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Gil Thorp, 1/10/19

AHH AHH AHH BOBBY HOWREY! You might remember Bobby from one of the greatest ever Gil Thorp plots, when he was the sweater-vest-clad megalomaniac student manager who hooked up one of the Mudlarks with Adderall but it was OK because it was actually just baby aspirin, but Gil was too square and didn’t think it was OK and so Bobby ended up coaching literal children down at the rec center. Now, four years later, he’s all grown up, with the much more grown-up name “Robby” and an actual website, so he’s ready to destroy Gil and his regime of mediocrity, in which you’re not allowed to give fake performance-enhancing drugs to players even if it helps you win!

Because we all become exactly what we hate most, I make fun of the newspaper comics for being helplessly mired in nostalgia but absolutely love the Gil Thorp plots where wronged players from years past reappear to blame Gil for their problems, like when Steve Luhm, who was a social justice warrior before it was cool, came back as a disgruntled janitor, or when Marty DeJong stalked Gil with baseballs because Gil’s inadequate coaching ruined Marty’s arm and his life. I’m definitely looking forward to learning how B/Robby’s exile to the Milford Recreation Center failed to teach him any kind of lesson at all, but rather left him a twisted, broken soul intent on billboard-delivered vengeance.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/10/19

We all knew as soon as we saw that Brayden wore his baseball cap backwards that he didn’t play by society’s rules — the brim is supposed to go foreward, to shield your face from the sun, but he just doesn’t care! So it should’t come as a surprise that he’s tearing the mask off society’s polite fictions before this plane’s even left the gate. The air marshals are helpless: there’s nothing in FAA regulations that authorizes them to stop someone from dropping truth bombs.

Mark Trail, 1/10/19

“You!?” Mark bellows with total conviction, having recognized our culprit as, uh … this dude? Does anyone know who he’s supposed to be? I’m so tired, you guys.

Family Circus, 1/10/19

Big Daddy Keane’s little smile is the expression of a man who’s just found a loophole. “She said ‘four children’ … but she didn’t say which four children, now did she?”

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Crock, 1/9/18

I got into a Twitter discussion last week about what the deal is with Crock exactly, what with its creator having died in 2011 and then his son, after briefly running the strip, deciding he didn’t want to keep it going. I guess the consensus is that what we’re getting are reruns, but there are some updates to the dialogue to keep the strip “fresh.” Like, the “4” in today’s final panel seems pretty obviously to be in a different handwriting from the rest of the dialogue, presumably because this strip originally appeared in 2001 when PlayStation 2s were all the rage. It’s honestly amazing that someone would go through the trouble of making sure the most current PlayStation model is reflected in the dialogue but not, say, question the premise of the strip, which is that home video game consoles and pay toilets are even in the remotely same category of thing, and decide to just pull another Crock from the presumably infinite quantity of Crocks in the archive instead.

Gil Thorp, 1/9/18

Hmm, who could the mysterious billboard-aggressor be? Let’s take a closer look at that “E” in “fire”:

And then compare it to the “E” in “December” on the wall of Gil’s office:

And, well, there you have it! Find your calendar-maker and you have tracked down your mysterious … wait, what’s that you say? Fonts are widely used and commercially available? Also, the billboard guy put his URL right on the billboard. Well, I still think my font thing is relevant, thank you.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/9/18

Oh hell yes, Rex is going to have to deal with some sullen little twerp named “Brayden” for the duration of his flight to Phoenix! I know I complain about the slow pace of this strip, but I sincerely hope that this storyline lasts for months.

Pajama Diaries, 1/9/18

Say, wouldn’t it be interesting if you were forced to look at your grandchildren’s dick pics for all eternity, in hell? Just something to ponder!

Slylock Fox, 1/9/18

WAIT ARE THOSE GIANT MICE OR IS THAT A VERY TINY ELEPHANT

I’M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO THINK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE FOR WEEKS

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Dustin, 1/8/19

It may not have been obvious from the Dustins I’ve showcased here but the gimmick of Dustin is that Dustin is a 23-year-old college graduate who has moved back in with his parents and is having Failure To Launch problems. As a Gen-Xer, I am a neutral party in the raging war between Baby Boomers and Millennials, and I hereby declare that Dustin is really shitty in its treatment of young people! Like surely there is humor to be mined from this conflict of worldviews but instead we get things like today, “Ha ha, youths can’t hold down a job because they just spontaneously fall asleep all the time! Meanwhile, the ADULTS who MADE THIS COUNTRY WHAT IT IS TODAY are going to enjoy some LEGITIMATE HIGHBROW CULTURE.”

Gil Thorp, 1/8/19

I appreciate it when bit players in the comics really give it their all in the one or two panels they appear. It’s subtle, but I’m particularly enjoying the “ain’t I a stinker?” realness being served up by the employee of [squints] S-Kybomi Outdoor Media Solutions here. This may be the Best Performance By A Working-Class Guest Character In A Continuity Comic since 2014’s iconic “Man In Hat Who Doesn’t Care About Doc Ock’s Runaway Tentacles Enjoys Sandwich.”

Six Chix, 1/8/19

As we all know, you can take an expensive vacation to Paris, go to the Louvre, get lost in the Louvre, get annoyed by the Louvre, realize that you could do a comic about your experience at the Louvre, get paid to do that comic, and then write the entire cost of your trip off on your taxes. But can you write the cost of a trip to Paris off on your taxes if you just make fun a comic doing that? We’ll see what my accountant says! Fingers crossed!