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Gil Thorp, 5/5/25

Hey, remember when we met Marty’s AA pal, “Clam,” and I said, “Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if that was the same person as Clambake, the guy who did some unpaid coaching for Gil and claimed to be a Negro Leaguer, but it turns out he was a fraud?” Well, ha ha, it seems that is the same guy, and he only went around lying about his baseball career because he was drunk, I guess, but now that he’s clean and sober he’s welcome to come back to the Milford dugout to do some unpaid coaching again, or at least to stare meaningfully out at the field with Gil.

This actually gives me a chance to talk about the weird Gil Thorp variant of comic book time, in which the kids age in real time, spending no more than four years as school-age characters and occasionally returning as adults, but Gil and his fellow coaches seemingly do not. And the original Clambake storyline, which ran in 2007, actually gives us some pegs to real ages: in his fabrication, he claimed to have been 83 years old and played in the late 1940s, when in fact he was only 71, as Gil found out with some help from the local cops once he decided to maybe figure out if this random dude who’d been hanging around the school for weeks was on the up and up. That would make him 89 years old now … or maybe still 71, if he’s in the same time-stasis as Gil? Unclear. I’m interested in finding out, though.

Dick Tracy, 5/5/25

I haven’t really been keeping up with the details in Dick Tracy, but I am happy to inform you that Dick finally has all the information he needs to put an end to Neo-Chicago’s nephewcrime epidemic once and for all. I love that the only photo the cops have of these two is a party pic printed out from Facebook; I assume that the heavily armed SWAT team currently converging on their location has been warned that “suspects may be enjoying canapés, repeat, canapés.”

Pluggers, 5/5/25

Now, the other coastal elitists and I all like to see pluggers engaging in their vaguely depressing down-home antics and ask, jokingly, “Are pluggers OK? Ha ha!” But, for real: are pluggers OK. Are pluggers no longer able to properly care for themselves, or possibly being physically abused. Do we need to call a social worker, to keep the pluggers safe.

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Dennis the Menace, 5/4/25

OK, obviously I was going to object that “Sunday school was awesome today!” is possibly the least menacing thing Dennis has ever said, but then I got to the big reveal of what he learned about: the pre-existence of souls, which was very explicitly anathematized by the Second Council of Constantinople in AD 553. Last I dwelled on the question, I had decided that the Mitchells were high church Episcopalians, but apparently they’ve since fallen in with some kind of Origenist cult.

Hi and Lois, 5/4/25

Not sure if some diktat has gone out to the comics to do jokes about how fun it is to read the comics in the newspaper, as God intended, but I feel like today’s entry has been undermined by Chip’s legitimately exasperated attitude. You’re making a disaster of the fridge, Hi! It’s embarrassing when he brings girls over! Why not just add your favorites to your bookmarks on Comics Kingdom dot com, like a reasonable person?

Crankshaft, 5/4/25

Ha ha! Get it? April showers … bring May flowers? Get it???? Anyway, I hope these guys recognize Crankshaft’s many sins and choose to punish him with exile from the colony, or perhaps even hanging.

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Six Chix and Blondie, 5/3/25

We have I think pretty conclusively established that the Blondie team mines National Day Calendar dot com when they need an inspiration or a peg for any given day’s strip. That’s why I regret to inform you that, while Six Chix was happy to riff on the very real and very cool holiday of National Paranormal Day, which is today, Blondie just gave us one of the most vapid and toothless “Ha ha, you know what sure are crazy, is current events! I’ll be giving you no further details on that” strips I’ve ever seen. Today could’ve been the day we saw Dagwood eat a bowl of chili so hot that he gains the Sight and can see through the veil into the next world! Instead we get this bullshit!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/3/25

Hmm, that crooked smirk … that domineering attitude … is bad girl Kelly back? Is bad girl Kelly going to show up at Niki’s to formally inform him that he was dumped approximately six weeks ago, with her new tall boyfriend in tow? This is a groove that I am very excited to see her get back!