Pretty sure there’s a verse in Leviticus that forbids interring a freshwater fish in the ocean
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Mary Worth, 6/10/24
The thing about disposing of a dead fish is, honestly, that there isn’t a particularly dignified way to do it, and if you’re as emotionally devastated about said fish’s death as Wilbur clearly is, then I suppose it’s hard to get some kind of closure. Maybe this is a best-case scenario! Because I don’t think that chucking a matchbox coffin off the deck of Dr. Jeff’s DieselBurner-2000 superboat is going to be that dignified, actually, and that’s before we even take into account how visibly contemptuous of the proceedings Dr. Jeff will be (you will be able to correctly ascertain his negative attitude from space).
The Phantom, 6/10/24
So the idol theft storyline turned out to be related to the years-long Death Of The Phantom arc, in that it gave an opportunity for the Phantom’s dumb son to reveal that he had a dream that sort of tied into Old Man Mozz’s prophecy in ways I don’t fully follow and am not going to bother trying to rehash for you here. Mostly I am just putting down a marker of hope here that we truly are getting a fresh new storyline, one involving a private spaceflight company known as “Space-Ox,” run by a guy named Elon Musk Ox (he’s just like Elon Musk, but also an ox).
Hi and Lois, 6/10/24
Fine, I’m all in on the new “punchlines are for the old and weak” era of Hi and Lois. Hi is up in the dead of night brooding over the fact that the world has changed since he was young. Are things better, or are they worse? Hard to say, but they’re different, and that exercises his mind in ways his wife would give anything to not hear about. Perfection, no notes, etc.
240 replies to “Pretty sure there’s a verse in Leviticus that forbids interring a freshwater fish in the ocean”
MW: Jeff should take them up on this offer but not to help give Wilbur closure. If anything, this is the perfect opportunity for him to be rid of the meddling harpy once and for all so she can’t get in the way of him returning to his “missionary trips.” And of course Wilbur is just a bonus to not leave any witnesses…
Phantom: I really wish they’d have aped Boeing’s Starliner. It looks like a giant erect penis. I mean, an even bigger dick than Eds Crankshaft and Kudlick combined. You know that’s big!
Dennis the Menace: No you little disrespectful shit. Mommy’s doing her Barbara Eden “Jeannie” impression, hoping she can blink you into next week’s Marmaduke, preferably into his pile of shit.
Mary Worth Mashups: This storyline’s gone on far too long.
Aunty Acid Mashup: I wonder which comic strip characters she’s talking about?
MW. Wilbur on a boat. Yeah, that always ends well.
MW: I think for Mary to talk Jeff into this will require a trade-off. Maybe a trip to the Bum Boat (and I don’t mean the restaurant).
H&L. Has there been a time in the last thirty to forty years when newspapers weren’t delivered by cars in the night?
@Baja Gaijin: Second mashup. If we’re lucky, we’ll still get our murder suicide with Jeff as the suicide. You’ll get a burial at sea for Stellan, you wastes of space…and yours as well!
@Pozzo: Finally Jeff can get a lapdance from his one true love: Peter.
Phantom: WE HAVE A NEW STORYLINE!
Hopefully, we’ll see StripeyButt punching out FASCIST! Elon Musk.
MW: This would be an ideal time for Jeff to discover his long-buried self-respect and say, “What are you, @#$#-ing NUTS??
H&L: That’s your future side hustle, Hi. With kids that never grow up, that supplementary income will be needed.
9CL: How heartwarming; the next gen of
creepy-ass relationships.
MW: Oh, please, *please* let this end Wilbur getting too drunk and falling off the boat.
Curtis: Why did Greg switch hands between panels 3 and 4?
H&L: “God, kids today are so lazy! They drive around in their CARS to deliver newspapers! When I was their age, I delivered them on my bike, uphill both ways, through blinding snowstorms! And I bet don’t even read the newspapers they deliver! They just get their news from their phones and TikToks and–”
*cue Hi sleeping on the couch*
MW:
When Wilbur’s grief gets the best of him, Mary offers a suggestion…
“Wilbur, have you ever considered thinking outside of the box and perhaps trying a dating site that is populated by more unconventional types, people who might not have the exact same interests as you but who would nevertheless offer fresh and unique perspective? I understand that there’s an eligible sheepherder who lives on the outskirts of Santa Royale who frequents one of those alternate sites, and that she’s interesting and dynamic!”
“I’ve already corresponded with her, Mary — but things ended up not working out because she had angora management issues!”
Phantom:
“10…9…8…7…wait a minute…what comes after 7 if you’re counting backwards? I’m drawing a blank! I can’t remember! Scrap the mission! NOW!”
