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Gil Thorp, 11/27/23

Happy postprandial Monday, all, and welcome to The Misdirect, Chapter 4 of the Barajas Era of Gil Thorp, America’s #1 newspaper comic for confusing sports action. After besting Valley Tech’s football team (I think?) by injuring one of their key players, Coach Thorp is ready to move on to basketball season, while Coach Ochoa is handing [squints] lacrosse (…?) duties. Coach Martinez, meanwhile has realized that the success of the [squints harder, eventually gives up] TBD team on the [shorthand for the TBD team’s playing surface or arena] matters less than branding, which is why he’s installed an enormous Milford/Martinez M in ominous red and black to loom over the gym, emphasizing to student-athletes and fans alike that they constitute One Team, One School, One Volk.

Pluggers, 11/27/23

Remember a million years ago, when, during a Super Bowl halftime show, Justin Timberlake tore a small piece of Janet Jackson’s outfit off, semi-revealing her breast, which was still mostly covered by an elaborate nipple ring appliance, and there were huge raging debates over whether this was intentional or a “wardrobe malfunction?” Like many incidents we all have to pretend are meaningful in some way, it sounds insane if you describe it in hindsight, but anyway, pluggers definitely remember. Pluggers remember, and to pluggers, their head is a boob and the slow work of time and decay is Justin Timberlake’s dextrous hand, about to free their head-boob for their loved ones and all of America to unexpectedly see.

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Mary Worth, 11/23/23

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! How will you be spending the day? Will you be enjoying a meal in the company of a bunch of other people from your apartment building that you don’t like very much, but you have agreed to spend the evening with because you were promised a particularly juicy bit of gossip to make up for the bone-dry turkey?

Gil Thorp, 11/23/23

Or will you be at home with your beloved family, along with the golf coach who’s fucking your wife?

Six Chix, 11/23/23

Trying to figure out where the action is happening in any given Six Chix is of course a fool’s errand but — are these turkeys hanging out amongst the clouds, indicating that they’re dead (presumably killed for some human’s Thanksgiving dinner) and in heaven? Truly sad that, even in Paradise, they cannot escape the justified fear that haunted them their whole brief, sad lives. Enjoy your holiday meal, everybody!

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Gil Thorp, 11/21/23

Hey, remember earlier this year, when Gil Thorp did a ripped from the headlines story about about a player who got terribly hurt during a game, only unlike the headlines, where professional athletes refused to return to play, the high school students were forced to forced to finish the game while their friend might’ve been dying? Well, looks like it’s happening again, and this time the injured student is Coach Luke’s son, still playing for Valley Tech even after his dad had to take a job working for his hated rival Gil Thorp. Why do these gruesome injuries keep happening to Valley Conference players? Probably for the same reason that the games continue after the kids are medivac’d off the field: because none of the adults involved care whether the student-athletes live or die.

Mary Worth, 11/21/23

“Did you know that this huge, beefy hunk is also a man-whore, who has impregnated at least one woman, via sex? Do with that information what you will, though if what you’re going to do with it is masturbation or dissociative fantasies during your thrice annual marital encounter with Ian, please feel free not to tell me.”

Beetle Bailey, 11/21/23

I know Beetle is using “neat” in the first panel to mean “tidy” but it’s hard for me to not read it as just “good” in general. He likes beds! He spends a lot of time in them, and has come to appreciate the ones that are especially interesting or high-quality.

Hagar the Horrible, 11/21/23

Hagar and his warriors have all suffered battle wounds during their latest raid, and their loved ones are waiting for them as they return to Norway, doing their best to nurse them back to health. That’s not a joke or anything, just a thing that’s happening in this comic strip!