Beasts, beast-men, Wilbur, etc.
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Pluggers, 4/22/24
John Cougar Mellencamp sits at the intersection of plugger and poet, and I have long believed that “Life goes on/ long after the thrill of living is gone” is one of the most poignant lines in the corpus of 20th century American literature. Anyway, mad respect to Pluggers today for briefly but explicitly acknowledging the overpowering miasma of hopelessness that suffuses every panel of this comic that’s ever been published.
Mary Worth, 4/22/24
So I was right that Wilbur truly is going into a fugue state in mid-conversation, but wrong in that Iris very much is noticing. This is actually pretty triggering, as Wilbur retreating to his mind palace so he can imagine himself as a spandex-clad superhero is surely a familiar scenario to her, from when she and Wilbur used to have sex.
Rhymes With Orange, 4/22/24
YOU are concerned about the potenial fire hazard that could arise from YHWH’s appearance as a burning bush
I am concerned about why these bears are being forced to learn religious dogma about human deities, rather than being told the truth about the great and awful Ursine God
We are NOT the same
208 replies to “Beasts, beast-men, Wilbur, etc.”
MW: Anyone remember the cartoon Doug and how his superhero persona, Quailman, was literally just Doug wearing his default outfit with a belt on his head, a towel for a cape, and his underwear outside of his shorts? And yet he still managed to have a lot more creativity in his design than Wilburman and his dead bulging eyes.
If I were Young Smokey, I’d be more concerned about why I have to wear pants, while the rest of the class gets to luxuriate in the altogether.
There’s nothing like wearing pants to call attention to how everyone else here is naked. It’s not quite pasties and a G-string, but it has a similar effect. (I can’t believe I checked for visible bear genitalia.)
Who am I, that I alone have been chosen to wear pants?
Rhymes With Orange: I’ve never attended Bible class, but I’m pretty confident that each lesson doesn’t have to be carved into a big stone slab, for effect. Apparently it’s what separates us from the beasts.
MW: When Wilbur is wearing his mask, how does he see? Does his mask have lenses in it?
Slylock Fox: Again, Slylock Fox proves he has to be the center of attention at all times by shitting on Max’s entertaining story with a side order of cock-block.
Dustin: DustDad takes a myriad of prescription meds. He’s fat and overeats and lazy too. Ha ha, he’s a Plugger!
Phantom: I’ll bet Ukranazi Stepan couldn’t fix this guy’s teeth.
Rhymes With Orange: Smokey is about to learn that Moses will replace him as spokesperson.
RMMD: What? The Morgans don’t have an at-home stomach pump? They should, with those dingbat kids.
MW: It’s funny because this whole time, Zak has been gazing benignly at Wilbur and envisioning a big chunk of bologna.
JP: At least April’s mom can say she died with her boobs on.
The bush wasn’t consumed. Calm down, bears.
Namcy – Today it becomes apparent that Olivia James’ secret identity is . . . Francesco Marciuliano!
MW:
Here’s Mr. Van Dyke’s and Ms. Andrews’ take on Wilburman:
Super-callous, fragile dipstick; ex seems, well, atrocious
Even though the look of Zak is really quite ferocious
If he says things loud enough, he’ll sound quite braggadocious
Super-callous, fragile dipstick; ex seems, well, atrocious
yDT: Everyone else started their description with “She had nice big boobs. I didn’t see the face.”
yJP: You do know, Pavel, April’s daughter is going to come after your daughter, if Taratino gets to Vol. 3.
Phantom: You know, Kit, your twin sister, without all that monk training, took down the head of an international cartel and his plane all by herself.
Electric Acres: Well, that was fun. Who wants Chinese?
@Needless Exposition: I do, and that explains everyone’s dazed expression in this current scenario! Mary’s laced her muffins with Zombie Chips! It all makes sense now!
JP: What, did Pavel have a stroke right at the moment of his greatest triumph? How ‘delightfully’ ironic!
Nah, there’s probably a mousetrap in that drawer planted surrepitously by April or maybe even the raspberry-haired brat (‘my first mission with Mommy, and THIS time it’s PERSONAL!’) and he’s about to yell like Tom the cat in the classic MGM cartoons.
How quickly it took Wilbur to start day dreaming tells me that she must have talked his ear off more than once when they dated.
MW: Wilbur smiles and thinks, SIZE MATTERS. Wilbur knows his own opposable thumbs are bigger than Zak’s.
@The Quiet Man: That was actually one of the best episodes of Doug. His friends all decided to hang out with Roger instead of him so of course they all had to be hypnotized into thinking that he’s a loser…only to find out that Roger had planned a surprise party for him to celebrate his moving in.
Am I the only one who’s not seeing the “vintage” strips on Comics Kingdom that I’m subscribed to? That Web site reboot has been a total disaster from the start, and every day it find some new way to be even worse.
RWO: After the Animalpocalypse, one of the first tasks facing the animals was to build their own education system. The more literate species salvaged old human textbooks, censored to remove outdated anthropocentric dogmas like “pets” and “beasts of burden”. The unluckier ones got, well, whatever random pieces of debris they found with the magical human word-shapes on them. These bears salvaged a slab of masonry from a collapsed church, and now their entire school curriculum revolves around the interpretation of 14 random lines of 3000-year-old scripture.
Pluggers: I’m reading this as an even bleaker Brokeback Mountain. Dog Man is about to confess the time he felt a deep longing for Cat Man, a yearning for something at once sexual and emotional and yet so much deeper. A desire to spend their lives together, a desire that he realised he could never fulfill due to the stiffling demands of family and society. A life wasted spent pining for someone he could never have… oh, never mind.
THE SPREAD WAS ADDRESSED THERE IS NO REASON FOR CONCERN BEYOND THE SENTIENT JEWISH BEARS
MW: Wilbur’s mind palace is a confusing labyrinth of food smells and resentful exes which is understandable since he mistook the European word maze for the Mesoamerican word for corn.
