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.
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.
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.
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.
Another Blog, Meanwhile 