Gossiporama at the bowling alley
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Dick Tracy, 9/17/26
An aspect of this rapidly concluding Dick Tracy plot that I kind of lost interest in early was that Sam Catchem was sexually coerced into going undercover into the seedy world of online gaming to track down Widescreen’s gang. The looming question, of course, is whether he’d get a taste for these newfangled “video games” in the process. Turns out nope! Widescreen is dead and he’s logging out forever. It’s back to wholesome pursuits for Sam, like curling up on the couch with a copy of Derby Dugan: The Geebus Years.
Gil Thorp, 9/17/26
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the bleachers of the Valley Conference, Beth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. We’re just getting started.”
Mary Worth, 9/17/26
“I heard that Ian Cameron spends more time with Mary Worth than with his own wife … doing I don’t know what! … Nelly said something that sounded like ‘segs,’ maybe, but it wasn’t a word I recognized. But supposedly that’s what she and Ian are doing!”
42 replies to “Gossiporama at the bowling alley”
Mary Worth Mashup: With all the innuendo swirling around Toby’s husband, where’s Toby? In the Missing Final Panel.
MW-Enough with this staling can we move the story forward.
Mary Worth:
“Doing I don’t know what but I suspect is what you wanted to do with me, only I’m doing it with Brandy now!”
Dick Tracy : Hey, Sam does TOO have more “out there” hobbies/interests! He’s a hardcore Rocky Horror Picture Show fan!
*************
Gil Thorp : Yeah, that’s a perfectly natural-looking way to cuddle, acting like you’re posing for an outside observer while looking away from each other.
Mary Worth:
“You’re brilliant, Mary! — dressing as Helen Moss to tempt me, you Salome, you! What’s next in store, my love — the Dance of the Seven Muffins?”
MW: One of Ian and Mary’s flirty sex games is opposite day. “You’re brilliant, Mary!”
Hey, Mrs. Gil Thorp — we need to see your hands. Otherwise, we’ll be forced to think…eee-www!
Gil Thorp:
“Sweetie, do you think that any of this would be happening if we were all drawn to look like normal human beings?”
CS: somebody slap Batiuk. He’s clearly stuck.
RMMD: Alert to all lady mudges! To avoid the risk of brain damage don’t look at today’s strip! June is rocking her hairdo today with plenty of closeups!
MW: At this point, I’d expect the Charterstone residents to be highly relieved and elated by the gossip. “The more time that busybody and that blowhard spend together, the less time I have to interact with either of them!”
MW: Like everyone else in the Worthverse, the only thing of Mary’s that Ian is stroking is her ego.
RMMD: “…and by the way, June, have you noticed how dim-witted our sons are?”
DtM: What, exactly is Mr Wilson doing here?
GT: “We’re just getting started?” I would expect Gil’s foreplay to be more like, “Hut! Hut! Hike!”
After sexily brushing her teeth naked, Beth Mrs. Gil Thorp sexily cuddles up to him in bed, her bare ass and legs sexily protruding over the edge of the mattress.
GT: Panel 3 is simultaneously the sexiest thing ever to appear in Gil Thorp, and one of the least sexy things I’ve ever seen.
GT — After examining today’s strip I’m forced to the uncomfortable conclusion that having angry adults scream at him is a form of foreplay for Gil. Beth gets hot by imagining men fighting. But only the truly weird would derive any arousal from looking at their oddly shaped heads.
GT “You… you could hear them. But then – I’m not even here for Necessary Exposition, so what _am_ I? I thought I’d get to be a Real Girl after I married into the Thorps but I still can’t find any personality trait. Every time we get a temporary artist, I hope I can at least become Eye Candy, but it never lasts…” (Gil turns away. Beth freezes mid-syllable, waiting to be activated again.)
“I’m surprised there wasn’t a fight.”
(3-5 minutes of complete silence as the Thorps finish brushing their teeth, move from the bathroom into the bedroom, crawl into bed, and stare at the fourth wall)
“We’re just getting started.”
@Liam: MW-Enough with this staling can we move the story forward.
“Why, this is the story, nor am I out of it” — Mephistopheles, Faust
DT: There’s been some discussion about what the game Widescreen and Sam were playing is supposed to be, and while the name of the game does suggest something in the Blizzard catalog, that is clearly the post-match screen from World of Warships.
MW: The look on Dawn’s face is less “shocking neighbor drama” and more “I just cut the wrong wire on the bomb.”
MW I remember years ago reading a review of the 2000 film Finding Forrester which stated that, aside from being a poor Good Will Hunting knockoff, the entire plot rested on the peculiar premise that a bunch of young men were obsessed with the daily activities of some random old man. Just thinking if that for no reason….
@Baja Gaijin: I was thinking Carlos Allorca the gardener, but that works.
Dick Tracy:
Reading Dick Tracy reminds me of watching ’30s screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby. You can understand at an intellectual level why it might have been engaging to people of that era, but in 2026 — despite efforts to “modernize” the story lines — the very old story, with odd dialogue, comes off as far less engaging and far more simply weird.
