
No sooner than Barajas leaves us scratching our collective heads over the lunacy of a kicker using a soccer move to recover their own kick and run it in for a touchdown* than we smash cut to Valley Tech and something possibly equally lunatic.
Honestly I don’t know where to begin. The old heads that may make a big deal about Valley Tech’s game being called by a Black woman should remember that grown-ass woman Pam Oliver has been in the biz for a long time. What she’s saying, however, might be cause for concern, as it doesn’t match up with what we’re seeing on the field. What’s up with that “flesh and blood” crack, anyway? Is Luke Martinez willing to sacrifice one of his sons for a VT win?
Pedro is the Martinez kid going out there, but in what capacity? Luke is talking to another guy in coaching gear in P2; is he Pedro? Or is he Mr. Kim and Pedro is a player who went in with the play call (again using a term from another sport)? In any event, all together now: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A TWO-MINUTE WARNING IN HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL. Nice of Barajas to add that the fourth quarter is the final quarter, maybe as a reminder to himself.
VT’s unis have morphed from Coastal Carolina to candy corn. Maybe they’ll be like Oregon and change unis from game to game, if not from half to half. Guess it beats having every not-Milford team wear Carolina Blue and white like last season.
Seriously, though, I don’t know what the hell is going on here anymore. In his quest to bring Gil Thorp into current times, Barajas has introduced family tension and made the strip more racially, culturally and gender-diverse. Fine. However, he has either never watched American football or has not watched it enough to understand the basic rules of the game. Sports are the canvas on which the soap of Gil Thorp has been painted; if the canvas isn’t primed properly the paint won’t stick.
I don’t know what kind of relationship Whigham had with Rubin, but whatever it was it must’ve been better than it is with Barajas. Rubin’s text and Whigham’s illustration didn’t match up on occasion, but now it seems to happen so frequently and so blatantly – along with the typos and omitted words – that I have to wonder if it’s not intentional. The color changes, yeah, they happened in the past too, but how hard is it to provide coloring instructions to whoever has been subbed to do the job?
Our fellow Gil Thorp snark blog, Mopped Up Thorp, usually takes a slightly different tack to the strip than we here at TWIM. Instead of trying to parse it, Mop rewrites the dialog to humorous (and often more accurate) effect. If the past week is any indication, Mop’s way may be the way to go, as the strip has become so illogical and incoherent as to be practically unreadable.
*Without commenting on the legality or lack thereof of such a move, I’ll share a clip someone posted in yesterday’s comments on the ‘mudgeon to show that an American football can, in fact, be rainbow kicked.