What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? Are Gil and Mimi Thorp Divorced? November 2023 – February 2024

They are. We saw Gil Thorp and Mimi signing the divorce papers the 29th of January. Before that we saw the two looking over photo albums agreeing they had good times, and Mimi asking if they’d still be friends. Coach Cami Ochoa mentioned how she thought Keri Thorp would be someone who loved having two moms. And coach Luke Martinez swore up and down that Gil Thorp would be the hottest bachelor in Milford. So this is as established as can be.

So this should bring you up to date to mid-February 2024 in
Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp. If you’re reading this after about May 2024, or news breaks about the strip, I should have a more up-to-date essay about it here. Now get in losers: we’re going to Milford.

Gil Thorp.

20 November 2023 – 10 February 2024.

Formatting this as a celebrity gossip column worked last time too, so I’m going to keep that up. We got a title for Chapter Four: The Misdirect, the 27th of November, which means once again a story strip started a fresh installment right about when I covered them here. This is coincidence but an eerie one. Except that loose definitions make it all but inevitable.

So. Also broken up? Keri Thorp and Pedro Martinez, who’s been ghosting her — and staying in his room — since Keri’s abortion and the football accident that broke his leg. Keri thinks Pedro is trying to embarrass his father; Tobias Gordon wonders if Pedro’s embarrassed about blowing the game.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 6th of February, 2024. Hey, no fair running into Mark Trail there! Turn back before a squirrel talks about the poachers!

One person does cut through Pedro’s seclusion. Valley Tech Coach Paul Kim shows up at the Martinez’s one day, saying he needs Pedro’s help. Before long he’s got Pedro doing push-ups and racing peacocks, all the signs of being recalled to life.

Speaking of Tobias: the story of him and Rodney Barnes going to juvenile detention for selling vape sticks reached a natural conclusion. And a punch line that would have fit in the Neal Rubin era, too, which underscores how Barajas has loaded new motifs into Gil Thorp without abandoning the old. After a couple strips establishing them getting back to normal with their friends, Rodney mentions how his cousin is making a killing flipping shoes. “You’re on your own, homie,” says Toby, and they freeze mid-laughter while the credits roll.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 18th of December, 2023. Compliance officers, by the way, are the people who find out whether there are laws to cover a thing, and then tell people in the organization what they are. So I’m assuming there’s a thin-skinned class of people whining about compliance officers existing and now you can dismiss their very silly opinions right away.

With that story of teens in trouble resolved there’s room for a new one. This would be Inma Rimsha, who’s on the girls wrestling team that’s brand-new this year. We’re introduced to this with an opposing team’s coach demanding she not wear her hijab. We don’t see how that particular conflict worked out, but Gil Thorp spoke with the district compliance officer and confirmed that yes, religious freedom means women can wear hijabs if they want.

Gil Thorp urges Rimsha to invite her parents to a match. She’s not sure that’s wise, but it turns out they’re proud of her and she has what seems like a convincing win, which is great. But the other controversy comes thanks to Marty Moon, who asks Rimsha’s opinion about the protests outside. Rimsha says she wishes she were there with the protesters, supporting an immediate cease-fire. Taking a mild stand against genocide proves controversial, of course, but Thorp stands up for his student.

Gil Thorp also gets into a weird exchange with a Coach Hernandez, which is a name once used by mistake for Martinez and that’s caused me no end of confusion in the first drafts of these essays. It also has Thorp demanding Hernandez keep his hands off “your student’s parents”, which isn’t something we’ve seen out of Martinez. I have no explanation for this phenomenon.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 15th of January, 2024. Well that’s a development that hit like a, oh, I don’t know, some kind of punch to the gut or something.

There’s also a curious coach-in-trouble story going on. This with — I believe, based on what seems to be the results of a four-team open-air hockey tournaments — Goshen’s Coach Gerads. This began, logic tells me, after the basketball game against Milford. Some of the benched players take out their anger at the teams loss on Gerads’s stomach, and since then he’s been afraid of his students, to the point he’s cringing at Gil Thorp, a man whose antique flip phone only makes calls through Myrt the Operator.

Also, Coach Ochoa stumbled across a gimmick that seems to rally the boys hockey team. Chanting nursery rhymes sure changes the mood, going from one of facing imminent defeat to one of the opponents not knowing what’s going on over there. Again, something that wouldn’t be out of line in Neal Rubin’s day.

There, now. Does the past twelve weeks of storytelling make more sense to you?

Milford Sports Watch!

The sports watch is getting all the more exciting and complicated as Barajas gets more elliptical about naming his opponents! So there are probably errors on this list. I will accept corrections and only sulk privately about getting stuff wrong, as always.

• Valley Tech (20 – 25 November) (with a day off for Thanksgiving.)
• Unnamed High School (6 December) (And yeah, another typo here, with ‘UUW’ allegedly standing for ‘United World Wrestling’)
• Unnamed Wrestling team (6 December)
• Unnamed Hockey team (14 – 16 December)
• Unnamed Basketball team (27 – 28 December)
• East Hampton (4 – 6 January)
• Goshen (11 – 15 January)
• Unnamed Hockey team (17 – 18 January)
• Unnamed Wrestling team (22 January)
• Unnamed Basketball team (1 – 2 February) (with Valley Tech getting named the 2nd)
• Oakwood (7 February)
• Goshen, and whoever has the Bobcats (8 February)

Next Week!

