Archive: Gil Thorp

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Gil Thorp, 10/21/22

Look, we all know that there’s supposed to be an apostrophe in “Yonkers,” and the joke is that Madame Yonker’s fever is up, meaning she’s sick, but wouldn’t it be funnier if that weren’t the case? “What’s up is Madame Yonkers Fever, the latest craze where we all take turns pretending to be ‘Madame Yonkers,’ a French teacher that we made up! C’mon, Gil, join in on the fun! It’s been in Time and Newsweek, and, I assume, on TikTok.”

Dick Tracy, 10/21/22

So Steelface is the guy whose nephew is doing Vitamin’s comics play, and his particular criminal gimmick is that he’s running some kind of auto theft ring, and, unrelated, has a metal face. Today’s strip is particularly evocative: despite working in the shadowy underworld, Steelface still speaks the language of modern capitalism, in which the vehicles at the heart of his operation are reduced to mere “units” that must be “processed,” and processed more efficiently to boot. Goodwin tries to play along, but he still sees each stolen car as a unique individual and dares to share his truth with his boss and let him know what makes each of them special.

Mary Worth, 10/21/22

Sure, dating a younger man seems cool: the sex is great, and they’re more likely to have made millions from their app startup than someone your age. But there are downsides: they’re much more prone to dying in an Instagram-related accident before your very eyes. Beware!

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Six Chix, 10/10/22

Man, it’s been a while since there’s been a Six Chix with so many specific inexplicable details as this one, and I feel like we need to kick off the week by celebrating it! “Back to the land” generally refers to a movement in the ’60s and ’70s where people rejected modern industrial society and moved to rural areas to live in ways they hoped would be more self-sufficient and connected to the earth. What does this have to do with robots? Why is the back to the land robot carrying a bindle, like it’s a hobo or a child pretending to run away from home in a old-timey comic? Why doesn’t the back to the land robot have legs? Is it significant that the other robot is plugged into the wall? Why is now a particularly panic-inducing time for this trip back to the land to happen? Is the plugged-in robot flailing his arms around in panic like the Lost In Space robot, or is he finger quoting around “back to the land”? Feel free to wildly speculate about the answers to all these questions in the comments, but I assure you that you will never figure it out.

Gil Thorp, 10/10/22

Milford’s new trans student Tobias is also the newest Mudlark, recruited as a kicker after Gil saw him playing soccer. This is big news! The traditionalist Gil Thorp readership needs to be introduced to the idea in the most Gil Thorp way possible: by having him pull off an deranged trickeration play (a rainbow kick, to be clear, is a soccer move) that we only have described to us while two other characters that we’ve never seen before look at the off-panel action. Why is mohawk dude telling Guy “you gotta see this” when Guy is clearly looking directly at the football field, just like mohawk dude is? Did Guy close his eyes so he didn’t have to see the woke hellscape? This too is classic Gil Thorp, and I appreciate it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/10/22

Oh yeah, in Rex Morgan, Hank Jr. and his long-distance girlfriend got married! It all happened off-panel, but don’t worry, they’re here to assure you that it wasn’t very interesting and you didn’t miss anything.

Dennis the Menace, 10/10/22

Ugh, it’s called athleisure, Dennis, look it up. I guess it’s kind of menacing for an eight-year-old to sound like a furious senior citizen writing a rejected letter to the editor about how women today dress like whores in public, but maybe not in the same spirit of menacing as the strip title intends.

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Mary Worth, 10/7/22

Ladies! You want to know what it takes to get a man to “put a ring [not pictured] on it”? Well, apparently you just have to cook the same simple meal that his teenage babysitter made for him years ago when he was a sad neglected child. It’s a real monkey’s paw situation, in that you get what you want but also get a very clear picture of what role exactly you play in your man’s emotional life. Anyway, I’m guessing Iris is going to put off this proposal until she can track down Nancy the babysitter and defeat her in single combat.

Gil Thorp, 10/7/22

There have been plenty of Gil Thorpian shakeups this year, but we haven’t had a chance yet to assess how they’ve affected Gil’s coaching, which is, despite appearances, what he’s actually paid to do. Well, it appears that Gil strolled into the locker room on day one of football practice and announced “If I were on offense, I would simply advance the ball more than 10 yards per set of downs, and ultimately either carry or pass it into the end zone.” And thus “the Thorp Special” was born! Looks like Goshen hasn’t figured out how to stop it yet!

Mark Trail, 10/7/22

I haven’t been super engaged in the current Mark Trail plot about a roadsider tiger “sanctuary”/cult, and, frankly, it looks like Mark hasn’t been either, and now he’s got a better offer. Wouldn’t it be great if comics characters could just peace out of stories and jump into new ones at a whim? Why not! It’s the ’20s, we’re all Zoomers with ADHD now, let’s just go with the flow, baby!

The Lockhorns, 10/7/22

“What did you serve this on … a man bun? A bun made out of man? Did you get that To Serve Man alien cookbook from that Twilight Zone episode, and use its recipes for ‘man bun’ as a guide for baking buns out of human flesh? Did you kill a bunch of men in order to cook them and feed them to me? Is our kitchen a crime scene? Are there more victims than I could possibly imagine?”