Gil Thorp

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gil Thorp is a sports-oriented comic strip running since September 8, 1958. Thorp is the athletic director of Milford High School and coaches the football, basketball, and baseball teams. In addition to the sports storylines, the strip also deals with issues facing teenagers such as teen pregnancy, steroids, and drug abuse.

The strip was created by Jack Berrill, who modeled and named Thorp after baseball player Gil Hodges and Olympian Jim Thorpe. Mr. Berrill continued the strip until he died of cancer on March 14, 1996. Over the course of his 38 years at the helm of Gil Thorp Mr. Berrill broke ground with many of his stories, often dealing with sensitive social issues of the day. As editorial standards relaxed, he was able to move from stories about jalopies and after-school jobs to teen pregnancy, divorce, and steroids to name but a few. Along the way he introduced many memorable characters who were given unusual depth for a comic strip. Mr. Berrill's meticulous attention to art detail combined with his compelling narratives made Gil Thorp a unique and entertaining look at the trials and tribulations of high school student athletes.

Upon Mr. Berrill's death, Tribune Media Services chose author Jerry Jenkins (co-author of the Left Behind novels) to take over writing the strip. At the time of Mr. Berrill's passing, Jenkins had been in negotiations with TMS about expanding previous Gil Thorp stories into a series of youth novels and was a convenient replacement. Contrary to previous reports, Jenkins was not hand picked by Berrill. Many of Jenkins' stories were written uncredited by his son Chad Jenkins, a baseball coach at Bethel College. The Jenkins stories discussed overtly religious topics which had not appeared in the strip before, including an Orthodox Jew football player ^[1] and a 15-year-old pregnant girl whom Thorp talks out of getting an abortion ^[2]. The Jewish player sequence was interesting because the player, named David Green, was never actually identified as a Jew; it was merely presumed he was Jewish.

Jenkins was followed as writer by Detroit News columnist Neal Rubin in 2004 who, while adding his own voice, has returned the storylines to the traditional format established by Jack Berrill. The strip was drawn by Mr Berrill from 1958-1993 until glaucoma forced him to turn the reins over to his Connecticut Cartoonist Associate colleague Warren Sattler, then Frank Bolle, Ray Burns, and finally Frank McLaughlin following Burns' death in 2000. On February 18, 2008, Apartment 3G artist Frank Bolle again took over art chores for Gil Thorp on an interim basis. In April, Rod Whigham became the new permanent artist. ^[3]

[edit] References

^ Daniel Fleishman, "Who Was That Yarmulke-topped Man? 'Gil Thorp' Strip Gets Sabbath-observant Character," Jewish World Review, August 28, 2001.
^ http://www.chicagoreader.com/hottype/2003/030418_1.html, Retrieved on 2008/04/17.
^ "New Artist Set to Take Over Gil Thorp Strip, Chicago Tribune, March 3, 2008.