the guy who does Apt 3G
Is this some kind of phone?
That tree-in-the-living-room thing is disturbing.
AWB, that tree is actually outside; as I learned from comments, what looks like a counter is actually part of a building. I think we've just replaced the duck-rabbit as the go-to gestalt shift illustration.
It's funny how with these things the default (and most reliable) setting is "fake."
Come on, some of those people have got to get rejected, right?
I should know better than to expect sanity from the syndicates, but what a weird decision. You need a replacement artist, and out of all the applicants you turn to... someone born in 1924 who is already doing another strip? Way to mine talent, guys.
The choice of Bolle is preposterous, and a short-term bandaid at best. What are they going to do when they run out of 80-something dudes named Frank? Is there no one younger drawing bafflingly bad pseudo-realistic comic strips?
Minivet answers my question in 9. Bryant would have been perfect. His drawing is still at weird angles with odd proportions, but the people are distinguishable, and actually ugly instead of merely badly drawn.
I'm optimistic the strip will eventually drive him insane.
Come on. Bolle was already pretty fucking nuts.
Given his penchant for reading right-wing assbaskets and Gil Thorpe, I submit that FL is actually a winger and that all other regards of his Unfogged-centered presentation of self constitute a massive act of trolling.
14: not as nuts, though. Not yet.
Bah! The best thing about Gil Thorpe is mocking the terrible artwork. This modest improvement in artistic talent will take even that away from us.
17: We'll always have Paris mocking the ridiculous out-of-joint dialog.
Thats true. And certainly the plot lines will continue to be terrible.
aw, bummer. I wanted that to have been real.
20: Different couple, different game, but the theory seems to be that a few "no"s are good for sales or something.
I do not know why everyone cares about this Gil Thorp thing, and feel as though I am missing a joke.
23: The answer lies in your ethnicity, dear Cala.
23: the blog about it is really funny; I would not be paying attention except for that.
I really enjoyed Frank Bolle's work on the Boy's Life adaption of John Christopher's Tripods trilogy. (Which IMDB tells me is being made into a movie again!)
With a different old guy named Frank, will we ever again witness Klein bottle brain-punchery?
You jest, Labs, but a former meth-head friend of mine now makes it through the day with Gil, the 3G girls, and Mary Worth.
Bryant reminds me of Daniel Clowes. Now that would have been a great thing: Gil Thorp in Ghost World.But is the strip on Comics Curmudgeon's blog by the new artist? Because if so, he's already got the Head Shaped Like the End of a Two by Four thing down. And that ponytail!
Cala, I think the point is largely that it's so indecipherably bad that it can, like Marmaduke, be read as hyper-obscure modernist art. Why, frex, bizarrely depict this conversation from outside a window in the middle panel? Why do all the characters basically look like the same person? Why are buildings drawn at 45-degree angles? Why is all the sports-action represented in a bizarrely static way? Why are there little shadows and flourishes sometimes appearing among drawings that clearly aren't interested in realistic shadows?
Clearly, Gil Thorp is a work of demented genius.
Sorry, that probably should have remained on Standpipe's blog.
I do not know why everyone cares about this Gil Thorp thing
Once you fully grasp Kant's three critiques, Hume's early work, Nietzsche's middle work, and the book of 5 rings, Gil Thorp is really all that remeains.
24: Too white, or not white enough?
Thanks, AWB. That's what I thought (I mean, it's obviously awful), but I couldn't figure out why, e.g., otherwise sensible ethicists would obsessed with it.
what looks like a counter is actually part of a building
Okay, so what are they doing outside in their bathrobes having a conversation?
I'm with Cala and McManly.
otherwise sensible ethicists
This refers to... Labs?
Also, GT seems to be the product of someone who either hates or has never played basketball.
28: will we ever again witness Klein bottle brain-punchery?
I don't know, per comments 2 & 3, the tree-in-the-living room, no it's actually a building across the street thing is pretty great (not to mention the ponytail in Panel 1). And given the whole context of GT, isn't another aged Frank being selected to do the drawing pretty much what you would want/expect. (And it clearly is but a short term "fix".)
36: someone who either hates or has never played basketball.
Nah, just someone looking for the return of the two-handed set shot.
No, the appeal of GT is the combination of (a) heavy-handed Traditional Values and (b) the way the comic makes no sense either in its art or writing. Imagine Stover at Yale rewritten in the style of Gertrude Stein, or something.
Oh, you're right, that article about a fake proposal was from four years ago. But it was at a Wizards game, so that's suspicious. Maybe they figured that's how long it would take for people to forget.
28: Oh, I loved that comic adaptation of the Tripods trilogy when I was a kid!
My school library had The Pool of Fire, the third book in the trilogy, but didn't have the first two books. Reading it by itself, it didn't make a whole lot of sense, so when Boys' Life did the comic adaptation, I got to fill in all the backstory!
OK, on the Josh Reads site - the Certified Christians (?) personals ad - with the blonde hottie wearing a little tank. Have they added nipples? Is this really how Christian dating sites get hits?
Am I crazy, or does anyone else see this?
AWB, that tree is actually outside; as I learned from comments, what looks like a counter is actually part of a building
Dude! That's not how perspective works. The woman's head is level with the second floor window!
Check it out - for the woman's head to line up with the window, the woman closer to the viewer would actually have to be taller than the other woman. It's insane!
In comics news, Steve Gerber died. I don't know what he did aside from Howard The Duck, which was one of two comic books I ever read even a little bit, but the Phil Nugent blog has a nice tribute.
43: It's insane!
If you're going to get disturbed by it, I'm thinking that you might want to avoid reading it on a regular basis (or looking through the archives). For instance in today's strip just try to come up with plausible sizes and location for the players, basketball and basket in Panel 3.
44 - Surprisingly, I don't see anything about him yet on Mark Evanier's blog... Oh, no, wait, he's memorial-blogging here. (Groo the Wanderer was first published as a Steve Gerber/Jack Kirby fundraiser during their lawsuits against Marvel.)
I wonder if this means that the dysfunctional gravity field causing everyone in GT to lean at a 20-30 degree angle will be normalised.