huge glasses | This Week in Milford

April 25, 2026

Gil Speaks for All. Gil Speaks for No One.

Filed under: actual action, anatomically implausible, big hair, freak faces, Gil Thorp, golf, hideous scar faces, huge glasses, Lantern Jaws, Marty Moon, Pissy faced Gil, Pissy faced Marty, same story 2 days straight — teenchy @ 8:28 pm

Between walkouts and their aftermath, Lucas, The One-Man Milford Co-Ed Golf Team, continues to hit the ball. He hits it very well. He hits it so well that it lands on the green. He hits it so well that it lands on the green about 15 feet from the hole. He will have about 15 feet to hit the ball into the hole. He will have a birdie if he hits the ball about 15 feet into the hole with his next shot.

The tension on the golf course is so thick you could cut it with a knife. But not with a butter knife. That would get you expelled from Milford High School. If you don’t think so, just ask Gil Thorp, Milford High School Athletic Director, Head Coach of Everything and Official Mouthpiece of Milford High School. Just ask him. You won’t get a straight answer, but you can ask him anyway.

~~Ron Jeremy~~ Marty Moon doesn’t like it when faceless lady reporters, lady reporters with frizzy blonde hair and glasses, and the red-headed stepchild of Zippy the Pinhead ask Gil Thorp, Milford High School Athletic Director, Head Coach of Everything and Official Mouthpiece of Milford High School questions. He thinks he should be the only person in Milford that asks Gil Thorp questions. That they get the same non-answers from Gil Thorp that Marty Moon would get from Gil Thorp is of no consolation to Marty Moon.

See Gil Thorp avoid eye contact as he gives his non-answers to the reporters. See Gil Thorp fail to acknowledge that one of the reporters knows the detained student’s name. See Gil Thorp look over the reporters’ heads as he recites the “About” information from the Milford High School webpage. ~~See Dr. Pearl’s hand up Gil Thorp’s ass as she makes Gil Thorp’s lips move.~~ See Dr. Pearl call Gil Thorp into her office on Monday to excoriate him over what he said and did not say to the reporters. See Gil Thorp come away from the exchange unscathed, without any consequences. See whether Gil Thorp’s elder child comes away from her stunt equally unscathed… or not.

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April 4, 2026

A lie told often enough becomes the truth… except in a legacy comic strip, where readers have long memories.

Filed under: Coach Gonads, dopes, Fat Guys, freak faces, hideous scar faces, huge glasses, Lantern Jaws, Miserable characters, Pissy faced minor character — teenchy @ 7:57 pm

Sometimes I hate it when I’m right. This is one of those times. Here we are again in the “lather, rinse, repeat cycle of Milford v. Goshen v. Valley Tech in which all three schools have one person head coaching all the teams and the head coaches of the latter two live only to defeat the coach of the former.” Today Merrill takes the conceit even further, challenging herself to draw Gerads increasingly grotesquely as he sinks deeper into Gil loathing. Pity she couldn’t accept the challenge of drawing a convincing pair of binoculars.

Where I’m stuck here is with this incessant repetition of “Gil is bad at golf.” I’ve been following this strip for a number of years and tbh, I’m not finding where this has been shown to be true. Where we have seen Gil and golf intersect is at the Milford Country Club where, at least during the Rubin Era, he coached the junior program. Here are some highlights:

July 2010: Gil starts coaching the junior program at the MCC, makes kids run laps. Kind of expected for a noob who heretofore has only coached sportsball. https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/theres-no-running-in-golf/

July 2013: Gil shares coaching duties with Steve Boone during The Summer of Herk the Mauler. https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/gopher-cam-action/

July 2017: Gil still at it when Jaquan and 8 Arms do their training thing. https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/the-little-girl-is-just-standing-there-hands-on-her-hips-getting-increasingly-cheesed-at-gil/

July 2021: Gil seems to spend his time at the MCC setting up Heather Burns with a low-paying assistant football coaching job while Carter Hendricks scams people on the links. https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2021/07/12/break-out-your-jorts/

July 2023: In the Barajas Era, Gil spends his summer coaching the juvie football team. Junior golf no more. https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2023/07/07/stop-making-sense/

If one of you gentle readers could point me to specific strips in which Gil has been shown to be bad at golf, especially strips that have been published since the inception of TWIM, I will gladly revise the title of my post and revisit its premise. In the meantime I will treat this plot device as so much revisionist history, like the scrubbing of references to slavery from national historic sites.

