Leaving the Light On for Gil

Midday Saturday, I don’t see robmize’s post and I’m in between errands so I’m gonna do a twofer. Thanks for covering for me while I was island-hopping, rob.

July 29, 2022

It doesn’t look like Gil took the crazy bet from Hairy Hands Martinez. Why would he? If Martinez is new at Valley Tech, how has he been tired of watching Gil win the COTY award “every year”? We need a bit more backstory to buy anything Luke’s spouting. No doubt it’s the liquor talking, which is why Bethany the barkeep is cutting everybody off, including Gil.

As Gil saunters off through the bar’s doorway, Bethany gazes wistfully in his direction. In her tiny voiced farewell are traces of a desire to make something else stiff for Gil besides an old-fashioned. Nice tiny, dashed word balloon by the Chief there; can’t recall the last time I saw one of those from him.

July 30, 2022

Can’t recall the last time we saw the Thorp kids, either. Some posters on the ‘mudgeon suggested that it was in the Christmas 2008 strip. A lot can happen in thirteen-plus years (I’m still holding out for the convent and military school angle, myself) so this retcon better have them back as young adults and not preteens, is all I’m saying.

The Valley COTY award ceremonies weren’t held in Milford, apparently but somewhere where there’s an Embassy McCormick Suites Inn. Wherever it is, that’s where Gil’s been staying at least for the past night… plus? Emmett Tays drops in on Gil in the breakfast room to drop off the COTY golden butt plug he left on the podium the night before, gets the lowdown on the kerflulffle with Martinez, then opens the can of worms by asking about la famiglia Thorp. Sit back and order another round, gentle readers; we’re in for a whole lotta backstory next week.

Oh !#%@! He Went There!

“Nice speech up there, Thorp.“

“Nice attempt at a burn, Cornelius.“

“The name’s Martinez. Luke Martinez. I’m fixin’ to be in your damn face like my cousin Davey.”

“Martinez, huh. Thought you might be kin to my old pal Martin Luna.”

“Oh yeah? Well you’re full of !#%@, Thorp.”

“Damn, Martinez, you can’t even tell the joke right. You see flies on me? No? If you did, you’d either say I was full of honey or that flies are attracted to !#%@. Now step off before I break off that hairy paw of yours and stick it up your keister.”

So Martinez has been hired to replace the lump who whined about losing True Standish to Gil, then had his flies handed to him on a plate courtesy of True, John Pascoe & co. Or maybe to replace someone who replaced the lump. Dunno about y’all but between the goatee and the lavender top, I’m getting a Jesus Quintana vibe from Luke here. (Is lavender even a Valley Tech color? With this strip’s colorists, don’t bet against it.)

Barajas has given us a Gil with a touch of the ol’ leatherneck from the strip’s inception. He’s also given us a bewhiskered antagonist to give Gil !#%@, at least through the summer if not through the rest of the year. Will Henry give us enough backstory to find out what Martinez’ beef with Gil is? If he’s playing the long game, I reckon we TWIMers can too.

Soiled it!

Dang, Gil should’ve held off on that last glass of Long Island iced tea water and checked his Depends before he got up on stage. Now he’s gotta slink off stage before he soils his reputation more than himself.

Presumably “the script” has something to do with why Mimi and/or the Thorp kids aren’t there to see Gil take his victory lap. This is gonna play out in slow motion (kinda like Boo Radley’s fatal car crash) and should at least be as interesting as a summer golf plot.

Before we pivot in that direction, let’s focus on the story that set up today’s cliffhanger. Emmett Tays was in an abusive household, and all Gil did was to tell him in so many words not to take it out on his teammates? Compare/contrast to the action he took with Aaron aand Maamaa Aagaard and Tiki Jansen (with Hadley V. Baxendale’s help) and chew on that one for a while.

Anyhoo, I’m here for the retcon.

New category: A Tinge of Regret, to reflect Gil’s current state of mind.

On with the (no) show!

We finally get to the end of the long presentation which culminates in Gil accepting Coach of the year honors for…. what? Conference? Region? State? Hey, they were going to state after the big win on the cold winters night, and Lord knows how cold it would be for the next game or 3. The suspension of reality meter is still off the charts even with a new writer.

I guess Emmitt Tays was an all-time Milford player, but I’d bet my house that there’s not a peep of him in the archives. Good thing he caught that ball at the end of the game or he’d be forgotten about as soon as the lights went out. Who remembers the losers? Well, the Buffalo Bills are an exception.

Legendary, Gil?? I followed my high school team for years after I graduated, and a handful of them made the NFL, but there’s not a one I would call legendary. 1 of em even intercepted a pass in the Super Bowl, and if you walked down the street and asked people who he was, you’d get blank stares. So I have a hard time saying any high school player is legendary. Legendary means EVERYONE KNOWS WHO HE IS.

