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Judge Parker, 7/25/22

Say, remember a few years ago when Judge Parker Senior ran for mayor on a NIMBY platform to protect Cavelton’s quaint vibes and their associated property values? Well, he lost (technically, he dropped out before the election, which is the worst kind of losing you can do), and now downtown Cavelton is full of multifamily mixed use buildings where regular people can afford to live, or, in this case, non-regular people who used to be married to local gazillionaires but said local gazillionaires are now divorcing them. (Oh, Abbey is divorcing Sam, by the way, I’m not sure if the fact that I’m more interested in the housing economics of Judge Parker than I am about the characters’ love lives says more about me or Judge Parker.)

Gil Thorp, 7/25/22

Milford’s number one hangout location for student athletes is, of course, the Bucket. But where do the Valley Conference coaches hang out? Apparently it’s this coffee shop (vaguely word-play-y name TK), which provides a safe space for them to all cattily gossip about each other because the barista will helpfully loudly announce whoever’s arriving, just in case you’re saying something really emotionally cutting about him.

Marvin, 7/25/22

Wow, huh, I guess the Millers deciding to move for some reason wasn’t just a one-off joke, but actually a running plotline of some sort? I’m kind of tickled that these two can only handle like one big emotionally strenuous process per quarter, and now that it’s July they’re finally ready for #3 of 2022. Sort of explains why they haven’t gotten around to potty training Marvin yet.

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Gil Thorp, 7/11/22

Big news, everybody! Neal Rubin, who in my mind had been writing Gil Thorp forever but in fact started the gig just a few months before I launched this blog in 2004 (nervous, uncomfortable laughter), has written his last storyline and is passing the baton to new hands. It seems that the subtle “Be Seeing You” in Thursday’s strip wasn’t a reference to The Prisoner so much as a good-bye, though I could see how writing Gil Thorp might eventually come to feel like being trapped in a bizarre small town where full of weird people with inscrutable motives and nobody can give you a straight answer about what’s happening.

Anyway, the new writer is comic book vet Henry Barajas, who claims that the strip “holds a special place in my heart,” so it’s exciting to see what happens next! Day 1 is here to reassure us that this isn’t going to be some gritty reimagined Thorpiverse or anything. Gil is the coach, Gil is good, Gil is getting a major award in the middle of the summer, how dare you impugn Gil’s good name, ALL HAIL GIL

Mary Worth, 7/11/22

Speaking of impugning people’s good names, I’m afraid I misunderstood the original strip in which Jess appeared as saying that she had been the victim of domestic violence, when in fact she suffered an attack by a stranger in the course of a robbery. Does this make her resulting meet-cute with Jared less distressing? I’ve given it a lot of thought, and while the whole thing is still bad, I’m willing to downgrade it from “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO” to “eeeuuurrrggggghhhhh.” I’m not made of stone!

Marvin, 7/11/22

Really appreciate how much effort has been put into the blazing rays of the sun outside the window in today’s Marvin to make sure we understand that a smugly smiling Jeff is talking about getting “peace and quiet” by leaving his terrible son out in the summer heat, to die.

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Marvin, 6/26/22

Look, I get it. Marvin, the strip, wants to “have it all” as a comic strip. That means that it wants to be a strip about an infant, and wants to be a strip where that infant delivers sarcastic one-liners and sasses back to his parents. But that can make it difficult for readers — and, frankly, the strip itself — to get a real firm handle on how old Marvin, the character, is supposed to be, from a developmental standpoint. I mean, here, why would you do whole strip where a mom admonishes her kid about wetting the bed, and yet also makes it clear that said kid is wearing diapers, and thus isn’t potty trained yet? It doesn’t add u– wait, what’s that you say? It’s some sick fetish? A fetish where increasingly elaborate piss scenarios are lovingly described to non-consenting newspaper readers everywhere? And it’s been happening in plain view of everyone, for years. Interesting. Interesting. I’ll keep that one in mind next time I read this strip!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/26/22

Hey, folks, remember June’s beloved Aunt (?) Hildy, who showed up on the family doorstep one day and became a live-in babysitter, and we briefly thought she might be a drunk but then it turned out she just took your occasional unplanned nap, and finally Rex reconnected her with her cheating ex-husband Andrzej, who was also an ex-pro wrestler, and they made up and got back together, sexually, and then she moved out? Anyway, the Street Sweeper plot has finally wrapped up, so I guess the new storyline is going to be to find what Hildy and Andrzej are up to. What they appear to be up to is dying of heart disease, so this should be a quick one.

Rhymes With Orange, 6/26/22

Well, this is it, everyone: consensual nonmonogamy has finally hit the newspaper comics. Sure, it’s a radical comic like Rhymes With Orange today, but can the normal ones like Garfield be far behind?