I Don’t Know What’s Happening With Jim Scancarelli But Gasoline Alley Looks Like It’s Out Of reruns

I still do not know what’s happening with Jim Scancarelli. However, Gasoline Alley for Thursday and Friday have been, as best I can tell, new strips. The comic strip had been rerunning a 2007 story in which Slim conks his head and has to get help for insomnia. In the 2007 run of this story Slim’s natural insomnia gave way to his being distracted by kids playing basketball in a court that had just gotten built. This turned into a story where, I swear, he bought a meteorite off eBay and arranged to have it dropped from a helicopter on the court in order to cancel basketball for the indeterminate future.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 15th of June, 2018. It’s a shipwreck fantasy and Slim and the Kiss Girls were playing post office, which isn’t something I ever did because I’m what the hep cats always called a ‘the square’.

This time around, after finally getting some sleep, Slim has dreams of being on a deserted island with a bunch of Kiss Girls, which gets him in trouble with his wife.

What I don’t know that this means the strip is going to full-time new comics. This could mark a transition to new stories, or at least new little joke strips. But this could also be Scancarelli going back to working part-time, slipping in new strips to a rerun arc. I haven’t got any information either way, and will have to wait for developments.

I have thought that the last several Sunday strips were new. There’ve been several featuring a Gasoline Alley centennial logo. Perhaps whatever has taken Scancarelli away from new work has passed and the comic can get back to normal. And, perhaps, even resolve the story of Rufus’s wooing of the Widow Emma Sue and Scruffy’s Mother. That story was left on hold when the comic went into unexplained reruns in November. It was held at a good pausing point, but there is unfinished business there yet.

And, for future reference, if you want my latest recaps of the current storyline in Gasoline Alley then please look to this page. I also recap the other syndicated story strips. They’re tagged by their various titles too, or you can look for the “story strips” tag to get the whole roster of them.