H&L – how old are these people? Papers were coming by car in the dark in the 80s. Secondly, they still get a paper delivered? Is Ditto going to start a scrap metal drive for the war effort tomorrow?
Are you sure Mary? Wilbur has some bad experience with throwing bodies from boats
MW: They’re going to kill Wilbur aren’t they? They’re going to take him out some distance off shore, perhaps some place where Jeff once saw sharks, and Wilbur and his old chum Stellan will be unceremoniously dumped overboard. They’ve had enough. Everyone’s had enough.
This new dark fist pounding and violent Mary is an interesting turn in this strip.
These nostalgic musings are fine but they should reflect the fact that Hi is a Millennial: “I used to get my news from Twitter, top of the feed. Now it’s called X, the For You tab is the worst and I constantly see non-metaphorical Nazis”
“Would he do that for me?”
“Sure! Well, Jeff can’t stand you but he would do it for me and I would do it for you because of a OCD-like compulsion to meddle and a very morbid fascination with you”
Phantom: Next day: Rocket blows up mid-flight. End of story.
MW: “You? No, but I own the bitch, so of course, he’ll do it for me.”
HnL: “You know what else used to come by car in the middle of the night?”
“Jeff, can you help us dispose of a corpse with your boat?”
“I don’t know what you have heard, but those patients were never on my operating table and I was not drunk and I can operate drunk anyway!”
Frazz: Hey. Pssssst. Hey, Caulfield. They have watches that have similar functions to those phones people stare at.
Luann: How wacky! The person who works at the “retirement residence” accidentally used a euphemism for someone dying to indicate they’ve actually just physically relocated. Ha! Hilarity ensues!
MW: Oh God, is Mary going to force Wilbur to gorge himself on seafood afterward releasing his beloved goldfish into the arms of Poseidon? That would be the most ridiculously oblivious and inappropriate thing she could do… so yeah, better than 50/50 odds that’s exactly what happens.
BB: What’s the minimum arming distance of a t-shirt? Sorry, that’s a really stupid question, but barely a drop in the bucket compared to the wild insanity of this portrayed situation.
CS: Has “Jeff meets Flash” really not been done yet? I swear that’s been done, and it’s even crazier if it hasn’t considering his son-in-law and the silent unimportant person his son-in-law is married to have worked with Flash for years.
DT: “Something interesting in Pierce’s effects?” “This is Dick Tracy. Of course there’s nothing interesting.”
HtH: Seriously. I mean seriously. Am I out of line for saying that this second panel is completely unacceptable for what is supposed to be professional artwork? This is a perspective mistake that would get you an F in kindergarten, for crying out loud.
JP: Wait, which one is Declan’s identical twin brother – Sam Driver or the Ghost-Who-Wallows-in-the-Same-Plot-for-Years? Either way, yeah, they’re both total fuck-ups, but considering we haven’t learned a single thing about Declan until now apart from his name, why are we supposed to care about this?
RMMD: Come on, Parker, hit him with more of that 1930s trivia that was working before! Borrow from the greats of comedy! Charlie Chaplin! Groucho Marx! Francisco Franco! Let’s see Haw Haw Boy defend himself against populist anti-Masonic rhetoric!
Luann: “I’m here to visit Mrs. Horner.”
“Horner… let’s see… oh, looks like she’s gone to a better place.”
“What?!”
“Yeah, she’s moving to that nicer retirement home across town. Next!”
“I’m here to see my dad.”
“Studebaker, right? Sorry, he kicked the bucket.”
“Oh my God…”
“Yeah, really jammed his toe doing that. Third door on your left. Next?”
“Is Tabitha Wainwright in?”
“Sorry, you can’t see her. She passed away.”
“I… can’t believe it…”
“Yeah, drew an intentional grounding penalty on third down, too. Cost us our flag football team the championship. She’s not allowed to see visitors for a while. Damn, the line is getting long, let’s hurry this up. Simon, your grandmother bought the farm. She said she wants your help milking the cows. Mr. Gladbach, your dad finally gave up the ghost. Harboring fugitives will not be tolerated anymore, even if they’re spectral monsters. And Ms. Fellerman, sorry, but your sister is pushing up daisies.”
“…You mean she’s planting flowers in the garden?”
“No, she’s dead. Sheesh, learn some damned sensitivity.”
CS: Jeff has that book strategically placed to hide his erection.
9CL: So, Alistair here hasn’t even dated either daughter, and he wants to marry them. Only in Brooke world. Anyway, I’m glad this conversation didn’t steer toward Alistair telling Edda how fuckable he finds her.
