Another day, another strip worthy of the MopMan treatment.
And now for the actual strip.
Once again we have a coach glued to the side of a player, following them around the course. Pretty sure that’s not how this works. We also have the ex-spouses getting the Goofus and Gallant treatment: “Goofus Emily praises her players when they do well and scowls at them when they make mistakes. Gallant Gil gives constructive advice to all his players… well, at least to one of them.”
This golf match has dragged on for two weeks now, with no plot advancement beyond showing what a horrible human being Mimi has become. Barajas might’ve chosen to work ICE into the strip this spring, but tbh the results look more like the work of another governmental agency. Bringing in a younger writer and artist to destroy what works in the name of modernization, all while drawing a paycheck? Barajas and Merrill are to Gil Thorp what DOGE is to the federal government.
Today’s post title is a shout-out to any of you Pennsylvanian TWIMers.
Drought conditions have stricken Farmyard Golf Course. That, or the greenskeepers have spread manure over the greens. Not a problem for VT’s Alana Trinkle, she of the magical disappearing/reappearing/jumping from hand-to-hand golf glove, who places her shot from the bunker two feet from the pin. Then what? Time to turn to her coach and Wonder Twin Powers… Activate!
Shape of… a gender-ambiguous teen!
Form of… a bitter lesbian ex-golf pro!
Powers thus activated, Emily fawns over Alana publicly, showering her with the praise she never bestowed on her own children. Meanwhile, beady-eyed Gil stares at Dorothy, who looks like she’d rather be in France with Beldar and Prymaat.
What is it with these coaches constantly appearing at the side of players who just hit their shots? There are multiple foursomes on the course. Do Gil and Emily have residual Wonder Twin Powers of their own? Talk amongst yourselves. teenchy out.
meta: tdrew, will be glad to let you take Monday’s post. This cliffhanger is too suspenseful for my delicate constitution.
At this stage complaining about the art is like beating a dead horse, especially since neither the art nor the horse get better.
It has occurred to me more than once that, by making Emily increasingly fatter, squatter and generally repulsive with each successive drawing, Merrill is trying to create some visual shorthand for Barajas’ writing Emily as increasingly bitter, spiteful and generally unsympathetic. That doesn’t explain why Merrill can’t draw the character – or damn near any character – consistently. It also doesn’t explain Merrill’s latest fascination with drawing everyone with little tiny shrew eyes. I mean, I get it, Emily’s a shrew, but is everyone else?
Today we continue down that path as, under the guise of sportsmanship, Gil asks Emily if she’s coming to his and Beth’s wedding. Em’s response lacks emphasis but implies that she’s coming solo. Gil asking why Ericka can’t come seems innocent enough, as he probably has no idea there’s any trouble in Lesbian Golfer Paradise. Not to Emily, who immediately decides she needs to twist the knife and insult Gil’s golf, or golf coaching, or golf-adjacent something-or-other. Good thing she doesn’t have eyes in the back of her head to catch Gil’s little limp-wristed backatcha pose.
Taken as a whole, this little encounter just serves to reinforce the ongoing narrative that Gil has moved on and is happier with his post-divorce life than the one who initiated the divorce. Now if the strip could just move on and not make Emily and her obsession with her ex-husband one of the main plot devices. Leaving her in the Arizona desert, with occasional glimpses into her career and relationships, would’ve been more believable than bringing her back to the Valley, having her take over in the same role as her ex at her ex’s most bitter rival, and becoming obsessed with defeating him at every turn. Before you say “well, she just wanted to stay close to her kids,” remind yourself how she doesn’t do jack with them and basically blames Gil for anything that goes wrong in their lives.
I know you think you’re the Queen of the golfing grounds
You can
Send me dead rodents every morning
Send me dead rodents by the mail
Send me dead rodents at Beth’s wedding
And I’ll never forget to put roses on your gravvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeee
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O Gang O Gang, what better opportunity to expess my love for my Rolling Stones than with a selection off of their blockbuster album, “Sticky Fingers”???? The song “Dead Flowers” is a fave among many Louisvillians due to its reference to the Kentucky Derby. Hey, when it slays the Gil, all the more reason to raid the vaults and bear it proudly for public domain. More fun than pursuing the Holy Grail.
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Gram Parsons was an excellent Rock musician who made tracks with groups such as the Rock heavyweight Flying Burrito Brothers.
But Parsons bored easily. He wanted in the worst way to crack the Nashville scene, given his love of Country music. But love could only travel so far. You didn’t just walk off the street and plop on stage at the Grand Ole Opry. Then there was the issue with his hair. You have a lot of long-haired male Country stars now(David Allan Coe comes to mind plus that perm artistry by Conway Twitty as well) but in the 60’s and early ‘70’s, the Nashville contingent were hellbent on not allowing any hippie Communist gracing the stage with the likes of Tom T. Hall or George Jones. This was unfair because Parsons was not trying to send any messages other than that he loved Country music.