Monday edit: Faithful TWIMers Downpuppy and (erstwhile TWIM SID) billytheskink as well as my fellow blogger Rob did the work to show us that the “Gil is bad at golf” trope originated in the summer of 2001. In the comments below, and in Rob’s well-researched post today, you’ll see that Gil somehow went 100-90-80-71 over the course of a tournament. It is implied that the tutelage of his then-wife is a factor. All that aside, why then is Gil allowed to coach the juniors every summer for nearly a quarter of a century after that? Did everyone else better than him, including said then-wife, have better things to do?

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January 5, 2026

And Here’s Gil, Without a Chrome Trailer Hitch in Sight

Filed under: big hair, Gil Thorp, huge glasses, Make and Model Mystery Mobile, Pantheon of Hair, Peering Over Eyeglasses — teenchy @ 3:18 pm

Well looky here. No sooner does Ochoa say Gil is some kind of MILF magnet than we get another guest artist who can draw women attractively enough to imply that Gil might find them attractive.

Jason Margos is a Long Beach, CA-based cartoon artist. He has a webpage, a TikTok and an Instagram feed. He can draw Mr. T and classic Marvel/DC-type stuff. He can draw girl on girl (don’t worry, it’s SFW) so that should make Henry happy. He should be able to draw Inma. And boy, can he draw hands!

Margos immediately puts Gil in a situation where he can put his magnetism in play: working the Milford High pickup line. Seems like a downgrade for the Mudlarks’ Athletic Director until he finds out that it’s not only students who might be getting picked up. Mrs. Wilson, who has to be the most overtly sexually drawn person in the history of the strip, wastes no time in testing the waters to indulge in a little roadside assistance fantasy.

Something’s a little off about her come-on, though. If Beth has second thoughts about marrying Gil, it’s not wet feet she’ll be getting but cold feet. Maybe’s Mrs. Wilson’s talking about what she’s getting and confusing her feet with some other body part. This panel from one of Margos’ comics should adequately describe what’s going through Gil’s head right about now.

Margos’ art is rich with detail – maybe too rich for a daily strip? – but as always a welcome respite from Merrill and another tease of what could be. Let’s sit back and make the best of what the first full week of 2026 strips brings us. teenchy out.

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November 5, 2025

In Which Milford Is the New Provincetown

Filed under: Bonfire!, Dr. Pearl, exposition comics, female moustache, freak faces, Gil Thorp, huge glasses, metapost, Milford Alumni, noises, Pissy faced minor character, Pointy Fingers, talking hand, They called it Puppy Love — teenchy @ 12:32 pm

What do you do when you don’t wanna go to the big Milford bonfire ’cause your secret girl crush went with some icky boy? Start your own private bonfire for two and ~~hope for some pity sex~~ complain about it to your hetero bestie.

Problem is, it’s still 1982 in Milford and yours is still the love that dare not speak its name. Maybe it can in Barajas’ retconned LGBTQ+ utopia in the Valley, but not so much in the vast majority of the country at that time. Pearl needs to catch a clue; her tone-deafness is about as much in fashion as her cat-eye goggles. Of course, if Roxy wanted to keep this on the down low she should’ve thought about that before having her big boo-hoo in the locker room.

meta: Rumor ’round town says our friends at Mopped Up Thorp are going on hiatus. See, I knew something like this would happen when they put down that tile flooring. Here’s hoping they’ll pick up the mop and run with it again in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, that leaves us as pretty much your sole bastion of predominantly Gil Thorp-directed snark on the interwebs. As the MUT crew can attest, it ain’t always easy to make witty observations or well-informed critiques of this strip. Still, we make the effort, and your support is greatly appreciated. teenchy out.

