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Gil Thorp, 5/22/23

Oh, were you wondering if the Great Vape Caper was still underway and still funding the Milford Athletic Department and/or the lifestyles of certain Mudlarks? Well, it seems that the kids are still in it just long enough to pull off one last score, which is too bad because Marty Moon has finally gotten bored enough to start following teenagers around and taking pictures to see if he can find any who are doing something interesting enough to put on his podcast before he gets arrested for it. Normally at this point in the season Marty would be very drunk most days and wouldn’t have the energy or initiative for this, and I don’t think Gil and the gang have reckoned with how their lives are going to be more difficult now that their main antagonist (media division) is sober.

Mary Worth, 5/22/23

Oh, were you wondering if the next Mary Worth plot would be about that couple at the Bum Boat who were looking at their phones instead of talking to each other? Well, too bad, it’s going to be about Estelle and Ed’s vet clinic, and about Old Man Wynter and his giantess girlfriend and their respective dogs. Those dogs better get a clean bill of health! I know I just made fun of Rex Morgan for having zero narrative tension, but I don’t want to see any god damn animal suffering in this strip! We do not need to see any more enormous dog tombstones, you hear me?

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Gil Thorp, 5/17/23

How is Gil’s arch-rival Luke Hernandez dealing with Gil’s secret baseball weapon, a blind pitcher teaching the Mudlarks to open their third eye and achieve cosmic oneness with the universe? Well, he’s flying to Korea with his assistant Coach Kim to try to recruit one of Kim’s relatives, who’s apparently some kind of baseball superstar. I’m assuming he’s going to pull a picture of Gil out of his wallet and show it to Kwan and say “See this man? He deserves death. He must be destroyed. You shall be the instrument of my vengeance.” Kwan doesn’t speak English, but just the power of Luke’s simmering hatred will be enough to get him onboard.

Mary Worth, 5/17/23

God, can you imagine how much Mary wishes she could just stare at her phone rather than listen to Jeff blather on about whatever it is he thinks is interesting or important? She’s just a little too old and polite to do it, but she envies the freedom of the young.

Hi and Lois, 5/17/23

I didn’t think we could get sadder than “Trixie is left on her own for hours on the floor to stare into the sun,” but I think “Trixie is left on her own for hours on the floor to stare at the TV, which is not turned on” might do it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/17/23

Uh oh! Looks like word’s gotten out that Mud Mountain Murphy is extremely easy to trick. At his next concert, he’ll still be singing “Muddy Boots,” but he’ll also be asking if his fans would be interested in helping him launch MudCoin, his own namesake cryptocurrency, with the help of his new best friend here!

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Gil Thorp, 5/12/23

Gil Thorp is notorious for bringing back beloved characters from years past, and so when I recognized Gregg Hamm’s name I was excited to see how far back in my archives my search for him was going to take me, but it turns out that all the Gil Thorp plots have blurred together into one big timeless smear in my mind, because Gregg’s story was from the summer of 2022, when he managed to pitch while tragically blind thanks to a little light cheating on the part of his teammates. And while I joked about his “tragic blindness” a lot I never really got the impression that he had anything other than just bad vision, but now here he is with a white cane and everything! I’m pretty sure I saw new writer Henry Barajas say that there’s supposed to be a time jump of a few years between Neal Rubin’s last storyline and his first one, but I’d like to believe that he’s fully lost his sight in the past year, and now is going to transform the 2023 Mudlark team by teaching them how to “feel the catcher’s signals.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/12/23

OK, we’ve been joking a lot about how Yvonne has been a little fixated on hearing Mud play “Muddy Boots” one last time, just for her sake, but clearly she cannot hold a candle to these two Mud Mountain Murphy superfans who have presumably spent the last 24 hours or however long it’s been since Fergus’ previous concert in a state of deep depression and/or rage. Those facial expressions tell me that they’re in the midst of near-orgasmic ecstacy at the return of their hero, and probably were planning a suicide attack of some sort on him if he hadn’t returned to form tonight.

Marvin, 5/12/23

Obviously I’m never happy to see or think about Marvin, the character, but I kind of like knowing that even when I don’t see him, he’s busy making the lives of the other characters in the strip miserable, because honestly I’m not a big fan of those people either.