@seismic-2: Oh gosh, I’m only seeing one. Check your favorites — sometimes they like to come undone spontaneously.
RWO: “And later on in Exodus, what’s this bit about ‘Thou shalt not, bear, false witness against thy neighbor’? Why do the humans get to false witness against their neighbors and we bears don’t?”
PIBGORN – This feature has always been nauseating, butt he seems to have decided to take it down another level. The author’s contempt for his characters comes pouring off the page, and the depiction of PIB as an oversexed, mentally challenged young child is only one of the disturbing elements.
Mary Worth: A chimple? An apecule? Menage à bonobo?
Pluggers: Pluggers have suffered decades of undiagnosed and untreated mental health issues.
MW: Look at Wilbur’s (sorry, Wilburman’s) manic expression in panel 2. Who’s the real villain here?
RWO: “Boo! Do 2 Kings 2:23-25!”
Pluggers use a write in comic strip to tell their associates they”re bored to tears.
—And a Tip o’ the Hat to Don “STFU” Paul of Placer County, CA.
Pluggers: I had never heard of John “Cougar” Mellencamp, so I had to look him up to confirm that Josh wasn’t actually talking about the cat to the right.
RWO: Smokey covers his head and hides his nakedness before the lord.
The instructor says; “Oh, I see someone’s been reading ahead.”
FG: Why, Doctor Zarkov, you old dog!
It’s good to learn that our heroes and the Mongovians have compatible sex bits, leaves Dale and Flash their options open.
Frazz: “I blame so-called ‘smartphones.’ I also have no friends besides you.”
Luann: So…the plan is to take a before image, and then give the “client” a three-word brand that is worse than something y0u can find in an astrology sign’s descriptors, and then take an after image, showing how the client has been changed by their new brand, and … profit?
CS: I like how the ellipses implies Jeff realizing he absolutely should include “the famous cartoonist” as part of Batton Thomas’s name. He doesn’t want to get thrown out of the store!
MW – “HEY!!! My tits are over here!”
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women:
Also teacher bear is literally holding a bible… making the slab even more pointless.
@taig: RWO – There are certain problems with the grammatical gender in the Hebrew that make those verses too controversial in certain states. Best to stick with Exodus according to Charlton Heston, as it was given at Sinai!
MW: After envisioning himself with the superpower to lift a somewhat-lighter-than-average American woman without suffering meaningful ligament, vertebrate, and knee damage, the only thing to come up with is the perfect name. Something mysteriously attractive which won’t obliquely tip off his real world idenity…
Mr. Advice-Lady it is!
Clearly not having the infrastructure to manufacture them, I am concerned about who the bears mauled in order to acquire that book and those clothes. To be biblically accurate, and by the size of Smokey at this time, I can only assume it was forty children.
Pluggers -“Then there was this one time? At Obedience School? I stuck a rawhide bone up my ass.”
Mary Worth has certainly had its moments where it’s tried to make people believe the craziest things. Like how it’s super easy to teach college courses or even take long repeated hiatuses. Or that hunky gazillionaires who went to diaper school with your son would rather be with you instead of someone in his peer group. Or being able to get a clean DNA sample from a can of root beer…
But trying to get people to believe that Wilbur is a hero because he pushed a kid or that his daydreaming is endearing rather than rude? Now you’re asking too much, Moy.
@taig: “Deuteronomy! Deuteronomy! Play Muddy Deuts!”
Pibgorn: Ledda practices her puppetry skills by shoving her hand up Padraig’s butt and making his neck turn at an unnatural angle.
9CL: We’re back to them being passionately in love regardless of their age. I’m slowly discovering that Brooke is inconsistent with his characters. The dialogue reads better in Welsh.
“Rwyf newydd gwblhau fy mhapur ar gyfer dosbarth Sister Aramus.”
“‘Hanes angerddol Awdurdod Dyffryn Tennessee.'”
“um… angerddol?”
“Mae’r cyfan yn y troednodiadau.”
“Ah. gwelaf. Yn hollol. A ddylwn i ddechrau, neu a fyddai’n well gennych chi …..”
“Nid wyf erioed wedi darllen defnydd mor effeithiol o gyfeirio, esboniad neu sylwebaeth o’r blaen.”
“Arhoswch nes i chi gyrraedd tudalen dau.”
Pluggers – The difference between John Mellencamp and the average Plugger is that at age 72 he is still touring and putting out new music, while Pluggers haven’t had any noteworthy personal stories worthy of an anecdote since the Clinton Administration.
Mary Worth – We can only hope that Wilbur’s mind breaks and he starts a vigilante campaign against any of the men dating his exes, which will end with him committed to a mental asylum.
Rhymes with Orange – Only intervention from the Sunday school teacher that directed Smokey’s attention to fires and not God himself prevented Smokey from being known as a terror to any religion of the Abrahamic faiths, instead of a beloved mascot for safe camping and outdoor practices.
Zits: Jeremy, stop putting bricks in your backpack. It doesn’t impress anyone!
FC: “Did you know that jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel?”
MW: It’s a pretty dull conversation, I would also space out and imagine Zack doing a Joe E. Ross impression.
RWO: Smokey thinks Moses got crabs.
Rhymes with Orange takes place after Slylock’s Animal-pocalypse right?
I mean it makes sense.
9CL: “We’re back to them being passionately in love regardless of their age. I’m slowly discovering that Brooke is inconsistent with his characters.”
He seems to have, surprisingly, not thought through how these daily time travel sequences might affect the continuity. He likes to take us back to when Amos was a pre-adolescent but Edda was already a canny streetwalker by contrast, bestowing sloppy wet oral excavations upon the hapless child.