H&L: Do newspapers get delivered by car in the middle of the night? Fortunately, no-one gets newspaper deliveries any more, so this comic will go un-fact-checked.
Phantom: I imagine a lot of Elon Musk fans aren’t familar with the Phantom, so here’s a quick primer: he’s a white African born into wealth and privilege, who claims to be saving the world but who seems to spend a lot of time lurking in his high-tech base trying to eugenically breed his successors, and he’s going to meet a superhero in striped underpants.
Zits: Yeah, Jeremy, you should know better than to lead with, “Don’t freak out, but…”
FC: “There’s also no sign that says, you break it, I break your ass, but guess what, bub?”
@jroggs: Nicely done!
@Schroduck: (on Phantom) {Applause}
The Phantom: Ollie Ollie oxen in come free! [Instantly smashed/burned to a crisp by falling rocket]
@taig: @Schroduck: Seconded. Well done, Sir.
MW: “Are you kidding? The only thing that Jeff has going on in his life is that boat. He’d agree to a fish funeral, a fish wake, and a fish memorial. Hell, I’ll bet good money that he tries to pencil in a Stellan anniversary boat tour for the next five years…”
Ph: So I’m guessing that we can expect at least two more days of this countdown? Not that I’m complaining, this is about as exciting as the regular Phantom is for me.
H&L: Imagine, with all the impactful things that have happened to the print journalism industry in the past 20-30 years, being kept up at night over the medium by which newspapers are delivered. He might be receiving those broadsheets, but he can’t possibly be reading them.
MW: I can only hope Jeff and Mary get confused and accidentally inter Wilbur at sea.
Mary Worth: Goldfish are of course members of the carp family: freshwater fish, bred for color and looks for over a thousand years. One might wonder how appropriate it is to “return” one to the wild. It only begins to make sense when you remember that goldfish are from the order Cypriniformes. Mary wants to get Stellan disposed of, stat, before Wilbur figures out where she’s been hiding that underwater microphone.
The Ghost Who Pivots:
Skull Cave Two (what Tony DePaul calls his bedroom office): (The phone buzzes)
Shh, honey, it’s the syndicate. What’s that? We need to freshen up the strip? Well, I guess we could kill off Old Man Mozz one of these days. . . Oh. Social Media? I’ve heard of that. Un-huh. You want to do what? Fine, you had me at launch.
(Calls Manley) Get ready to draw an app! Another brilliant idea from the suits. No, I don’t know what an app looks like either. Probably a rocket, Is there any tech bro in the news that I can make a wordplay name from?
Wait, Hi and Lois still get physical newspapers? Around here they just update the iPad first thing in the morning.
Purple StripeyButt: Buried in the lede is the return of Mike Manley. Here’s to continued health and to future snarking about shapely female figures (or lack thereof)!
MW: Stellan’s gonna get the send-off he deserves! And maybe another corpse scene if they do an open-box service. Willa’s not too happy about this – she tends to sea-sickness on the open water, but we’re gonna try to get her included. Maybe a split screen…
Triumphant return by DoL! Yeah, after they saw whatta reception the Seagulls o’ Soap Opera got in Judge Parker, they thought they’d better get back in action. Hey, maybe The Gulls can do a crossover for the burial at sea! And the DoL can do a guest shot at JP for the Happy Couple! So many possibilities!
I wonder if the Dolphins o’ Death will be available…
MW: The only fitting way to end the storyline? As soon as Wilbur solemnly drops Stellan into the water, a shark rises from the murky depths and swallows her. What remains of Wilbur’s soul is finally crushed, and he throws himself into the water, calling for the shark to take him as well. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the shaft turns its snout on him in disgust and swims away.
Mary Worth – We have a second chance for Wilbur to fall off a boat and into the deadly arms of the ocean!
It would be better that, rather than dying in the deep ocean and costing millions in US Coast Guard and Navy resources, Wilbur tries to recover Stellan’s body from being dropped in a school of sharks, with only the unfortunate harbormaster and a few volunteer rescue boats having to scoop out his chummed remains for an undignified funeral.
The Phantom – In the novel Forrest Gump, Forrest ends up going to space with a female astronaut and male Orangutan named Sue, and a space flight disaster has them land in the jungles of Papua New Guinea where they are stranded with a cannibal tribe for years. There was good reason to cut it out of the movie. But the astronauts in this story would probably prefer that to the years long saga they will endure in these interminable, never-ending Phantom plots.