GT: Beth dated Gil for at least a year before they got married, right? And this is still the first time she’s attended any of his games? Or maybe she was there but her presence wasn’t deemed important until she officially became a trophy wife?
MW: “Ian Cameron and Mary Worth were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me.”
Mary Worth:
“I hear they’re doing the splits for one another — and I don’t mean at a bowling alley!”
MW – we are all going to be so shocked when we learn that this whole gossip chain was set off by Ian and Mary planning a surprise party for Toby. It’s gonna totally blindside us. Brilliant. Also, the party will end with crazy-eyed old woman driven into the wilderness, this year’s scapegoat in the absolution of Charterstone’s sins.
A plugger doesn’t care if his socks don’t exactly match, just so long as they are hideous monstrosities that cover up his even more hideous feet.
Dick Tracy:
I’m curious how long Dick Tracy is going to keep pushing this “the thing happened in the case, this computer thing happened” symbolism. “The Citadel” in the game took a hit just as Widescreen was mortally wounded! Widescreen’s smart glasses show a BSOD as he lays dying! The case is over, so Sam Catchem logs out of the online game he was researching! I look forward to the coming Sunday strip, in which the exorbitant bill that Sam racked up from the addictive pay-to-win elements of this game comes due, just as the case Internal Affairs has spent years building against him and Dick for brutality finally results in their arrest.
Gil Thorp: From now on, every statement about Gil Thorp must end with “In bed,” Chinese fortune cookie-style. It is now canon. In bed.
@Schroduck: Thank you!
Mary Worth: Dawn’s expression in panel one convinces me that she is contemplating, in horror, the idea of Mary and Ian doing the horizontal mambo. Or possibly taking an extra large hit from the crack pipe. What am I, a clairvoyant?
MW: I was going to question why Tommy is speaking about Mary as though he barely knows her despite calling her a second mother to him in the very last arc before this, but then I remembered. Every character save Mary gets their intelligence and memories drained from one story line to the next. With how often Tommy and Dawn appear in these plots, they’ve gone through this process so many times that it’s amazing they’re not in permanent vegetative states.
C’shaft: “Then when I realized that created a bunch of people with good health and strong life skills, I eliminated those programs entirely.”
Dustin: Hey, that cookie’s more insightful and witty than anybody in this strip…
JP: “Also your office seems to be one of those weird funhouse rooms that make you stand like Michael Jackson in the ‘Smooth Criminal’ video.”
Luann: So by “family meal” they mean “regular cast meal.”
MT: “In fact the rain has been going pretty hard upstream of us, and a flash flood is already on its way. Basically you have fifteen seconds to make your peace with the god or foreground wildlife of your preference.”
Pluggers already bent over once today to put on their socks, and they are NOT doing it again.
RMMD: “Though thanks to me there are now a few less.”
Ian spends more time with Mary than his wife: stale and boring
Toby spends more time with her parrots than her husband: bizzarre and intriguing
Silly Gil Thorp, you’ve made your bed wrong! When you use one of those Hollywood-approved L-shaped sheets, the half that comes all the way up to the neck goes on the WOMAN’s side, while the half that stops below the chest goes on the MAN’s. You’ve put this one on upside down!
“Thanks for coming, sweets” is also what Gil says at the end of a lovemaking session. He wants his wife to enjoy sex, but he will not put 100% effort into it, she must cooperate!
Sam is right to abandon the game. Why waste time shooting pixels in the virtual world when he can shoot real humans with real guns in the life world? It’d be a waste not to!
“It was good to see you in your element. Maybe tomorrow night we can get blackout drunk, so as to spend some time in my element”
“Brilliant”? I will not take opinions on brilliance from a non-Amish doing the beard but no moustache combo!
GT: Beth is kneeling by the side of the bed praying to Gil’s ….? I know these sports guys have huge egos but c’mon.
MW: From the look of Dawn’s eyes and where’s she’s staring, it seems that when Tommy says “doing, I don’t know what” he takes out his you-know-what to demonstrate.
RMMD: Rex and June briefly remind us what this strip is ostensibly supposed to be about, before we begin another completely non-medical-related story arc tomorrow.
Things I’ve learned today: Gil Thorp wears a hoodie as he brushes his teeth while his bride does so naked. Gil Thorp sleeps with the duvet all the up to his neck while his bride doesn’t.
Things I’ve concluded today: Gil Thorp is chilly while his bride thinks the thermostat could be turned down a touch.
***
Oh no! Tommy’s going to get addicted to the dopamine hit that comes from spreading juicy gossip!
I was about to do a bit about how Gil and New Wife hold their toothbrushes – unsettling! Then I realized they’re both staring at me through the screen in the final panel! Please don’t do that, guys. You’re clearly ready for sexy times, and I’m not into extremely weird art.