He’ll wait for her, motionless, in that same room, indefinitely
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Gil Thorp, 5/7/26
See that girl in the second panel, sort of squinting at Gil and Coach Gerads in the middle distance? That’s me, trying to parse the order of their conversation. “I guess my invitation got lost in the mail.” “It’s invite-only, coach.” “I know, I said, I guess my invitation got lost in the mail.” “And I said, it’s invite-only, coach.” They could go on like this forever. Anyway, I thought I’d give you a glimpse of Coach Gerads’s dumb outfit, if that’s the sort of thing that amuses you (I admit it does me).
Mary Worth, 5/7/26
Oh my god Tommy isn’t spiraling into crisis because Brandy dumped him, he’s in crisis because she went on a trip without him! He meant “left” literally, in the sense of physically moving out of his immediate vicinity! This is simultaneously one of the funniest and saddest things Mary Worth has ever done, which is an impressive achievement in a srtip that stars Wilbur Weston.
Hagar the Horrible, 5/7/26
Hagar has killed so many people, you guys. So many! Almost none of them deserved it! They were just trying to defend themselves when he was robbing them!
Pluggers, 5/7/26
Hey, now, pluggers aren’t “smart”! You almost had me there for a minute. They aren’t “devices,” either, as most devices are engineered at least passably well.
57 replies to “He’ll wait for her, motionless, in that same room, indefinitely”
Tommy is a devout believer in solipsism! That girl has ceased existing, have you no sympathy? If sympathy exists. Or YOU exist….
Hagar Until you realize the bunny was acting unusually due to its suffering from rabies, which you contract and die a horrible death (neatly matching you own name!)
“James England”? That’s no red-blooded American Pluggers surname! This is just a fake Plugger, that’s why the joke is passable!
I know domestic rabbits that won’t let you pet them. Clearly this bunny sees something in Hagar’s heart. And the bunny lusts for blood!
Brandy left the room and Tommy thinks she vanished into thin air. This and the hair are not beating the allegations that he is a Golden Retriever!
I can’t shake the feeling that the girl in Thorp panel #2 has had that expression for days, if not weeks.
OMG, Gil is going to kill him, isn’t he? (That’s what “eighty-six” means, doesn’t it?)
GT Is that a TV screen partly in front of the window – or a computer screen in Panel2? Could that woman be Marty Moon’s (only!) YouTube audience – and that would explain why she’s following a conversation through a closed window and across a huge yard?? Could the artist and writer have actually done something consistent by accident today?!
Pluggers : were brainwashed into becoming deadly assassins, and still fall into an obedient trance when given their trigger phrase : “Honey, please take out the trash”.
While today’s manosphere celebrates Vikings and other warriors “races” as epitome of manly brutality, traditional masculinity included appreciation for beauty and softness (lyric poetry is part of all warrior cultures), because real culture is more complex than post-modern flattening for consumerist consumption. Bring Hagar into schools!
MW: So either tomorrow we’re going to found out that Brandy broke up with him because she couldn’t have any distractions on this very important family reunion, or that Tommy’s just an idiot. Granted, he’s an idiot regardless, but the second way is significantly funnier.
Also MW: Didn’t Brandy used to be tan?
GT: Gerads wants to go to the wedding so he can object when the minster asked if anyone has a reason why these two should not be married. Thorp can’t waste his energy on matrimony! He has to devote one hundred percent of his life to coaching to make his defeat to Gerads all the more devastating!
CS: It must’ve taken a lot of work to weave all of that pubic hair into upholstery for Ed’s chair.
Pluggers are smart devices, in the sense that you give them a command and they obey. They won’t monitor the trash level and take it out independently like a AI agent or a responsible adult would do, so they are still an inferior model
Mw:
:
“I’ll wait for you for three months, Brandy! — of course, in strip time, that’s six years!”
GT You know where the best golf courses are? That’s right: the Bonneville salt flats! No annoying hills or trees or water, just an clear unobstructed line to the green, er, ‘brown’.
MW /2 hours later/ “….fuck this, I’m smoking meth!”
@Pozzo: I do wonder if the news lately made the writer toss that in to emphasize that “86” from a bar means to be refused service / no longer allowed in but isn’t a threat
MW: “No, don’t wait for me. It’s not fair to
YOU.”
