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Gil Thorp, 9/17/11

Year after year after year after year, Milford’s football season begins with a fiery pagan ritual during which the violent gods of the gridiron are propitiated for good luck with human sacrifice. I’m a little disappointed that this year’s flesh-searing mayhem has been relegated to a single panel, and even there serves only as a backdrop to more classic half-assed coaching from Gil. “Yeah, your only hope of winning this year is, uh, not suffering a season-ending injury! There’s probably more to it than that, but since you almost inevitably will suffer a season-ending injury due to poor coaching and your own incompetence, there’s really no point in me getting into it. Why not save yourself time and just go accidentally catch on fire over there?”

I like that Marty Moon and/or Gil Thorp refuse to tell us which team Paris and Ottewill play for, so we don’t know whether this dramatic early-game touchdown is good or bad for our heroes. It’s almost as if they expect you to have paid attention to the last few weeks of strips? But surely they can’t be that naive.

Shoe, 9/17/11

This strip certainly makes good use of the aphorism it picked out of Bartlett’s! Few things say “quiet desperation” more than someone so hung over that they need to wear sunglasses to the dark, sleazy bar where they’re going to try to pick up a sullen drunk.

Pluggers, 9/17/11

Pluggers know that the key to not being arrested for their horrifying collection of illegal pornography is to keep it analog.

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Gasoline Alley, 9/15/11

In attempting to banter with a rustic innkeeper, Nina reveals far, far too much about her and Skeezix’s sex life.

Pluggers, 9/15/11

Pluggers are haunted by the fear that if they were to die, neither they nor anyone else would notice.

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Pluggers, 9/12/11

Wow, thanks to the Pluggers comic for keeping me up to date on important plugger anthropological developments! If you had asked me before I saw this comic, I would have guessed that a “plugger coffeehouse” was one of those greasy-spoon diners where you can sit at a counter and a waitress will call you “hon” and fill up your mug limitlessly for a quarter. But no, all of those went out of business years ago, obviously, so pluggers just drive out to the McDonald’s on State Route 178 to drink their coffee. They may not get free refills but at least they aren’t going to menaced by any fruity poetry.

But pluggers may need to brush up on their own cultural awareness! Because, based on this comic, I’m guessing that they assume that non-plugger Americans get their java in ill-lit bohemian hideaways, where bearded Communists read slam poetry on stage while the assembled patrons snap their approval. In actuality, of course, non-pluggers get their coffee at Starbucks. Can’t we as a nation come together and bond over our love of soulless chain restaurants, even if they aren’t the same soulless chain restaurants?

Dennis the Menace, 9/12/11

So, uh, Dennis wishes his mother were some kind of pagan nature deity? This is either not menacing at all (i.e., Dennis is into twee neo-pagan spirituality, with, like, faeries and stuff) or extremely menacing (i.e., Dennis yearns for a divine lineage so that he might be imbued with God-like powers and indulge his every whim, to our terror).

Marvin, 9/12/11

Whoah, it looks like Marvin and his cat have turned to high-priced lawyers in their battle over pooping rights. Can you believe that they’ve gotten so corporate? I remember when it was about the shitting, man.