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Gil Thorp, 10/9/20

The current football plot mostly focuses on the most classic form of football plot known to science: a quarterback controversy! Who will be Milford’s starting quarterback this year: Terry Rapson, or, uh, the other guy, whose name I forget? This would be a much more interesting storyline if either Terry or the other guy were interesting or if I could tell them apart, but things may be looking up, because Terry was ordered by Coach Thorp to run out the clock at the end of the last game but decided to throw some touchdowns instead, and now they’re locked in a battle of wills during which Gil plans to break Terry in mind, body, and soul. But Terry’s resisting! Keep it up, Terry, Gil will definitely get bored of this soon enough.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/9/20

Oh, man, remember when we were teased with the idea that something interesting might happen in this strip but then it was all resolved off-panel? Well, it seems we are actually being allowed to see someone try to do something interesting, though they were immediately stopped before anything interesting actually happened. I’m not sure what’s funnier: that Nancy’s parents have given up on trying to stop her COVID-spreading ways themselves and have just sent out an APB to all the local disreputable hotels, or that the photo they sent is of her trademark sneer. I certainly hope they have a big framed version of that picture hanging over the fireplace!

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Mary Worth, 10/8/20

[Reads panel one] Well, Tommy, I think it’s admirable you’re moving forward into this difficult conversation by openly talking about your own feelings and being vulnerable about what the stakes here are are for you emotionally, and [gets to panel two] NOOO TOMMY NO ABORT ABORT ABORT

Mark Trail, 10/8/20

That’s right, you simpering fools! You dared cross Mark and now you understand your terrible mistake! Now you must shower him with apologies! Praise! Money! Only if he cracks a smile will you know that you have returned to his good graces! Keep trying! Try harder!

Beetle Bailey, 10/8/20

Looks like the troops from Camp Swampy are going to be deployed to Afghanistan! Not sure if this means that the Afghan peace process is going well or really, really badly.

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Crankshaft, 9/7/20

HOT TV RECOMMENDATION FROM JOSH: I have been enjoying Trapped, an Icelandic mystery show set in a remote, isolated small town. It’s available to stream on Amazon Prime and watching it in Icelandic with English subtitles triggered a Remembrance of Things Past-style flashback to one of the many books I had as a kid in a genre that basically could be described as “Do You Have An Extremely Dorky Kid And Wikipedia Hasn’t Been Invented Yet? Here’s A Phonebook Sized Book Full Of Interesting Facts Without Really Anything By Way Of Organization,” which had a section on the Icelandic language, which is basically still Old Norse. It stayed archaic for so long because Iceland was historically so isolated, but as the modern age dawned, the country made a conscious effort to keep neologisms out of the language, using native words for new concepts instead; the example given in the book is the word for telephone, sími, which is based on a Norse word for thread, referring to telephone wires. This is funny to me in Trapped because people talk about phones all the time, and of course exclusively use the word to refer to cell phones, which use no thread at all! Anyway, this is just to say that I was enjoying some fun etymology stuff about words we use to talk about phones and how they work, and how they embed older, outdated notions into our current speech, until fuckin’ Crankshaft came by and ruined it with a dumb joke about “poking,” ugh.

Dick Tracy, 9/7/20

I am absolutely cackling at the image of Professor Stokes or whoever using this prototype vampire chassis and biting into some guy’s neck and starting to pump with its inadequate motor and the victim just being like “Hey, uh, what’s going on? That … that tickles, knock it off, guy. If you’re trying to drain my blood, you’re not doing it very well!”