So after Isis and her dad are arrested by the ICE official on April 11 and taken to this facility, all it took was some official we’ve never seen finally filing a false arrest petition and saying kids walked out of class (April 20) and there were protests, and Gil visiting Isis (April 29) to release them. Thanks a lot Gil. You were too busy coaching golf for a month to get this done sooner.
Wait, Gil is paying for all this? How? He makes that much? What happened to Pranit Smith doing Gil a favor? Sure took a while. 31 days. I hope Pranit delayed the release after Gil put his hand on his shoulder.
Yeah dont worry. You only worried for 50 days. Now everythings fine and dandy. While you were here school ended for the summer. No more protests at the school since school is out. This guy sounds like a moron telling them things they knew 6 weeks ago. Doh. If there were no protests, would they be stuck there forever? If all it took was protests for everyone in ICE to be freed, well; golly gee, they might as well walk out as soon as they walk in. A high school coach will pay for everyones release. Bada bing bada boom.
Talk about fuckin stupid. Who cares if theyre illegal immigrants, which is the gist of the matter. Kids walked out of class. Thats all we need in this country. Not real reasons to release them. No sirree. Everyone in these facilities has friends. But if your friend is Gil Thorp, all is well. Who cares about all the others?
We skip the part where Beth goes home and spills her guts to Gil about Big Momma and cut straight to where Gil confronts Big Momma about it. Little strange that it’s happening at the bridal wear shop instead of a formal wear shop; at least in my experience I’ve never seen the two combined. On top of that, either Gil is on a massive pedestal or the tailor at Deborah’s Bridal must be Lilliputian.
Big Momma’s explanation turned insult is just so much bullshit and Gil knows it. Her little emphasis on affair lets Gil know what she thinks of the whole relationship. Be cool if he follows through with his threat ’cause the less we see of this retconned Big Momma the better.
Finally the old ghoul fiddles with Gil’s, uh, bolo tie? and suddenly he takes on a drastically different appearance – one we’ve only seen before in dream sequences. Yes, it’s the return of Count Thorpula! Maybe he can suck the life out of Big Momma, not unlike how the life has been sucked out of his namesake comic strip.
meta: I half joked about watching ’70s-80s-90s Atlanta Braves baseball when mentioning the passing of Ted Turner and Bobby Cox. I neglected to do it again when Bob Horner recently passed. I spent many an idle afternoon and evening at the Launching Pad watching Horner hit bombs and watching a fanbase grow more sophisticated as they got better at discerning when a ball had the trajectory to clear the fence instead of being just a loud out. Thanks for the memories and rest in peace, Bob.
There’s another passing that’s hit even harder. I spent this past Christmas in Quebec and was hoping to catch a Habs game at the Bell Centre as it’s been a bucket list thing for me, at least since the Forum closed. Missed them by one day as they went on a road trip ’til the end of the year. The whole pregame ceremony where a former player enters the arena carrying le flambeau is just inspiring and really revs up the home crowd. This past Monday, it was Claude Lemieux who got the nod. Not always a beloved player but a respected one and the kind you hated on other teams but loved on yours. He played for several teams and won the Cup with more than one, but it was in Montreal where he got his start. Hearing the news that he took his own life three days later was beyond shocking. Yet another reminder to check in on people; you never know what’s going on in their minds. (edit: It’s been reported that Lemieux’s brain is being donated by his family for CTE research. That his mental state may have been influenced by CTE makes his loss no less shocking and the need for intervention no less critical.)
That’s it from me until June 13. Rob and tdrew will have each other’s backs and help each other out, so play nice with ’em while I’m away. teenchy out.
Let the record show that this was Whigham’s version of Big Momma Thorp. Note that all three panels contain different artwork, whereas today’s strip contains two panels cut/pasted from yesterday’s strip.
Let the record also show that Barajas was writing the strip when this version of Big Momma Thorp made her appearance.
