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Gil Thorp, 1/10/23

Sorry, kids! Gil has a new commitment to winning and he doesn’t have time for mere gossip like “checking in on each other’s well being” or “saying heartfelt farewells after decades of working together.” How long do you think Kaz was standing there on the sidelines waiting for Gil to give the signal for the kids to bring out the cake and start his good-bye party, or at least make eye contact with him? Instead, all he gets is his longtime boss solemnly reading his full name off of a cue card. We the readers don’t need to get too broken up, as I assume that Kaz will continue to pop up in Thorpian adventures in some capacity, unless that Coach Kaz, P.I. spinoff strip I’ve been trying to manifest for years is finally going to happen.

Gasoline Alley, 1/10/23

“Getting people interested in a story about Santa and his elves in mid January” is not a challenge I would’ve thought Gasoline Alley was capable of meeting, but I have to admit “Santa’s elves live in constant fear of arbitrary summary execution” has me intrigued!

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FOLKS, I neglected in yesterday’s return post to promote the big event of Comics Award Season: The Fifteenth (!) Annual Worthy Awards, in which faithful reader Wanders nominates the best of Mary Worth’s 2022 shenanigans and you, the readers, pick the winners. You’ll be choosing the Panel of the Year, Quote of the Year, outstanding performances from regular and guest characters, and, of course, the most coveted award of all, Outstanding Floating Head. Vote early and often!

Dennis the Menace, 1/3/23

Man, look, I don’t know if the menace here is supposed to be “Ha ha, Dennis thinks his childhood likes and dislikes reflect the overall business climate” or “Ha ha, vegetarians, amiright, even a child knows they’re gross,” but what really bothers me here are the … things … inside the shuttered restaurant. Are they potted plants — like a lot of potted plants, like way too many potted plants for a small space? Are they bowls containing the aforementioned organic vegetarian cuisine, as drawn by someone whose restaurant habits are Applebee’s-centric and this is what they think vegetarians eat? Are they leftover bowls of vegetarian meals that, abandoned by their creators, have sprouted into aggressive, powerful plants that will have their revenge on us? Each option is more unsettling than the last.

Gasoline Alley, 1/3/23

Couldn’t really tell you how Gasoline Alley got to this point but I am amusing myself by trying to figure out what terrible emergency at the North Pole would get Santa to abruptly abandon his tropical vacation. Like, probably a violent elf labor revolt that his trained Pinkertons have been unable to suppress, right? Or maybe word has gotten back that Mrs. Claus is having a dalliance with Jack Frost or something? Honestly, the funniest answer is that Rudolf is trained to summon him on a fake “emergency” if a child insists on talking to him for more than ten minutes during his vacation, and they’re just going to circle back to the beach as soon as the kids leave.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 1/3/23

Meanwhile, diabolical scientists in Mother Goose and Grimm have created a perfume so alluring that it will stir up murderous violence in anyone who so much as sniffs it! Or it’s just deadly poisonous, honestly kind of hard to tell what they’re getting at.

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Blondie, 12/17/22

I spent a probably embarrassing amount of time staring at this thinking “Which of the third-tier Blondie characters is this dressed up as Santa at the bowling alley with Dagwood and Herb? Is it one of the carpool guys, or maybe the barber?” before I realized that … it’s supposed to actually be Santa, I think? Santa is real, within the Blondie universe? He’s real and he goes bowling with random suburbanites, just days before Christmas, in what should be his workshop’s busiest time of year?

Pluggers, 12/17/22

I guess that’s better than the Pluggers universe, where Santa is also real — a real freakish man-animal of some kind, that is, and he also treats body positivity as a weird series of contests.

Gasoline Alley, 12/17/22

Gertie, “Who’s On First” hit the peak of its popularity in the 1940s! I’m pretty sure you’re too young to know about it.