Who the hell is Bill?

From Least to Most Interesting Today:

• The introduction of Bill “Scrapper-Doo” Hawkins as a potentially major character this spring. Let’s see…blond freckled kid, doesn’t talk much, with the personality of toast? Ladies and gentlemen, your new R.J. Brennan! (On the plus side, I suppose he already comes off as less annoying than Elmer Vargas…)
• The comic where the starting line-up is announced is over three weeks earlier than last season. Rubin may have ended the last couple stories quite abruptly, but at least that appears to be to the benefit of getting the sports seasons slightly more aligned with reality. So we got that goin’ for us, which is nice.
• Kaz is back! And he just might have a mullet!

Zagnuts to this!

3/28/09

There’s definitely more going on here than these punk kids let on. Because in the now infamous December 8th comic, Ashley is seen getting ready to stock a case of Nutboys, and in the following day’s installment, the “PROFESSIONAL CRIMINAL ROBBER PERSON” proceeds to steal that case of candy…(Nutboys: Clearly worth armed robbery, Zagnuts: Not so much.)

Since anyone who would steal Nutboys would never leave them lying around in the trunk, it’s now obvious that Ashley planted some Zagnuts in some poor schlub’s car after the fact in order to frame him for this inside job. Now that some dimwitted patsy has taken the fall (we haven’t seen Cully recently, have we?), she and her co-conspirators can get back to what they do best: petty theft of awful convenience store food. And it finally makes sense why they’d all want to remain in Milford: Thanks to its utterly incompetent law enforcement professionals, they’ll never get caught.

3/30/09

On second thought, based on comparing the artwork of December 6th to that of today, I’m going to presume that basketball season was just skipped due to lack of interest…and that anything that I think might have happened in the past four months was really just an awful dream. (“Nutboys: They’re manure-flavored hallucinogens!”)

So Sacko and Vanzetti say the baseball team is gonna be awful. Great. Looks like we’re in for another long season. Perhaps the only thing sadder than the current state of Milford athletics is the fact that Gil sits at home and watches “Prep Spotlight.” Or the fact that Mimi watches too, but has to imagine that they’re also talking about her team… Perhaps she’s been eating too many Nutboys lately.

Crime doesn’t pay…unless you’re a professional.

OK, first of all, I don’t say it enough, but all the reader comments yesterday were particularly hilarious. Keep up the great work!

On to the strip. So…It was a CRIMINAL who did it. And no AMATEUR CRIMINAL either, but a PROFESSIONAL CRIMINAL! He was caught after he mailed his resume to the police station, and the Nutboy job was listed under “Recent Employment.” It only took the cops five weeks to piece everything together after that. What a twist! Did they get M. Night Shyamalan to ghost write this plot?…oops, my sarcasm meter got overheated and blew out,  I guess I’ll have to take a break from critiquing this.

Which means only one mystery remains: What does Bryce’s latest T-Shirt say? I’ll guess:

“Substandard Plots
By Neal R.!”

As to why there’s also a Death Star on his shirt, I’m still not sure. Perhaps Mr. Rubin’s abilities are powerful enough to destroy Alderaan, or even the snarky planet of TWIM.

Textual Healing

The timing of all this doesn’t make any sense. Brenda emerges from the locker room and finds out her parents have become Milford pod people…Meanwhile, Ashley, having played in the same game, has already changed, left for the Swifti-Mart outside of town and started her shift. Um, sure, why not? Nothing else here makes sense, why should the timeline be logical? Also, Bryce “sent her a text”? Texting: for when you just don’t care enough to call.

Then: The robbery is resolved! Will it:

a) be done in as as boring a manner possible?
b) be mentioned in one panel then never be spoken of again?
c) involve no characters we’ve ever heard of before?
d) all of the above.
e) turn out Marty Moon, Big Ray, Cully, Tyler Jay and Boyd the Bad News elf ganged up to pull off the biggest heist this town has ever seen, then all be gunned down in a hail of bullets after a tense 17-hour stand-off with Chief Lind, Coach Kaz and Skippy the angry janitor?

Answer: If you remembered to send Neal Rubin your monthly bribe, the answer is (e). But we all know you didn’t, so (d) it is. Be sure to send a text to all your friends about this.

Brainwashing the brainless requires minimal soap

“Golly,our kids are going to miss the playdowns. How can we leave town now??” Really? LAME.

