There was a time when if someone was Ari, his s/o might be Jackie. But that time was over half a century ago, so yhs has to spend time Googling to find out who Keri and Pedro are comparing themselves to.
All of these characters are from a manga (and an amine based on the manga) called Chainsaw Man. Its main character is Denji, a young man who can turn parts of his body into chainsaws and works as a demon hunter. I’m not sure who Ari is, but there is a character named Arai who is another demon hunter. Himeno is a female demon hunter who wears an eyepatch. Aki is yet another demon hunter who Himeno has a crush on. And that’s all I have to say about that.
The Bucket’s decor is looking a lot duller today. This convo must have something to do with that. Things will get livelier soon, as someone is offering the pair a refill. Odds are it’s The Bucket’s new resident pusherman Toby. Will he be pushing soda, vapes, or to get the name of this strip changed from Gil Thorp to Toby Gordon?
Another smash cut, back to Milford and boys’ hoops action. In the course of hammering Tobias/Toby/Tobe/Toebeans, the Salem player gets a look of consternation as he player he hammered feels… somehow… different.
If Toebeans is getting mugged in P1, is Keri getting mugged in P2? Kudos to the Chief for the arms wrapped around neck poses in parallel. No clue why we’re getting the rando Milfordian showing us his choppers in the foreground, though.
Problems at the charity stripe, Gordon? You need to track down good old Kenzie Hanley to show you how it’s done. But why so distracted by Pedro on Keri like white on rice? Thought Dorothy was your babe and Keri was your bestie when you and they were kids. Have we been thrown from Mimi’s potential girl-on-girl tension to a potential bizarre love triangle?
Talk amongst yourselves. It’s late and I haven’t put a lot of deep thought into this. teenchy out.
Is it the bonfire? Wrong time of year for that in Milford. Unless they started it with Gil’s playbook. Then that might be a good new tradition.
Is it the s’mores? I thought sloppy joes were the thing.
Is it ditching your date for your gal pal? In the words of the late Judy Tenuta, “It could happen.”
Is it the man bun? Not sure we’ve seen one of those on a Mudlark before.
I know what it is: it’s the underage drinking! We’ve been down this road multiple times before. All it takes is one snitch and Gil’s zero-tolerance policy and, before you know it, there won’t be enough kids to field a basketball team. Milford forfeits the rest of the season and starts getting ready for baseball. That’s one way to deal with those pesky budget cuts!
SLAP! AGH! AHHH! CRACK! Keri’s turning into an episode of 1960s Batman all by her lonesome. She might’ve had help from Luhm with that last one, though. Such a shiny, shiny floor.
What’s all this about a nurse? Where’s Rick Scott when you need him, not available for the jayvees? No matter; Keri’s getting sidelined for a bit. Call it karma for not getting benched or kicked off the team for punching out Dorothy if you will. Gil has done the same to kids not named Thorp for less.
This should give Barajas time to drop a couple of reaction strips about Keri’s preferential treatment. With all the jumping around we’ve seen, those have been in a little short supply. Consider the Tabitha-now-Toby making the team, making funky plays and converting into a skill position player subplot. In the days of Rubin we’d have had at least one if not more pissy middle-aged person complaining about Toby being allowed to play football, followed by A Very Special Gil Thorp in which some preachy lesson would be learned. In the days of Jenkins this would just not be spoken of.
With Keri sidelined, maybe we’ll smash cut to another subplot. Time for the Luke Martinez Revenge Tour to resume? Or The Last Days of Meemaw? Will she outlast Funky Winkerbean?
meta: Gocomics has been down all day (rumors of turning into a pay site circulating), plus I’m on the road today. Sorry for the late post.
A week’s worth of active shooter drill comes to an end and with it, more questions than answers. For example:
How long is Gil’s neck? Where does it attach to his body?
Was Gil’s line in P2 written by Barajas or did Whigham ad lib it?
