Gil Thorp

Gil Thorp
Gil Thorp coaching a Milford football player
Author(s)	Jack Berrill (creator) Neal Rubin (writer) Rod Whigham (artist)
Website	gocomics.com/gilthorp
Current status / schedule	Running
Launch date	September 8, 1958
Syndicate(s)	Tribune Media Services
Genre(s)	Sports

Gil Thorp is a sports-oriented comic strip which has been published since September 8, 1958. The main character, Gil 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 Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe. Berrill continued the strip until he died of cancer on March 14, 1996. Over the course of his 38 years, 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 topics like teen pregnancy, divorce, and steroids.

Upon Berrill's death, Tribune Media Services chose author Jerry Jenkins (co-author of the Left Behind novels) to take over writing the strip. Jenkins had been in discussions with TMS about expanding previous Gil Thorp stories into a series of youth novels and was a logical replacement. 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 Jewish football player and a 15-year-old pregnant girl whom Thorp talks out of getting an abortion.

In 2004, Jenkins was followed as writer by Detroit News columnist Neal Rubin.

The strip was drawn by Berrill from 1958–1993 until glaucoma forced him to turn the reins over to his Connecticut Cartoonist Associate colleague Warren Sattler. Later Frank Bolle took over. Later Ray Burns took over. Frank McLaughlin took over 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. Rod Whigham became the permanent artist two months later.