From the comic strip people most complain about jumbled and unmotivated plots to … Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker! Am I going to have to separate these two strips so I don’t overload my rationalization engine? Anyway it’s your chance to meet a Judge Parker relative I don’t know if Marciuliano just made up or who actually used to be in the comic back in the Benjamin Harrison administration or what.

What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Is Rene Belluso gone now? November 2023 – February 2024

I can’t imagine that Rene Belluso is gone from Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.. While I sympathize with those who find the Wile E Coyote-like explosion of all his scams exhausting, I suspect that his is too good a bit of business to drop. At least not unless you have a more serious story to tell. And Beatty’s Glenwood is a gentle place. He may recede for a while, and I wouldn’t mind that as he’s had a lot of story lately. But I expect he’ll be back.

So this should catch you up to early February 2024 in Rex Morgan, M.D.. If you’re reading this after about May 2024, or news about the comic strip breaks, I’ll try to have something useful for you at this link. If I don’t, well, maybe I fell for one of Rene’s plots or I’m running late and need an extra day. We’ll see.

Rex Morgan, M.D..

12 November 2023 – 4 February 2024.

Rene Belluso, having tried his own “Mirakle Method” of personality fixing, had turned himself in to authorities as the first step in repairing his life. With the help of Mirakle Method Industries LLC chief promoter Buzzy Cameron, though, he got released from prison and joined Cameron and “Mud” Murphy’s tours on-stage. As Cameron points out, everyone loves a redemption story.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 5th of December, 2023. “How bad are you at promotion that you couldn’t sell self-esteem in the 70s? Were you even trying? … no, no, look, you’re okay, I’m okay, it’s all for the est.”

Meanwhile in a chance encounter Rex Morgan, M.D., finds himself doing some doctor work. His patient Lyle Ollman knows more specific Mirakle Method stuff than a guy who never heard of the thing should. It transpires that Ollman created the Mirakle Method, back in the 70s, as the Ollman Technique. But it didn’t catch on so how does anyone know about it now? Morgan advises Ollman to get a lawyer fast. Here, you can have one of his, out of petit-jury.

A couple weeks later, Cameron gets word from his lawyers about all this. He and Mud Murphy try to find Belluso, who’s fled their hotel. Ollman gets together with Cameron and Murphy and somebody’s lawyer and everyone agrees, you know, why mess up the money machine? Just give Ollman credit and royalties and everything’s cool. It is, perhaps, another case of Terry Beatty setting up an interesting conflict and then punting. But how would you feel if someone was willing to give you a dump truck full of money and in exchange you just have to let them?

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 27th of December, 2023. I don’t know how realistic that is. So for a test, I’d like if someone could reveal they’d turned something or other that I scribbled out back in, say, 2007 and went and turned it into an Oprah’s Book Club-grade bestseller and oops now they had huge ongoing royalties to deliver to me. Just to see what my reaction would be. So we can judge for realism.

New year, new start. Cameron and Murphy get Rex Morgan into one of their Glenwood Mirakle Method seminars, in gratitude to him for letting them take over his comic strip. Rene Belluso is there too, in disguise, and vows revenge on Morgan for however it is the good doctor has ruined his life again. As the seminar breaks up the scheming Belluso steps out into traffic and gets hit very hard by a car. A bright red one, too, the most dangerous kind. Fortunately, there happens to be a doctor in the strip.

Belluso makes it through, but he’s in a full-body cast. And doesn’t know whether to be more horrified that he’s stuck in that cast for six to eight weeks minimum or that he has Rex Morgan to thank for doctoring. And if that’s not enough Mud Murphy’s come to visit! The onetime hellion now worries sincerely for the person who, even if he was pulling a scam, helped him and maybe even other people. And hey, Murphy’s brought a special guest, Lyle Ollman, let’s give a big hand for —

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 28th of January, 2024. For the sake of avoiding confusion I figure to keep calling him Rene Belluso, among other things because barring extraordinary reason you should call someone by the name they pick themselves. Also, I’m not sure whether he’s Jimmy Ollman or some other last name. I feel like if Ollman were Rene’s uncle on his father’s side, he would have said “after my brother died”. But that’s not an unshakable hook to hang the question of Rene’s birth name on.

Rene’s uncle? Because Ollman recognizes the man in the cast as Jimmy, his long-lost nephew. Rene protests, over and over, and finally just asks Uncle Lyle to leave him be. No such luck, and Ollman insists on giving Belluso unquestioning acceptance and welcoming. You understand his terror.

And that’s the standings as of early February. What’s next?

Next Week!

It’s adventures in Milford! I look at Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp and see what’s up in that Gil-Mimi divorce and everything else going on. Catch you then, I’m hoping. Meanwhile, everyone, please be careful crossing the street. Those red cars are something else.