Hi and Lois – The creators of comics are under pressure to preserve their format, so I feel like the syndicate killed the original joke about news push alerts on phones waking you up at all the wrong hours. Sure, it’s a dunk on how new technology is bad, but at the same time they know their readership’s great-grandchildren will just set the “do not disturb” setting on their Pop-pop and Na-na’s phone in seconds and solve the issue.
MW: This feels like the sort of thing you’d say to cheer up a small child.
MW: “And we’ll throw in your other fish too! Now that’s she’s single, it will be a good time to start dating again. There really are a lot of fish in the sea!”
“Not for me, Mary! Sob!”
“Oh, we will see about that! By the way, a one question, old friend. Did you ever watch Dexter on television?”
“No, why?”
“Oh, nothing. It sometimes featured a boat. That reminds me, I need to tell Jeff to bring the new scalpels.”
Questionable Content makes a ploy for Legacy Comic fans with an entry literally called Pluggers.
I’d worry about giving legacy creators the idea to steal webcomic audiences, but we’ve already seen the open tryouts for that.
Lois Flagston, I can take you away from all this.
@Niall Horan’s Popup ad: My father delivered newspapers by car at night as early as 1970 if not before and proceeded to do so for 50 years! So, Hi is older than a boomer, I guess?
MW: “Yes, Jeff and I will tow you and Stellan behind us in a small dinghy. Then we cut you loose, and Jeff and I will fire flaming arrows at the dinghy to give Stellan the Viking funeral at sea that he deserves!”
Phantom: “10… 9… 8.. All systems are go.”
“Roger, Launch Control. All systems are go.”
“7… 6… 5… Prepare for lift-off.”
“Prepared for lift-off!”
“4… 3… 2… Tell me, Captain, do you believe in the inevitability of fate? Like, suppose you have a dream where certain systems’ malfunctions cause the spacecraft to blow up, so you change the settings so that those systems won’t malfunction that way, but these changes wind up causing other changes that…”
Crankshaft : TOMORROW : Mopey Pete is not let inside the Atomix Komix building because he no longer works there, Chester Hagglemore deciding to be vindictive on a “quitter/traitor”. WEDNESDAY : Mopey Pete tells Jeff he quit making comics with his childhood idol (both Pete *and* Jeff’s!) to buy a shitty pizzeria. REST OF WEEK : An enraged Jeff brutally murders Mopey Pete for his “betrayal” of the comics industry.
…Too far?…****************
Hi & Lois : whereas Josh sees this as part of a “OOPS, I FORGOT TO TELL A JOKE” trend, I’m seeing it as part of a trend whereas EVERY OTHER COMIC is going “PRINT NEWSPAPERS ARE PRECIOUS BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE YOU GET YOUR COMICS! AI WILL NEVER REPLACE US!”, Hi & Lois is all “Print newspaper suck. None of the funnies are worth reading anymore. I hope an AI takes my job, so I no longer have to do this dumb bullshit”.
I wonder if the Hi & Lois people are assuming they’ll still get paid once they’re replaced by an AI, because I feel that’s uncertain?****************
Marvin : I wonder if this strip is going to remember the effects caffeine would have on a small body like that…
Though knowing this comic, rather than “Caffeine + child = ‘and you thought sugar rushes were bad’ “, it would be “coffee is both a diuretic AND a laxative”…
***************
Mary Worth :
a) Mary actually means inviting him to the Bum Boat, not going on a yacht trip
b) Mary is planning to toss Wilbur into the sea while in international waters to finally be rid of him
***************
Phantom : What’s the name of the Phantom-like who operates in the american desert again? The guy who killed Savior Z and brainwashed his cult into following him instead? The Hornet? The Grasshopper? The Wasp?
Whatever, he’s going to call the Phantom with a “Hey, can you come over and punch the CEO of this commercial space exploration company? Their stupid failed launches are destroying the area with rocket debris! And it’s YOUR responsability, because he comes from YOUR country, and you punched his dad way back when!”
….Too far?…JP: Just what Neddy needs: another dysfunctional family.
Frazz: What Caulfield’s school needs is a bully.
CS: “Thanks, Mopey, but I’ve been stalking Flash for years. He finally got a restraining order.”
H&L: With the depressing, soul-crushing turn this comic has taken, we’re about two days away from Hi murdering his whole family and then killing himself.
Damn it, Mary is an evil genius! She’s clearly had enough of Wilbur’s BS and knowing his history with boats, this is the best way to put an end to his misery without getting her hands dirty. The only people I feel bad for are those in the far future who find his skeleton somehow still wearing his glasses and have to try to figure that out.
@taig: With polygamy! The women, as per usual fair in 9c, have no choice in this matter.
