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Gil Thorp, 6/26/19

Welp, the softball team failure to advance in the playoffs went, as predicted, largely unnoticed (especially on this blog, heyooo) and now we’re onto a summer storyline! For those of you too young to remember, summer in Gil Thorp used to be a time when anything could happen, when the strip was freed from the rhythms of the school athletics calendar and could explore truly zany scenarios (e.g., “Coach Kaz, Rock and Roll Bodyguard,” “The Day Marty Moon Got Grifted At Golf,” “Gil Wrestles A Man With Dementia, For Charity“). But lately we’ve just had to endure Gil half-assing it even more than usual as a golf coach, with only the occasional Beloved Character From The Past returning to liven things up. And this year we’re getting a second-order Beloved Character From The Past: Jaquan, a pro basketball player who improbably tagged along for a trip back to Milford two summers ago with his personal trainer, Mudlark alum Trey Davis, and whose mid-career ennui was cured with the suggestion that he get a master’s degree in history. And folks, I’m allowed to say this because I have a master’s degree in history: I assume he’s returned to town to have his awful revenge on everyone who allowed him to make such a terrible decision, because getting a master’s degree in history sucks and carries literally no advantages whatsoever.

Dick Tracy, 6/26/19

Dick Tracy just jettisoned its vaguely exciting tale of Little Orphan Annie being kidnapped mid-week and instead demands that we pay close attention to this scene: a faceless, cigar-smoking man surrounded by a cloud of flies sings a little tune about banana bread and admonishes a yokel for gawping at his late uncle’s vast library. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, it probably won’t come as a huge shock that I find this much more interesting than a little light orphan-napping.

Dennis the Menace, 6/26/19

So Dennis is just straight up stealing stuff now? Even I have to admit that that’s reasonably menacing.

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Family Circus, 6/15/19

God help me, but I laughed at today’s Family Circus. Not because of the lame golf joke — it will never cease to amaze me the extent to which syndicated cartoonists think golf is a infinite supply of relatable laffs — but because of the wary way that Jeffy is eyeing the head of that club that Billy has somehow managed to get his grubby little hands on. What will he damage, or destroy, with it? Will it be one of other Keane Kids’ skulls? Jeffy is resigned to finding out, possibly the hard way.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/15/19

The newspaper industry’s few remaining shreds of decency sadly precluded actually showing us Darrin and Jessica going at it once they were reunited earlier this week. But I appreciate today’s strip for letting us know, in as vivid terms as possible, how extremely gross it all was. What would a monkey do to a cupcake, exactly? I’m not sure, but we can all agree that we’re better off for not having seen it happen!

Gil Thorp, 6/15/19

Gil Thorp spring storylines often verge dangerously into the summer months, but I certainly hope that this one, which has been pretty boring, is just going to end here. Ha ha, we spent so much time on the “too cool for school” drama that we barely noticed that the softball team won the Valley Conference, and did the baseball team even play this year? What would be extremely funny would be if the last word on all this is Mudlark #2 saying “I bet no one noticed” and then next week we just start the summer storyline and the championship is never mentioned again in any way, thus proving her point.

Mark Trail, 6/15/19

“Plus he’s a human being with inherent worth so, if he’s dead … someone, somewhere will be sad? I guess?”

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Mary Worth, 6/6/19

Estelle has yet another Silverdater prospect on the line and she says that the goal is not to carry on a long-running virtual relationship and then wire him ten grand, but to rather meet him in person and have a regular romance where no large sums of money are exchanged, but then also … they’re getting to the point where they’re singing on the phone? I feel like once you get to the singing on the phone part you should probably just meet in person. But you do you, Estelle! Just don’t send him any money! That’s the bad part of “doing you,” the way you do it!

Gil Thorp, 6/6/19

Ah, yes, just as in the world of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, our “Too Cool For School” clique’s move towards liberation merely created another hierarchy, with themselves at the top. Now they’ll be forced to esteem all passions absolutely equally, even though some of them are objectively much dorkier than other, just like in the world of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron.” I guess the real lesson here is that no matter what these girls do, there will be some piece of canonical mid-20th century allegorical literature there to let them know they’re doing it wrong!

Six Chix, 6/6/19

Ha ha, it’s funny because if you drink too much wine, you’ll start to hate yourself! This has been a public service announcement from Six Chix.