“I’ll call you every day.”
“No, I’m weaning myself off technology.”
“We’ll write letters.”
” No, I’ll be on the move.”
” I’ll send you psychic messages.”
” AAAARGH!!!”
GT: This strip’s dialogue ALWAYS reads like someone played 52 Pick-Up with a bunch of word cards.
HtH: “Then Snert ate it in one gulp.”
Pluggers: The real “Honey” trap.
Gil Thorp:
“You know, son, in some counties, wearing a hat like that is a misdemeanor!”
I know Gil Thorpe is never this timely but Coach Gerads having Gil falsely arrested for making a death threat would make a great summer storyline.
@Ettorre: Who knew Moy and Brigman were fans of the classic Goosebumps book ‘My Hairiest Adventure’.
@Pozzo: Well, sure, how else is Gil going to convince that spineless ICE goon (the one with the ‘gambling debts’) to release the cute girl if he doesn’t convince them he’s capable of anything. It’s the ‘Mad Coach’ theory.
JP: Wait, that’s *it*? “Thank you and good bye?” Not even a hint that they are ever going to come back and take the raspberry-haired brat off this dullard’s hands? I’m choosing to interpret Ann’s ‘Give me a moment’ as her quietly letting the rage reach another boiling point before smashing first the phone, then Santy Bogdan’s skull, then Neddy’s skull, for giving her such a long walk to such a short, unsatisfying payoff. It’ll be the most cathartic thing the strip’s ever done.
HtH — “It was so soft and purdy. And I hugged it real tight and then it wouldn’t move any more. Tell me, Helga, tell me again about the rabbit.
GT – “So what’s the rush to get married, Gil?”
“Time marches on and it’s slipping away. Beth was pretty good-looking when we first hooked up a few years ago. Now look at her. Hell, look at all of us!”
The Plugger Smart Home Device might spy on you, but it won’t remember any of it.
Pluggers: You can’t fool me, this is foreplay for an extremely elaborate kink roleplay. Before long, she’ll be saying “Honey, paint my garage“.
Are you talking about some other Hägår episode, Josh?
Because your comment has no connection with Hãgâr petting a rabbit.
Murky Tail:
“Send help. I mean, call Mary Worth, she should be back from the spa by then. Tell her to bring Muffin.”
_________________________________
Wary Morth:
“I’ll wait for you. I mean it’s not as though I have anything else to do when summoned out of inexistence because Moy ran out of ideas and closed down the Trixie story.”
_________________________________
Wrecks Moregone:
If you like getting paid, you should probably consider looking for a job where the manager doesn’t use all the profits to maintain his gigantic pompadour.
Pluggers: “…would you kindly?”
The comics device of “foreground character looks at background character while facing forward in a way that doesn’t makes sense if you think about it” is one I have defended in Hi & Lois. But I am going to mock it in panel 2 of Gil Thorp. Because I am a shameless hypocrite.
Questioned Malcontent:
I admit that I still have a soft spot for Yay, unlike the majority of the remaining characters from the old days, though all of them have been mercilessly destroyed.
In any case, today’s Bubbles-Yay conversation at least postpones Lizard’s yet another party to next week.
I’m thankful at least for that much.
@matt w:
I just can’t tear my eyes away from her gigantic lower lip. Did she get stung by a wasp or something?
@Ukranazi Stepan:
He’s highlighting the contrast between Hagar radiating hearts and talking about petting cute bunnies (what he’s doing TODAY), and Hagar raiding castles and brutally killing his enemies in bloody brawls (what he does every other day).
You know, like if he ran today’s Dustin and said “DustinDad HATES his son! Just outright despises him! Spends every waking second belittling him!”, even though that’s not what’s happening TODAY.
Or if Crankshaft offered to take a kid who fell asleep on his bus for ice cream, and Josh said “Crankshaft HATES kids! He deliberately avoids picking them up, just driving past them while leaving them in the dust! He thinks his bus driver job is about being as big a menace as possible! He treats actually safely taking kids to their intended destination as a failure!” It wouldn’t match what would be happening in the strip, but they’re not untrue statements about what kind of person Crankshaft is!
