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Archive: Gil Thorp

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Mostly frisbee content

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Shoe, 3/5/22

Look, I’m not saying the creators of Shoe are trying to get us to think about the weird anatomical mechanics of their bird-man character’s asses — I am of course on the record as saying that they’ve actually forgotten that they’re birds entirely. But you have to admit that this strip features the absolutely perfect angle to remind you that, yes, the Perfesser has a huge plume of tail feathers, and that’s why he doesn’t wear pants, and then immediately hits you with his wacky story of sitting a gooey puddle of chocolate. I don’t care for it.

Mary Worth, 3/5/22

Oh my gosh, it looks like we’ve found our plot’s villain, everybody! It’s this woman who’s watching Toby and Cal’s ham-handed flirting with cold, detached disapproval. Not sure which possibility is funnier: that she’s Santa Royale Community College’s designated #metoo officer and she’s going to cancel the living daylights out of Toby, or she’s a literature prof who’s met Ian at conferences and always had an eye on him, and now that his hussy younger wife is flinging herself at some teenager she sees a chance to make her move.

Gil Thorp, 3/5/22

“…to inject me with the EXPERIMENTAL SUPER SERUM”

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Remember, the other plot is a PANIC some girls who drank exactly one-third of a can of hard seltzer

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Gil Thorp, 2/26/22

The thing about Gil Thorp and its teenage hijinks is that they do occur in the very restricted world of the newspaper comics section, which means that the black-market Adderall the characters buy needs to be fake, their “sexting” photos need to be fully clothed, and their backyard wrestling deaths need to be accidental. Still, I would have liked at least a panel or two of ambiguity before finding out that Pranit’s attempt to solve his cash-flow problems with hired violence instantly blew up in his face.

Gasoline Alley, 2/26/22

Gasoline Alley is doing this long shaggy dog story about how Walt was on an adventure in Egypt decades ago and ended up in a Pharaoh’s tomb and drank something, and I feel like we finally have an explanation of what’s going on with him, which is that he’s under a mummy’s curse. Which make sense, as he’s increasingly mummy-like himself.

Mary Worth, 2/26/22

Cal, I get it, Toby’s an attractive woman, and a student-teacher romance has a forbidden allure. But you don’t have to debase yourself by claiming that you think Toby’s hideous grey figurines look “playful.” Try to have a little dignity, man.

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Lillian will not be involved (too boring)

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Crankshaft, 2/22/22

God, I certainly hope this is the setup for an Agatha Christie-style locked room murder mystery, where all of our beloved Crankshaft favorites — you know, Crankshaft, [squints at mailbox] Keesterman, Crank … friends, uh, and the, uh, ladies — are summoned to a mansion for a mysterious gathering where everyone has a secret and nothing is as it seems. Will Crankshaft turn out to be the killer … or, better, the victim, and turns out everyone killed him, just like in Murder on the Orient Express! Uh, spoilers for an 88-year-old novel, I guess. And for a five-year-old movie. I swear I don’t know who did it in Death on the Nile! Anyway, yesterday’s strip consisted of Crankshaft aggressively reading the back of a box of cereal and complaining that he didn’t have a newspaper to read, and the bearded guy with one arm used to run the local paper by himself until he quit to spite the hedge fund that bought it, so I’m betting this is actually going to be a meeting where Crankshaft And The Gang Save Journalism, a plot that will make me so angry that I’ll wish they’d all murder each other and then go to jail for it.

Gil Thorp, 2/22/22

I always find it charming when we get occasional reminders that Milford isn’t so sports-crazed as to be able to afford a full-time assistant coach and that Kaz has to double up as a teacher of some sort. In real-life schools, phys ed teachers/coaches are often enlisted to teach health — I got my sex ed from a guy who insisted we refer to him as “Coach” in the classroom and wore short shorts and a whistle at all times, but the information he imparted on contraception and STIs was accurate and complete — but Kaz seems to teach … geography, maybe? No doubt he’s hoping that he can drag out “Paraguay: South America’s forgotten -guay” for two or maybe even three class periods. Pranit, meanwhile, is learning a different kind of lesson, namely that traditional bookies employ burly men to shatter the knees of recalcitrant bettors for a reason (the reason is that if you don’t, the bettors simply refuse to pay you a lot of the time).

Mary Worth, 2/22/22

Wow, I assumed the inevitable Cal-Toby flirtation would begin with Cal showing Toby a drawing he did of her, implicitly saying “Ms. Cameron, look at how young and beautiful you are … in my eyes.” I’m very pleased to be proved wrong and see that his actual opening move was to give her a dreamy-eyed picture of himself. “Here you go, babe. You can rub one out to this if you want.”