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Better Half, 1/5/14

Stanley thought that the ennui of a long medical stay would be leavened if he checked in to Vaudeville, Borscht Belt, and Dadjokes General Hospital. How wrong he was!

Gasoline Alley, 1/5/14

If the central conceit of your strip is that the characters age in real time, but also your strip has been running for 95 years and you refuse to kill anyone off, you will eventually get a visit from a nice man from the government convinced your characters are perpetrating Social Security fraud.

Six Chix, 1/5/14

The vet is there to provide the constant medical attention this nightmare legless dog-blob abomination needs to maintain its ghastly parody of life.

The lawyer is there to fend off lawsuits from everyone emotionally traumatized by seeing it.

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Gil Thorp, 11/26/13

Uggggh guys, sorry I haven’t been keeping you in the loop on the Gil Thorp football season plot, but it’s been super boring. Here’s a quick summary: the big guy who never talks is making friends and has a girlfriend and is playing on the football team even though he continues not to talk, and the Coaches Thorp are doing some half-assed detective work to figure out his Past Life Trauma; and Tip the cheerleader has been dragooned into playing on the football team, because almost all the actual football players have been injured in some way. The injury spate has up until today been confined for the most part to incidents during games or in practice, but today the team’s running backs have just been straight-up killed in a car crash. Which leaves one to ask: what horrible sin against the Gods have the Mudlarks committed, to be suffering such a fate? Were their sacrifices at the annual bonfire not considered worthy? I was reminded of a line in this review of a book about Aztec culture and sacrificial religion:

I suspect that, given a geographical setting where the main instrumental aim of religious ritual was to avert natural dangers that came at irregular intervals, such practices were subject to an “intensification ratchet” — if your efforts did not succeed in preventing the earthquake, volcanic eruption, or hurricane despite the previous long period of peace and quiet, the best inference is that it’s probably because you did not try hard enough.

In other words, look for increasingly frequent and bloody pep rallies in the coming months, with the limping and injured players making the perfect sacrificial victims. “Why do you turn your backs on us, O Gods of Victory?” Coach Kaz will implore, blood-stained hands raised to the heavens over a steaming, gory altar at the front of the Milford High School auditorium.

Six Chix, 11/26/13

I’m intrigued by the truly radical proposal being broached in today’s Six Chix: that electricity-hungry humankind should bypass the oil companies and just deal directly with Satan, the Lord of Lies, himself, tapping the supernatural fires of Hell and the moans of damned souls as an energy source. What could possible go wrong? I mean, sure, eventually we’ll all be weird pinkish blobs tortured for eternity, but let’s be real: that was probably going to happen to most of us anyway, so why should we pay high utility bills in the meantime?

B.C., 11/26/13

This is as good an opportunity as any to remind you that I have a Twitter account that you can follow if you like that sort of thing! It’s, uh, mostly petty complaints.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/19/13

Look at your plate Rex just look at the plate she can’t know no one must ever know.

Pluggers, 10/19/13

Psst: Kitchen — eat.

Six Chix, 10/19/13

In a stunning development, Aaron Hill returns to Luann.

Judge Parker, 10/19/13

Narcissist boor Alan Parker interrogates his tablemates before introducing himself or his family, and burns with the knowledge that not only is Audrey the nemesis-critic who panned his terrible novel but this is not lemon in his martini God DAMN the world and everything in it!

Katherine slurps her cough syrup, transfixed: April was right — murder up close looks nothing like in the movies!

Ha ha ok what the hell:

Blondie, 10/19/13

Facebook and Zynga turn to Blondie for promotion, in what Wall Streeters call a “sell signal.”

News item: Longtime faithful reader Ned Ryerson, proprietor of the excellent and hilarious Gil Thorp blog This Week in Milford, announced Thursday that he’s throwing in the towel, hanging up his spurs, and other metaphors for not going to do it any more. Despite its highly selective focus, TWIM had lots of innovative features, and if you haven’t ever checked out the “Milford Pantheon of Hair” or “What the Hell is Going On Here?”, you should give it a look.

TWIM remains my go-to reference for Gil Thorp character names, team positions, and incidental nonsense, and I remember the day I beat Ned to a stupid golf joke in the wee hours of the morning as one of the high points of my life. Thanks for the laughs, Ned, and hope we’ll continue to see you ’round these parts!

— Uncle Lumpy