MARY WORTH: I think Tommy’s “spiraling into a crisis” because he’s suffering from the aftereffects of the dumbining Virus that’s hit Santa Royale as of late, causing symptoms such as Short Attention-Span Syndrome. Only a few days ago Tommy self-pieously asked himself “Why did you leave me?” even though this flashback shows that he was clearly told the answer to…wait what were we talking about again?
MARY WORTH (2): The Dumbining Virus and S.A.S.S. hasn’t just affected Tommy either. “I’m going to Florida to spend time with my father’s sister to learn why he treated me the way he did. You know that reason that I already know (drugs) since it’s my one noteworthy attribute and therefore the thing I bring up all the time, which is the main conflict we have, with me comparing your past drug use with my father’s? Anyway my Father’s half-sister who’s never met me and has never observed our family dynamic should help me answer the question I already know about why my father behaved the way he did. I mean, as we’ve seen the numerous times this story has come up in the comics page, people love it when long-lost relatives look you up just to dump all of their ‘baggage’ onto you!”
GT: Rowdy Roddy Pooper talks to Gil. if I don’t come, will you let my friend who dresses like Cowboy Bob Orton attend in my place? He’s got the cast and everything!
@Ukranazi Stepan: It’s more fun to see that gigantic lower lip as a slightly protruding tongue. You can’t unsee it.
I honestly thought Helga was raising her entire left arm over her head and that she had lost half of it in a freak accident. Her armless, bowling-pin-like body in the first panel didn’t help matters either.
Maybe the bunny did it?
Thorp just made a death threat to the President of Plaid, and loudly enough to startle that student on the bus.
***
Based on everything I know about modern Mary Worth, sigh, what pet is Tommy going to get to cover for his temporary loneliness? It can’t be a cat or dog that devotes its every waking hour paying rapt attention to him, there are too many of those already. Maybe it’s a bird that flies freely around his home without defecating on everything? No, Toby has that covered. Wilbur’s the fish guy. I’m going to go to one of those betting sites and put my money on an iguana.
***
Pluggers have planned obsolescence.
Dang it! I didn’t close the italics after Mary Worth!
MW: @Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars! Looks like your intern released those Doves o’ Love prematurely—unless Ian is hooking up with Helen Moss in the Cameron condo while Toby is away at the spa—in which case, I’ll be more interested in the parrots’ recap of that activity than I expect to be in Tommy’s self-pitying moaning about being alone. Tommy should get a pet.
H&L: Warn Defever of His Name Is Alive literally did this on one of his solo albums. Chip could really menace Hi by saying the retro sound was some early ’10s signature sound, if the audience knew what an early ’10s signature sound was. Or the writers did. Or I did.
[On my daily “How much quiet desperation is there in Hi and Lois?” post I somehow twisted this into speculation about which Homestuck character Chip is into. Dave Strider, I think. Hi disdains this because he’s a Problem Sleuth guy.]
REX MORGAN M.D. Uh-oh. Looks the Dumbining Virus is so severe that’s it’s become a plague that’s infecting other comics as well. So…which one of you brave and patient souls wants to explain to poor dimwitted Hector here that short-order cooks don’t work on commission or tips, and therefore “get paid” regardless of how many people they serve as long as they work the hours? (Certainly not Terry Beatty, who apparently didn’t know this either.)
Maybe the same person who can let the dumb lad know that since this is a motel that does room service, he’ll be “cooking” (and therefore “working” and “getting paid”) regardless of whether the restaurant is open or not?
(P.S.: By the way, Luann Degroot, if you’re still trying to find a viable career path for naive, slack-jawed morons, you might want to look into being a comic strip creator. Apparently you don’t need to know jack shit about about anything to get that position.)
Gil Thorp: Is Gerads wearing a full over-the-shoulder tartan with slacks and a tasteful blue button-down? Commit to the bit, buddy. You’ll never win the Outlander cosplay contest at this rate.
@Ukranazi Stepan: I think some of the Gil Thorp art problems are because the mouths are always drawn too big, then the bottom of the head is over-wide to compensate, which is why they all have heads shaped like butternut squashes. Note I said “some,” this doesn’t explain the problems with bodies or backgrounds or vehicles or houses, just faces.