Boy, when Emmylou Harris found out about how Nashville was mistreating Parsons, she went ballistic. And because she was well on her way to winning fourteen Grammys, Nashville listened. Her contention was, dammit, the man loves Country and wants to play it at fever pitch. Who cares what his hair looks like???? Do we blackball George Jones because he drank his way into a bitter divorce(which was true)???? Nashville backed down.
”Return of the Grievous Angel” is to die for. The duet of Parsons and Harris just sends me. Check it out.
Today’s Headline in the Milford Enquirer
”Milford Musicians Association Still Protests Gil And Mimi Crooning ‘Return Of The Grievous Mudlark’ At Milford Outdoor Amphitheater!!!!!!!!”
sub headline
”Doesn’t she tee off that day????”
REX ALERT!!!!!! REX ALERT!!!!!!
Remember the movie called Masada???? It was about a small contingent of around 900 Jews who found themselves in a no-win situation with the Roman army around 73-74 A.D. They were trapped on this mountainous fortress mainly built by Herod the Great when he ruled c.37-4 B.C. The fortress is in the southeast part of present-day Israel, located in the desert overlooking the Dead Sea.
This small group of Jews had no chance against the powerful Roman army. It was a valiant effort but it looked like these Jews would have to surrender and be enslaved by the Roman government.
Then something unusual happened. These Jews poisoned themselves, all 960 of them, and snatched victory away from the Romans. What could the Roman army do now? To round this out, Masada is a UN World Heritage Site today, commemorating this noble gesture.
But isn’t that what Fatty Butt is doing???? Pulling a Masada on Sharp Dressed Oreck Man???? As she mentioned, if Snake-for-Ethics finally put two and two together and came up with the Bertha Butt Boogie, don’t you think other people will eventually sing the same damn tune????
C’mon, Snaky Ethics, if Candy is laying in the grass as if she had a severe case of diarrhea and you see a plate of brownies, a bowl of red onions, two cans of Alpo Chicken ‘n’ Grits, a London broil in Reynolds Wrap, and some Gala apples all splayed out on a picnic blanket, do you honestly think she contracted the poops digesting red onions???? That she OD’d on collared greens???? And how would a dog know how to use a can opener to indulge in Alpo or for that matter rip up the bag of Kibbles and Bits???? Use your head, Snake-for-Ethics. That’s what deductive reasoning is for. Candy ate the brownies which caused the pseudo-DOA in the same way that Grandma Moses, given her similar ability to figure that a fatass duck that walks like a duck and smokes Tarytons like a duck and pigs out on pepperoni slices like a duck, will finally conclude that by gum, it’s a fatass duck who will sing a duet in the near future with ol’ Mud on “Them Muddy Boots.” You can take that to the bank. Oops, perhaps the wrong way to put it, given the situation, but you know what I mean. You should have left this with Friday and Gannon and split it three ways. You could have still quit your day job.
As it stands, you can’t even finance a toothpick they keep in a little container by the cash register. Way to blow this golden opportunity, Mr. Snake-for-Ethics.
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This is absurd. I’m not even about to do Reductio ad Absurdum, a method of proving an argument correct by reasoning through the process of its opposite. Proving that nobody but nobody broaches Vegas odds in relation to high school sports???? We prove otherwise by coaxing Coach Dale to throw his paycheck away at the Hickory craps table in front of Jimmy Chitwood???? Have Roger and J.P. send their allowance to a bookie and the Angels in the Outfield go bankrupt with George Knox flashing a bull whip on their behinds to teach them to never raid the piggy bank when the Angels are projected 1,000,000 to 1 that the Angels will win their Division????
I do believe some idiotic notions speak volumes for themselves without my having to loan Coach Dale a Grant.
And I’m with Teenchy. I have fewer rays of hope and less confidence that we are going to escape from Plotline Hell if many rodents dominate much of the landscape. More or less.
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Well, we don’t think Ben or Willard will raid the Valley Conference Golf Tournament. I heard they sprayed #5 Dog Leg Left with several cubic feet of Janitor in a Drum. The putting should roll the same.
God bless you, Gang.