Now the characters can travel in time at will, have learned to levitate and hover in the air, have switched places so that Edda is the world renowned performer who mocks her husband’s performance (musical, not that kind of performance, still waiting for that development) … and yet still there are no more stories to follow just these endless one off “they have been in love since birth” sequences.
RMMD-“Put on your Sunday best we’re going to the vet.”
MW-“You said something about eating a big sandwich?”
@taig: LUANN – The plan is to drag the corpse of this plot along until Saturday, and then we can reset and forget all about it. Isn’t Brad wanting to have a baby? Maybe we can do a sequence where it is explained to him that this is not physically possible. But Toni can have one in an exciting Surrogate Mom plot sequence that ends on a Saturday with the baby about to be born but then instead the plot is dropped forever.
G. &*^(@#$! Thorp – “Everyone picks a role out of the hat?”
This takes me back to high school when I had a theater class with Connie Goetz as the teacher. (Some locals may remember the Peter and Connie NSP commercials. Peter, her husband, was a bigshot actor at the Guthrie Theater.)
Connie wasn’t happy with me in her class. She already had me in a regular English class and found me to be unmotivated. (She may have also thought I was a pervert, since she may have noticed me in regular English class peaking up her skirt rather than focusing on conjugating verbs). But the English class I had selected for the last period of the day was canceled for lack of students and her drama class was the only other English class (I guess theater qualified as English) that period. So she was stuck with me.
We had baseball practice right after that. She tried to be friendly and talk about what interested me, even though she knew nothing about baseball. She once asked what time my baseball rehearsal started. Another time she asked what part I played on the baseball team. They’re called practice and position, not rehearsal and part.
Gil’s “role” comment reminded me of her asked about my “part” on the team.
@48 Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: So when was your baseball rehearsal? Enquiring minds want to know.
Luann: Is the endgame here that they’re going to post the “New Luann” videos on potential dating sites, or that they’re selling her into white slavery?
Pluggers: So this is the last Pluggers then, right? We’re all in agreement now? Because I don’t see how pluggers can let the mask slip this far and still keep going.
BB: Don’t you hate it when you try to trick someone into digging their own grave and they make a cairn instead?
CS: Now I understand the purpose of Harry Dinkle. He’s the only character that can make the appearance of Tom Batiuk’s least-veiled author insert character a refreshing improvement.
SlyF: Slylock Fox is full of crap as usual, and here’s a hint why: today’s mystery contains less than sixty words and even that has at least one word that isn’t in the dictionary.
RMMD: Now now, let’s all calm down and make sure we’re not forgetting anything. Are everyone’s shoes tied properly? Does everyone have a toy or a book? Did everyone go to the bathroom? This is an emergency, after all, so we are not stopping along the way. Well, unless anyone wants to check out that new pizza restaurant with the skee-ball and arcade that we’ve been talking about. You know, maybe we should do that first, it will get too busy if we wait until after we get to the vet. You’ll be okay for a couple more hours, right, Candy? Good dog!
@The Rambling Otter: You never heard of… but… [sputters] oh god I’m completely a Plugger
MW: I don’t know about Iris. She has the opportunity to walk away and not talk to Wilbur and she is not taking it.
Geez Wilbur if you’re gonna daydream yourself with muscles just go ahead and top off that head of yours with some hair as well. It’s imagination!
MW – In Wilbur’s defense (that was very hard for me to write), I also tend to check out when someone is talking my ear off about going to the gym. I don’t fantasize about being a lame superhero; I use the time for something practical, like composing a grocery list in my head.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: True. I should know better than to expect a coherent plan from the characters, because the Evanses will just write themselves into a corner and eject.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: You should have followed up with the Abbott and Costello routine.
Bear Jesus is pretty metal. “Father . . into my jaws I commit thee Romans.”
“Surely, he was a bear, and it was a real mistake for us to try to crucify him.”
Pluggers – Remember that time I ate pile of “_____” and plugged a toilet so bad it took an hour to plunge it down and even then I had to call the Roto-Router man and it was still plugged up and then I had to….
MW – Wilbur is in a toccata and fugue state…California, I think….
RwO – Only You Can Prevent Primitive Mythological Thinking From Fucking Up Your Government….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
MW – Zak has never been anything but polite and respectful to Wilbur, even having witnessed some of Wilbur’s worst behavior first-hand. So, of course, Wilbur makes him the villain in his pathetic, childish little fantasy. Because Wilbur never misses a chance to be extra asshole-ish.
@jroggs: Hey now! He put a lot of cairn love into his work!
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box:
They’re called practice and position, not rehearsal and part.
My Freshman drama teacher used to tell the story that her first time at the theater, she turned to her drama teacher and said, “Is this halftime?”
The drama teacher said sweetly, “Yes, but they call it intermission, dear.”
@matt w: To be fair, and maybe to allay your fears you’re a Plugger, I believe Rambling Otter lives outside the United States, and Mr. Mellencamp’s musical reach didn’t really extend beyond North America.
Andertoons: NFBG and Taig!
MW: that Wilbur fellow sure is endearingly quirky.
@Sequitur: And yet I still clicked on the link. What is wrong with me?!?
Don Abundio, translated:
“Help! Help! Police!”
“Help! Help!”
“We’re just about to finish a game of Clue!”
“We need you here to arrest the murderer”
@astroboy: Exactly. Zak’s been more courteous and respectful than Wilbur deserves. And Wilbur repays it by constantly mocking Zak behind his back, openly hoping that Iris will divorce Zak and come back to Wilbur during their wedding reception, and now imagining Zak as a homewrecking gorilla when Wilbur was the one who callously dumped Iris for the sexy con artist.
@taig: Tell me more of these mythical lands, far beyond the influence of Mr. Mellencamp’s musical stylings!
@taig:
On Crankshaft : they shouldn’t highlight that Jeff and Batton Thomas are essentially the same character, except the latter is slightly older.
