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Archive: Gil Thorp

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Did we … did we forget about the “Dad doesn’t want to be photographed” plot entirely?

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Gil Thorp, 5/28/22

Welp, the gig (gigg?) is up for our boy Gregg, whose blindness was was discovered by Coach Thorp, and after briefly taking the position that, while he was willing to engage in an elaborate web of deception to fool the world, actually making use of reasonable accommodations for his disability would be a bridge too far, he quickly changed his mind and will be wearing a mask to protect him from the baseballs that will be flying at top speed towards his face, completely unseen. Mostly today I’m enjoying the Thorp’s post-coaching intimacy, with Mimi admiring both Gil’s manly yet caring mentoring style and his carrot-cutting skills (he’s going to slice off a finger roughly 0.5 seconds after he delivers his line in the final panel).

Hi and Lois, 5/28/22

What ever happened to romance? To mystery? All you have to do is look at Chip’s face to see how a red-blooded American teen reacts to a girl who “is straightforwardly interested in physical intimacy” or whatever. Thank god nobody else is in this theater to watch a women’s libber absolutely ruin this date, and also to apparently hear them talking at full volume during the movie.

Crankshaft, 5/28/22

Not only do I absolutely buy Crankshaft becoming obsessed with the minutia of property laws, I actually think this would be a great topic for a whole series of storylines. If we’re really lucky, he goes down an internet rabbit hole and becomes a sovereign citizen whackadoo. He’s going to spend hours at the diner scowling at Ralph and Keesterman, talking about how gold fringe on a courtroom flag means you’re being tried under admirality law and that means you don’t have to pay any property tax, while they wait for a terrible pun that never comes.

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Comics deal with the future (i.e., the present)

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The Lockhorns, 5/19/22

I’m pretty sure the first legacy comic to do a cryptocurrency joke was, shockingly, Snuffy Smith way back in 2015, although they just did a “bitcoin? what if a coin got bit? Wouldn’t that be funny????” joke. Nobody would ever accuse The Lockhorns of being innovative, but I respect that they wait until something like cryptocurrency has become a fairly well established part of our mental landscape before figuring out exactly how to fit it into its own internal universe. What they came up with is “Leroy has lost much of his paltry savings in the recent crypto crash but still keeps posting ‘HODL’ on Reddit and won’t shut up about crypto at parties,” which is 100% correct and I applaud it.

Blondie, 5/19/22

I was about to make an “Alexander, your father looks literally exactly like you, as if you were not sired by him in the normal human way but rather were grown in a vat from cells containing only his DNA, what possible reason do you have for saying he’s taking away from the quality of your social media,” but upon reflection I think the joke is about him smiling. Is … smiling bad now? Do the kids not smile anymore? Does Blondie, the strip that did a “You know what I miss? Chalkboards” gag two days ago, know more than me about acceptable facial expressions on Instagram? Truly this is one in a series of humbling moments.

Gil Thorp, 5/19/22

Climate change is accelerating, and you can find evidence of it everywhere. For instance, as the traditional saying goes, “Gil starts actually coaching in June, corn be heavy soon.” But it’s only mid-May and he’s already noticed one of his players is blind! Truly we are moving into uncharted territory.

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Josh contemplates human frailty with varying degrees of sympathy

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Pluggers, 5/11/22

The historian Ronald Syme wrote that the Emperor Augustus, who died at 77, “outlast[ed] the friends, the enemies, and even the memory of his early days,” and I think about that a lot as I get older, about the way that, if you’re lucky enough to live to a ripe old age, you become something of an alien, as the world you grew up in recedes further and further in the past. And what do you get by way of compensation? Well, there’s more life, I suppose, which is not to be sneezed at. And old age maybe takes the edge off a bit by softening our vision and our minds, so we come to perceive the world through a comforting and gradually thickening haze. Unfortunately, modern society and so-called “advanced” medicine has allowed us to reverse this process, so that we can see, with abrupt clarity, the ruin that we have become. As usual, Pluggers, a strip I have been forced to respect more and more, has given me much to think about today.

Gil Thorp, 5/11/22

Speaking of seeing, Nolan Ryan could see, so I don’t know what to tell you, kid. God bless Scooter for sticking up for his tragically blind friend, but as a guy who was once a loser tween who blurted out some ill-thought-out defenses of his fellow losers, I can guarantee you that he will only feel more embarrassed in the coming innings, as Valley Tech sends Greggg flailing aimlessly at bunt after bunt after bunt that he can only hear.

Dustin, 5/11/22

“Can you imagine? It’s 2022! How would we even cash it?”