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Ericka and you sitting back
In your trash-filled Cadillac
Making bets on Kentucky Derby days
I’ll be in my office room
With old-fashioneds and a spoon
And some Delaware T’s to melt my pain away
Take me down, Little Mimi, take me dooooowwwwwwwnnnnnn…
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Afternoon Edition to the Milford Enquirer
”Keith Richards Denied Rumors Of Nuptials With Heehaw!!!!!!!!!”
sub headline
”They tol’ me that Heehaw nidded ta wayke up so me ‘n’ th’ band wawlked into th’ rume ‘n’ stawrted awn sum Dead Flowers. We even gayve hawr tikkets ta tha Kintuhky Dawrby cuz she lukked like she nidded ta get out uv tha casket Mimi’.”
Boy it looks like news of the Milford walk-out has spread all the way to Valley Tech, where Mimi and Paul seem to be walking on eggs for their safety from ICE. Or at least his and his childrens’. Love the big award on the wall; who knows how old it is, but I’m sure if Mimi won it it will be broadly displayed for all to see. Do they even know about Isis situation at all? Why would they? Dont they have their own school program etc. to worry about? Mimi is Gils ex. Why does she care that much about some student at another school? They never connect the dots around here, they just jump around assuming everyone in creativity is on the smarts. Does Gonads have any thoughts about it?
Of course Mimi must have heard from Gil how her daughter made an ass out of herself (again) and Im sure that paints a fine picture of the job she did raising this fine young lady. Im sure they also went over who is more responsible for Peanut turning out the way she did, although she has many years of life and maturity to turn it around, even if some of it may be spent at Milford Modified or some other correctional institution.
If Alex Trebek was still around Im sure he would love to pose this answer to his contestants – “This comic strip has been around for 68 years and has gotten progressively worse over the last 5”. Well, Ken Jennings can do the honors. Maybe it’ll even be a Daily Double.
That’s really unfair of me to write, TBH. Emily officially stopped switch hitting off the course the day she signed those divorce papers, though in all likelihood she stopped long before then.
When this strip featured golf in the past, it was almost exclusively as a summer filler arc and predominantly involved someone hustling or otherwise cheating at the game. In the Barajas Era, it has been used as the vehicle to destroy the Thorps’ marriage, transforming Emily f/k/a Mimi from a generally pleasant, generally athletic wife and mother who could impart life lessons of her own into a miserable, misshapen lesbian who thinks only of herself.
That’s also really unfair of me to write, too. Emily doesn’t only think of herself; she also thinks about exacting revenge on her ex-husband. In so doing she follows in the footsteps of the pre-firing Luke Martinez and the God-only-knows-why Mitch Gerads. Pretty sure I’ve pointed this out previously but it is entirely possible for a coach of one of Milford’s conference rivals to have a relationship with another coach that isn’t based on seething hatred and spite. (See Andrews, Tod.)
Speaking of coaching relationships, anyone find it bizarre that Kim has this sort of fawning respect for Emily? After all, he was named VT’s AD after Luke’s firing; now she has his job yet he’s still on the staff. Don’t tell me Kim saw himself as a placeholder and now sees Emily as somehow being more worthy of the position?
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this but it’s early Sunday morning as I write and I need to crash. teenchy out.
Well, this should come as a surprise to no one. Keri’s poor form in Saturday’s strip pretty much ensured Keri wasn’t making this shot. Wonder if that hyperextended upper arm had anything to do with it. That, or the lack of coaching from anyone, including Keri’s parents, beyond the usual “you got this” or some other pleasantries. Meanwhile, Emily gets dap from Dark Gil a/k/a Coach Kim.
Now can someone please explain the consequences of this outcome? Milford and Valley Tech were playing for a postseason berth. Were they not also playing for the conference championship? If so, then would it not follow that the loser of this game would end up the conference runner-up? How, then, can the winner of this game go on to play in the postseason Goshen, a team in their conference that is neither the conference champion nor the conference runner-up? Clearly Barajas needs to learn more than how to just sprinkle various phrases and terminology into the strip at appropriate moments. ‘Splain, Henry.
Anyhoo, back to Emily. Ms. Clover continues to be drawn ever more grotesquely, never looking the same way twice or from one panel to the next. Today she looks like the love child of Rocky Dennis and Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Color her green and she could easily pass for She-Hulk. It’d be easy to write this off as visual evidence of her becoming a increasingly miserable individual, one who is more concerned about herself and her career than about anyone else in her life, including her offspring. That would be giving the artist more credit than is deserved.
Shades of old-school Gil Thorp here as the sports action builds to a crescendo and we’re left with a cliffhanger as our main character gets ready to be the hero or the goat. Since there’s not much more to say about that, I’m gonna fill the rest of today’s post with some rando observations:
VT’s lettering has gone from solid black to orange with black outlining. A nitpick.
As per today’s post title, if Keri is trying to get off a shot, shouldn’t one of Keri’s hands be behind the ball? Instead Keri’s hands are on either side of the ball, so it looks like she’s pulling down a rebound.
