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Gil Thorp, 11/27/23

Happy postprandial Monday, all, and welcome to The Misdirect, Chapter 4 of the Barajas Era of Gil Thorp, America’s #1 newspaper comic for confusing sports action. After besting Valley Tech’s football team (I think?) by injuring one of their key players, Coach Thorp is ready to move on to basketball season, while Coach Ochoa is handing [squints] lacrosse (…?) duties. Coach Martinez, meanwhile has realized that the success of the [squints harder, eventually gives up] TBD team on the [shorthand for the TBD team’s playing surface or arena] matters less than branding, which is why he’s installed an enormous Milford/Martinez M in ominous red and black to loom over the gym, emphasizing to student-athletes and fans alike that they constitute One Team, One School, One Volk.

Pluggers, 11/27/23

Remember a million years ago, when, during a Super Bowl halftime show, Justin Timberlake tore a small piece of Janet Jackson’s outfit off, semi-revealing her breast, which was still mostly covered by an elaborate nipple ring appliance, and there were huge raging debates over whether this was intentional or a “wardrobe malfunction?” Like many incidents we all have to pretend are meaningful in some way, it sounds insane if you describe it in hindsight, but anyway, pluggers definitely remember. Pluggers remember, and to pluggers, their head is a boob and the slow work of time and decay is Justin Timberlake’s dextrous hand, about to free their head-boob for their loved ones and all of America to unexpectedly see.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 11/26/23

CASSANDRA [bursting through the studio door]: Quick, Kopy, I need a favor. Put this portrait up on your easel and act like you’re painting me. I’ve already made sure that I’m wearing the same clothes as in the picture; let me get myself in position so I get the strut exactly right.

KOPY: Gee, Cassandra, this painting is completely dry, and I don’t even have any blue paint out. Slylock’s gonna see right through this scheme! You’d better just run if you don’t want to get caught.

CASSANDRA [posing sexily, just they way she knows Slylock likes it]: Who said anything about not getting caught?

Dick Tracy, 11/26/23

OK, yes, ha ha, Sam’s colleagues on the Major Crimes Unit are razzing him by implying he’s going to extract saliva from their suspect X. Libris by smooching her, and Liz is even demonstrating the frenching technique he’ll used to acquire an adequate sample size, but we need to talk about the metaphor Sam is deploying in response in the final panel. I guess we’re supposed to visualize him … face down in the gutter? Sort of swimming along? But he’s wearing a snorkel, so he can get a real good look at what’s going on down there? And these floating brains keep blocking his access to air? It’s all very unsettling, and once they solve this series of gruesome stab murders, probably everyone on the squad should sue everyone else for creating a hostile work environment.

Gasoline Alley, 11/26/23

Hey, did you know that back in the early ’80s, Bolero was considered a top “sex record”, a cliched thing you’d put on the old hi-fi if you brought a special person back to your pad and were ready to get down? Not saying that’s what’s going on here, but I do invite you to imagine going home with someone and instead of hopping into bed they insisted you wait for a bizarre cat food commercial featuring singing mice, to “set the mood.”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/25/23

Well, the Harwoods are going to feel pretty foolish when they learn that it wasn’t Rene’s high-powered lawyers that got him sprung out of jail. The cynical answer isn’t always the correct one, guys! Now, it is true in fact he’s free because he’s using the Mirakle Method to build an army of hypnotized disciples, some of whom are in highly placed positions of power, who will follow his every whim, but I say we should wait a bit to see how that plays out before we get too worried about it.

The Lockhorns, 11/25/23

This is the sort of statment that you would expect someone to deliver with a wistful sigh, and what makes Leroy Leroy and makes the Lockhorns great is that instead he’s just seething. Stupid highway full of assholes. Stupid Robert Frost and his stupid poetry, planted in the lyric and narrative traditions while pointing the way towards modernism! Screw him! Two roads diverged in a yellow wood my ass.

Beetle Bailey, 11/25/23

Some people will tell you that America’s military budget is hopeless bloated. But I for one would be willing to pay higher taxes if it means that our brave soldiers could have decent internet access so they could access high-quality streaming pornography and didn’t have to jerk off to annotated romance novels. I just respect the troops that much.