Post Content

Judge Parker and Gil Thorp, 9/17/16

Saturday is a natural point for a mid-plot cliffhanger for a soap opera strip, and these two offer a great Goofus-and-Gallant-style class on how this effect can — and can’t — be achieved. Start with Judge Parker: we all thought Sophie was fine, but it looks we popped the cork on the champagne a little early, eh guys? Because it’s Honey who crawled living from the wreckage, and Sophie who’s apparently still dangling there, proving, if we needed further proof, that Honey was the steel-willed one all along. So is Sophie OK? Is the whole band dead? Does Honey think she’s Sophie? Have the Spencer-Drivers, who only got the call from the police in the first place due to the unseemly influence they have over the local government and services thanks to their wealth and power, bothered to contact the parents of anyone else in that car, who presumably are also worried about their missing children?

Meanwhile, in Gil Thorp, a girl decided to quit the soccer team and become a student trainer. Forgive me if I say this doesn’t bring us to quite the same thrill level.

Crankshaft, 9/17/16

Shoutout to the Cleveland State Comics Club who, when tasked with coming up with a plot for Crankshaft, settled on “What if Crankshaft did ’shrooms?”

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 9/9/16

Welp, looks like despite my best efforts to fool myself, summer is actually over in Milford, and football (both the American and foreign versions) season is getting underway! Panel one gives True Standish, the beloved (?) driving force behind many of the last couple years’ plots, an affectionate sendoff as he leaves the strip forever, or at least until he blows his knee out in a scrimmage a year from now and starts hanging awkwardly around Milford again. In panel two, Coach Kaz is the only person on the field wearing sunglasses, proclaiming his intention to let the whinges of his student-athletes blow harmlessly past him like “The Ride of the Valkyries” in the classic Maxell tape commercial. And in the final panel, a Lady Mudlark soccer player is experiencing one of the most valuable lessons that high school athletics has to offer: a keen insight into one’s own essential mediocrity.

Six Chix, 9/9/16

Shoutout to Six Chix for really committing to a strip gag where two vultures hang around talking about how much they love eating rotting animal carcasses! What really impresses me is that the artist gave that dead dog or whatever it is a face. Just two little closed eyes, but still, it crosses the line from “dead thing in the abstract” to “a creature that once lived and loved but then got hit by a car or maybe died of exposure and now its rotting corpse is a delicacy for these carrion-eaters to devour,” which, just to reiterate, is a joke that we’re expected to laugh at.

Post Content

The Lockhorns, 9/6/16

“Like, take the guy who designed this building. How high do you think that ceiling is? Six feet? Six and a half? I’d like to use the democratic process to let that architect know what I think of him! Too bad we can’t. Too bad he works for the Management of this building, which is an enormous edifice built on the post-apocalyptic wasteland that used to be ‘outside.’ Or that’s what they say, anyway. I’ve never seen a window. Have you? Has anyone? How many generations has humanity been inside this fortress? Has anyone seen the Manager, who has enslaved us to inscrutable busywork under the eternal glare of flickering fluorescent lights? Did you catch the big game last night? Working hard or hardly working?”

Gil Thorp, 9/6/16

Oh hey, now that phenom QB True Standish is off to anchor the Wake Forest Demon Deacons’ 114th-ranked offense, I guess there’s a new quarterback battle shaping up in Milford! Soon enough we’ll learn if Kevin Pelwecki is a standard-issue “overly cocky high school athlete” of the sort we get once a year, or actively delusional!

Hagar the Horrible, 9/6/16

Legitimate shoutout to Hagar the Horrible for depicting how the only way to truly survive war with your mind intact is to pretend your enemies aren’t human! The carnage behind Hagar and Eddie is particularly great — but nothing compared to what happened to Eddie’s soul.