What’s with the word balloons that have to tails on opposite ends? It looks to the untrained eye like two people (Jackie and Marty?) are speaking in unison. I know: let’s solve this one using The Magic of AI:
In manga, a speech bubble with two tails attached to the same character is a visual shorthand that modifies how the line should be read or who isspeaking. Common meanings:
(a) Dual-voice effect: Two distinct tones or simultaneous voices coming from the same character – for example, a normal speaking voice plus an inner/more intense voice, or a spoken line immediately overlapped by a whisper, shout, echo, or telepathic overlay. (b) Split or layered speech: The character is saying two things at once (literal double utterance or simultaneous thoughts and speech). The artist indicates both streams belong to the same mouth/person by tying both tails to that character. (c) Emphasis on source or volume: One tail may mark the actual speaker while the second signals a different mode of delivery (e.g., one solid tail for regular speech, one jagged or thin tail for a computerized voice, shouting, or a thought-like aside). (d) Dialogue attribution incrowded panels: When tails converge on a character who speaks while another character’s bubble overlaps, two tails can clarify that both linked bubbles come from the same person.
From yesterday’s comment section, it looks like we will be without tdrew’s commentary for the immediate future. Hopefully Rob and I can fill in adequately. (edit: Rob is on vaca this coming week, so it’ll be yhs until you’re sick of me.) I know a lot of you gentle readers appreciate tdrew’s Rex Morgan, M.D. commentary. I don’t read Rex so I went back and skimmed over a few strips from the past year. Not a lot of doctorin’ goin’ on, but the writer and artist seem to have a fixation on roots country/Americana music and thick women.
As for Crankshaft, the less said the better. Tom Batiuk has a fixation on human suffering and, well, Tom Batiuk.
I did write at one time that I might drop in on Tank McNamara for a more realistic look at the world of sports. In the past two weeks, Tank has covered the US loss in the World Baseball Classic, curling, March Madness, college sports’ transfer portal and NIL money, and the tail of sports betting wagging the dog of sports.
I notice that GoComics has turned off commenting for Gil Thorp – and for the rest of the comics, for that matter. What’s up with that?
Apologies for the ramble and the late post. See y’all on Monday where we find out what happens with Keri’s shot.
This Week in Milford 
Looks more like a rebound than a shot, but who’s keeping track?
Shades of old-school Gil Thorp here as the sports action builds to a crescendo and we’re left with a cliffhanger as our main character gets ready to be the hero or the goat. Since there’s not much more to say about that, I’m gonna fill the rest of today’s post with some rando observations:
In manga, a speech bubble with two tails attached to the same character is a visual shorthand that modifies how the line should be read or who is speaking. Common meanings:
(a) Dual-voice effect: Two distinct tones or simultaneous voices coming from the same character – for example, a normal speaking voice plus an inner/more intense voice, or a spoken line immediately overlapped by a whisper, shout, echo, or telepathic overlay. (b) Split or layered speech: The character is saying two things at once (literal double utterance or simultaneous thoughts and speech). The artist indicates both streams belong to the same mouth/person by tying both tails to that character. (c) Emphasis on source or volume: One tail may mark the actual speaker while the second signals a different mode of delivery (e.g., one solid tail for regular speech, one jagged or thin tail for a computerized voice, shouting, or a thought-like aside). (d) Dialogue attribution in crowded panels: When tails converge on a character who speaks while another character’s bubble overlaps, two tails can clarify
that both linked bubbles come from the same person.
From yesterday’s comment section, it looks like we will be without tdrew’s commentary for the immediate future.
Hopefully Rob andI can fill in adequately. (edit: Rob is on vaca this coming week, so it’ll be yhs until you’re sick of me.) I know a lot of you gentle readers appreciate tdrew’s Rex Morgan, M.D. commentary. I don’t read Rex so I went back and skimmed over a few strips from the past year. Not a lot of doctorin’ goin’ on, but the writer and artist seem to have a fixation on roots country/Americana music and thick women.As for Crankshaft, the less said the better. Tom Batiuk has a fixation on human suffering and, well, Tom Batiuk.
I did write at one time that I might drop in on Tank McNamara for a more realistic look at the world of sports. In the past two weeks, Tank has covered the US loss in the World Baseball Classic, curling, March Madness, college sports’ transfer portal and NIL money, and the tail of sports betting wagging the dog of sports.
I notice that GoComics has turned off commenting for Gil Thorp – and for the rest of the comics, for that matter. What’s up with that?
Apologies for the ramble and the late post. See y’all on Monday where we find out what happens with Keri’s shot.