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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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Blondie, 7/27/25

The Blondie creative team has never met a young person that it didn’t want to call a lazy sack of shit, but … I kept waiting for this strip’s punchline to be “Napping and playing video games at work? This nepo baby is just like me for real!” but somehow it never happens. I guess the whole thing could be a subtle joke, but nothing about Blondie in general or today’s installment in particular, which includes the normal English phrase “urban expression,” has ever made it seem like the strip is capable of subtlety.

Mary Worth, 7/27/25

Some claim that New York is the so-called “Greatest City In The World,” but Mary, despite her professed love of the place, has on previous visits already encountered two of its greatest dangers: the criminals who lurk in the city parks and shove innocent bystandards with no warning, and the reckless drivers who speed into pedestrians as they innocently step into the street. Now we must add a third member to this unholy trinity: air conditioning units that simply rain down from the windows of New York’s famously tall buildings, killing dozens a year. Anyway, Olive is thinking about the challenges that come with her gifts, which is a weird setup to her using her gifts to save Mary from a certain bludgeoning death, seemingly without any challenges at all. Unless maybe this wasn’t a use of her psychic powers, but instead she just heard the classic Big Apple “Eyyyy! I’m droppin’ an air conditioning unit outta my window ovah here!” Only in New York, baybee! Amiright folks?

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The Lockhorns, 7/26/25

The random, silent bystanders who show up in The Lockhorns represent one of the strip’s great mysteries. Like, who is this lady, who we’ve never seen before and never will again, but who apparently thought she might get some quality time in with Loretta, only to discover that she was about to take her unconscious husband to a matinee showing of the latest superhero movie? Honestly, I enjoy speculating, but I’m also glad we’ll never find out. Anyway, this, and not some geek-savvy discourse, is the only way I want to think about the box office performance of franchise films. Are Superman’s ticket numbers being artificially inflated by women physically carrying their comatose husbands into the theater, an action that represents the latest aggression in a long-running conflict in a way that even they can’t explain? I’d be happy to read 2,000 words in Variety on the subject.

The Phantom, 7/26/25

Speaking of superhero franchises, The Phantom has been running for 89 years now, and I’m pleased to see that it’s taking the steps necessary to stay up to date. “Don’t share too much personal information online, or you might end up enslaved by warlords in a mine in Africa” is a timely message that today’s comics readers need to hear.

Dustin, 7/26/25

Ha ha, look at Dustin’s expression in that last panel! He’s definitely going to leave his father to die in that hammock, and you know what? Good for him.