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Gil Thorp, 7/11/22

Big news, everybody! Neal Rubin, who in my mind had been writing Gil Thorp forever but in fact started the gig just a few months before I launched this blog in 2004 (nervous, uncomfortable laughter), has written his last storyline and is passing the baton to new hands. It seems that the subtle “Be Seeing You” in Thursday’s strip wasn’t a reference to The Prisoner so much as a good-bye, though I could see how writing Gil Thorp might eventually come to feel like being trapped in a bizarre small town where full of weird people with inscrutable motives and nobody can give you a straight answer about what’s happening.

Anyway, the new writer is comic book vet Henry Barajas, who claims that the strip “holds a special place in my heart,” so it’s exciting to see what happens next! Day 1 is here to reassure us that this isn’t going to be some gritty reimagined Thorpiverse or anything. Gil is the coach, Gil is good, Gil is getting a major award in the middle of the summer, how dare you impugn Gil’s good name, ALL HAIL GIL

Mary Worth, 7/11/22

Speaking of impugning people’s good names, I’m afraid I misunderstood the original strip in which Jess appeared as saying that she had been the victim of domestic violence, when in fact she suffered an attack by a stranger in the course of a robbery. Does this make her resulting meet-cute with Jared less distressing? I’ve given it a lot of thought, and while the whole thing is still bad, I’m willing to downgrade it from “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO” to “eeeuuurrrggggghhhhh.” I’m not made of stone!

Marvin, 7/11/22

Really appreciate how much effort has been put into the blazing rays of the sun outside the window in today’s Marvin to make sure we understand that a smugly smiling Jeff is talking about getting “peace and quiet” by leaving his terrible son out in the summer heat, to die.

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Mark Trail, 7/9/22

Hey everybody, remember Sassy? He was Rusty’s adorable little puppy (distinct from Andy, Mark’s big macho dog), and he was always prone to getting into trouble, just like Rusty! He sort of faded away in the past few years of the strip but now he’s back! … just in time to die horribly from whatever gross skin disease is afflicting Lost Forest. RIP Sassy, 1981-2022, you will probably not be missed.

The Phantom, 7/9/22

Man, I’m barely even going to try to explain the current Phantom plot, which has been very, very long and difficult to follow but is mostly a series of nesting narratives from Old Man Mozz explaining how the Phantom will ruin his life if he tries to bust his former flirtation partner Savarna out of prison, and it’s never quite clear if we’re watching the big guy actually doing this stuff or just hearing Mozz spin a what-if narrative about it, but the point is that you can apparently show a couple guys just straight-up dying from taking a bullet to the chest, right here in the funny papers! It’s Saturday, I guess? You can show dudes getting shot to death, on the weekend? And maybe if it’s just a story-within-a-story told by a wise old sage and not something really happening in the strip? Do the practices and standards departments at major newspaper comics syndicates take into consideration the layer of narrative distance at which a violent murder happens?

Mary Worth, 7/9/22

“I mean, I’m definitely going to have a lot of different opportunities to explore once the state Physician Assistant Board finds out about our extremely inappropriate relationship and I get my license taken away!”

Slylock Fox, 7/9/22

Welp, let’s take a look at the details here and see if we can guess the six diffOH MY GOD, is that a human femur, is that GRANDMA’s femur, oh my GOD

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/5/22

Say, were you feeling a little on edge rolling into our four-day week? Need your nerves soothed? Well, remember how beloved (?) ancillary Rex Morgan character Andrzej was about to die of a heart attack? Turns out he just had heartburn. False alarm! Ha ha! But it’s a false alarm that Rex can definitely still bill Medicare for, so all’s well that ends well.

Gil Thorp, 7/5/22

A fun aspect of the baseball season Gil Thorp plot is it’s been all about comically blind Gregg Hamm and his media circus and we only hear in passing about how the other pitchers on the team are also doing great. Gregg (and these other, less interesting pitchers) got the team into the playdowns this year but, just in case that’s too much excitement for you: Gregg blew it and they lost in the first round. Whew! One less thing to worry about there!

Gasoline Alley, 7/5/22

I know I’m going against theme here but it may excite you to learn that some characters in Gasoline Alley are going to have some post-fireworks sex tonight. One of them is named “Boog.” Does that excite you? Or disgust you? Is disgust a kind of negative excitement? Much to think about.

Dennis the Menace, 7/5/22

Damn, Dennis, one minute you’re humiliating your dad in front of tough guys by pointing out he’s insufficiently masculine, and the next you’re humiliating him while he’s trying to fit into a masculine milieu by pointing out traditional masculinity’s violent, toxic underpinnings. It’s almost like you don’t care one way another about society’s construction of gender roles and are willing to say whatever will most efficiently ruin your father’s attempts to make friends, which is truly the most nihilistically menacing move of all.

Mary Worth, 7/5/22

Wait, would Jess “like to see more” of Jared as a romantic interest … or as a medical caregiver? Wait, it’s both, you say? That seems extremely healthy all around. Please proceed!