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Gil Thorp, 6/19/20

Good news from Gil Thorp, everyone! Mike “The Mayor” didn’t just slink off to the bad kid school and give up on his hopes and dreams after being expelled for bringing a butter knife into class; instead, he’s training the other bad kids at his bad kid school for an epic slobs vs. snobs baseball battle against his old Mudlark teammates. And he just found his secret weapon Corina Karenna (named, I assume, after the beloved (?) 1994 Ray Liotta/Whoopi Goldberg vehicle Corrina, Corrina), who’s very good at baseball and is a total anarchist. The infield fly rule? The “unwritten rules of baseball”? Corina will be ignoring all of them as the misfits roll over the Mudlarks in an unauthorized game played “thunderdome-style,” i.e., with no umpires, parents, or sense of decency.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/19/20

Today’s Funky Winkerbean made me realize that despite having read about the glory and pageantry of Lisa’s Story for years and years and years, I don’t actually … know what exactly Lisa’s Story is about? I mean, I know Lisa’s actual life story, but does the book/movie treatment cover the whole arc of her life, or just the cancer stuff or what? And, like, she died pretty young — Darrin, who was born when she was in high school, was in high school when she passed away, so she couldn’t have been older than her mid-30s. And she had two cancer bouts, over several years! I have no idea how young or old this actress is who Les just hate-masturbated to on the plane, and it’s true that Hollywood casts actresses young, but I’m pretty sure Les would only be satisfied without someone the age he is now, and here’s the thing, Les: Lisa stopped aging when she died.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/19/20

Ha ha, that got kind of dark, didn’t it? Well, suck it up, times are dark. Look, here’s the grimmest, realest Hagar the Horrible ever written!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/27/20

As you may know (and if you don’t buckle up because you are about to find out), I love etymologies. So, here’s a fun fact! In German, the word for “prince” (in the sense of “a sovereign ruler regardless of other title” rather than the sense of “the son of a king”) is “fürst.” Etymologically, this word means, quite literally, “the first,” as in the foremost person in the state; “fürst” and “first” also have the same etymological root, and are basically pronounced the same way, but because English always has to be fancy, we imported our word for the noble title from French, which in turn got it from the Latin word “princeps,” which also literally means “first.”

Anyway, I’m pointing this out mostly because of Jughaid’s “furst” in panel two, which is a prime example of the eye dialect used in this strip, designed to make the characters look like they’re speaking non-standard English even though the difference between “furst” and how anyone would pronounce “first” is negligible. And honestly, I’d like to believe that Jughaid is announcing that the Holy Roman Emperor had invested him in a small alpine principality with the status of imperial immediacy, and that he’ll be leaving the Holler behind to take possession of his new realm post-haste.

Beetle Bailey, 5/27/20

I woman I dated briefly years ago once said that it always made her cringe to see a couple both sitting on the same side of a table at a restaurant because she took it as a sign that the passion had gone out of their relationship, and while I definitely think that’s a sweeping overgeneralization, I admit I always think about it whenever I see people sitting like that. Anyway, I wonder what she’d think about a couple who’s sitting together on one side of the table at a restaurant and also one of them has fallen asleep face first onto their plate.

Gil Thorp, 5/27/20

Good news, everyone! Mike “The Mayor” has resigned himself to having his life destroyed for no good reason and has now come on down to see his old friends continue to play team sports, like he used to do. Anyway, would it be an appropriate response if he just whipped out a butter knife and started stabbling everyone to death with it? Well, no, no it wouldn’t. But would it work as narrative? Yeah, sure, probably.

The Lockhorns, 5/27/20

I know this isn’t the intended reading, but I am absolutely cackling at the thought of Leroy diligently printing out the “How To Fake Your Own Death” WikiHow article, which he’s now studying with more determination than we’ve ever seen him demonstrate in his entire life to this point.

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Blondie, 5/25/20

If you had asked me to make a list of Dagwood’s trademark “things,” obviously sandwiches would be at the top, but I’d also say sleepiness, being a slacker at work, insatiable hunger (if we’re thinking of that as a separate thing from the sandwiches), his constant physical abuse of the mailman, and his weird passive-aggressive relationship with his supposed “best friend” and next door neighbor. “Classic TV” wouldn’t appear anywhere on the list, and while as written for the last decade or two Dagwood has embodied powerful boomer vibes and I’d definitely believe that he’s into classic TV, all the TV jokes in this strip are about made-up shows with food themes that he’s obsessed with (see “insatiable hunger,” above). This strip, in other words, has shaken me to my very core.

Gil Thorp, 5/25/20

“If you hadn’t imposed a life-altering punishment on a student for an extremely minor infraction, you could’ve been fired and reduced to penury yourself! Remember, in this totalitarian panopticon, we are simultaneously the enforcers of arbitrary rules and subject to them. It’s very grim!”

Marvin, 5/25/20

Man, it took me a lot longer than it should’ve for to realize that by “poor loser” the girl baby whose name I refuse to learn or look up means what a normal English speaker would call a “sore loser”; I thought she meant someone who was a loser because they were poor, and I actually started getting indignant on Marvin’s behalf. He’s not poor at all! Have you seen his bathroom? It’s a fucking palace!