**********
On Luann : Bernice should be the “victim” of Bets and Tiffany’s scheme, because :
1. the strip shouldn’t highlight how much Luann is a blank slate and personality-free loser.
2. Bernice actually has a super-easy “rebranding” they could do; take off her glasses and re-do her hair/make-up. They can’t do the same to Luann, basic appearance alterations to make her “pretty”.
You’ll note I’m not talking about how it’s out of character for Luann to be cynical and snarkily disbelieving of this stupidity. I’ve given up on Luann showing consistent characterisation.***********
Heart of the City : RERUNS!? Right at the moment where the “Heart and Kat become anti-pothole vigilantes” storyline was getting interesting, with the police hunting for them!?
************
Phoebe and Unicorn : I was waiting for this moment in this RERUN storyline, so I can repeat : Phoebe’s dad is fully expecting his children to travel back through time to meet him, this is the mid-90s : he’s familiar with the Back to the Future trilogy, the Terminator duology and half of the then-ongoing X-men storyline, so time-traveling descendants showing up to meet you is a concept he is quite familiar with.
************
Safe Havens : I thought Mars had been terraformed so that it was now a lush, green jungle teeming with vegetation and wildlife? Is the implication that the dodos somehow wiped EVERYTHING out, in just a few years, turning Mars back into a red, lifeless desert?
************
Rhymes with Orange : do the three preceding comics put “a young Smokey Bear interrupts Sunday School because mentions of fire trigger him” into perspective in terms of how weird the content of the funny pages can get?
does it at least put into perspective that a bunch of comics are doing reruns, while RwO’s insanity is fresh (as far as I know)?@Ukulele Ike: Let’s see…There’s Australia where everything is upside-down and venomous.
MW: On one hand, ADHD would explain a lot of Wilbur’s issues: inability to focus on the conversation at hand, difficulty in picking up social cues, severe emotional dysregulation. On the other, even the most socially inept neurodivergent would realize “letting people assume I’m dead while I hang out on a tropical island” is a bad look, so any way you slice it he’s still an asshole.
GT – “Second base?”
“What size shoe are you?”
“What’s the name of the guy on second.”
“I don’t know.”
“Third base!”
These heathens are truly delusional if they think Kim-un-kamuy, the Ainu bear god of the mountains, will ever forgive this heresy.
Sherman’s Lagoon: Megan and Hawthorne are laboriously *climbing* a large underwater mountain to visit a guru. My question is: since the mountain is entirely underwater, why don’t they just swim to the summit instead of clambering up the rock face with their fins and claws?? Perhaps the guru can explain that to them. In the meantime this is going to vex me all day. ALL DAY.
P.S. aside from that, it’s a cute cartoon!
Mary Worth Spanish to English.
CS: Ugh. First Lillian and Dinkle, now this dolt. Batty’s preparing us for the inevitable return of Les Moore, isn’t he?
RwO: When the rangers came, they forced all the bears into forest preserves. They banned their language, their traditions, their religions. They were no longer free to hunt and fish as they once did and they came to rely on the food doled out by the rangers in their pic-a-nic baskets. Their cubs were forced to attend schools were they learned man’s ways, not their own. At first, young Arrroowwall’rooo questioned all this, but his resistance soon faded as he became one of the first to adopt man’s wear. When he took the ranger name “Smokey,” his elders dreamed of days long past and wept.
I am concerned that the title panel is making an extra punchline that makes no sense unless you have read the actual panel beforehand, creating a loop of temporal interdependence that cannot be properly solved
Bob Mankoff Presents: Show Me The Funny (Animal Edition): SOW-TV.
MW: Tomorrow, Wilbur snaps out of it only to find that hours have passed, the sun has set and Iris and Zac are long gone.
B.C.: In case you’re wondering what it says on that rock in the lower right, it says (upside down), “Thor is a stupid head”.
@matt w:
@taig:
Canada, pretty close to the border in fact.
I just don’t follow music, or celebrities or… OH GOD… I’m a plugger!!!
C’shaft: So Tom Batiuk just gave up pretending that this strip is anything other than an exercise in indulgent self-gratification, huh?
Dustin: “I don’t have time for diet and exercise; it would cut into my ‘complaining about my wife’s cooking’ and ‘berating my son for being lazy’ time.”
GT: Does Gil do this for his other teams? “Devon, I know you’re our best place kicker and you’ve got a shot at a college scholarship if your leg stays healthy, but today I want you to take a crack at linebacker!”
JP: “–All right, which of you hired goons has been in my snack drawer? I had a whole bag of Reese’s cups in here!”
Luann: Luann has spent this entire exercise being petty, pessimistic and mean-spirited. And who says she doesn’t have a brand?
Pibgorn: I really, really wish I didn’t know about split hose right now. My only hope is that Brooke doesn’t know about split hose.
Phantom: See, this is why most patriarchal lineages have the ” a heir and a spare” principle…
RMMD: Candy’s pretty chill for a dog that should be in severe gastrointestinal distress right now…
@erdmann:
Well, there was one Yogi Bear cartoon, where the Ranger was chewing Yogi out for stealing picnic baskets. Yogi retorts that his people were there first, and due to humans destroying his natural habitat he is forced to resort to stealing food to survive.
@The Rambling Otter: I guess anyone who reads and comments on a blog about newspaper comics has a very high risk of being a plugger.
Rhymes With Orange-Moses had sex with a woman with an STD?
@The Rambling Otter: Well, never mind then. Mellencamp’s popularity peaked in the mid-to-late ’80s, so you may be too young to remember him, which makes you not a Plugger, at least in that sense.
@Daisy:
Part of Sherman’s Lagoon‘s schtick is to ignore that they’re underwater—like when they sit around a campfire.
And yeah, it’s a consistently solid joke-a-day strip, beautifully drawn.
Pluggers:
Dog-Man: Good morning. Oh well, I guess we’re still alive.
Cat-Man: But are we, really?