Will Marty refer to the people in P2 as “crisis actors” on his podcast? Will he lose sponsors as a result?
Will Gil press the teacher who waylaid the active shooter into duty as his defensive coordinator?
Will Gil let Keri go home or will he make them stay in class lest he be accused of playing favorites? If he makes them stay, will they go to Mimi for a pass?
Which of the many plot lines, if any, will move to the forefront as factors in the Mudlark football season?
Talk amongst yourselves.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot: It wasn’t Gil Thorp but I passed through Jim Thorpe, PA, this morning. Here’s a pic from the car window.
How bleeding edge are we now, kids? The Linda Lindas’ new album is their first album, released only this past June. They’d previously released an EP in 2020. Their breakout hit was “Racist, Sexist Boy” which kinda seems on brand for the nu-look Gil Thorp. Here they are performing it at a public library, which kinda seems on brand for the old-look Gil Thorp.
Rock ‘n Roll Thursday comes a day early to TWIM, then.
That, in a nutshell, is what today’s strip is all about: getting past the hard candy shell of modern society to get to the chewy middle of adolescent desire to be popular and part of a group. Look beyond the hijab-clad volleyball player and her brown-bagged meal (possibly halal, because the MHS cafeteria can’t be trusted) and see the girl who wants to let her circle of friends know she’s hip to the latest music. Look past Arianna’s acknowledgement of the hijab-clad girl (who hasn’t been given a name yet IIRC) and see the girl who wants her friends to know she uses Urban Dictionary. Look beyond Keri’s suddenly green-dyed hair and bejeweled everything and see the girl whose nose is out of joint because she’s not in the team picture one of her teammates took and posted to social media.
So sit back, relax, and watch the old Too Cool For School drama play out with a bunch of new faces. At this rate, we’ll probably see more of that than we will of Mudlark football.
Gentle readers, I am still genuinely freaked out by the knowledge that a portion of my Saturday post was quoted at The Daily Cartoonist. It’s not like I haven’t been published before; I’ve co-authored a pair of scientific papers and have had a regular column in both a baseball quarterly and a life sciences industry trade magazine (no humblebrag intended, mea culpa). In each of those cases my publication involved significant amounts of research followed by multiple rounds of peer review and editing. Here, it’s just my hot take on a comic strip published hours before I read it, with no input save any comments about it that may have already been made elsewhere – and again, I feel the need to emphasize that I almost never read those comments before coming up with ones of my own.*
If I think about that for too long, it’s gonna make me timid. A timid blogger has no place on a snark blog, so I’m just gonna stop thinking about it, okay? Okay!
Another thing I’m gonna stop thinking about is the dialogue in today’s strip. Typical spousal convo where one spouse has suddenly become concerned about their relationship and their place in it. The only piece really worth hanging onto is Mimi’s evasive answer as to where she and the kids are. Unless the corner of a building we saw yesterday is Mimi’s mom’s place, we have no evidence they went anywhere but to the beach. Those three little birds that have been hanging around Mimi the past two days are either a sign that every little thing’s gonna be alright or harbingers of Hitchcockian horror.
The real highlight of this week’s strips has been the art, particularly of Mimi. Kudos to the Chief today for drawing her holding a phone the way an actual human might. (This might be more challenging than it looks; take a look at how it’s done in Mary Worth, for example.) What’s really gotten my attention is how she’s been drawn relative to Keri – and to previous versions of herself for that matter. We’ve frequently noted how progressively younger Mimi was looking (e.g., in the Christmas strips) but in the past two strips she’s developed a noticeable mom bod. Has Whigham done this in response to some direction by Barajas, then? Dunno but I’ll take it as another sign of increased realism coming to Milford.
As for Keri: get your minds out of the gutter! She’s still building sand castles with her little brother.
*I will start reading those Gocomics comments now, but still not after I post here on the days I post. I also signed up for a Discord account but I couldn’t find where Gil Thorp was being discussed there. The less I know, maybe.
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This Week in Milford 