sense out of this.
@Rube: [Sings] I dreamt one night I got on the boat to Heaven, and by some chance found a bottle in my fiiiiisst…
In all seriousness though, we should be so lucky. Maybe it’ll be like the ending to ‘The Sopranos’.
Gill-Man Thorpe: Don’t tell me I’m the only one who looked at the third panel and saw Gil puking.
After submerging them both in water, the Rational Reynard found the shocking truth; both crowns displaced the same amount of water. Either both were real, or both were fake. If the former, then there were two sovereigns, and civil war must ensue. If the latter, then the royal treasury must be empty, and civil war must ensue. He finally pointed mutely to the one on the left, knowing it didn’t matter, knowing that the fall of the state was inevitable. The once-Vainglorious Vulpine turned, and left the castle to face the brutal future. At least he had Max with him. That would provide a meal or two when the granaries burned and famine set in.
MW: What chinbeardian horror greeted Ian? He probably saw the last panel of today’s Gil Thorp. That’s an image that will live in my nightmares.
So, apparently the Insane Clown Posse didn’t survive the glorious animal uprising and consequently, nobody in Animaltopia knows how magnets, fucking or otherwise, work.
@Dan: #15: Did you also find out that she served in the Marine Corps in WW2?
MW: The Stooges had a couple shorts with a parrot. I don’t think Ian will manage that level of comic genius, but I have hopes for painful pratfalls.
Also note further evidence the bird is both sentient and evil: Sunny waited for Ian to walk in the door before the latest destruction.
@The Quiet Man: RMMD: Good lord, we’re STILL doing this…
Check the storyboard: “Summer tells co-workers how much Augie’s being paid: 3 weeks (note: 1-day break for Christmas dinner at the Morgans, 1 day for Happy New Year)”
Can someone explain today’s Daddy Daze?
Phantom: The kitchen drudge fires one round in return….and so ends the centuries-long legend of the great white crime fighter, the Ghost-Who-Walks, gunned down by an enslaved scullion using a sidearm for the first time.
@Ukranazi Stepan: Damn you, Sunny! You hacked the VOR and glide slope indicator for Santa Royale International and now there’s a 777 in the living room! You see, Toby, the bird is evil!
GT: I wouldn’t have thought Gil would be the kind to consider The Star Wars Holiday Special comfort viewing.
SFx: Sadly, inbreeding and corruption have taken their toll on the Felidae Dynasty, to the point that Princess Pussycat doesn’t have the brain power to figure out this elementary-school riddle. Whether they will be overthrown in a bloody revolution or quietly relegated to the role of figurehead while a parliamentary system oversees the governance of the country remains to be seen.
MW: It’s now the next day. Ian knew that the bird was destructive and further knew that Toby wouldn’t do anything about it, but apparently he still hasn’t secured his treasured belongings. No sympathy.
MW: I can’t take anymore of this Ian temper tantrum.
DT: I’m a little disappointed in Ozob’s ride. It should at least have purple polka dots, or a car horn that blares “Entrance of the Gladiators.”
JP: Somehow, Charlotte feels even less like an actual child than she did when she was a dour-faced mini-adult. Now she’s like the “how do you do fellow kids” meme for the early grade school set.
MW: I know I should be on Ian’s side here–it’s perfectly clear by now that Sunny will happy trash Ian’s possessions if given the chance and Toby’s doing jack all to prevent that–but honestly I’m enjoying the schadenfreude too much. I hope that “crash” was a bottle of 50-year-old Macallan and Sunny’s happily getting plastered on whatever hasn’t seeped into the carpet yet.
Phantom: The Ghost Who Killed A Member of the Jungle Patrol in Friendly Fire
Pluggers are in so, so much pain. Please, just put them out of their misery.
RMMD: I would almost respect this “Augie’s being offered a lot of money for his book!” nonsense if they would actually put a number on the deal. At least then they’d be going all in on the implausibility of it all.
Luann: People don’t know the difference between hoards and hordes. Next, Prince Valiant defeats the Mongol hoards. On the other hand, you seldom see the opposite error, where Reeky Rat steals a horde of Gnutella, for instance.
MW: Unless Sunny gouged To-Bee’s eyes out and poor To-Bee just crashed through the window. Good luck getting that security deposit back, Ian!
FC:
“PJ’s Claustrophobia could be treated if only Santa had a helper.”
“You mean the baby needs…”
“Yep. A dose of Elf-Tryptophan.”
SFx: A thief? Just anyone? All the work Ricky Rat or Count Weirdly puts into their career, and nobody gets the credit?
Pluggers: “Shoulder massagers”? I thought this was a family comic!
Gasoline Alley: Remind me never to ask these guys to tow me when my gasoline car has run out of unleaded.
Beetle Bailey: The warfare is simulated, but the trenchfoot is real.
BG&SS: Nothing says “small town life” like the locals’ barely concealed contempt for anyone trying to get away and better themselves.
MW: I’m rooting for the plate glass window.
@Voshkod: Or a third answer.
One is indeed a fake one but a carefully and beautifully crafted fake. It weighs the same and displaces equal volume how? Because it has three materials – gold, iron and a substance denser than gold (e.g. uranium) applied carefully and so that the total weight Au + Fe + U = real crown, but to get the right displacement carefully meticulously shaped that the error in displacement is incredible small – too small for the animals and their limited science detect. All of this work and energy makes the fake the more valuable of the two crowns. Everyone exposed to the radiation soon succumbs.
CS: Having done it often myself, I know what a time-consuming headache it can be to completely color a comic strip. The idea of deliberately inserting an element that’s small enough to disappear into the surrounding colors in order to justify NOT coloring 99% of the comic is……..actually a stroke of genius. But if this keeps up, it will get boring and tedious as soon as tomorrow.
@White Rabbit: You mean there is a difference between a Canadian boarder and a Canadian border?
@treetown: Slylock, tasting metal in his mouth, immediately suspects Putin Puma the Polonium Poltroon.
@treetown:#36 — Thanks for the link! We need this sort of attention to detail. I appreciate the solution the author proposes and the good attention to significant digits and grammar (e.g.: “too small a difference…” rather than the too-common and grating: “too small of a difference…”
@White Rabbit: You mean there is a difference between a Canadian boarder and a Canadian border?@TheDiva:
Here is the big reveal later in the week. Ian wanting to document his case for parrothanasia has secreted placed a camera to record what is occurring when he is away. He discovers that it is TOBEY ripping up his playbills. It is Tobey smearing guano into his shoes. It is Tobey who pushed over his curio display. She despises Ian but has been so conditioned by him, that only in a fugue state can her true nature come forth! The parrot Sunny acts as a trigger – his sqwaks and chirps are what releases these mad moments.
GIL THROP: “You;’re so cute when your sick!” Has that been the problem recently? Everyone has been sick? And once they are better and are no longer seen through the haze of fever deliriums, everyone will go back to looking like recognizable human beings instead of angular gorillas?
GIL THORP (2): “You’re so cute when you’re sick!” Beth gushes while her boyfriend vomits up pasta. (The onomatopoeia says “slurp”, but without it, would you really think that’s the direction the food is going in the drawing?)
Mary Worth: The “CRASH” is caused by Toby reaching her “O”. Mr. Al(l)ora shouldn’t have taken her on the glass coffee table.
GT: Mimi cleverly gave Gil a rare virus at the game, explaining why the strip soon is changing its name to Peanut Thorp and Friends.
@Twinkles the Elf: Each resident of the animal-controlled world possesses a simple hand tool (not unlike us humans’ shoe horns) expressly used for threading their tail through their pants.
Luann: The local fire department has exactly one female employee, who also happens to be a babe, so of course they make her dress up like a Sex Elf on their annual Santa Day.
Has Gil read Misery?
Word Play!
Both FBoFW (Elly) and LUANN (Ms Daytona) remind us langu-age is adult fun.
Science Play!
SFx: Pure gold is soft. A pure gold crown could be bent
Tomorrow’s mystery will involve Max’s body turning up on Slylock’s front doormat indicating that Princess Pussycat has taken a liking to the dapper detective.
@T.H. Steady, GT.: Oh, crap, he’s watching The Star Wars Holiday Special.
GT: Henry Barajas and Rachel Merrill, with caps turned backwards and holding skateboards, enter the chat: “How do you do, fellow Golden Girls fans?”
RMMD: “Look at you. All smiles this morning! And wearing the same clothes as yesterday … and that smell. My God, you’ve had sexual congress!”
Girl Genius: Holy Schlamoley!!!! THIS is certainly out of left field.
(Yes, good thing neither of them got the nose)
@Myrtle: I like to think of the current political paradigm that we live under as the Congress of the cow…cuz we’re all pretty much fucked….
@Little Guy: He and I are waiting for “Light the Sky on Fire.”
Gil Thorp: Who the hell refers to Bea Arthur as “Beatrice”?
@81 ectojazzmage: AI chats or dumbasses. Sorry, I repeated myself,
Crank: So Batty, who has previously gone on at tedious length about the importance of newspapers and that the most important thing about them is that they are the correct place to read your newspaper comics, is doing a gimmick that only works if you’re reading the strip in colour. Sure, why not?
GT: A lot of people are giving Beth crap for calling Bea Arthur “Beatrice”, but I think it’s more likely “Beatrice Arthur” is a fictional actress who only exists in the Gil Thorp universe, since the woman on the screen looks as much like Bea Arthur as Gil does.
OTF: Oh, joy, it’s the annual “some vaguely topical tech issue has affected Santa somehow and Dethany is the only person who can sort it out” story. See you in January!
Phantom: Old Jungle Saying: The Phantom’s fire is never friendly.
@ectojazzmage: The credits designer for “The Golden Girls,” among others.
https://youtu.be/HV7AXRABSng?t=22
@White Rabbit: I remember hearing a story about a Dungeons & Dragons group discovering that the label “Dragons, Horde” on the map the DM gave them was not misspelled…
MW: The CRASH! sound is caused Toby stumbling about blindly because Sunny pecked her eyes out. Ian sees that as a blessing in disguise because it means he can get as old, fat, and ugly as he wants and Toby can’t compare him to better looking men.
GT – “Cute”? This is the first time I’ve seen an Informed Attribute applied to the artwork rather than a character.
Don Abundio, translated:
“How’s business?”
“It’s wonderful how kind and generous most people are!”
“I can’t believe anyone would give two cents for this cornball shit!”
“Oh yeah, especially if they piss off my monkey!”
A month or so ago, they did a flashback sequence from when Gil met Mimi — she was in high school and he was already a young coach. Thing is, the date on it was 1984, I believe, which would make Gil in his mid 60s.
@Hibbleton: That you don’t know puke when you see it?
@John Maddening: #89: I believe in that flashback he was an older student (maybe a senior to Mimi’s sophomore) who was coaching the girls football team on a volunteer basis because none of the regular coaching staff would touch it.
@John Maddening: I think they were both students, Gil went to the student dance with Mimi. The regular coaches wouldn’t take on the girls’ football, or something, leaving Young Prodigy Student-Coach Thorp with them. That’s still high 50s, though.
@Voshkod:
I wondered where’s earlier comment went, now wonder if the phrase “adolt fon” [sic] is banned
Verbal humor:
Both Ellie in FBoFW and Ms Daytona in LUANN are good for a low-brow literary chuckle.
Science humor:
SFx : pure gold is soft and easily formed into shape of a gon.
@Activist:
My bad! Original at #73
Is Gil slurping or barfing cutely?
@treetown: So if the crown weighs the same as a duck… it’s not made out of pure gold… and therefore… A FAKE!
But seriously, thanks for that link, it’s an excellent explanation.
Gil goes to such lengths to avoid admitting Bea Arthur’s “Faulty Towers” ripoff, “Amanda’s By The Sea” makes him horney!
Gil Thorp: Attempting to sneeze with your mouth closed can cause ruptured eardrums, throat tears, blood vessel damage, or a collapsed lung. I’m not sure the current Gil Thorp artist could handle that level of body horror, but it would be (more) interesting (than this) to see her try.
@Tripod: FC: PJ felt Santa’s erection when he sat on his lap
_________________________
Dolly: “That’s called his Yule Log”.
AHHHHHH-CHOO!!!!! “Shut your mouth!” “I’m just sneezing about Beatrice!”
What A Frazzhole! “Lets compare Caulfield talking to farting.” “Ok, they both are annoying sounds that warn of an impending release of a build up of gas.”
@Myrtle: “By which I meant you had two had a boring, inane, repetitive conversation, which, as you know, is the way that Rex Morgan M.D. characters get off.”
MW: Sunny wonders what further misfortunes awaits him as Ian enters the apartment.
CRASH!
“Oh, great.” He thinks. “That fat, clumsy oaf knocked over the Christmas tree again.”
@Chance: Slylock Fox: “Eureka! I’ve got it! I’ll ask my pal Archimedes.”*
* Archimedes the Aardvark
___________________________
Just like Slylick to pass off the Aard Work to someone else!
RIP Rob Reiner. He was 78.
GIL ##%&+ING TWERP COMIC CREATION INDUSTRIES has been sold! “We’re Beatrice”
@Guillermo el chiclero: RIP Rob Reiner. He was 78.
__________________________
Well, at least he and his father will be able to welcome Dick Van Dyke when he crosses the Rainbow Bridge.
@Hannibal’s Lectern: GillThorp-I too thought it was Gill Ralphing His Ramens
Good lord the art in Gil Thorp is ugly, that last panel is repulsive.
RMMD — between Sunday’s installment and today’s “BIG” comment, are we supposed to believe that Augie is well hung?
@GarrisonSkunk:
#95. GT: either, but my first impression was he was discharging mucous from a seriously clogged nose. You’re welcome.
GT: Don’t be so sure it’s The Golden Girls, Josh. Bea Arthur was also in The Star Wars Holiday Special, and there’s nothing like a head cold to bring out Gil’s inner Ted Forth.
Late Thread Cuisine: Does this look like anything in today’s Gil Thorp?
@Baja Gaijin: The Battle of the Relish Plate.
“Celery will never be the victor!”
— Radish, Carrot, Pickled Beet, Cauliflower Floret, and Pepperoncini, waving their swords above their heads
@Baja Gaijin:
It’s so hard to tell what anything or who anyone is in Gil Thorp these days. I’ll go with yes, that’s definitely something in today’s Gil Thorp, but who or what is anyone’s guess.
BETTY: probably Betty, like me, chooses to leave phone at home. Young folk horrified.
FG: we’ve all had days like that, Bones.
ZITS: Lungworm, great name for a band who hope to take over your heart en route to your ear
@Peanut Gallery: The thief turns to the camera and breaks the 4th wall: it is a fair cop.
@113 Baja Gaijin:
I couldn’t stand it. I had to look up the recipe.
@Baja Gaijin: Recipes for calorie counters who can’t count very high.
(“This is just CELERY! Isn’t that, like, zero calories?” “There’s dressing on it.”)
@Sequitur: Thanks for the recipe. Until I saw that, I really thought it might be about 1 calorie.
Apparently red foxes don’t particularly like being wet, so we will be spared Slylock having a bath, realizing the solution, and running naked through the…town or city or wherever this is. It does open up the possibility of him licking himself though.
@114 Ukulele Ike: That’s one way to look at it.
@115 Anonymous: That was a leading question. Of course it looks like something in Gil Thorp. Any misshapen unidentified blob looks like it belongs in that strip.
@118 Sequitur: WHY??? Why would you want to know more about THAT??? Are you satisfied with the recipe?
@120 Peanut Gallery: Can you believe someone would go through all that trouble for 30 calories? Thirty rather unappetizing calories.
@pachoo: It does open up the possibility of him licking himself though.
The Princess reserves that honor for herself.
@Maude R. Fawker: My goodness, and what does Cassandra think of all these erotic royal feline/volpine frolics behind her shapely back?
CAT FIGHT!!!
“Let me go” Gil is begging his captor Beth in the first panel, who has tied him up and forced him to be her “so cute” Munchausen-by-proxy victim. That’s why he’s not using his hands in the final panel, as the drugs slipped into the ramen numb him to his fate.
I wonder if the idea in Gil Thorp is, that he normally hates Golden Girls but is so delirious that he doesn’t realize what he’s watching, and Beth finds his temporary personality shift “adorable”?
@Baja Gaijin: It’s apparently a *lower*-calorie version of an “American classic” of the early 20thC, with celery simmered in beef stock then chilled in a proper vinaigrette dressing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celery_Victor
MW. It’s a red flag when your husband is more deranged than a wild parrot.
I don’t think Mary can bake enough muffins to save this relationship.
@Ukulele Ike: Despite Cassandra and Princess Pussycat are anthropomorphic, I hope that they literally make yowling and hissing noises as they duke it out.
Peanuts – The poor kid’s only mistake was being born in the wrong comic strip.
@Peanut Gallery: If you’re talking about The Funkyverse or Augie’s current obsession with publishing novels. Lucy dodged a bullet really.
Slylick Fox And Comix For Kinx: Doesn’t Princess Pussycat realize that Sly’s gonna palm the real crown and give it to Cassandra?
@The Rambling Otter: Yes, those are two good examples of strips with ridiculous instant authorial success. I think there were a few more; maybe Judge Parker and FOOB.
@Harmless little bunny: I’m gonna make it official: NO ONE can explain Daddy Daze.
@Harmless little bunny: Oh wait, I just got it!! “Take out” as in “take out on a date.” One reason it’s confusing is that the wordplay has nothing to do with the visuals.
@GarrisonSkunk: FC:
Christmas is a-comin’, and the egg is in the nog.
Please do let me sit upon your old yule log.
@Peanut Gallery: Also, this might be a subtle joke about “Trashy women/girlfriends” Which may or may not overlap with prostitutes? Maybe I’m overthinking.
Slylock has an even bigger moral dilemma, if the princess is unable to tell which crown is fake, does it really matter if she gets the real one back? To her it seems the real gold and plated gold crowns are functionally identical so maybe he just hands her the iron crown, promises to dispose of the “fake” and he and Max hang up thier magnifying glasses and go live on a tropical island somewhere, not like she’d know the difference right?