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October 29, 2025

The Bucket, Now Serving from The Reverse Fountain of Youth

Filed under: besties, Dr. Pearl, exposition comics, Gil Thorp, huge glasses, Milford Alumni, Mimi Thorp, same story 2 days straight, sports Henry knows nothing about, The Bucket — teenchy @ 2:41 pm

“The past was alterable. The past had never been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” – George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Gentle readers, yhs will be the first to admit he’s not young anymore. Not quite codger status but old enough to be a generation removed from WWII and Korean War veterans and to remember Phil Rizzuto and Bill White as well as the Montreal Expos. Gil Thorp is a long-running strip that thrives on continuity, not just as a legacy serial comic strip but as one with rhythms that are uniquely tied to the rhythms of high school sports seasons. That said, it makes sense that some level of reboot is necessary to keep the title character relevant and contemporary.

Let’s face it: Gil Thorp, Flying Leatherneck wouldn’t likely be coaching high schoolers today; he’d either be playing the role of Pops and haunting the Milford locker rooms or, at best, be advising the current coaching staff in the Clambake mold. Having Mimi as a high schooler in the early 1980s makes a bit more sense. Kinda stretches credibility that she’d have won a professional ladies’ golf tournament this decade, though. Seniors’ Tour?

What stretches credibility even more is to suggest that Dr. Pearl is the same age as Mimi and/or Gil. No matter the artist, the good doctor has always been drawn as significantly older than the Milford High coaches. How can we be sure this is Dr. Pearl? How else would “we’re getting the band back together?” make sense? She couldn’t have been one of the “backwards faculty” against having a girls’ football team.

This retcon is unfolding whether we like it or not. The best we can do is lie back and ~~think of England~~ watch it unfold, then poke holes in it. Me, I’m still waiting to see how Barajas makes the Gil/Mimi relationship in this scenario anything but inappropriate, creepy or worse. I’m also waiting to see how life after high school aged Dr. Pearl faster than anyone else in Milford.

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October 22, 2025

“I’ll take ‘Things Dr. Pearl Would Never Say’ for $200, Alex.”

Filed under: boring memories, confusing dialogue, Dr. Pearl, exposition comics, football, Gil Thorp, huge glasses, huge numbers, Milford Alumni, Mimi Thorp, sports Henry knows nothing about, team pictures, What the hell is going on here? — teenchy @ 4:26 pm

Smash cut from the postgame handshake with Jefferson to Dr. Pearl’s office, where the good doctor and Gil fire non sequiturs off at each other. Is Gil implying that Leo’s frybread power will pay for this… reunion? Reunion of… who, exactly? The 2014 State Champion Milford Football Mudlarks?

Dr. Pearl looks wistfully at a team photo of a younger Gil with what appears to be a group of preteen girls, preteen boys with long hair, or a bunch of preteens who were transitioning long before Tabatha Gordon ever thought of doing it. All of them look smaller than Gil, their tiny helmets unable to fit any head larger than a newborn’s. And where, exactly, does Mimi fit into all of this? Since when has Mimi ever had anything to do with Milford football?

Oh, no. Oh, no no no.

I’ve got a sinking feeling Barajas is gonna retcon Milford into having had a girls’ tackle football program. If that’s true (and not True Standish), prepare to suspend your disbelief like it’s never been suspended before. Here’s hoping my gut is wrong and we’re just treated to a week of Whatever Happened to True, Jarrod Hale, Austin Shuford, Winn Wiley et al.

Speaking of tiny heads, wonder if Dr. Pearl will invite her cousin Zippy the Pinhead to the reunion?

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August 16, 2025

Come to Me, My Sweet Babu.

