The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Archive: Gil Thorp

Comments are closed

Don’t think I didn’t notice Dick walking around just casually unbuttoned

Post Content

Dennis the Mance, 4/11/20

Yes, yes, the real menace here is that Dennis’s mom is forcing her son to be a messenger in her marital psychodrama, and is just standing in the doorway watching him do it to boot, but I cannot get over the suitcase that Henry is backing for his bacchanalian trip to Sin City. Crisp white dress shirt after crisp white dress shirt … blue check pants, or maybe a sport jacket, or maybe a whole suit … those ladies aren’t gonna know what hit ’em!

Dick Tracy, 4/11/20

Many people worry: how will the elderly and others not fully plugged in to the internet stay informed as print media finally dies out? Well, don’t worry: they can just pick up their old-timey crank-driven phones and call up their cop friends to find out what they missed.

Gil Thorp, 4/11/20

Say what you will about Gil Thorp, but the strip really knows how to build up to a narrative crescendo and end the week on a cliffhanger! A walk? In the third inning? I’m on the edge of my seat!

Comments are closed

He’s probably stepped on it at least twice

Post Content

Pluggers, 4/6/20

A rule of classic horror, which has somewhat fallen by the wayside in this era of all-too-perfect CGI effects, is to never quite let the audience get a good look at the awful thing you’ve been hinting at all movie, because their imagination will inevitably fill in something far more terrifying than anything you could depict in practice. That’s why I respect what Pluggers has done today, allowing us to dream up our own image of what that greasy slice of pizza, which just landed cheese-side-down on this plugger’s nasty-ass floorboard and is now covered by a thick layer of matted fur speckled with gravel, will look like right before he shoves it into his greedy maw.

Gil Thorp, 4/6/20

It’s finally baseball season and we can move on from the utter snooze-fest that was the basketball plot, though we’re still in the early stages of this storyline, which is to say that Gil is just rattling off the names of various players to his compliant, favored media outlet. Still there are hints of fun to come: the outfield will feature unapologetic fraud artist Tiki Jansen and violent scissors criminal Chance Macy, so I assume that by “a lot of speed” Gil means they’ll be running a amphetamine-dealing ring from the dugout.

Dennis the Menace, 4/6/20

“He’s still sittin’ there watching it, though! Dad says old age has really turned his brain to pudding.”

Comments are closed

It’s funny because he uses alcohol to numb his emotional pain

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 3/28/20

Lots of people, me included, criticize legacy strips like Beetle Bailey for just going back to the same well over and over again. But I want to recognize the fact that they can be innovative too, often refining established joke premises into sharper and sharper barbs. Take this strip’s now beloved weekly regular, “The Halftracks Hate Each Other.” Today’s installment really presents us with a harrowing and baroque version of what’s usually a quick and savage interaction: Amos sitting in a bar drinking himself blotto, with every sip reported back to his wife, who’s no doubt lying in bed alone, staring at her phone and getting more incandescently angry and bereft with every text. I personally feel like I will never be warm again after reading this!

Gil Thorp, 3/28/20

Oh man, remember how this Gil Thorp storyline began with jokes about how annoying it would be to have the same name as a popular digital assistant? Well, guess how it’s ending! Let’s please do something dumb about baseball starting Monday and never speak of any of this again.

Dustin, 3/28/20

Dustin was of course created to specifically poke fun at the tensions between millennials (who suck) and baby boomers (who … don’t, apparently?), but that doesn’t mean it can’t also take on some more universal truths, specifically that women be shopping. Throughout time, in every nation, across generations: Women. Be. Shopping.