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Soapy Tuesday

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Gil Thorp, 9/3/24

I always joke about how the good people of Milford and the greater Valley Conference catchment area at large are completely crazed over high school sports. What I hadn’t reckoned with is that, in the age of social media, what had until recently been a local phenomenon has gone national. Just as TikTok users everywhere now watch endless videos about sorority rush at the University of Alabama with mingled fascination and horror, so too have sports fans been drawn into the drama and excitement of the football season for the Mudlarks and their rivals; and as today’s strip makes clear, the memetic vector for this viral trend is Mary Moon’s podcast, which has had the side effect of making Marty a celebrity as well. But at what cost? Look at his grim facial expression in panel three there. He knows how the game is played in the year 2024, and he knows the only way to become a successful content creator is to get personal, to share your own struggles, no matter how damaging and humiliating. So yeah, this reporter knows about Marty. She knows about the drinking, about the on-air meltdowns, about perpetrating fraud on CPS, about the time he was financially ruined by “friendly” golf bets. She knows about all of it, and he knows she knows, and it’s honestly killing him. He just wanted to report on sports, like Howard Cosell and Chris Berman, and maybe get a little recognition for it. That’s all he ever wanted. Did those guys ever have to publicly gut themselves three times a week for the amusement of the vultures streaming on Spotify, then pull themselves together enough to read the copy for a mattress ad?

Gasoline Alley, 9/3/24

If you find the emotional intensity of Gil Thorp too much, may I recommend Gasoline Alley? In the latest plot developments, Walt’s new cat didn’t want to eat her food, so Gertie got a new flavor and now she’s eating again. This took two weeks!

Judge Parker, 9/3/24

Ah, yes: piles of putrid uncanned trash rapidly baking in the early September sun … a college undergraduate smiling cruelly at a text about someone getting dumped, possibly her … just another day in the greatest city in the world! Da Big Apple, baby!!!!

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Don’t even get me STARTED on why we don’t celebrate on May 1 like everyone else

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Gil Thorp, 9/2/24

Happy Labor Day, everybody! I guess it’s now an annual tradition for a continuity strip character to appear as Rosie the Riveter to promote the American labor movement. I’m going to take this opportunity to be a bit of a killjoy and point out that the now-iconic “We Can Do It!” poster was actually a piece of internal propoganda produced by Westinghouse Electric in 1942 in an attempt to get its employees to work harder; another poster from the same series provides pretty good evidence of where on the labor/capital divide the ultimate sympathies of the campaign lay. “We Can Do It!” was not associated with the “Rosie the Riveter” concept at the time, was not widely seen outside Westinghouse during the war, and was largely forgotten until the Washington Post Magazine did an article about patriotic wartime art in 1982. Much more famous at the time — and perhaps more in tune with the labor movement — was Norman Rockwell’s 1943 Rosie the Riveter cover for the Saturday Evening Post, which features Rosie chowing down on a sandwich on her lunch break while grinding a copy of Mein Kampf under her foot. Perhaps we can get Abbey Spencer or Sarah Morgan to do this pose next year.

Alice, 9/2/24

Most cartoonists are of course more interested in making jokes about “Ha ha, we call it Labor Day but nobody’s working” than they are exploring and celebrating advances in workers’ rights, of course, which is kind of funny considering most cartoonists are freelancers who don’t get paid holidays of any sort. Hey, Alice, maybe instead of lying around all day you should organize your workforce!

Hi and Lois, 9/2/24

I know the whole dynamic of the Thurstons’ marriage is that Irma is perpetually enraged about her husband’s laziness, but he very much does have a job that he goes to every weekday with Hi. Like, that’s an important part of the strip lore. He’s also not unionized, as he’s management (I’m basing this on the fact that he wears a tie to the office, but I think given the lingering 1950s aesthetic that’s a pretty good rubric), so maybe this is just further topical commentary.

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Don’t want my furniture talking or even thinking. Sorry if that’s not “politically correct”

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Mary Worth, 9/1/24

Hey guys! Sorry I didn’t keep you up to date on the big drama at the Santa Royale Veterinarians Convention, which is that Dr. Ed ran into his ex Shiela and Estelle experienced a frission of jealousy about it. I know you’re all very emotionally invested in the Ed/Estelle relationship (or E/E, as its known in the fandom) and didn’t want to leave you with your feelings all up in the air about it! But don’t worry: today we’ve definitively established that Shiela is Dr. Ed’s former girlfriend, but they’re just good friends now. They each found partners better suited to them! And that goodness for that!

Panels from Slylock Fox, 9/1/24

This has got to be a real downer for the intelligent animals of Slylock Fox: they successfully rose up and overthrew humanity’s domination, but only had a couple decades at the top before a massive asteroid strike wiped out their ecosystem. Their rule was so brief that whatever sapient species eventually evolves from tiny sea lice in a billion years or so probably won’t even notice it in the paleontological record.

Panels from Beetle Bailey, 9/1/24

You ever think about how your bed has to work to support your weight while you’re asleep, and that what you consider to be the restful part of your day is actually when your bed suffers the most? Why would Beetle Bailey, whose title character is truly the patron saint of sloth, be the one to bring us this terrible information?