MW “Are you listening to me?” is a strange way to begin a conversation.
FG: Wow. Zarkey’s back in the palace scoring with some science nerd babe while Flash is freezing his ass off in the Frigian wilderness. Wonder what Dale’s up to?
“The arrangement seems rather unfair,” I remarked. “Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone. A Pluggers contributor does all the work in this business. He gets a cartoon out of it, McKee gets the credit, pray what remains for you?”
“For me,” said Slylock Holmes, “there still remains the Comics Curmudgeon.” And he stretched his long white hand out to the keyboard.
Crank: I’ve been working under the assumption that this guy bore some relation to Batton Lash, the late subpar comics creator responsible for Wolfe & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre, a strip about lawyers who represent monsters, which ran in some law journal and just about anywhere that could poke up the meager fee. I used to see it in free handout newspapers, of which NYC used to have a lot. (I read it when I came across it because hey — free comic strip.) I always figured the name was a bad pun pseudonym having something to do with “batting your eyelashes,” but it seems it was the poor boob’s actual name.
This led me to 3 minutes internet research on the history and meaning of the male given name “Batton.” Surprise! It doesn’t exist! “Batten,” I found, as in “battening down the hatches,” and — to my delight — “Batarang,” but no little boys anywhere named “Batton.”
RMMD: I know soap opera strips are not known for having a breakneck pace, but this one seems to be exceptionally glacial lately. Maybe, as a bonus, we’ll get a two-week victory lap once the story wraps up like Mary Worth does nowadays.
BC-“This isn’t a bridge. It’s a fence.”
Dustin: Anybody who has to see a doctor as often as Ed Kudlick should be dead by now.
Pluggers-“Nope. Can’t tell that story. That’s still considered a war crime.”
MW- I can only imagine the WTF coming from casual or first time readers
@Guillermo el chiclero: I’m really happy Zarkov found an age-appropriate Science Babe to “liaise with.” I’d’a thought less of him if he’d bedded some random Frigian cocktail waitress or chambermaid.
I can picture these two discussing the local seismological phenomena as they reach climax after shuddering climax.
Irish and Weelbur used to have sex?
Please no
Oh, I see Pigborn was updated and Pigborn is now a pregnant, what is it, 13 year old human female.
Get stuffed, Brooke.
Pluggers: If you suffer from suicidal depression… you might be a Plugger.
Mary Worth: So I’m guessing this is building up to Wilbur trying to savagely beat Iris’ husband to death amid a manic episode, only to be immediately knocked unconscious with a single punch.
Rhymes With Oranges: This is actually funny and cute. No notes.
@Baja Gaijin: Right after theater class, which was the final class of the day (and after I got a peek up the skirt – I wasn’t leaving before that).
@Ukulele Ike: “Did Mars move for you too?”
“I’m not sure. Let’s check the seismometers.”
The Far Side Earth Day 1990.
Smokey the Atheist
MW: I hope this leads to Wilbur having a week long fantasy, only to snap out of it on Saturday and reveal he’s wrapped up in an insane asylum.
@Sequitur: I like it!
Um, actually, bear teacher from the Rhymes with Orange title panel, Exodous 3:2 is quite specific that, though the bush was on fire, “it was not consumed.” indeed the Eastern Orthodox tradition prefers to call it the unburnt bush to highlight this part of the miracle, so maybe you should do some research, maybe read the source text in a couple different translations before you make your silly little jokes. I do. for some reason.
@Anonymous:”2. Bernice actually has a super-easy “rebranding” they could do; take off her glasses and re-do her hair/make-up.”
Um, it was Tiffany who got Bernice out of the horn rimmed frames and into the wire-frames, and took her hair from frizzy to wavy way back when. Maybe now they need to rebrand her back to sweet nerd-girl from officious prick.
@TheDiva: re RMMD: “Candy’s pretty chill…”
You are so right, Ms Diva … *too* chill! After that expressive close-up of her remorse on Saturday, her “discomfort” has been completely ignored! And this was supposed to be her big break, introducing her dramatic skills and range. We figured somethin’ was up, so I sent my Intern over – pretending to be a roots country fan – and he was able to get onto the set and investigate.
It seems that Candy has been DRUGGED with Benadryl! Of course she didn’t really eat any brownies, but they were afraid she might actually try to vomit for dramatic effect! And of course they wouldn’t allow any real mess on the floor or rugs there. So they thought it better to just sedate her, then when she’s “at the vet’s office” they’ll put her behind a closed door with maybe some appropriate sound effects.
So Candy’s chance to shine here has been sabotaged by their up-tight management. I hope this may convince her she needs to be working with professional representation…
MW-Poor Wilbur. Being banned like that by the prostitutes.
MW-I’ve stopped reading ‘Judge Parker’ am I going to stop reading ‘Mary Worth’ too?
Rhymes With Orange – The religion teacher is Gladly, the cross-eyed bear.
Crankshaft – Oh, goodie. Comic books! Comic books! Thanks to a week of Harry Dinkle, I didn’t immediately feel extreme annoyance when I saw the comic book store. Oh, well, give it a day.
I honestly did not recognize until now that Jeff is another Batiuk avatar (along with Les Moore). The resemblance didn’t register with me until the characters brought it up today.
Mary Worth – Iris blathering on and on about going to the gym, and portly sigmoid Wilbur tuning her out to have stupid daydreams. For some reason, I just thought of that Norm MacDonald meme.
@erdmann: Re RWO – To make it even more painful, they gave him the middle name “The.”
@Uncle Lumpy: I love Sherman’s Lagoon. The artwork is so wonderful – it always makes me smile.
@Will: It’s more likely that there will be weeks and weeks of “It’s dangerous for dogs to eat chocolate!” The actual treatment will be low key to the point of being boring, but they’ll blather about it endlessly.