Since this particular plot has seemingly resolved itself by transforming the Ethnic Larkins from judgemental jerks into brainwashed slugs, thanks to one nonsensical Gil Thorp speech, we now have to pin our hopes on something decidedly wacky and more interesting to happen before the drudgery of baseball season. So what will it be?

Will we get resolution of the Great Shitti-Mart Nutboy caper? Will Brenda enter and win the World’s Longest Fingers competition? Or will something new, entirely out of left field, be brought up then resolved in the period of three days? (Like last year’s ‘Big Ray returns from Jungle Patrol and gets yelled at about shoes by Gil, which teaches him to respect the authority of Thorp?*) Your theories please.

*Hmm, now that I think about it, maybe all those times Gil is gone he’s actually at some class on how to hypnotize Milford parents into doing his bidding, just by feeding them a couple lines of  jibber-jabber. I wish I had powers like that.

A little less conversation, a little more action

Sorry for the late post…the life of a stay-at-home dad proves unpredictable, after all. But it’s not like you should care that much, since a comic that begins “The Larkins’ conversations continue…” doesn’t bode well for holding anyone’s interest.

Apparently what we learn today is that the dad with no personality or opinions feels like he’s building something here. (My money on what he’s building is a giant freak hand factory. ) He then proceeds to ditch his construction job for the day (no doubt in the field of brick magic) to attend his daughter’s game for the first time ever. If only we knew whether he knew whether he was black or not…that way we’d know if his black power salute was done out of a sense of irony or genuine black nerd rage.

Then of course, it’s back to sports ‘action’, where a record crowd of three watches Milford. Will they pull it out? Or will the end of this game be preempted in order to bring us baseball season? Stay tuned! Or don’t! What do I care?

Everything I know I learned from reading Gil Thorp

Oh boy, another valuable set of Gil Thorp lessons! It’s always good when we can learn while reading, right?

Primary Lesson: When your hairdresser tells you your kids are dating criminals, don’t believe her, because remember that time that you got pulled over on your way to North Hamptonchestershire Hills to buy cigarettes and that evangelical cop tried to convert you using his Jesus flashlight? Well that was, like almost the same thing! So be sure to let your kids date whoever they want, I guess.

Secondary Lesson: If you’re gonna smoke, don’t smoke some snooty brand of cigarettes, because it would be tragic if you had to send your son to the nice part of town to buy them for you.

Tertiary Lesson: Make sure you decorate your house with unclear, possibly pornographic pictures, so that strangers might debate what precisely is going on in them. Also, for everyone’s amusement, your home should appear to have an elevator.

Judge not the ass-hats, lest ye be judged, you ethnic people of some sort

3/20/09

“Wait…you’re still in our house?”

“Yep, but the peyote is starting to kick in…I see…a creepy portrait of your kids and their dates. Awful, awful clothes.”

“That’s them all right. What’s with the basketball jersey over the popped collar? My son is such a douche.”

“You can see this too?”

“Of course. Why would I let you take all the peyote?”

“Ahhhh, so I’m seeing a strange message…’Flossing Straightjacket’? ‘Glossy ButttJack-off’?? Anyway, it’s telling me that just ’cause your kids are dating two local ass-hats, doesn’t mean you should judge our whole town to be ass-hats. You have to meet us all first, and then you can realize we’re all ass-hats!”

“But they’re ass-hat criminals!”

“They’re not even accused ass-hat criminals…”

“Well yeah they are. I accused them. So there ya  go. And that Dylan punk was already involved in a robbery, so shut the f*ck up, Gil. You don’t know what you’re even talking about!”

“Er…yeah, I get that a lot. Wait, I know what it says: ‘Lost Ass-hatjackers’…I bet that’s what it is. More peyote please.”

3/21/09

“…so you’re judging Milford by the color of our pasty white skin, are you? Just because we whities are the new face of crime, doesn’t mean you should judge us! I mean haven’t you as uh… black? Latino…? Hawaiian? Turkish…? Seriously, what the hell race are you?”

“Easy, the same as Clambake.”

“Ah…ha. OK then, I’m not sure if I’m able to offend you by playing this race card here. Apparently at the very least it gives you hideous scar faces on my way out the door. So, anyway…I’m gonna go swim nude in your fountain. Thanks again for the drugs.”

Later:

“That was quick.”

“Well I am an expert javelin catcher, as you know…”

“Did it hurt?”

“Well, the father was black, I’m pretty sure. Not that I knew that while his pants were still on.”