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Gil Thorp, 10/1/24

Ah, well, it seems that Gil’s airborne lovefest under old artist Rod Whigham was some kind of hallucination he was having during a massive cardiac event on the sideline of a football game, and now, under new artist Rachel Merrill, he lingers comatose in a hospital, kept alive by machines the size of a 1950s mainframe computer. Anyway, this is a perfect time for Keri to confess to bulimia, I guess, and just like the time in Mary Worth when Dr. Jeff’s drippy daughter accepted her cop boyfriend’s proposal when he was in a coma, this will only lead to positive outcomes.

Gasoline Alley, 10/1/24

Gasoline Alley will never try to confuse us with abrupt narrative shifts. In fact, if characters who we last saw a year and a half ago appear in the strip, Gasoline Alley will remind you what their names are by having another character say them out loud, in bold type! Gasoline Alley is just thoughtful like that, and as a rapidly aging member of its audience, I appreciate it.

Mary Worth, 10/1/24

Sorry, Estelle, I know your mind is clouded with sorrow right now, but you had both these pets for some time before you met Ed, so he can’t possibly have achieved “daddy” status with them. Technically Wilbur owned Pierre before he handed him off to you because of their complete failure to bond emotionally, so to Pierre Wilbur is daddy! Frankly this just seems to be pointing towards a reunion wiOH NO OH NO OH NO ABORT ABORT ABORT

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Pluggers, 9/23/24

An oft-noted source of malaise in American life is a rise of loneliness, as “third spaces” — places where people socialize that aren’t home or work — decline, and more and more people spend all their time with immediate family, coworkers — or, as they age, themselves. My new crackpot theory is that this explains why individual Plugger entries have gotten increasingly weird and idiosyncratic over the years that I’ve read the strip. They used to be the sort of corny and relatable content that emerged from consensus as you and your buddies griped or joked about life’s little foibles at the bar or on the job site. But now? Now that you took your pension and your wife has died and the VFW hall has closed, now that mostly you just sit on the couch with the TV turned on way too loud, so you can hear it and also can’t really think, which is maybe the whole point? Well, now who knows what your old pals who you exchange occasional texts with do. Do they mute the TV before they reply to your text? Probably, right? You do it, so it stands to reason that they do too. Maybe that’s why they haven’t replied to your text yet. Maybe they’re just waiting for their show to end so they can focus some attention on it. That’s probably it.

Gasoline Alley, 9/23/24

In addition to being obviously annoying, Rufus and Joel are also uncanny, in the sense that they alone among the cast stay the same age even as everyone ages around them. Are they truly human at all, or are they strange visitors from the fae realms? Well, today’s strip at least establishes that Rufus was in fact pushed down a human birth canal, which may be more information than any of us ever wanted, but now we have it.

Shoe, 9/23/24

I love the fact that the Perfesser’s eyes are closed here. He’s not just daydreaming about these culinary delights: he appears to be deep in the act of prayer, as if he’s trying to manifest them. This probably hurts Roz’s feelings, as she runs the restaurant where he’s currently sitting and from which he could presumably simply order them.

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Curtis, 9/19/24

Derrick and Onion are canonically the bullies in Curtis, but their game has been slipping for a long time. Way back in ’06 they were hard-core car thieves, but their malfeasance dwindled into vaguely threatening confrontations in school hallways accompanied by labored “Yo Mama” insults. Onion lost his trademark (“Onion”) quotation marks around 2016 and honestly hasn’t been entirely himself since. Tuesday we learned his given name is Norman, which doesn’t carry quite the same panache.

Now Derrick and Onion are in Mrs. Nelson’s class along with Curtis, assaulting the poor woman with flowers, candy, and honeyed words. Is this a redemption story, in which the two Learn the Error of Their Ways? A Josh-infuriating trauma plot, with a Big Reveal about the characters’ Painful Past that Explains Everything? A long con, as Curtis suspects? Or, intriguingly, one of those postmodern reframings of evidence that was right before our eyes the whole time, revealing Curtis as the real bully? I bet Curtis’s brother Barry would like to weigh in on that last one.

Dennis the Menace, 9/19/24

Oh, speak of the devil low-ranking demon, here he is with his familiar, Hot Dog. Wikipedia correctly pegs Hot Dog as “rarely seen.” He doesn’t have the personality of the Mitchell’s dog Ruff, and mostly just sits there in a lump with a smug expression on his face. So how would Mr. Wilson know he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do? Maybe he just assumes that about cats, based on his observations of Heathcliff and Garfield.

Gasoline Alley, 9/19/24

What I love about Gasoline Alley is Jim Scancarelli’s art: the guy’s an old-school natural, and so long as he doesn’t try to get all photorealistic on us, there’s an easy elegance to his work that takes me back to when newspaper comics were a Big Deal and worthy of craft (cf. L’il Abner, Out Our Way, Pogo, Steve Canyon, many more). And it’s charming when Scancarelli gets locked in on something he clearly wants to draw, like a locomotive or today’s World’s Most Adorable Water Heater. Just look at that thing: lovingly rendered hot and cold water lines (copper, no PEX for 18″ ’cause it’s gas), corrugated vent duct shared with the chimney flue no backdrafting here no siree, igniter access panel, overflow pipe, inspection tag, for Pete’s sake! There’s even an International Residential Code-compliant stand to protect against ignition of flammable vapors. But what does that sucker hold, maybe two quarts?

It almost makes up for the cutesy animals and Joel’s lame pun.

Baby Blues, 9/19/24

Zoe turns the tables on the old “just wait ’til you have kids” trope: sour grapes for Wanda!

Crankshaft, 9/19/24

Crankshaft joins Arctic Circle in the Ain’t-It-Awful Hall of Fame.

—Uncle Lumpy