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Gil Thorp, 4/23/22

Despite having become, late in my life and to my own surprise, a fervent Dodgers fan, at first I was unable to get that worked up about the Houston Astro’s sign-stealing scandal of the mid-to-late ’10s that probably cost the Dodgers the World Series in 2017. After all, surely if it’s legal to for one teammate to try to surreptitiously convey information to another during play, it should also be legal for the other team to try do figure out the content of that communication if they can? Well, it turned out that the Astros were dirtier than that — they made use of the cameras in the reply booth to observe other teams’ signals and sent information via electronic buzzers taped to their own players’ bodies — but I still felt like the whole thing raised some interesting philosophical questions, questions which this brewing Gil Thorp storyline is also going to explore! For instance: if it’s legal for the catcher to use hand gestures to send encoded information to the pitcher, why shouldn’t it be legal for the catcher to instead send that encoded information to one of the infielders, who then encodes that information in baseball chatter for the pitcher, who can’t see the catcher because he’s secretly and tragically going blind? I’m very intrigued, though I assume Gil’s typical response to philosophical questions is the same as his typical response to everything else, which is to say three months of ignoring it followed by a lot of yelling.

Mary Worth, 4/23/22

“She’s in her forties or fifties, medium height, short straight hair … I don’t know why I’m giving you a physical description, that’s not what you asked for! … unless you’re standing by the sink, silently staring off into the middle distance with steely resolve, like you’re thinking of paid killers you can hire … ha ha, just kidding, of course … but what if…?”

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Crankshaft, 4/13/22

Once, many years ago, there was a comic strip called Funky Winkerbean about the antics of teenagers. Then someone got the bright idea to spin off the one old person character into his own strip, about old people! Later all the Funky Winkerbean teenagers grew up and become old people in their own right, but that’s a story for another time. Anyway, Crankshaft, the strip about old people, continues to stick to its original old-people mission, and today’s installment, in which two old people angrily yell at each other at the top of their lungs, is a perfect example and I respect it.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/13/22

Oh, I guess the other time to tell the story of the old people Funky Winkerbean characters is now! It turns out Crazy Harry didn’t travel into the metaverse, but rather into his own past, to converse with his younger self, who is eager to learn one thing above all others about his own future, which is: do I get to have [whispers] sex? Ha ha, could you imagine going back to the 1980s heyday of the fun teen characters of Funky Winkerbean, and going up to random newspaper readers and saying, “Hey, you know those teens in Funky Winkerbean? They’re all gonna have sex, eventually, and you’re going to read about it!” They’d literally put you in jail.

Gil Thorp, 4/13/22

“My eyesight is failing! I’ve got grey hair! I’m 55 years old! I can’t believe all of you think I’m a high school student!”

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Gil Thorp, 4/12/22

Can’t believe it’s taken the Milford student-athlete body this long to figure out Coach Thorp’s main weaknesses: he isn’t very smart, and he doesn’t pay a lot of attention to any of his specific individual coachees. If you can trick him into forming a positive opinion of you during a ritual reciting of the names, you’ve got a real leg up!

Gasoline Alley, 4/12/22

Dick Tracy and Gasoline Alley are both syndicated by Tribune Publishing, and with everyone trying to exploit in-house IP to the max these days, it should come as no surprise to see innovative experiments in crossover content synergy like this week’s rapidly escalating Dick Tracy porno. Tribune also owns Gil Thorp, so don’t be surprised to see another special erotic guest star by the end of the week.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/12/22

Ha ha, it’s funny because … poor public health infrastructure has resulted in Hootin’ Holler being ravaged by infectious disease? And it’s hit the children the hardest? That’s the punchline?