What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? Did Gil Thorp’s kid have an abortion? August – November 2023

Yeah. Well, I guess there’s a sliver of deniability if you suppose this wasn’t a home pregnancy test, but, c’mon. Keri and Gil Thorp have a quick family meeting with Pedro Martinez, while his father’s busy with the Milford football game. And in less time than it takes everyone to thank Mary Worth for suggesting they talk about what’s bothering them, Keri is recovering in a hospital bed.

So that is the big news and big development in Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp the past three. I, too, am amazed how much it was not built up as a Very Special Episode. It’s also a reversal of one of the few famous Gil Thorp stories, from back in 2002-03 when Left Behind novelist Jerry Jenkins wrote the strip.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 14th of October, 2023. Oh, yeah, so Dorothy and Keri have gotten pretty tight the last couple months, bonding over those shenanigans after Nome King Ruggedo discovered the magic word to induce shape-shifting and tried to lead the animals of Oz in a rebellion.

And yes, Keri and Pedro had been taking precautions. Keri mentioned having an IUD, at minimum. It’s just that the only sure method against pregnancy is laminating your body with at least 15mm weight plastic and never removing yourself from the box.

With luck, this essay should catch you up to mid-November 2023. If you’re reading this after about February 2024 odds are there’s a more up-to-date plot recap here. And now on into the world of high school sports …

Gil Thorp.

28 August – 18 November 2023.

Breaking things down by person rather than chronological order worked last time, so I’ll give that a fresh try.

Keri Thorp and Pedro Martinez’s brief pregnancy you already read about. There are hints that the event might lead to some important further family developments, though. Keri’s abortion brought Mimi Thorp back from the golfing road. Mimi’s been almost entirely absent from the strip. Her strongest presence was learning she can’t live without Ericka Carter. And that coworkers are, in fights, giving Gil Thorp beef about his marriage failing.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 12th of September, 2023. I’m not sure whether Martinez is out of line here. Yeah, he’s fighting over what is, at heart, a disagreement about work plans. On the other hand, this it is an argument about they should do for a half-hour at work. It’s not exactly a personal quarrel, except that the context makes it so.

Those fights? They’re provoked by the existence of Luke Martinez on the Milford coaching staff. To his credit, Martinez is trying to behave, emitting apologies at a rate of hundreds per day. He’s got a lot he feels awful about. His inability to be normal about Gil Thorp has strained his marriage. And it’s alienated Pedro. Pedro, meanwhile, took a bad hit defending Valley Tech’s perfect season in the big game against Milford. Last we saw Luke he was rushing onto the field to be with his son who is, note, on the other team. Yes, it takes more than a moment of normal affection to break through (justified) grievances. But a bit of rain can end a drought, so, we’ll see.

Also on the apology tour: Marty Moon. Everyone at Milford is angry at him for snitching on Toby Gordon and Rodney Barnes just because they were selling vape sticks. Pedro Martinez is angry for his family drama reasons. But Moon’s even getting a cold shoulder from new Valley Tech coach Paul Kim.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 18th of November, 2023. I feel like there’s something weird in Luke Martinez coaching against his son, but I don’t know what the expected standards are for high school athletics. Maybe I’m overly fussy, since I’m in competitive pinball and that has a crazy network of competitors, tournament officials, and even game designers being the same people.

Kim’s perfect season does suggest maybe Luke Martinez isn’t as exceptional as he claims. In this case, though, Kim hasn’t got anything against Marty Moon. He just thinks this town is really, really weird about its high school athletics. Man has a point. I come from central Jersey, where high school sports rate at about a two, but Milford’s letting them cruise at around 186,244.

Anyway, Marty takes all this personally, even though only 95% of it is personal. But he has a dog and his support group, so, that’s something.

And hey, slumming basketball star Emmett Tays relied on the Celebrity Speed Trap to bring in special guest stars Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, that’s neat.

Milford Sports Watch!

Who’s playing Milford, and when? Or at least getting some mention on-screen? Here’s the league standings:

• Valley Tech ( 9 September)
• Oakwood ( 12 – 16 September)
• Central ( 23 September)
• Valley Tech ( 24 September)
• Goshen ( 27 – 30 September)
• Valley Tech ( 1 October)
• Jefferson ( 6 October)
• Unidentified ( 19 October)
• Batavia ( 27 – 29 October)
• Valley Tech ( 10 – 18 November)

Next Week!

What comic strip about the drama and romances of a small-town judge features all the international arms smugglers and super-secret spies running for mayor? Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker gets some attention from me, next week, all going well.

The Monster In The Living Room

“I can’t help sensing a certain coolness in you toward me,” the savage, bloodthirsty monster said.

I agreed with our pet rabbit. “Well, I have felt a bit put off by you lately.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” He shook his head, flapping his ears together, in that way that starts out being dramatic and ends up comic because, you know, rabbit ears flapping. “I didn’t have any choice when you went and attacked my tail.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, and scratched the part near my knuckle where the scar was. “Me, one of the two people who’s spent the past fifteen months bringing you all the food you could eat — ”

“Not nearly all!” he protested. “I could have a whole box more of raisins if you gave me a chance!”

“— and who gets rewarded for brushing you out with an attempt to sever my finger.”