Archive: Gil Thorp

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Dennis the Menace, 8/25/10

It seems at last that Dennis has found something truly menacing to do: serve as a self-appointed eugenicist enforcer. “Miss, did you have authorization from the Central Hereditary Bureau to bear that child? I can tell by looking at you that your genome is suspect.”

Gil Thorp, 8/25/10

Gil Thorp has managed to find something duller than golf in real life or golf on TV: golf in the comics. Yes, I know we’ve been talking about golf in the strip all summer, but the last few … days, I guess (it seems like years) have been taken up by an actual single golf game. It’s been so boring that Torrey is well aware that most of the readership has dozed off, and is attempting to poke them to wake them up in the first panel. The person I really feel for is the behatted multi-chinned dude in the first panel. You can tell he’s all excited about his big Gil Thorp cameo! Wore his best Hawaiian shirt and everything! Too bad it’s in such a snooze-inducing strip.

Mary Worth, 8/25/10

Why is Mike surrounded by a halo of distress in panel two? Does he fear that his father is going to die of massive liver failure right there in front of him, and he’ll be responsible for disposing of the gin-soaked body? Or is he disgusted that the old man is satisfied to go to his grave without having tracked down Richie’s killer, thus becoming a failure at officially everything?

Pluggers, 8/25/10

Pluggers know that the chances of their working up the energy to have sex with one another will be improved if they can’t see each other.

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Your comments of the week momentarily, but first: As I noted last week, this summer’s Gil Thorp storyline has been insultingly boring, not least because it has featured exactly zero instances of Coach Kaz being wacky. We weren’t even treated to another glimpse into his love dojo! Faithful reader Loramir provides some evidence of why this might be.

I confess, I’ve only read Gil Thorp this summer when you’ve posted it on the site, but apparently while Gil’s celebrating his success in bringing honesty back to golf, Coach Kaz has been hiring himself out again. Not, unfortunately, as a freelance badass — just as a yard man.

I encountered this truck the other day around town and figured I’d send the photo to the only other people I know of (possibly the only other people period) who care how Coach Kaz is spending his summer while Gil chills in the clubhouse: the Comics Curmudgeon and my fellow readers.

But we need to move on from this sadness and learn to love again, with help from the comment of the week!

“Is it me, or did the writer of A3G have an ‘oh shit’ moment when she was writing Mojo’s lines? ‘I’ve styled everyone from Beyonce…’ Oh crap, nobody in my target audience knows who that is! Uh … uh … ‘…to Helen Mirren.’ Saved it!” –Rumon

And the hilarious runners up!

“I call foul. They aren’t enjoying a real frolic until they’ve shared a sandwich.” –seismic-2

“I think Mary Worth is teaching us an important lesson about the inevitable random cruelty of urban vigilante fashion police. There’s no excuse for what they’ve done, but seriously: don’t ever go out on the streets in a vest, kids.” –Revenge of Chesnut

“That’s a hell of a big piece that gangster is riding around with in his sweet two-door Dodge Aries K. It’s a good thing he has that ice chest riding shotgun to help steady his aim.” –Edgy DC

“I’m glad they added ‘college student’ into that plugger joke’s calculus because ‘A plugger’s idea of a balanced meal is eating three processed foods with slightly different flavors’ would have been just too hard to believe.” –Fanshawe

“I had previously assumed one became a plugger only through soul-crushing life experience. I find it uplifting to deduce through the existence of college-age pluggers that it is a hereditary trait, and therefore one which I can almost certainly never acquire.” –Tess

“There is no way that is not Rusty in a Marlo Thomas wig. Who’s that girl? It’s Rusty.” –Jester

“I must say, considering Dr. Mike’s earlier histrionics he’s taking his father’s revelations with an alarming nonchalance. ‘So your best friend was brutally murdered in front of your very eyes and you left mom and me to go on a bloodthirsty campaign of vigilante justice? Fascinating, please go on.'” –Paddy

“Say what you will about 9 Chickweed Lane and Mary Worth (and I usually do), but as far as I know, they have yet to stoop to using hair cutting as a major plot point.” –TheDiva

“My initial reaction was also to be kind of judgmental about Lu Ann’s pathological obsession with getting her hair cut and seeming belief that it’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person, but I guess if I had to wake up every day to the chilling cautionary example that is Tommie, I might get a little squirrely on the subject myself.” –Violet

“I can’t think of a decade old enough to put jury duty jokes into.” –Alex

“So in Shoe’s grotesque avian parody of the human world, you can still smoke cigars in drug stores but Preparation H is available by prescription only?” –Joe Blevins

Panel 5 of Mary Worth: Best Comb-over Depiction in A Dramatic Role.” –zenvelo

“Sam Driver weight-tested women’s shoes. Neddie had lunch with … some guy. April went on a thrilling, high stakes mission for the CIA, probably involving a car chase, a shootout, and lots of cool explosions. There was only time to follow two of those three storylines. And the creators of Judge Parker stand by their decision. –4 8 15 16 23 42

“‘Exchange data’? We didn’t call it that in my unspecified period of time.” –Zaratustra

“When Herb says, ‘I hate the way this show typifies the way women gossip,’ his obtuse verbiage is actually a psychological defense that indicates he’s lying to himself. What he really means is, ‘I love Gossip Girl.’” –BigTed

As ever, big thanks go out to everyone who put some cash in my tip jar! And, while there are no advertisers to thank this week, there have been some exciting updates to our advertising offerings, so please check those out!

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Gil Thorp, 8/18/10

I feel like I’m turning into one of those old people who are always whining about how much better things used to be in the Old Days, when you could get drunk at lunch on weekdays and children were allowed to work in garment factories, but: summer used to mean something in Gil Thorp, man. It meant total madness. Remember 2007? Coach Kaz pimped himself out as a freelance badass and Gil taught a one-legged kid to box, in the same year? The seasons used to follow a predictable, stately rhythm: football, basketball, baseball/softball, lunacy.

But in 2010, this has now been downgraded to football, basketball, baseball/softball, golf. This summer hasn’t even had a hilarious b-plot to distract us from the annoying overbearing-father-cheating-on-golfing-son’s-behalf bull hockey we’ve been subjected to. Today’s the first time in nearly a month I’ve felt any compulsion to comment on the strip, and it’s just to note that Gil, having against all odds defeated the evil overbearing dad with his usual half-assed psychological warfare techniques, has decided to reward himself by getting blotto and watching the young people he’s ostensibly supposed to be coaching from the safe distance of the golf course’s clubhouse.

Mary Worth, 8/18/10

Wow, remember yesterday when I made a very silly and totally unrealistic joke about Richie getting gunned down in a drive-by? Well, it turns out that I can kill comics characters with my mind. Whom shall I mark for death next? Marvin? Brad DeGroot? Marvin and Brad in some kind of murder-suicide pact?