GT: Why does Coach Permawave even want to go to the wedding of his rival? I can only assume that it’s because everything in Milford revolves around White Male Protagonist Gil Thorp, and his nuptials are the local equivalent of the Met Gala.
MW: Tommy lacking object permanence is the most believable thing this strip has produced in months.
Pluggers fall back on tired sitcom stereotypes with astonishing regularity.
MW: I’m betting that this ends up with Brandy meeting someone else and dumping Tommy by text message. Well, not “ends up,” we’ll have at least three months of Mary’s meddling after that revelation.
Dustin Yes. That’s exactly how the practice of law works. You have one case, and if you settle it, you can take the day off to play video games. Tomorrow you can go to the office and eat donuts until your next case comes in.
@TheDiva: On GT – Oooo, I wonder what sort of audacious ‘statement’ the nonconformists will plaster on their dresses in an attempt to show they aren’t just as desirious as everyone else of being accepted and feted by their betters in the upper class. That is, if they decide to go and don’t just stand outside waving little signs or throwing tomato soup at the attendees.
LUANN: The Dumbining Virus III: Inner Beautystan Edition: Phil: We need to go! We came here in the first place for free food, but I’m offended that the glorified real estate pitch turned out to be a real estate pitch, so we’re leaving. Sorry for wasting the precious little time you get for lunch, Luann. I guess you don’t get to eat now!” (Shrugs)
Hagar the Horrible-“And on a related note, Helga. I want rabbit stew for dinner. Here’s the rabbit.”
MW-Poor Tommy. No stray animals for him to adopt.
MW-These people fall to pieces so easily when someone leaves them.
@TheDiva: Pluggers fall back on tired sitcom stereotypes with astonishing regularity.
You could say the same about tired jokes about regularity.
C’shaft: Man, that joke would have…well, it wouldn’t have killed in 2005 because it’s a stupid joke, but it wouldn’t have resulted in the reader frowning and wondering if Criminal Minds was still on the air. (Apparently, yes.)
Dustin: “…In other words, treating your very existence as a burden and a curse upon my life.”
JP: Oh, please don’t tell me the Randy-April videos are deepfakes. I’ve had more than enough of comic strip writers trying to wrap their minds around AI technology.
Luann: Suuuuure, the “amenities fee” is what’s keeping you from living in this high-end luxury apartment complex on your RN salary.
MT: So….Mark Sr. will kill his son for standing in the way of his illusions of romance?
RMMD: Dude, you were the only one working while the dining room was shut down! You’re paid by the hour, not on a per-customer basis! Getting paid is not the problem here!
Dustin-“I got fired from my job months ago and everyday since I’ve been making an appearance of going to work.”
“Don’t worry, honey, I’ll stay out of the way.”
“Look, you really can’t come. My mission might be dangerous!”
“Well, I’m not worried about that.”
“Jesus, man, my mission involves a nighttime HALO drop into Tehran to assassinate a senior Iranian leader. I know Langley thinks having an idiot boyfriend is good cover, but sometimes you make it difficult.”
Hagar the Horrible presents John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I can’t wait until next week when Lucky Eddie stars in Catcher in the Rye.
I think we should at least acknowledge the engineering skill and effort that went into designing the Plugger’s belt. More or less successfully containing that gut without catastrophic failure isn’t a trivial task.
Hagar the Horrible:
I’m intrigued and a little bit concerned by Helga’s response to Hagar’s bunny-fondling. “It’s the best, right?” she beams, which implies she, too, has pet this bunny. How long has the bunny been sitting on the Horribles’ front lawn, accepting physical affection from strangers? Are they even talking about the same bunny? Is this the first time this has happened? Are the bunnies truly “letting” them pet them, or are they leaving behind a trail of mangled rabbit corpses, Lennie Small style?
@Tabby Lavalamp: Pluggers are well aware of their own obsolesence. They just don’t do anything about it. They won’t die. Or retire. Or shut up. Or accept that the world has changed a great deal since they were young. Or stop forcing their preferences on everyone else. Or stop acting like their sub-Hallmark observations make them the funniest person in the room.