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Daddy Daze, 4/7/21

A thing that irritates me and probably nobody else in storytelling is when the protagonist has to solve some central mystery and for most of the book/TV show/movie/whatever they’re the point-of-view character, with the audience learning new information when and how the protagonist learns it, but suddenly and abruptly we get a shift in perspective and see a scene that reveals vital information that the protagonist isn’t privy to! I complained about this online years ago in regards to North By Northwest, and I’ve noticed it recently in A Simple Favor and The Flight Attendant — all of which I enjoyed, to be clear, but I still find this specific aspect annoying!

Anyway, this isn’t quite the same thing, but to the extent that I enjoy the comic strip Daddy Daze, I enjoy it in terms of its own central mystery: do the Daddy Daze daddy and the Daddy Daze baby truly communicate in a secret language of bas, or is the daddy just in the throes of late-stage single parenting psychosis? Frankly, a strip in which the baby apparently successfully holds a conversation with his grandmother undermines that ambiguity. On the other hand, it’s possible that the baby just mashed his finger on the phone and babbled nonsense at it, and the daddy has once again made up an elaborate narrative to make sense out of this moment and his life that includes no interaction with adults for days at a time. His mother is none the wiser that any of this is going on in this scenario, and is no doubt better off for it.

Gil Thorp, 4/7/21

Meanwhile, in Gil Thorp, a guy had to go to the public library to use their computers, and had the same thought we all do whenever we go to a public library, which is “this library has too much money!” Words cannot describe how much more excited I am about a library drama storyline in Gil Thorp than a storyline about, like, sports, which no doubt tells you exactly what I think of Abel Brito’s dumb opinions.

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Gil Thorp, 4/2/21

So there’s been a lot of buzz in this new storyline about the triumphant return of Zane Clark, after the resolution of some unspecified family drama, and this is upsetting me because I usually pride myself on remembering beloved Gil Thorp characters from the past, but his name doesn’t ring a bell and I’ve never mentioned him on this blog. But today I was relieved to learn that in fact Zane is dead, and possibly has been for years! I think it’s quite progressive that ghosts are allowed to participate in Milford athletics, honestly, although it seems there’s still some social opprobrium that comes with them dating the living.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/2/21

So it turns out Sarah got bored with the gangster version of this adventure even faster than she got bored with the cowboy version, and now they’re doing some kind of superhero shtick, with her as Rex’s sidekick and Buck as Rene’s sidekick. But Rene unleashed his ultimate weapon, paint, and now he and Buck are sort of ambling away and Rex and Sarah are walking slowly in the other direction, and their only hope is that she just kind of casually pull some item out of his handbag. I think Sarah kind of sucks at imagining things, is what I’m getting at.

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Gil Thorp, 3/29/21

The Gil Thorp winter basketball storyline is over! Donezo! It was boring and I’m not even going to bother recapping it! We’re cruising right ahead into spring, the new season that smells like freshly mowed baseball diamonds and [sniffs air] [record scratch] musty old books????

Yes, it appears our baseball/softball season is starting in the library — and the boringest part of the library, where they don’t even have any books or anything. Not sure what prospect would be funnier: if Debbie’s trailing spouse here got replaced on the library board by Gil or Coach Kaz or some other Milford-adjacent jock who really shakes things up in the stacks in a way that at first ruffles some feathers but ultimately everyone agrees it’s for the best, or if market research has shown that sports fans stopped reading newspaper comic strips years ago and so Gil Thorp is about to take a hard pivot into the thrilling library governance drama the last few remaining newspaper readers crave.

Hi and Lois, 3/29/21

I love how genuinely shocked Lois looks overhearing Hi’s tale. “Oh, no, he’s telling them about … golf? But we agreed! Not until they’re older!”

Family Circus, 3/29/21

Speaking of ruined innocence, I am very much enjoying Mommy’s expression. “Oh, no, am I going to have to deal with this moron’s thoughts about … his own mortality? At this hour? Absolutely not.”