Post Content

Gil Thorp, 8/31/20

Man, remember when I had cautious but high hopes for a wacky Gil Thorp summer storyline? Well, it’s pretty much the end of summer, and I haven’t talked about Gil Thorp at all, but I can summarize what went down like this: star quarterback of yesteryear True Standish came back, having graduated and been inexplicably drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays, which is a baseball team, and the sassy and vaguely beloved Corina Karenna, who played catcher on Mike “The Mayor”’s ragtag baseball team from the bad kid school, was recruited to help True work out his arm. If that sounds like it might’ve been vaguely wacky, keep in mind that most of the eight weeks was spent talking about True and Corina’s mothers, who have both battled depression, which was very serious and not wacky at all. But now Corina is attending Milford, it seems, which will … help her mom in some way I didn’t really follow, so I hope that the upcoming fall will feature less of her fiercely but tenderly caring for and defending her beloved family (SNOOZE) and more of her defying authority or at least sassing back at authority at a rate at least 10% higher than the usual Mudlark would.

Dustin, 8/31/20

The point of Dustin is, of course, to turn the battle between Dustin’s dad and Dustin into symbol of the Boomer-Millennial struggle. Of course, thanks to comic book time Dustin’s dad is now Gen X and Dustin is probably a Zoomer, but the point is that Dustin is lazy and can’t hold down a job or find a girlfriend so that’s evidence that young people in general suck. But here’s a young person who works at Dustin’s dad’s law firm and wears a suit and everything, but apparently he still sucks because, uh, phones? Anyway, since it’s clear that young people in general are fully capable of holding down a job, Dustin’s dad might want to consider that his kid sucks because he did a bad job raising him, just putting that out there.

Post Content

Panel from Slylock Fox, 8/30/20

Slylock seems pretty confident that Count Weirdly is lying about being anointed King of Earth by a powerful alien civilization, based on a firm belief that, as described by special relativity, the speed of light is in fact the upper limit at which information can travel. Of course, Count Weirdly has a working time machine, which you’d think would prove that ordinary physical laws don’t apply to him. You’d also think his powers to bend time itself would help him establish his rule over our planet without needing alien intervention on his behalf, but that’s a debate for another time.

Gasoline Alley, 8/30/20

Gasoline Alley is, along with The Simpsons, the last media franchise on Earth still trying to squeeze laughs out of Frank Nelson’s character from The Jack Benny Show. This Nelson-ish fellow has been annoying the Gasoline Alley crew intermittently over the years, and today has proven that even death can’t stop his antics. Still, we shouldn’t let the appearance of this beloved (?) figure distract us from the true horror here, which is that Walt, who was almost finally freed from his cursed, interminable earthly existence and was ready to receive his reward from his Creator, is being dragged back down to the plane of the living on the orders of a cruel family that simply will not let him die.

Shoe, 8/30/20

In the Shoe world of sapient birds, there is no pan-avian solidarity. Different bird species still see themselves in competition, and boast that they would certainly never be dismembered and eaten at human-run fast food restaurants! The fact that whole international businesses exist to murder and cook intelligent creatures isn’t the problem, the problem is actually that some of those creatures are too inherently dumb to avoid getting captured and processed into lunch. Pretty grim, if you ask me!

Post Content

Mary Worth, 8/29/20

If you had asked me where I might expect to encounter the line of dialogue “Pain exists. But so does hope,” I would’ve guessed the end of the first act of a big-budget superhero origin story movie, with an anonymous hooded figure staring down at our protagonist and throwing him a rope after he’d been left for dead in a pit somewhere. Our hero climbs out but the figure is gone, but he’s inspired to enter a years-long rigorous training program to make himself into the perfect fighting machine so he can defend his city from the kind of evil-doers who almost killed him, only to discover at the climax of the film that the mysterious leader of the twisted criminal syndicate he’s been trying to defeat is in fact his long-ago rescuer. “We’re not so different, you and I,” intones the Hood as the two of them battle it out on the city’s rooftops. “I made you so you could make me. A shadow cannot exist without the light.” But, you know, it could be an contented retiree making amiable chitchat with a tween as they sit besides the pool on a sunny Southern California day, that would work too!

Hi and Lois, 8/29/20

Today’s Hi and Lois is brought to you by the good people at the International Dairy Foods Association. In These Unprecedented Times℠, Cheese: Now More Than Ever™.

Pluggers, 8/29/20

Pluggers want more tomatoes. More. More tomatoes. Do you think they’ve had enough tomatoes? They’ll tell you when they’ve had enough. There will never be enough. More tomatoes. Bring more tomatoes to them. More. MORE. M O R E