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Gil Thorp, 7/22/21

So we’re still in the early, extremely manic phase of this Gil Thorp storyline, and there’s been lots of cutting back and forth between plots and little context for anything. So far the Heather Burns plot is easy enough to parse (a former Mudlark coming back to Milford and ending up with an almost certainly unpaid assistant coaching job is a long and storied tradition in this strip) but I’m not quite following what the deal is with Loud Golf Hat Man (he’s named “Carter Hendricks,” apparently). We know he’s (a) loud, (b) loves golf and saying golf jargon, (c) wears a hat, and (d) seems like a real asshole, and admittedly that last one is just a gut assessment from me but do you know who else was a solvent salesman? Del Bader, who liked a nightcap or two after a hard day of solvent sales and then ended up killing a beloved Mudlark with his car. Excited to see just how bad Carter’s gonna get!

Family Circus, 7/22/21

Can’t quite tell what Ma Keane’s facial expression is supposed to convey here. Is she imagining Billy going outside and wildly flailing at his various non-baseballs with that baseball bat, much to the embarrassment of everyone watching? Or is she thinking, “Yeah, sure, you’re dad’s a workaholic, that’s it”?

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Gil Thorp, 7/13/21

It’s summertime in Milford, everybody! Is this the year we’re going to get a wacky summer storyline that isn’t about golf? Maybe! We definitely are going to get a wacky summer storyline about a beloved character from the past: Heather Burns, who you might remember as the girl who convinced a professional basketball player to get a master’s degree in history, possibly one of the worst pieces of advice I’ve ever seen given and I read the Mary Worth where Mary told a woman that if she didn’t like her past she should just remember it differently. Anyway, I can’t wait to see what Heather learned in Iowa (possibly after taking out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to get an MFA in creative writing) that will definitely help her career as a poorly paid writer for a dying small-town daily newspaper.

And in the other plot, we have … well, golf, I guess! At least one guy’s wearing a dumb hat, though. Can’t wait to see what antics this hat dude gets up to!

Hi and Lois, 7/13/21

Speaking of golf, I know it’s a rule that legacy cartoonists have to spend the entirety of each and every workday absolutely consumed with thoughts of all the golf they’re going to play when they’re finally done drawing cartoons for the day, but I think they’re supposed to actually come up with a punchline before they head out to the links, sorry guys.

Shoe, 7/13/21

[don’t get mad don’t get mad don’t get mad] IF YOU THINK HE TALKED FOR TOO LONG WHY ARE YOU MAD THAT HE TALKED SO FAST, WOULDN’T THAT HAVE MADE THE WHOLE THING GO QUICKER?????? [aw crap I got mad]

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/10/21

Hey, do you guys remember Phil Holt, who was (I guess?) a thinly veiled stand-in for Jack Kirby, and who Darrin met at a children’s party once, and then he died and left his valuable comics to Darrin, then took up residence in the same spectral hell-dimension that Lisa haunts? Well, he and Flash Freeman had some bad blood, which I guess is supposed to mirror some real-life comic book drama from the Good Old Days, but one of my constant positions is that I love newspaper comics and am extremely lukewarm on comic books, and that was true in 2004 when I started this blog and remains true today in 2021 when comic book franchises have swallowed all other media, so I refuse to do the research as to what the real-life analogue of the “subterranean” is. The point is that this is setting up the real identity of the figure who’s mysteriously interested in Flash and Ruby’s Hall of Fame induction. Do you think it’s supposed to be Phil Holt? Do you think that everyone involved in making Funky Winkerbean forgot that he was dead, or maybe assumed even ghosts needs some kind of pass to get on the Comic-Con floor?

Mary Worth, 7/10/21

Wait, hold on, I had always assumed that, what with her substance abuse problems and her legal issues, Shauna had in fact been the dumpee in her relationship with Drew, which led her to strut her way back into his life looking her best (?) in an attempt to win back his heart. But no, she left him! This is delicious. No wonder Ashlee is so determined to hold onto Drew, this is a guy who will absolutely stick around while you extract all the emotional and financial value from him that you can.

Gil Thorp, 7/10/21

Ugh, it’s a bad idea because the labor necessary to pull this off represents a huge new expense, and you wouldn’t make the money back because libraries don’t charge people! Honestly, Abel, I know this is (hopefully) the last day of it but it’s like you’ve forgotten what your entire deal in this storyline is.