MW: Moy is trying way too hard. The infamous Wilbur and Estelle karaoke showdown was built up to for weeks, with Wilbur getting dumped for threatening to kill Libby, getting a dog to try to pick up women only to immediately blow it when he got a woman by talking nonstop about his ex and calling his date Estelle, etc. Similarly, Wilbur falling off the boat had the build up of months of story line behind it and multiple strips devoted to showing him getting increasingly drunk.
Now Moy thinks she can just rest on her laurels and show us Wilbur being a smug, rude weirdo with no build up and we’ll just all go wild. We could have been with Dawn. I can’t believe I’m asking for a Dawn story, but we could have been with Dawn.
The surprise isn’t that Iris noticed that Wilbur is checked out, it’s that she said anything more than “Bye”, because why would she care?
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: By the way, great work on today’s Blondie.
Dustin- I’m siding with DustinDad here. When facing the choice between $30 per 90 days for my blood pressure meds or $35 per month for activities that take up my limited free time and eating unappetizing food the choice is clear. I choose the pills 7 days a week and twice on Sundays. Mmmmmmmmmmm triple Butterburger with cheese (drools)
Love the Earth Day tributes. Go, Earth! (I’m reusing my styrofoam cup today)
FRAZZ:. That’s it, make important political and social thoughts into memorable jingles and showtunes. Wait, that’s what musicals are for– Hair, Hamilton.
MW:. First time I’ve laughed out loud at a soap comic.
Rhymes With Door Hinge – True story, in many European languages, including English, our word for “bear” is derived from the word “brown,” because our ancestors feared that using the original word for bears would call down a bear attack. So they took to calling bears “the brown ones,” and eventually, that name stuck.* In short, Josh, it’s good that they didn’t give the true name of the Great Bear God.** Only misery could follow.
*Great explanation in this here xkcd cartoon
**Fun fact: the word “arctic” actually does come from the original work for bear, which means that the arctic means “place where bears are” and Antarctica means “opposite of the place where bears are,” both of which are true.
@Hibbleton:
The instructor says; “Oh, I see someone’s been reading ahead.
_______________
Smokey says, “Yes, YOU have. That’s how you remember my name…you read my head. Take my wife, please….a funny thing happened on the way to the forest….and please call me by my stage name…Henny Youngbear!”
@Ukulele Ike: The endgame is that the Evans will forget about this by Saturday afternoon.
Well, at least we know “MASH” reruns survive the Animalapocolypse. Slylick has seen the episode “The Interview” where Hawkeye tells Clete Roberts that he reads the dictionary because he figures ‘all the other books are in it.’.
@I speak Jive: Just like Frankenstein being the name of the mad scientist, not the monster, there’s a whole pedantic thing about whether it’s “Smokey Bear” or “Smokey the Bear.” Having skimmed the Wikipedia article just now, I’ll sum it up by saying that the U.S. Forest Service named him Smokey Bear, but practically everyone calls him Smokey the Bear, and it doesn’t seem to bother anybody.
But “Daylight Saving Time” vs. “Daylight Savings Time,” ooh, now there’s a controversy…
@124 Peanut Gallery:
It’s kind of like calling “Joe Blow” “Joe the Blow”. I don’t think Joe would like it.
@Uncle Lumpy: What I continue to find amazing about SHERMAN’S LAGOON is that the strip keeps rolling out funny stories that could go on for weeks and would still be funny, but Jim Toomey ends each story after a week or so. It’s like he’s a story-idea fountain and has no fear of ever running dry.
And when I double-checked his name just now, I found out he also does a lot of work for the environment. You rock, Jim Toomey! I will follow Sherman for as long as my aging fingers can hit the right keys.
@Dr. Larry Erhardt: re Blondie: Hey, thanks, Doc. Yeah, we don’t do much business with them – the dozen generations of Daisy clones are in-house talent, as well as The Parrot. But today they went for the deluxe Earth Day ensemble package, maybe because we were givin’ holiday discounts. Sometimes that pays off with repeat gigs… we’ll see. Great retro styling by the production crew there!
@126 Poteet:
One thing I like about Sherman’s Lagoon are the great facial expressions on fish, sea turtles and crabs.
The great war between the Pres-bear-tarians and the Pawtestant Reformed Churches would go on to decimate the forests and turn many forest creatures into militant atheists.
@astroboy: #59:
@Needless Exposition: #67:
Plus, whatever happened to the common bond Wilbur and Zak developed when they found out they were both big fans of soccer and enjoyed watching the World Cup matches together?
God help us, how long is this Luann storyline going to go on? Even grading on a Luann curve, this is “kill me now” levels of inane.
This should have been the final Pluggers. What a wonderfully passive-aggressive note for this passive-aggressive comic strip to go out on. Especially if it was cancelled by the syndicate. “Yeah, okay, we get it. Even we’re tired of us by now.”
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: OUTRAGEOUS!!
I would gripe that RMMD would never have done that to a two-legged actor, except that drugging certain two-leggers might help to explain a few things about past RMMD stories, sad to say.
@Sequitur: Agreed!! I especially like the expressions on the crab.
PIBGORN – Remember when this strip updated three days in a row, because Brooke told us he had to re-draw the hand again and try to get the fingers right?
Now look at todays installment, and the way he drew the hand that isn’t up her hubby’s ass.
Is Brooke happy with the way it came out?
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: She keeps forgetting that Padraig has anal dentata.
FC – No wonder Thel dropped her spoon in shock. “They’re teaching my children about… THE FUTURE!?”
@Guillermo el chiclero: Like most Americans, they forgot about soccer when the world cup wasn’t on.
RwO: With great respect, and while understanding the temerity of commenting on the deity of another species, I would venture to guess that the great and awful Ursine God would tell these young bears that fire is an integral part of the North American landscape, and that human fire-suppression stupidity helped lead to serious landscape problems today. The truth is out there, Smokey! Seek and ye shall find!
