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Archive: Gil Thorp

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Milky Monday

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Gil Thorp, 4/14/24

Look, my mission is as always to read the comics so you don’t have to, but sometimes with the continuity strips you really do need to read them daily, because the seemingly insignificant ones are there to set up the highlights. For instance, today’s strip, in which Marty is doing Step 9 of the twelve AA steps at the lady who took over his job and his beloved wooden crate press box, is much funnier if you had read Saturday’s strip, which establishes that he’s doing this in the middle of a game, probably in the hopes that some of his apology goes out on-air and people feel sorry for him and proud of the hard work he’s doing and give him his job back.

Heathcliff, 4/14/25

I’ve always assumed that Team Heathcliff resents Garfield at some level because, even though Heathcliff was the first orange cat comic on the block by several years, it never became the multimillion dollar marketing and merchandising juggernaut that Garfield evolved into. But then I see strips like today’s and realize that Heathcliff clings fiercely to its punk rock ethos. “You hate Mondays because you’re pandering to some sub-Dilbert level workaday everyman relatable feeling,” you can imagine Heathcliff saying here. “I love Mondays because I get to make other people hate them by ripping their face off and stealing their milk. We are not the same.”

Slylock Fox, 4/14/25

Wow, the post animalpocalypse society really is becoming more and more like ours every day, as Slylock (who I assume works for the Forestville Bureau of Investigations) becomes increasingly focused in getting one up in the bureaucratic war against the FSA (“they rely too much on high-tech gadgets and refuse to do the real legwork of law enforcement!”) and kind of forgets to do anything about Weirdly and the current giant robot situation.

Pardon My Planet, 4/14/25

Hey, man, uh, what do you think is in the milk you buy in the store. Like, for real. Because I don’t think milk works the way you think it works, like, at all?

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Watch where you’re pointing that thing, narration box

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/11/25

WHO IS THIS MAN, AND WHY IS HE IN THE CROWD? I dunno. Probably he’s the person who was responsible for the stalker guy dying somehow is my guess, what with his cryptic but ominous thought-ballooning. Actually, with his unassuming demeanor and stealthy observational methods, this guy seems like he’s something of a stalker himself. Send a stalker to catch — and possibly kill — a stalker, that’s what I always say, and it looks like I’ve been proven right once again.

Gil Thorp, 4/11/25

A spectre is haunting Milford — the spectre of “Pop,” the beloved dead coach who was somehow even worse than Gil at coaching. Note the “Turn off the lights when you leave!” sign Gil left on the wall: he doesn’t want people seeing the ghost, because he knows that will inevitably lead to the ghost becoming the latest in the parade of unpaid Milford coaching assistants, like bitter janitor Steve Luhm and fake Negro League star Clambake, except dead, which is probably against school policy in some way.

Garfield, 4/11/25

Liz, that’s very much a sandwich. Like, I don’t know what the Paws, Inc., brain trust thinks veggie lasagna with tofu, cheese, and kale looks like, but I’m here to tell them that it pretty much looks like lasagna. There was no need for them to resort to putting clip art of a leaf on top of clip art of a sandwich to convey this idea. They could’ve just put clip art of a leaf on top of clip art of a pan of lasagna! I refuse to believe that Paws, Inc., doesn’t have very easy access to clip art of a pan of lasagna!

Dennis the Menace, 4/11/25

This body positivity pep talk is honestly one of the least menacing things I’ve ever seen! Except for the part where Dennis is in Mr. Wilson’s bathroom while Mr. Wilson is trying to weigh himself, I guess. That part’s pretty worrisome. I know we’ve just inured ourselves to that kind of thing but it’s still not great.

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Friday is for Pop(s)

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Beetle Bailey, 4/4/25

That’s right, Zero! Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention establishes that POWs are only required to give their name, rank, and service number to their captors; their identity so established is used for the administration of their rights under Article 71 to send and receive letters and cards, as supervised by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Your parents will be glad to know you’re alive and safe in … whatever country the men of Camp Swampy have been deployed to invade. It looks heavily forested, wherever it is. Good luck, fellas!

Gil Thorp, 4/4/25

Some say “Pops” was the heart and soul of Milford. Some say that he and “Pop” were the same person, while others say they were twin brothers, one of whom wore fancy clothes while the other wore workingman’s attire and a dumb hat. But everyone agreed that he sucked at coaching sports. He sucked so bad that Gil was credited with “turn[ing] the program around.” Gil! The coach we’ve been following for all these years, who frankly is not very good!

Hi and Lois, 4/4/25

I really love how exhausted Hi looks here. He’s reading that magazine right up until the final moment of unconsciousness, filling his mind with golf and nothing but golf. Golf will be the last thing he sees while he’s awake, so golf will be all he sees while he’s asleep! Golf, wonderful golf! Oh, also his wife is right there or whatever.

Family Circus, 4/4/25

“Let the kids watch PBS,” you said. “It’ll be educational and culturally enriching,” you said. “Definitely they won’t see a lady get stabbed to death by her jealous lover,” you said.