Why, then, the personality change from being somewhat sympathetic to being yet another harpy? What’s that you say? The two aren’t mutually exclusive? Big Momma can be strong and caring and want the best for her boy and, at the same time, think that settling for the first woman who throws herself at him after the ink dries on his divorce papers is not the best for her boy?
That is what’s going on here, isn’t it? This isn’t so much trying to control every aspect of Beth and Gil’s wedding as it is a not so subtle hint that Beth truly doesn’t know Gil as well as she thinks she does – or at least not well enough to marry him. Instead of putting on her Ace Frehley makeup again, Beth needs to grow a pair and tell Big Momma where to step off. That would require character development on her part that has yet to happen.
Since her introduction, Beth has existed solely in terms of Gil. We saw her first as a secret admirer, then a not-so-secret admirer, then a live-in-lover and now a bride-to-be. No friends, no family, no backstory, no personality; Beth is the ultimate Bechdel fail. At least she’s not a complete shrew like Emily/Mimi, Peaches, Dr. Pearl and the updated Big Momma Thorp, or hot to get into Emily/Mimi’s pants like Ericka and Roxy. Why is it so hard for Henry to write a sympathetic female character, or at least one with depth?
So there you have it: your summer plot is Beth ‘n Gil’s Wedding: Will They or Won’t They? Wonder if any news outlets that still run Gil Thorp run it in the sports section.
Show of hands: how many of you gentle readers knew Keri would make yet another public statement about the Pillar family’s experiences with ICE? If betting on comic strips ostensibly about sports was a thing, you’d be playing with house money.
One might think that by now Gil and/or Emily would’ve had a sit-down with Keri and told them something to the effect of “y’know, you don’t always have to be the one who starts every protest. Or, if you do, be a little more selective in how and where you do it.” In this case, a school walkout will likely end in nothing but suspensions and/or expulsions of the students who participate. A protest march in front of WDIG, or a sit-in at Janet’s Diner, would get the point across to a larger audience with a smaller impact on a student’s status inside the walls of Milford High.
But nooOOOooo! That would not be modus operandi for Keri Thorp, Attention Whore and Social Justice Warrior. Instead we’ll have Keri facing some sort of discipline from Dr. Pearl and Gil acquiescing while standing up for Keri’s right to blah blah blah and yakety schmakety. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Speaking of lather, rinse, repeat, when are we gonna address the acromegaly epidemic that’s hit Milford?
Before I dive in today, again I want to thank all of you gentle readers and bloggers who answered my call to fill us in on the history of the “Gil Thorp is bad at golf” trope. I especially want to thank Rob for biting the bullet and subscribing to GoComics to do the heavy lifting to find the original strip. There was a time when a membership wasn’t necessary to do that deep dive; that’s how I was able to piece together the Tobias née Tabatha Gordon backstory. That time is gone.
You gotta imagine Barajas has access to the entire run of Gil Thorp from day one in 1958, so when he makes reference to something that comes off as canonical the challenge is on us to figure out if he’s retconned something out of his ass or if it actually is canon. Especially if it’s 20th-century canon. For now the best we can do is look at what’s been published in the 21st. I’m kinda thinking tdrew and I need to chip in for Rob’s GoComics account, but I’m open to other suggestions as to how I – I mean we – don’t call BS on something that actually has precedent.
I was gonna suggest that those who cared consider dropping a tip in the TWIM tip jar to aid in this effort but this is the message I got when I attempted to do so:
Makes me wonder how we’re keeping the lights on. Hey Jason, if you ever look at this page, let us know if we can kick in, okay?
Enough of that; let’s snark on what we’re seeing today.
Lucky for Henry coed golf is now a thing; no need to try to keep multiple balls in the air and give more than lip service to those pesky girls-only and boys-only sports. This way a single sport has the attention of both writer and artist, and accuracy and attention to detail should improve as a result. Right? Right?
