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New month, old week, best comments:

“The idea that Gil Thorp is the ‘most beloved man’ in Milford is both baffling and sad. Doesn’t this town have a charismatic politician? A prominent philanthropist? A moderately attractive evening news meteorologist?” –TheDiva

And your very funny runners up!

“It wouldn’t be Gasoline Alley if it wasn’t some unholy mixture of 100 year old comedy bits and bafflingly specific infodumping.” –Evelyn Waughluigi, on Bluesky

“So they’re remaking the movie 10, but with Bo Derek’s part played by vermin? Having simultaneous writer’s and actor’s strikes really did take a toll on Hollywood!” –BigTed

“Tracy, like the rest of us, wonders what the hell Sam is talking about; but if there’s enough blood and gore that he needs a snorkel to navigate, he’s all in.” –Hibbleton

“‘I’m going to use the reasonable suspicion already established by the evidence we’ve compiled so far to get a warrant, and then tell her we need a DNA sample, because I’m pretty sure doing it any other way would be inadmissible in court and probably get the Major Crimes Unit into trouble!’ ‘Sam, this is Neo-Chicago. Nothing will ever get the Major Crimes Unit into trouble, but if we start asking for warrants before we do stuff, people are going to expect us to do it all the time!’ ‘ Okay, then wacky plan it is!’” –Horace Broon

“Pluggers are too embarrassed to ask their techie nephew how to turn off parental controls on their router and therefore last saw a stranger’s breast in 2004.” –Schroduck

“I refuse to believe that pluggers’ wardrobe malfunctions don’t involve farting (or attempts to do so).” –nescio

“Hey! listen up! I’m Coach Ochoa. Welcome to full contact chorus! You, stop dancing, and turn down the Glee soundtrack. Thank you.” –Little Blue Bicycle

“The descent of Kubrick’s Black Monolith continues; today, it can only find work as a teaser panel in Gil Thorp. I used to be someone, you can hear it think. I was a thing of wonder and mystery. I was full of stars! And now, this. The Misdirect? Stanley never misdirected.” –Voshkod

“If I understand my slang of [decade that is unmoored in time in just the right way to appear in a newspaper comic strip] correctly, Dennis’s dad is a cocaine dealer?” –matt w

“At first, I thought Dagwood had abandoned the 21st century completely, and had gone back in time and was dealing with an elevator operator, someone who existed before people could push their own buttons. What a relief to find out he’s just some modern-day asshole!” –Buck Ripsnort

“I like that the wallet moth(?) is still in the same position in the last panel, which suggests to me that its actually some kind of spring-loaded prop that Stumpy McRage placed in there to drive his point home. Buddy, if you’re going to go to those lengths to get five bucks you might want to try a more subtle hook.” –pugfuggly

“You were right to ask me, a weapons expert, to examine these autopsy report. Look closely at how neat this stab wound is! It’s like, wham, you’re dead, bro! It would take a real weapon expert — I mean like Conan the Barbarian or Darth Maul, not me — to kill someone this precisely and awesomely. Sorry, I don’t really have a professional insight to offer, I just love this kind of stuff.” –jroggs

“Winnie-the-Pooh might be a bear of very little brain, as the books have it, but here we have proof positive that Ditto is, to use scientific terms, a fucking moron. Honey is a viscous liquid that sticks to the inside of clay jars, making it at least plausible that a determined enough bear might stick his head into said jar to get every morsel he can. Cookies, though, are not a liquid of any kind, so all one has to do to get them all out of the jar, Ditto, is to use something readily available to every human being on the planet: gravity. Just … just turn the jar over. Just turn the jar over! There are crumbs! Next! To!! You!!! Know why?! APPARENTLY NOT.” –els

“None of those sanitized, watered-down nursery rhymes for Hi’s baby! This is the REAL Mother Goose! The one where Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten by the wolf, Bluebeard murders six of his wives, and Cinderella’s sisters hack off their toes. There’s no sense sheltering the child; someday she’s going to have to live in the real world, where such things are a common occurrence.” –Peanut Gallery

“I was wondering why Trixie can’t understand the stories and thought maybe what she monologues to herself in is some sort of non-English baby talk translated for our comprehension, but then I realized that she’s an infant who doesn’t yet grasp the concept of ‘fiction’. Babies are stupid. I bet she can’t even do taxes yet.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“I’m not a father, but 7:28 pm seems to be the ideal time to read to an infant. Gets it out of the way early, leaving plenty of time for drinking.” –Pozzo

“Rex does a surprisingly good imitation of me when they announce the lineup at our county fair. Toughen up, Doc! It’s not like you had to deal with Ted Nugent practically in your back yard!” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“I’m so glad I lived long enough to see Rex Morgan, M.D. do Jazz Hands.” –MKay

“Why does June close her eyes during sex? See panel three.” –bartorama

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/1/23

I like how Rex and June are talking fairly seriously about Rene, a longtime criminal whose various cons have bedeviled them for years, and Rex suddenly thinks to himself, “Hmm, how long has it been since I’ve done a big overwrought theatrical pantomime bit where I show how much smarter I am than all the rubes I have such contempt for? It’s been a while, right? Not exactly matching the tone of this conversation so far but might as well get to it.”

Pluggers, 12/1/23

Pluggers don’t believe in “metaphors.” Why would you say a word when you actually mean a different word entirely? Sounds like something a big city elitist would do and then make fun of you for not understanding. To a plugger, “eye candy” is just candy that you look at, with your eyes. (It’s not candy made of eyes; that would be gross, like something a big city elitist would order in a restaurant and then make fun of you for not liking.)

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Dick Tracy, 11/30/23

I have to admit that it’s a little discomfiting to learn that X. Libris, a wealthy, sinister rare book collector who dresses in a severe black suit all the time and looks exactly like Cate Blanchett, belongs to a Planet Fitness where she goes after work to lift free weights of whatever. I was going to grudgingly acknowledge that this humanizes her a bit, but you know what? Part of Dick Tracy’s whole deal is that its villains are inhumanized, in the sense that their skulls and faces are deformed in disturbing and biologically improbable ways and they die impossibly agonizing deaths, so I’m going to have to give today’s strip a thumbs down.

Gil Thorp, 11/30/23

Welp, it took more than a year, but it seems finally everyone’s acknowledged that Gil is a Newly Divorced Dude, and so the question arises: Is he getting the emotional support he needs as he goes through this huge change in his life Who’s he gonna have sex with? Is it this kid’s grandmother? Apparently everyone in town wants a piece, but this kid was thoughtful enough to get dibs for his grandmother.

Hi and Lois, 11/30/23

“Please, just a few moments of human contact! You usually leave me alone on the floor in the middle of the living rooms for hours at a time. You don’t even close the curtains! I’m so sunburned!”