Filed under: Dr. Pearl, freak hands, Gil Thorp, huge glasses, Lantern Jaws, Milford Idiots, same story 2 days straight — teenchy @ 3:54 pm

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Per Barajas as related by faithful TWIMer Downpuppy, Baker, Todd Baker was indeed modeled on Coach McGuirk. He and the rest of the suspects were just filler until we got to the meat of the lineup.

It’s been almost exactly three months ago to the day that Merrill introduced her version of Dr. Pearl to the strip. Didn’t take her long to move the doctor from the well-established, bun-wearing granny model to the haggard, disheveled, racially ambiguous mold she keeps for older adult women. Interesting that Barajas is moving her from some sort of stern voice of reason to someone whose judgement of character seems, well, a bit lacking.

We’ve never really seen Pearl get involved in any of Gil’s personnel decisions beyond telling him to lowball Kaz’s replacement. Not even a peep when he rehired his ex-wife for what turned out to be less than one semester. So why now, and why so eager to hire Babu? Does she think sucking up is a prerequisite for the job? Nah, more than likely Babu’s got the old gal a little moist. Why else would she make the quick switch to her sexy Edna Mode glasses before the interview process was even over?

Not quite convinced of Babu’s suitability just yet, Gil might be thinking some research into Catholic High School Girls In Trouble is in order. How long before he realizes that she who cuts the checks is really the one in charge?

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April 2, 2025

That’s Gil Effing Thorp to You

Filed under: actual action, anatomically implausible, baseball, big arms, exposition comics, freak faces, freak hands, Gil Thorp, Gils kids, huge glasses, Keri Thorp, noises, Pissy faced Gil, Pissy Faced Keri, soccer — teenchy @ 2:33 pm

In case you hadn’t seen, GoComics made some changes yesterday. The image size of their strips decreased by about a quarter; the image above has been enlarged by the same amount and it doesn’t look to have lost much in the way of sharpness. More importantly, at least from yhs’ perspective, is that the archives have gone behind a paywall. Unless you’re a subscriber, you can only read strips from two weeks before the current date. (The same is true at the Seattle Times, and I imagine it the same at any site that carries Gil Thorp.) No big deal for a gag-a-day strip but for serials where plots take weeks or months to unfold, a subscription is almost a must. At least if the reader is invested in the strip.

It’s also a bigger deal when you’re trying to blog about a serial strip that revives characters from many years in the past. Unless you have access to the archives or, if you’re lucky, to published anthologies of the strip, you really can’t make informed ~~snark~~ comments about those characters. I can’t speak for my fellow bloggers here, but I’m neither a GoComics subscriber nor do I have access to any of the Gil Thorp anthologies. On the other hand TWIM has been around long enough that it’s become sort of an archive in itself. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

Now for today’s strip. We got two days of “Clam” (who may or may not be “Clambake” from the spring 2007 arc*) giving Marty AA support then this clash of gears. Was that the end of Dark Side of the Moon and another volume of Gil Thorp, The Graphic Novel? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, this reads like the beginning of Nineteen Eighty-Four. No academic institution does sports better than Milford High School, Milford is at war with Valley Tech: therefore Milford has always been at war with Valley Tech – until the moment it is announced that Milford was not after all at war with Valley Tech. Milford was at war with Goshen. Valley Tech was an ally.

Business as usual otherwise in Milford. Athletes continue to make noises describing what they do, rather than reflecting what they do. (Wait for a pitched ball to say “PITCH!” and a stolen base to say “STEAL!”) Action takes place at unlikely angles and in implausible directions. Coach’s kid gets away with murder throwing an extra-pointy bulimic elbow at a teammate in practice while the coach himself stands with his back turned.

The mental image of Gil as connecting tissue reminds me I have to cut up chicken for dinner tonight. With that, I end today’s post. teenchy out.

*Clambake was in actuality Otha Yancey, a retired mailman and ex-Navy man masquerading as a former Negro Leaguer. Don’t get any ideas, Rob. ;)

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