Doesn’t take us long to throw that out the window, though. We’ve shone enough light on Gil’s relationship with golf; now how about Tays’? What has he done to earn the right to do nothing but criticize Gil’s game and stand around with his arms crossed looking pissy? How is he not a “stranger to the green” and how did he end up a member of the MCC? It’s certainly easy enough to know how Marty isn’t. He’s done enough public harm to Mudlark sports, the coaches Thorp, numerous MHS students and himself to keep him at best a second-class citizen in Milford.
So wipe that shit-eating grin off your face, Moon, and get to convincing us that there’s a market for coed high school golf on the radio beyond the golfers’ parents.
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:
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?
All sports action today (yay!) so let’s break it down.
P1: Ball-busting powers notwithstanding, Gerads is nothing without his jheri curls. Bill the zebra needs to feed him a chill pill.
P2: Any guess as to why Keri randomly shouts out “Collier” mid shot? Yours is as good as mine.
P3: Gerads oughta be telling this to his players and not his assistant. Still don’t understand why these two and Gil are coaching the girls’ teams and not the boys’. Reckon Henry didn’t give those deets to Guest Artist Jason Margos, or forgot that he already had Ochoa coaching the Lady Mudlarks. I’m sure he’ll have some excuse for not following his own canon. Bizarre Cameos Dept.: The role of Goshen assistant coach Darby is being played today by a pre-heart attack Kevin Smith.
Previously we’ve seen Emily and Ericka ensconced in a conventional-looking Milford detached single-family dwelling, when not on tour in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Now they appear to be in a luxury terraced condo/apartment somewhere in the Greater Milford Metropolitan Area, with an expansive overlook of The Valley. Emily has custody of Jami, a/k/a “The One with My Hair,” for the first time since Gil’s proposal to Beth, and Jami feels compelled to spill the tea on all the deets.* (Wait, weren’t E&E at Borney Pub on New Year’s Eve? Shouldn’t they kinda already know about it?) Jami’s also been retconned into some kind of movie buff; too bad he didn’t have that attribute when Joe Bolek graced the halls of Milford High.
But wait, what’s this? Trouble in WPGLLGBTQ paradise? Seems like Ericka is tired of giving away the milk for free and wants Emily to buy the cow. This is enough to make the otherwise sunny Coach Clover turn into Medusa away and avoid the subject. Fair enough for Ericka to press the question; after all, how much did she give up to move to Milford and how much has she gotten out of the arrangement? Did she bargain for having to vie with a hyper-aggressive not-quite-an-ex-girlfriend for Emily’s attention?
January 10, 2026
Speaking of that hyper-aggressive not-quite-an-ex-girlfriend, she’s now hanging out at Valley Tech games continuing to vie for Emily’s attention. So what does Emily do? Talk about it with Coach Kim, distracting one or both of them from coaching the Lady Techsters. Seems like this is something she should be discussing with, you know, Ericka instead? Is Emily gonna be that great a catch when her inability to focus on her job – or to keep her coaching staff focused on theirs – ends up getting her fired?
We do get a fleeting glimpse of actual sportsballers today, with three Lady Techsters wearing illegal jersey numbers. That reminds me: I saw this comment on the ‘mudegon a couple of days ago (from someone with the screen name “I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV”; YOHB?):
Ever since the new social justice-minded creative team took over at Gil Thorp, it’s become a pastime watching the commentariat at GoComics explode with rage that the strip is not strictly about sports. But if Josh is right, and we’re introducing a theme of competitive marriage, they may…well, actually they’ll be the same assholes they’ve always been, they can’t stand any more sexual diversity than the Luann Trufans.
Not being part of the GoComics commentariat, I’m not sure I’m in a place to, well, comment about that. That said, is it not unreasonable to expect that a strip that purportedly “provides an important link between high school athletics and contemporary social issues” actually link them, rather than using one as a sometimes backdrop to talk about the other? Talk amongst yourselves. teenchy out.
*BTW, is anyone surprised that Beth doesn’t want any kids with Gil? After spending enough time with his two trainwrecks with Emily, she doesn’t want to risk that his seed is the source of any of their attributes.
This Week in Milford 
