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Gil Thorp, 7/16/16

In general, I have been very happy about our move to Los Angeles, but like many transplants, I do sort of miss the passing of the seasons. This surprised me because I hate both cold and hot and humid weather. You do sort of get a winter from December to February, which everyone else makes fun of because the temperature maybe gets down into the 50s, though keep in mind that most Southern California homes are very poorly insulated so if it’s in the 50s outside, it’s also in the 50s inside your house. But the rest of the year is kind of a sunny-and-70s-or-80s blur, with occasional weeks in the 90s that could happen at any time, with the upshot being that it’s actually kind of difficult to remember what time of year it is sometimes. To keep moored in reality, you come to depend on external signposts, and up to this year, Gil Thorp’s chronological rhythm was one of those for me. You got football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring, and some wacky “school’s out” plot or maybe golf in the summer. But it’s summer and this baseball plot is still happening. Even when the “Elmer gets deported” plot of spring ’08 dragged on into summer, there was an acknowledgement that the semester had ended. But now? Much as I would like to enjoy Barry Bader’s continuing hilarious insensitivity to his beloved classmate’s gruesome death, I can’t help but wonder why Gil is still at his desk on July 16th. Has the world gone completely mad? Is this the final step in becoming unmoored from the natural world, begun decades ago when industry began to displace agriculture as humanity’s dominant profession? Will the fall bonfire never come?

Hagar the Horrible, 7/16/16

I’m not sure which interpretation of this strip is more unsettling: that an executioner, overhearing strangers having a conversation in a pub, assumed that they were talking about executing people, or that this executioner’s work life and sexual desires have converged in horrifying ways.

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Judge Parker, 7/11/16

I don’t really have the strength to get into the various nuances of the Sophie-Derek-Honey triangle, or how the details have shifted over time to make Sophie look better. I just want to enjoy Derek’s hilarious pissyface in panel one. Look at that thing! It’s almost like he thought inviting two girls who like him but hate each other on this trip was a good idea and the scenario was going to work out great for him and everyone else involved. Sorry Derek!

Gil Thorp, 7/11/16

Is this funeral in a church? I really want Tru to have his full on nihilist breakdown in a church. “Some things are just random. No omniscient deity guides us towards an ending that was meant to be! Nothing has any meaning!” [clergyman attempts to drag him away] “Get your hands off me, you charlatan!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/11/16

Meanwhile, in the “Rex found valuable comic books under the floorboard of his attic” plot, Rex’s pals are putting the valuable comic books that have been slowly mouldering under the floorboards of Rex’s attic for decades into protective sleeves, apparently under the misapprehension that protective sleeves work retroactively.

Slylock Fox, 7/11/16

You know, considering how often Slylock has Max and Melanie over socially, you’d think he’d get some chairs they could actually sit in.

(Psst! Today’s the twelfth anniversary of the day I started this blog by writing a pissy screed about Non Sequitur, for some reason! Thanks to everyone who’s been reading for twelve years or twelve minutes. It’s still fun and you’re all great!)

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Marvin, 7/7/16

So it turns out Marvin’s dad didn’t go to jail, and is now planning on taking his wife and child on vacation to the extremely cheap destination of “Swindletopia.” Today, his father-in-law gloms onto the trip using transparent emotional manipulation! The brief forays this strip takes into the lives of its adult characters makes you long for its usual witty and subtle baby poop jokes.

Gasoline Alley, 7/7/16

I’m trying, I’m really trying to not get worked up over the various historical horrors going on with this coin. I won’t goggle at the fact that the strip managed to accurately learn that Nero’s full name began with “Nero Claudius” but get everything else wrong: that he was never referred to as such on coins, only as “Nero Caesar”; that the picture looks almost nothing like Nero’s real coin portraits; that the “A.D.” dating system wasn’t developed until the 6th century A.D. and the pagan Romans wouldn’t have used it as a dating formula in 64 even it was around. I am, however, going to get mad about the fact that this terrible coin changes size radically between panels, appearing to be about the size of a quarter in panels one and three and about the size of a smallish plate in panel two.

Gil Thorp, 7/7/16

Oh, man, looks like Boo’s death is setting up a wacky summer Gil Thorp plot in which the kids discover nihilism! Watch them veer wildly between sullen inaction and wild self-destructive behavior, all while muttering “What’s the point of the playdowns? What’s the point of the annual bonfire? What’s the point of anything?”