Archive: Gil Thorp

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 7/5/23

Ahh, there’s nothing like waking up on a fine summer morning, picking up the morning dead tree paper, and seeing the banner headline that your hated rival was not only fired but escorted off the field by a police officer. Gil is too “old school” to have already learned this via Marty Moon’s podcast or TikTok or whatever like everyone else did, so this is a pretty great way for him to start the day. It’s nice that the paper reminded Gil that he also won a championship himself, in case he forgot.

Mary Worth, 7/5/23

Welp, Greta’s been reunited with Saul and a large steak, so I guess all’s well that ends well! We know that Greta had been held captive by evil Lyle Lovett, but Mary and Saul definitely don’t, and I think it’s very funny that they just assumed, based on some dramatic local news reporting, that a nervous dachshund in a bow tie managed to successfully escape an evil underground dogfighting ring, when the much more probable explanation is that she just wandered off when Saul wasn’t looking and temporarily got lost.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/5/23

TIRED: The weird adult-teens of Glenwood finally graduating from high school
WIRED: The idiot citizens of Glenwood blowing off several fingers, much to Rex’s disgust

Hi and Lois, 7/5/23

Not sure how I feel about Trixie transitioning from “Trixie, the baby who talks to the sun” to “Trixie, the baby who can’t wait to show off her hot beach bod … just like her mom.”

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 6/27/23

Oh wow, it looks like the WOKE FCC won’t let America’s millions of high school sports fans hear fraught language or see a father-son relationship fall apart, with devastating emotional effects that will leave both parties wounded for years, THANKS A LOT PRESIDENT BRANDON

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/27/23

Good lord, I thought Snuffy knowing common French phrases was bad, but I absolutely cannot abide by Hootin’ Holler’s citizenry acting as if they all accept the germ theory of disease.

The Phantom, 6/27/23

Savarna and Wilbur: The superstar teamup we didn’t know we needed!

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 6/20/23

Some years back, the state of Maryland renamed the government agency in charge of courts, detention facilities, and parole supervision for kids under 18 from the “Department of Juvenile Justice” to the “Department of Juvenile Services,” and I can understand trying to get rid of a label that has punitive implications and maybe try to imply that you’re leaning towards rehabilitation, but (a) you can never win a race on the euphemism treadmill and (b) “Department of Juvenile Services” might falsely lead you to believe that the department was delivering services to young people that weren’t ultimately crime-and-punishment related. Anyway, I bring this up because I thought that was a pretty bad euphemism, but “Milford juvenile sports program manager” as a job title for a prison guard is frankly a lot worse.

Family Circus, 6/20/23

Now, obviously the joke here is that Jeffy is an idiot. But you have to admit that it does present us with a truly horrifying image of a world where children just a little older than Jeffy reach an age at which they lose their “child’s eyes” — maybe they cloud over and harden first, or maybe they just suddenly and painfully pop off the optic nerves, with the new, literate “adult” eyes emerging from bloody sockets over the next few excruciating weeks. This is a lot of body horror to just tell us that Jeffy’s an idiot, in other words, especially considering that most of us already knew that he was an idiot.

Hi and Lois, 6/20/23

The truly depressing thing here is that after nearly 70 years in publication, this strip hasn’t come up with enough of a personality for Ditto to give him a plausible joke.