RMMD: Tell him his shoelace is untied, Parker. You’ll be home free.
MW: “He’d do that for me?”
“Well, actually, he’d be doing it more for himself. I’ve been telling him for years what an a-hole you are, and when it comes to a-holiness, it doesn’t get much better than this. He’s absolutely going to love it!”
Good news – Mike Manley, on his Facebook page, said he has returned as artist for The Phantom.
Family Circlejerk – It’s “You break it, you buy it,” you stupid little shit.
Luann – Once again, who had Mrs. Horner in the Shrug Memorial Dead Pool?
Hi and Lois/Frazz – As Hi pisses and moans about newspapers not being delivered by kids on bikes anymore, Frazz jumps into the People Look at Their Phones Too Much fray. Can’t these strips just all be merged into Pluggers themes?
Josh writes: he’s just like Elon Musk, but also an ox.
OK, this kind of thinking comes straight out of the Kevin and Kell playbook. We need to stage an intervention before Josh goes full Vore on us.
MW-“We can even offer up a pray. Wilbur do you know the Hail Mary?”
RMMD-And on top of this he has to go to the bathroom too.
MW-Followed by dinner a the Bum Boat where Mary will have her usual salmon dinner.
FC-You broke Thel’s water and she’s been paying for it ever since.
Hi and Lois – I used to lie awake brooding about stupid shit in the middle of the night. Now it comes in the comics section of my newspaper. Go back to sleep.
SlyF – Meanwhile Max is borrowing the classic manual on how a mouse can make a cat fall in love with him while apprehending her at the same time. But this time offissa pup is on his side!
MW-The only way this can end is if Mary Fredos Wilbur.
High and Lower – That “SLAP!” isn’t the sound of a newspaper being delivered. It’s a guy masturbating under their window. But Hi can still lament the changes in the world. In his day, a guy had to go down to the adult book store with the peep shows to do that. Today’s kids feel entitled to jerk off in his rhododendrons.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Maybe they can throw Mrs. Horner off Jeff’s boat along with Stellan. A two-fer. Hey, push Mary in, too!
Don Abundio, translated:
“This is the stupidest fortune I’ve ever received!”
“What the hell is ‘You will soon be surrounded by friends and cranberries’ supposed to mean?”
“Thanksgiving is still months away!”
Ph.: If Elon Musk Ox is also an ox, then that sweet bastard is a Plugger. “You’re a Plugger if you mistake your refrigerator for a pick-up truck” – Nikola T., New York, NY.
SF: Cassandra has a tape recording of running water. At 11 o’clock, she’ll play it, and when the librarian hears the sound, it will make her want to pee. She’ll rush off to the ladies room, and then Cassandra will swoop in and grab the book.
No?
H&L: You know what newspapers delivered by car at night doesn’t get you? A dead Froggy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Laughlin
The Phantom-Join us as we spend the next year going through the countdown.
Rex Morgan, PTA – Am I the only one who thought the last panel could be coming from inside the locker?
Luann – This is one of my pet peeves. Just say dead. Dead is fine. The other one that’s recently made the list is when they are booked out at a salon, spa – and instead of saying they’re booked, they say they’re “fully committed”. It makes me want to reply, “Fully committed…to giving me a great haircut at 3:30?”
I just want to say that I loved Josh’s Elon Musk Ox comment, and I’m picturing that character as The Cow from Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures.
Luann – “Maybe you’d like to speak to her son, Little Jack. He’s a good boy.”
“Uh… he is?”
“Well, he thinks so.”
MW: It’s only natural to hope that taking Wilbur out on a boat will result in his demise, but don’t forget- the little putz floats like a cork.
MW- My local paper somehow delivered next Sunday’s strip to us instead. So, yes, the torture continues all week long, and trust me, it only gets worse by Sunday.
The boat comes to a halt amidst the gently lapping waves. Ian and Dr. Jeff slowly emerge with the flag-draped coffin of a fish. A hush comes over the crowd, interrupted only by Toby’s sobs. “All hands, bury the dead!” Mary shouts in a voice honed by her years as a Parris Island drill instructor. The flags fall to half-mast. “Firing party, present arms!” Keith and his police buddies raise the rifles to the sky. Wilbur stands aft, watching the coffin prepare for a final dive. Mary looks over at Keith and motions for the rifles to aim a little lower, a little to the left, a little more at Wilbur. “We commit these bodies to the deep,” Mary intones, and Wilbur looks up, wondering why she said bodies. “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the body,” Mary continues, and Wilbur sees the rifles aimed at him, and he relaxes. Mary has it all sorted out, he realizes. