What’s the wine made of? Probably I don’t want to know
Post Content
Gil Thorp, 3/14/26
Emily “Mimi” Clover has, at various overlapping times, been Gil’s student, assistant coach, and wife. Now that she’s coaching Milford arch-rival Valley Tech, we’re in for a real “now the student/assistant coach/wife has become master” scenario, where she uses Gil’s own The Secret-inspired “think yourself win” techniques against him.
Pardon My Planet, 3/14/26
Pardon My Planet’s take on romantic partnerships is traditionally “they are the worst nightmares you can imagine and there is no escape,” so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that when the strip finally depicts a loving relationship, it’s literally between two demons in the depths of hell.
Pluggers, 3/14/26
Pluggers have precious little free time remaining to them due to the huge amount of effort it takes to keep them alive, and they spend it playing golf. Sad!
61 replies to “What’s the wine made of? Probably I don’t want to know”
GT: “Go show them what you’re made of! A random assortment of irregular polygons and teeth like mouthguards you can never take out!”
Supposedly God has the whole world in His hands, but looking at Mimi in the last panel, there may be some competition here.
Gil Thorp:
“Oh, and while I’m at it — and although probably a little off-topic — I’m going as Ipana toothpaste mascot ‘Bucky Beaver’ for Halloween this year. So remember, ladies! — ‘Brusha, brusha, brusha’ !”
I call bullshit. Pluggers don’t play golf — golf is expensive and upscale. Pluggers play horseshoes. Or bocce. Or poker. Don’t be stepping outside your lane, Pluggers contributors! Remember, a Plugger is old, sick, old-fashioned, sedentary, and poor.
Pardon My Planet:
Okay, so they’re knocking down romantic aperitifs together while in a state of partial undress. So what’s wrong with eternal damnation, anyway?
Is BG&SS trying to make me more recognize the appeal, aesthetics, and chemistry of the Archie/Betty/Veronica love triangle?
H&L: What kind of magical clean roller is Hi using to apply blue paint? And where are those doghouse fixit guys when we need them?
Pardon My Planet: They’re having American cheese slices and Two-Buck Chuck — but what’s really hellish is that nobody gets any s’mores.
Pluggers: Um, but pluggers don’t play golf — doctors play golf! I think this whole thing is a scam to get free medical advice.
Hi and Lois: Wow, Hi is really depressed about having to paint the bedroom. And maybe also because he only owns one shirt, and it’s orange. And did I mention his terrible haircut? Yep, Hi is really depressed, as well he should be.
Blondie: Dag, buddy — let her try on the clothes! Someone who can look that hot in a tight business suit should definitely be making sure anything new has got exactly the same fit.
Dennis the Menace: The Dennis the Menace comic strip keeps on going…. but it turns out that the entire Mitchell family died of Hantavirus sometime in the 1960s. A genuinely tragic tale that’s been covered up for more than half a century.
Mary Worth:
— “All right, we agree — the whole thing seems suspicious, and he should meet her in person before thinking about proposing!”
— “But Mary, we barely know this man — maybe we shouldn’t spend all our time discussing what he should do with his life.”
— “Okay, then, let’s talk about your life — what’s happening?”
— “Still parrots.”
— “Yeah, I think we’ll stick with the old guy.”
Not sure what Jose Ferrer did to get sent to Hell, but I admire his work, and am happy he’s enjoying himself.
@Twinkles the Elf:
Twinkles, my friend, COME ON. Bowling. You KNOW it’s bowling.
Pluggers:
And when they’ve finished their round of golf and they retire to a local watering hole, they can shout across the tables to casual acquaintances they encounter there: ‘I’ve just had a PROCEDURE!!!!!!!!!!!’ “
Apparently you can just show naked female breasts in the newspaper now if you don’t draw the nipple? Please nobody tell Brooke.
RMMD:
The anagram of “Glenwood Cafe” is “Wed Fecal Goon.”
Just sayin’.
Pluggers: Nothing good can come of a Plugger squeezing ANYTHING.
You, neophyte: The plugger shouldn’t be playing golf because golf is for rich people.
Me, versed in Pluggers lore: Oh god god how did I let myself become versed in Pluggers lore this is terrible.
Anyway Pluggers can be rich now, nothing matters, the problem is that he is making a golf date with Andy Bear who is not that old and shouldn’t be hanging out with him.
MW: Toby tries to keep up with the fast pace, her arms pumping and her hair flowing behind her, but she’s no match against Mary gliding along easily in her roller shoes.
PmP: Leaving aside the problem of proper wine temperature, how is the cheese not in puddle form?
GT: Mimi doesn’t even own a hairbrush, does she?
JP: “Uh, there hasn’t been a videocassette player in this house for twenty years. Is it streaming anywhere?”
Pluggers: Jeremy Zits on the Island of Doctor Moreau.
Gil Thorp looks Cubist, sounds Dada.
Gil Thorp:
-Dialogue others see: “They think they have won this game already”
-Dialogue I see: “Mimi Smash!!!!”
GIL THORP: Mimi: “Don’t let them intimidate you! I mean, I have the face of a feral lowland gorilla, and yet you girls can look at me and not run screaming for the hills. You’re made of stronger stuff than you know!”
RMMD: I swear the city was called “Glenview”
Mandala effect in full force here.
HnL “I am never casually tossing on my stained paint shirt to hang around the house on a Saturday again” thinks Hi
DtM Forget hantavirus, a wild rat acting listless enough to be caught by a kid likely means you all need rabies shots – have fun with a month of daily injections, 1950s folks!
GT — It’s becoming more and more obvious that the Thorps had inspirational coach sayings hung all over the house, and have internalized them as their own wisdom. But again, showing them what you’re made of is a phrase open to multivocal interpretations and is not a strategy or even a tactic.
PMP — OK, male demons are canonically displayed with pointy goatees and slicked back hair, but shouldn’t the female demon have a hairstyle that doesn’t shout middle-aged suburban mom?
PMP: So you can print naked boobs on the comics pages as long as they’re on a devil lady? I see some perverse incentives…
Pardon my Planet: Haha it’s funny because… Hell. Just Hell.
@The Rambling Otter: No seriously. Usually comics about Hell at least include some sort of silly punch line.
Far Side did so flawlessly all the time.
@Charterstoned: To be fair, it’s how Andy is wealthy enough for his golf excursion: As a lucrative side-hustle ecstatically squeezing the Charmin in their infamous commercials.
Luann: Inner beauty, ladies and gentlemen! Seriously, Luann, screw you.
PMP: Pull your eyes away from lady demon’s damned breasts and look at her hair. Is that Marge Simpson? Has she, not Burns, been the corrupting influence in Springfield all the time?
@But What Do I Know?: RE: GT: So, what Mary Worth would look like she were a jock, then?
Sex Organ V.D. : Lurs Win is apparently Mie Mie’s new name, according to her enhanced name tag.
CS: Here, Pete, let me edit your sign for you.
That’s a fantastic find! I’ve always been fascinated by the history of comic strips, especially the characters like Gil Thorp.
@The Rambling Otter: @The Rambling Otter: No seriously. Usually comics about Hell at least include some sort of silly punch line.
Far Side did so flawlessly all the time.
_____________________________________
Like the one with the darned Avon™ lady ringing “Hell’s Bells”.
GT: From Mimi, I get more of a “out to get ex, even though she’s the one who left because she’s just never satisfied with anything and SOMEONE needs to pay” vibe.
REX MORGAN M.D.: “Sit wherever you like! I’ll be right with you hon! I just have to throw away this stack of pancakes we inexplicably made for the zero other people in the cafe. Kinda a waste, if you ask me, but I don’t have the fancy book learnin’ to run a motel restaurant so I guess they know what they’re doin'”
The Family Circlejerk – I think Dolly learned “bluey” as a euphemism for penis from HTT Grandma.
@Bob Tice: And the anagram for my actual name is HENRY WETSLOT.
Metacomment: Dennis the Menace at 75. the Dark Story of One of America’s Great Comedy Stripshttps://13thdimension.com/dennis-the-menace-at-75-the-dark-true-story-of-one-of-americas-great-comedy-strips/
Yeah, it’s very dark.
Rex Morgan: Wow! Mud Mountain is now Mud Molehill. Has he been mainlining Ozempic while off panel all these months?
Pardon My Planet-Sweet cherry wine
MW-“And I always thought H@rvey went the other way.”
@Baja Gaijin: We’ve secretly swapped the comics strip actors for Mud of Rex Morgan with Bogdan of Judge Parker, let’s see if they notice…
Wary Morth:
Few months, decades,
Glamazon suspicìous
In person
Proposing!
(Bold poetry is so easy to write! Thanks MoyJune!)
________________________________
Wrecks Moregone:
Why would anyone like eating in that place? It’s got about as much atmosphere as a swingset on the moon.
@42 CanuckDownSouth: I noticed!
@Bono Vix: Wow, dark is an understatement. Thank you for pointing this out, however, it shows that there was really a golden era once for strip comics – if this guy could do a strip living in Switzerland.
Yesterday on DT we saw a brand new Can-Am side by side utility vehicle and today we get a nice look at an expensive drone. Was there a seminar recently explaining how one can deduct reference models when doing a commercial comic strip?
PMP – That guy was sent to hell for mis-quoting The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Do ten “a loaf of bread, jug of wine, and thou”s and ten Hail Marys and maybe, just maybe, they’ll move you up to purgatory.
RMMD: I’m getting ridiculously involved in trying to figure out the relationship — both physical and financial — of the hotel and café. It’s probably because what’s going to happen has been obvious for a couple weeks now, the only real question being whether Mud will go live with “Lorna Starr” at her mansion, or Mae Mae will give that up so she can travel with Mud on the roots country circuit. Though after typing that out, the answer is obvious, in the RMMD-verse.
Anyway, with the café shut down (for lack of one waitress) and only providing room service to the hotel, I was sure it was a little place actually inside the hotel. Today’s picture of the café entrance doesn’t quite work with that, it looks like a separate building. Maybe it’s part of the hotel but has its own facade and entrance, like an Applebee’s attached to a Marriott…
PMP – “Where’s the cheese?” “What, this sentimentality isn’t cheesy enough for you?”
@Twinkles the Elf: Given the number of Pluggers entries that come from high-end suburbs, I’ve become increasingly convinced that Pluggers only think of themselves as humble, salt-of-the-earth types, when really they’re pulling in six figures and have a healthy retirement account. So yeah, they probably golf, all while talking about how their caddy should pull himself up by his bootstraps and get a real job (if he’s white) or go back to wherever he came from (if he’s not).
GT: Gil and Emily have the exact same coaching style, which means that Gil will win because he’s Gil Thorp, White Male Protagonist, and she’s merely a supporting player in his life.
GT: “Show them what you’re made of!”
“Sugar and spice and everything nice?”
Discuss.
C’shaft: Of course Montoni’s had to be involved in the wedding somehow. Of course.
Dustin: “I’m worried about our son”=”I want an excuse to complain about how terrible our son is and how much I hate him.”
JP: “Also explained in video is why I am here and they are not, how April escape from men who lured her to Norway to kill her, how she found where husband was, how we escape from Siberia with broken truck, and why I talk like this.”
MW: I….do not think that word means what you think it means, Toby. Unless you’re implying that Trixie is Black and/or a drag queen.
RMMD: “I just have to serve this plate of pancakes I’m precariously balancing on my fingertips to a non-existent customer!”
@Twinkles the Elf: Pluggers BOWL. Maybe a little friendly softball or hoops if their tendons and knees allow it.
And as a former classical scholar, it always pisses me off when Rubiyat of Omar Khayam is misquoted, and this little shit didn’t even bother with the rest of the stanza:
“A book of verses beneath the bough/ A loaf of bread, a jug of wine — And THOU — Beside me singing in the wilderness.”
Where the pluperfect fuck does CHEESE come into it?
Gil Thorp-In this case I prefer they tell us what they are made of because with this artwork it is hard to show it.
Don Abundio, translated:
“What make is that cute little car?”
“Want to hop in for a ride?”
“Certainly not!”
“Lady, I only drive this car to meet chicks”
“And it was made by Mattel!”
Gil Thorp: Even though she’s basically just saying, “Our enemies want you to play bad, so play good” to her team for three panels, they really managed to imbue Mimi with some supervillain vibes today! Plus, she’s morphing into a cartoon beaver. That’s always scary.
@Bono Vix: Jeezis, just cut his flesh and blood son out of his life completely. That bastard DESERVES to be menaced!
P(i)MP: You’ll notice these are DEMONS, not two damned mortal souls; when you’re in middle-management, you’re allowed to kick back once in awhile.
@Bono Vix: So Dennis Ketcham served in ‘Nam, got himself shellshocked, went through several jobs and marriages and estranged children, and is currently pushing 80 in a trailer park somewhere in Ohio? Livin’ the LIFE, baby!
Yeah, I won’t be reading Hank’s autobiography any time soon.
GT- Is that an opposable thumb on the VT player’s left hand in panel 3?