@taig: I read one 9CL every three or four months as a kind of vaccination, and decided to make today the day after reading your eloquent Welsh. And I would say, having read the strip, that it did not DESERVE your eloquent Welsh. But thanks for providing it anyway. Cool.
love is… getting his dick so hard you can cut a cake with it.
@Peanut Gallery: When in doubt over such linguistic controversies, I often turn to the wisdom of Beat poet Gary Snyder.
@Bruno Guedes: Welcome to RwO.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Wilbur rewrites history because of his selective and self serving memory putting him in constant denial. In his mind, he sees Zak as the reason why he and Iris didn’t get back together after the Fabiana incident. You know, because she was supposed to pine for Wilbur endlessly and not move on with her life.
@Poteet: I wish I could take credit for the Welsh, but that is all Google Translate. One of these days, I’ll learn the language, and, by that point, I won’t be reading 9CL.
@Lauralot: Moy thinks that Girlfriends of Wilbur’s Past is the buildup while completely forgetting the “heroic” act Wilbur committed. Except Wilbur has literally done nothing otherwise but throw a pity party about how he wants to be a hero with all the glory and none of the selflessness.
@Uncle Lumpy: #87
Of course, you are right. That’s the charm of the strip; the characters and the settings have all the accoutrements of our world (furniture, computers, smartphones, kitchen appliances, etc.) and all the foibles of our human nature, which makes it laugh-out-loud funny and recognizable. The recent story of the stone idol Kahuna getting his nose broken off and then restored by the ancient god “Schnozzus” was hilarious! Jim Toomey is one of the best comic writers out there.
Crankshaft: Vigorous wanking going on today.
Bacön: Bears aren’t the only animals that got religion.
Berkeley Mews: Uh, why?
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
Crank: You know how Jeff sometimes has his Inner Child following him about, and sometimes has his actual grandson following him about, and Batty doesn’t always make it clear which it is, because they look identical? What if it turns out Jeff was actually Battom Thomas’s Inner Middle-Aged Guy the whole time? Well, that would be stupid. But would it be any more stupid than whatever Batty’s actually doing?
FC: I’m reminded of an episode of The News Quiz, I think in the 2000s as it happens, where they were discussing how certain Boomery voices in Britain were, as always, complaining about how The Kids These Days weren’t learning anything in school, and Jeremy Hardy said this was nonsense, and added something like “They think kids aren’t learning history, because they don’t believe anything they remember can be history. ‘The Vietnam War? I was protesting that in Grosvenor Square last week, surely!'”
FG: “But that’s only one of the interesting discoveries we’ve made! I’ve also learned that, despite their name, it turns out the Frigians are in no way…”
“Yeah, thanks, Doc, I think I get the idea.”
JP: Pavel discovers that the gun he was going to kill Helena with isn’t in his gun-to-kill-Helena-with drawer. From what we’ve seen so far, this is equally likely to be due to incompetence on his part or absurd off-panel superheroics by our usually equally incompetent “heroes”, but the important thing is that the absence of the gun he was going to kill Helena with makes it completely impossible for him to kill Helena.
Pluggers: I share everyone’s bewilderment that Pluggers, a syndicated comic strip about the foibles of an aribitary and ever-changing demographic known as Pluggers based on reader contributions from self-identified Pluggers, has flat-out gone for “Nobody finds anything Pluggers have to say interesting, themselves included.” But then I was distracted from that by realising Dog Man’s line fits the rhythm of the Road-Song of the Bandar-Log from The Jungle Book.
@Horace Broon:
And those Northern girls, with the way they liaise,
They keep their boffins warm at night
— The Beach Boys
Injury day!
Bound and Gagged
Close To Home
Dennis the Menace
FBOFW:. Coss-themes of today’s discussions and comics feature Earth day and religion. Lynn’s strip sweetly addresses both giving two reasons we plant flowers on the green grave of beloved dog. Tho if carnations are annuals, the grave will be lost and forgotten over winter.
Also, I guess death of a pet is a way of introducing a child to death of a beloved grandparent.
@Sequitur: Because 2024 is the opportune time to combine Jurassic Park (1993) and the fact that Bill Murray sure is in a lot of Wes Anderson films (starting in 1998) into a joke!
@Horace Broon: (Crankshaft) I think there’s something to your theory, which is sad, but fully in Batiuk’s wheelhouse.
@Activist 1234, FOOB: You have to give Lynn credit. She did age characters to die, and she restrained herself in the reboot for John to stay alive and not die from a freak accident (although, that may have elicited a visit from the local provosts).
JP: Tomorrow prediction: Cavelton –Tunguska Event.
@Peanut Gallery:
Alternate:
“Help! Help! Police!”
“Help! Help!”
“We’re trying to play a game of strip poker!”
“But no one wants to see anyone naked!”
This Rhymes With Orange is bad in about three different ways. Primarily because it requires people to draw from two totally different realms of pop culture (US public safety commercials, and the Book of Exodus).
PHANTOM:. Silly KJ may have forgotten that you’re supposed to travel in pairs, but Devil shows him why.
#158 Little Guy, that’s hilarious! Of course she should’ve, could’ve killed John off after what the worm did in real life.
CS: If there were a scratch-n-sniff card to accompany this strip, Lillian’s Book Shoppe and Komix Korner would both have the scents of mold, cigarette smoke, cheap whiskey, and urine, but Komix Korner would add notes of weed and body odor.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: They’re called practice and position, not rehearsal and part.
So when your baseball director told you to hit behind the runner, did the runner get angry at being upstaged? Or did you ad lib and hit a walk-off home run, AKA exeunt to the applause of the baseball audience? Did it get boffo reviews?
Take me out to the sports performance,
Take me out with the other theatergoers
Buy me some white wine – not a pouch of chaw,
I don’t care if I understand what I saw.
