Post Content

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.

Post Content

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

Post Content

Click the banner to contribute to the Comics Curmudgeon. Details here.

We’re already halfway through the Comics Curmudgeon Fall 2013 Fundraiser! Don’t let it pass you by!

Slylock Fox, 10/16/13

Extinct or not, when a saber-toothed tiger menaces you with its 12-inch canine teeth, do not be the one to say it isn’t technically a tiger. At the very least, don’t be first one.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/16/13

Sarah toils unceasingly over her book in her basement prison. Rex is moved – Stockholm Syndrome is so adorable in the very young.

Six Chix, 10/16/13

Yes, because drug addicts need a loyalty program.

Phantom, 10/16/13

Gah, both Josh and I have been neglecting the Phantom for months because it’s just been such an incoherent mess but it’s the job so here we go:

Remember the mystery aeronaut of Mozz’s dream who had been rescued during WWI by the 19th Phantom and whose spectre showed up in the Deep Woods wearing a tattoo like the logo on drug pilot Ted West’s business card? And how the Phantom went to New York and a) forgave Ted for working with the drug gang because they threatened his family, b) broke into the drug boss’s house, c) knocked out all the minions, d) took a call that told him a big caper was going down at 3:00 AM, e) recorded the boss’s admission that he had taken a hit out on West, and f) here he is at 2:00 calling the cops?

Well the plan here is to use the Phantom’s own break-in as the pretext for a search that will lead police to incriminating evidence on the boss. There are, of course, constitutional safeguards against such behavior, but Dispatch Lady seems to think it’s pretty clever nonetheless.

Unresolved are a) what’s the big caper at 3:00, and b) what’s the connection between the aeronaut and Ted West? There you go: six months of the Phantom you’ll never have to read. If only there were some way to express your appreciation!

9 Chickweed Lane, 10/16/13

If you’re speaking English, it’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” This is true even if you’re having a conversation in English with a German concert pianist. The only reason to switch to German is to show off, and because Germans are required by law to correct your pronunciation, nobody would ever switch to German in this context unless they were pretty damn sure their audience didn’t speak it.

What I’m saying is a couple of thug spooks can kidnap her, drag her to a dungeon, hang her up in chains, and Edda Burber will still find a way to be the biggest jerk in the room.

Of course no real pianist would say it was ‘a’ fugue in C-sharp minor. WTC Book 2 (and why not Buch Zwei Edda hmm…?) includes one and only one fugue in each of the 24 key signatures — why, that’s the actual point of the exercise, is it not? Bach certainly seemed to think so, though I suppose he lacked your chops as an underwear model. Anyway, dearie, tell all the gals back in dance class that it was ‘the’ fugue in C-sharp minor, won’t you? Or just Number Four. Goodness, I’m certainly glad I’m not in that room.

— Uncle Lumpy