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Gil Thorp, 7/8/21

Oh, hey, the “spring” storyline in Gil Thorp is still going on [checks notes] several days after the 4th of July, but today’s strip would like you to know that you aren’t going crazy: it’s being deliberately dragged out by the library board, because they’ve discovered how great it is when people pay attention to them and they’re going to ride that high as long as they can. Anyway, it’s pretty clear from the neoliberal detente Zane and Abel achieved at their debate that the library board is going to announce that there’s no rule in the bylaws that would prevent them from appointing two new members. If there’s further conflict between the two, expect the rest of the board to live-stream the meetings in hope of recreating this magic springtime when everyone cared about library governance (it definitely won’t work).

Daddy Daze, 7/8/21

The whole gimmick of Daddy Daze is that the Daddy Daze baby speaks in an unintelligible series of “ba”s, which the Daddy Daze daddy purports to understand as a fully-fledged linguistic system that encodes complex ideas and concepts. I’m a fan of Occam’s Razor, the idea that simpler explanations are usually to be preferred to more complex ones, which may give you an idea of where I come down on the question of “is the Daddy Daze baby actually able to formulate complete sentences in a language of his own design despite his young age that his father understands, or is the Daddy Daze daddy merely in an advanced stage of psychosis?” Strips like today make the question substantially easier to answer, in my opinion.

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Hagar the Horrible, 6/29/21

The most unsettling thing about today’s extremely gross Hagar the Horrible is Hagar’s eager smile in the final panel. I’m not sure which possibility is worse: that Hagar is intrigued by this new an thoroughly repulsive weapon that Lucky Eddie has just added to the Viking band’s arsenal, or if he’s just excited and maybe a little aroused to watch someone barf.

Judge Parker, 6/29/21

Folks, it looks like Neddy is finally going to be forced by her circumstances to truly go out on her own and make it as a responsible adult! Fortunately, by the look of panel two, she’s prepared herself for this potentially difficult conversation by getting extremely high first.

Gil Thorp, 6/29/21

Swordfights? More like accidental suicide pacts, kid! Surprisingly, it seems like someone maybe hasn’t been spending enough time at the library.

Mary Worth, 6/29/21

“OK, we’ve established that these two attractive women are uncouth and sexually aggressive. Now they’re going to compete for Dr. Drew’s love. What are their tactics? Showing up at his work with coffee for him, right?” –the Mary Worth creative team, apparently (LOVE U GUYS, PLEASE DON’T EVER CHANGE)

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Gil Thorp, 6/26/21

So the B-plot to this spring’s library administration nonsense has been Corina Karenna nonsense, in which the beloved (?) and sassy new Mudlark has resisted all of Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp’s entreaties to take her prodigious softball skills to college, using the facts that she spent much of her high school years at an “alternative” school and her mom needs care due to unspecified mental health problems as excuses. But it turns out that her grades are actually great and her mom wants her to go to college, so her mom and Mimi conspired to get her enrolled, problem solved! Anyway, none of that is very interesting, and mostly what I want to talk about in today’s strip is panel two, which takes the “it’s OK for a character to have a word balloon attached to them even if they’re obviously not talking” position to a radical extreme. Not sure if we’re meant to understand that Mimi is taking a big sip of iced tea to wet her whistle and prepare to unleash this long sentence, or if she’s drinking it to soothe her parched palate after saying it, or if (best option, in my opinion) she’s just kind of burbling her words through her beverage. Gil, who is used to Mimi’s bullshit after however many decades of marriage, will refuse to acknowledge this.

Marvin, 6/26/21

Say what you will about Marvin, but at least it doesn’t have an ongoing plot I feel obligated to recap just so I can talk about some visual element that annoys me in today’s strip. That visual element is Bitsy’s foot. It’s got paw pads, like a dog’s foot should, but also distinctly human toes. It’s gross and I hate it! This concludes my Marvin commentary for today.