Let me root, root, root for the cast of characters,
Whether they drop their lines or the ball,
Yes it’s one, two, three strikes and you’re out
‘Cause the show must go on!
@Bob Tice: This is very good, sir.
@Little Guy: That would explain why there are no chips on the table!
@Ukulele Ike: Very nice! And very appropriate for Earth Day!
@Activist 1234:
#162. PHANTOM:. Ok, my reading of morning devotional is about 8 hours late, but it’s Eccl 4:9-12. “And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him.”. Go, Devil! (Hey, religion is part of day’s discourse but hope I didn’t offend)
@Peanut Gallery: Earth Day….? Damn, I decorated for Mars Day.
@169 Ukulele Ike:
Did you decorate Uranus?
Late Thread Cuisine: My original recipe for this thread is a salad. I found something better.
@Sequitur: May you always have ripened blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.
@Baja Gaijin: recipe #1: isn’t “madrilene” chilled tomato Jell-O? I’ve heard of it but never encountered it.
recipe #2: French-fried potatoes in bread is that rare abomination you can obtain in both London and Paris.
Six Chex In Search Of A Punchline: “..hold on,I’ve got Karma-waiting™”
@173 Ukulele Ike: It is tomato Jell-O and cheese. Guess which kind of cheese? Hint: It’s not Stilton. The pictured french-fried potatoes in bread is actually in Tokyo. Guess what the topping is? Hint: It’s not miso.
@Baja Gaijin: No idea what kind of cheese, but most cheese is complemented by the acidity of a ripe tomato. What did these weirdos use?
The label gives it away: mentaiko (fish roe, specifically pollock) mixed with mayonnaise. The Belgies like mayo on their frites, and I love tamarasalata (Greek dip made of red caviar mashed with potato, garlic, and olive oil), so I’d give THIS a try.
@171 Baja Gaijin:
Mayo is recommended.
“You are now dining in The Twilight Zone.”
@176 Ukulele Ike: Would it help you determine the cheese if I told you this is a Weight Watchers recipe card from 1974?
@177 Sequitur: Actually dining in Shibuya.
@taig: Now that’s funny right there, I don’t care who you are. And of course, there’s a 42 in there!
@Poteet: Trouble is, Smokey played a large part in misunderstanding how forests really work. The original smokey was found clinging to a tree with burnt paws after a fire, so it was easy for him to become the star of all those public-service spots growling “Remember, only YOU can prevent forest fires.” We now know total suppression laid the foundation for many of those of those huge, hot and fast-moving blazes that have done so much damage. I wouldn’t think the ursine gods would appreciate one of their own being used to push backward forest management.
@178 Baja Gaijin:
You actually left me plenty of time to change my comment from Twilight Zone to Shibuya. However, I thought, “Naah. No head games tonight.”
@181 Sequitur: SNERK!
MW: “Of course I was listening. You were talking about Zak’s abductor routine, right?”
@Bruno Guedes:
I am concerned that the title panel is making an extra punchline that makes no sense unless you have read the actual panel beforehand, creating a loop of temporal interdependence that cannot be properly solved
______________________
“Six Chix” avoids that problem by eliminating punchlines altogether.
@Sequitur:
Mayo is recommended.
“You are now dining in The Twilight Zone.”
____________________
“Stay away from the Wilburp, it smells funny tonight.”
@Baja Gaijin: You’re right, the second option is better, even with the mayonnaise.
@Baja Gaijin: Lo-fat Velveeta!
@187 Ukulele Ike: Velveeta? Really? Velveeta is fluorescent orange. The cheese in question is white as Mary Worth.
@Baja Gaijin: It’s brie or Camembert, isn’t it?
Hopefully, the guesses won’t go on longer than a cheese shop sketch.
@189 taig: Uh, maybe Velveeta was closer…
@taig: ….Venezuelan Beaver Cheese…?
@Baja Gaijin: If that’s a Weight Watchers recipe, my guess is that it’s some kind of imitation cheese.
@Twinkles the Elf:
(I can’t believe I checked for visible bear genitalia.)
_____________________________
Everyone needs a hobby.
@178 Baja Gaijin: Cheese
Toe jam?
I think the payoff for this storyline will be Iris using those boxing lessons, punching Wilbur in the face, breaking his nose and knocking him out.
@192 Ukulele Ike: You’re not even trying.
@193 I speak Jive: Surprisingly it’s not imitation cheese.
@195 Sequitur: You’re trying even less than Ike.
The Late Thread Cuisine mystery is…cottage cheese.
A Plugger has told his stories so often, he doesn’t even bother posting them on GoComics.com anymore.
@Baja Gaijin: Of course. The cheese most likely to make people go “Ewww.”
@200 Peanut Gallery: To go with the gelatin flavor that makes people go “Ewww,” tomato.
@198 Baja Gaijin:
And that’s the truth. Phaaat!
@Baja Gaijin: Link? I’ll have a look.
@Ukranazi Stepan:
Never mind, saw it and yes I could.
@204 Ukranazi Stepan:
Now, could you fix his nose?
@Dr. Pill: Yes indeed, that is exactly what I meant. Since this panel is showing us young Smokey, and since in this panel, we readers have apparently moved far backward in time, I took the opportunity to tell young Smokey that fire suppression is stupid and that he should go out and seek the truth about fire. Obviously he did not take my advice, alas.
And sorry, I can’t resist adding that in much of the Upper Midwest, fire suppression in oak woodlands has not not led to huge super-hot fires, but it has led to severe ecological degradation and drastic declines of many oak-woodland wildflowers. We need far more prescribed fire here than we are getting..
@Baja Gaijin: Why stick French fries in bread? Just eat the fries!
If I were Wilbur and I was imagining myself as a buff superhero, I’d throw a fantasy hairline in there too. But that’s just me.
His eyes as he kidnaps his sex slave— I mean, saves Iris from a sexually satisfying relationship— are truly the heart of Inceldom.