Babe Ruth was legendary. Jim Brown. Johnny Unitas. Hell, Joe Namath was very average but he won 1 game that made him legendary. So be it.

And P3? Every other table I ever saw with name tags had individual names at each place setting. Not “… Family” Pretty shocking that even Mimi couldnt take the time for this, but the time reference is so vague we dont even know if he’s married or has kids yet. But anyway its very strange to see a vacant table where your own family should be.

So so far this new guy has been nothing short of weird. Old memories, winter football, more bad graphics; we still have no sniff of any writing talent yet. Maybe next week will be that golf story I’ve been waiting for.

If not, there’s always lemonade with Mimi. In the present.

Are these guys all gonna go join John Pascoe at State?

A little over a week in and Barajas has run out of dialogue? Five straight panels of nothin’ but action? How are we supposed to respond to this?

I suppose by nitpicking the artwork to begin with. It’s an “unforgiving Milford night” that looks like daytime. That’s another one that’s on Whigham and/or the colorists. Ditto with the Milford and Oakwood uniforms. As I’ve often railed on in the past, color-on-color games are rare at any level with only a few exceptions. Finally, if this is a flashback, when did this game occur? (I think a call to TWIM SID billytheskink may be in order.) Did Milford’s uniforms canonically look like that that season? Take a look at these examples from the Berrill and McLaughlin eras – or, heck, from the earlier Rubin & Whigham era. Canon is important in the Thorpiverse, except when the matter of the Thorp kids comes up.

The next thing to nitpick is the lingo. “It’s good!” usually refers to a kick attempt for a field goal or PAT, not a touchdown. Since the Mudlarks were down by six, presumably Tays’ TD catch tied the score and it was the point after kick that was good. But what’s this “State” thing? It’s “playdowns” around the Valley and don’t you fergit it!

Call it whatever you will, we come away from today’s strip knowing that Milford made the football postseason in whatever season this represents. Why does Gil look so pissy, then? Is it because the player behind him has started bonking him on the head, or is it his typical response when he figures out he’s gonna have to do more coaching that he thought would be necessary during a season?

Please Tays, Don’t Drop It!

We are now back to game action within the story Tays is telling at the coach of the year banquet. In Tays retelling, he has now become white and has fleshed out his story with commentary from Marty Moon. I knew we were getting some different story telling, but I didn’t know we were going full Inception. (I think we’ve established that the color change is not part of the narrative, but a quality control issue at GoComics, from Andrews McMeel Universal, the largest independent syndicate in the world and a leading digital entertainment provider of humor, comic strips, political cartoons and gaming content for print, Web and mobile devices. The creatives have no idea why Tays has shed all his melanin.)

What is Marty saying in this retelling? It’s fourth and fifteen and Milford has the ball. The play hasn’t started yet, but Marty is projecting that if Tays drops this, the game is over. Does Marty know what the play calls are? What if Tays “drops this” and somebody else scoops it up and gets the first down. What if Marty isn’t even talking about the ball. What if Tays drops a tab of yellow sunshine? would it be “game over” or would he expand his consciousness?

I guess we’ll just snap the ball and find out what the hell is going on..

Grim Saturday

This concludes the first week of the Henry Barajas era of Gil Thorp. I think we may be in for quite a shift in pacing compared to Neal Rubin’s style and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. How a longer, sustained story plays out in a daily, newspaper comic is question. Of course, it’s still only 6 days in, so I might be hasty in projecting forward with this small sample size. At any rate, the anticipation level for new strips has gone up a notch or two for me.

As far as the story goes, we’re really leaning into seriously violent “parenting”. Gil is relating to his troubled student, Tay, by sharing grim stories of beatdowns by his alcoholic “Pa”. Grim stuff.

As far as football coaching goes, Gil’s message to Tay is to take it easy on his teammates in practice (and maybe save up the violent aggression for the creeps at Valley Tech?)

I Kinda Thought He’d Put Me in the Goon Squad

For a moment there I thought Gil might have actually recruited Lineman Gordon Achebe to join his Mudlark hoopsters. That would’ve required some action on Gil’s part and, as longtime readers know, when it comes to coaching Gil doesn’t act, he reacts.

This time he lets Heather Burns and the Star do his dirty work. Knowing that Milford is that rare place in America where kids read GRIT the daily papers, Gildeaux lets Heather play up his squad’s scrawniness, then sits back and lets the volunteers roll in. Gordon obviously has confidence in his strength and he already has experience talking to Heather. He’ll be all set to field her softballs about his role in adding muscle to the Mudlark forecourt.

Will Gil’s passive-aggressive plan to bulk up his front line pay off? Time will tell. For now, it’s off to the locker room to see just how much more time Gordon can be big. Hiyo!