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Gil Thorp, 7/28/25

There are two types of Gil Thorp summers: the wacky ones, with plotlines like “Kaz punches his way to a bodyguard job for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Carole King” or “Gil gets involved with a pro wrestler who might have dementia or that might just be his latest angle” or “a sadistic warden forces juvenile delinquents to battle each other on the gridiron for their freedom,” and the boring ones, like “let’s just get a head start on football season or whatever.” Obviously you know which kind I prefer, and while it’s early yet, I do think “Coach Ex Mrs. Coach Thorp takes their son to Berlin, where he’s vlogging mean stuff about his sibling while dressed like one of the guys from The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou for some reason” has potential. Who is he vlogging at, by the way? Where’s the camera? Are we holding the camera? In some high-end French literary theory sense, are we the camera?

Dick Tracy, 7/28/25

Look, when you come to the conference room to present the evidence you’ve been gathering on the latest case to Dick Tracy, you’d best come correct, and by “correct” I mean “with the logo of the company or government agency you’ve been assigned to investigate printed, in color, on the manila envelope you use to hold the documents you’ve compiled about said company or government agency.”

B.C., 7/28/25

You’d think that when the POV “camera” pulls back to give you a wider view of the gym in the final panel, you’d see a pull-up bar, to reinforce the punchline. You’d be wrong, though! It’s hard to draw a pull-up bar outside, honestly, so these weights are going to have to do.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/28/25

“So you’re saying you’re not very observant and are pretty easy to trick, huh? Interesting. Just filing that away. Might be useful information at some point.”

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Slylock Fox, 7/24/25

I gotta say, it’s probably pretty annoying to have to write Slylock Fox at this point, because doing cute little animal mysteries attracts lots of “um, ACTUALLY”s of both the “um, ACTUALLY, the pedantic fact you used as the solution for this mystery is more nuanced than you’re implying” and “um, ACTUALLY, the animal you’re using as a character in this mystery doesn’t work like that” variety. Thus you get puzzles like today, where you’re preemptively anticipating this kind of feedback in the solution. “[heavy sigh] Besides telling us that the gloves were not worn by a snake [closing eyes, briefly resting thumb and forefinger on either side of bridge of nose] or other handless animal…” Honestly someone is probably penning a furious email about “um, ACTUALLY, some invertebrates aren’t bilaterally symmetrical and could have two right hands and maybe they also became sapient along with all the other animals? can you prove they didn’t???” as we speak.

Pluggers, 7/24/25

Feels like this one is based on seeing a “Don’t talk to me before I’ve had my coffee!” mug and trying to work backwards from there to someone cheerfully claiming to be a criminal right up until the moment that first sip passes their lips, when in fact the appropriate cartoon would be a bleary-eyed plugger saying just the most casually cruel thing you’ve ever heard to his wife for no reason.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/24/25

Well it looks like I got my wish on this situation allowing us to delve into Truck’s psyche, because he’s really doubling down on “Please, living genetic evidence of the fact that I got cheated on, please let me pretend to be your dad!” Meanwhile, his not-son is just increasingly upset and unresponsive. “How can I feel anything for someone with whom I don’t share any genetic material?” he’s thinking. “This man has nothing to tell me about my phenotype! What’s the point?”

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Gearhead Gertie, 7/17/25

Oh, man, the domestic drama in the Gearhead household just gets more fraught! Gertie’s husband Harold, in a desperate attempt to introduce a new topic of conversation into his life, has dragged his wife to an art show, and you have to imagine that there was a brief moment where he really believed he had pulled it off, believed that he had managed to awaken something in Gertie’s soul when he brought her face to face with the greatest examples of human creativity. Sadly, what she actually took away from the experience was “What if we got more NASCAR shit, for people to look at, in our house?” Gertie may not know much about art, but she knows what she likes, and what she likes is having Dale Earnhardt’s death car, acquired and restored at great expense, hanging on the wall of her living room.

Pardon My Planet, 7/17/25

Man, what the hell, do you think vampires would ever in a million years wear cross necklaces? Of course not! They would burn their skin upon touching it! These are just goths! Goths with deep respect for Madonna’s iconic cone bra!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/17/25

I gotta say, we’re all pretty used to nothing really exciting happening in Rex Morgan these days, and so when this plot about Truck’s maybe-son started out, I don’t think any of us would’ve pegged “Truck finds out he got cucked by his own drummer” as the dramatic conclusion. I’m trying to parse out what his facial expression in the first panel is conveying … excitement? Respect? I hope we dive ever more deeply into his psychosexual landscape over the rest of the week.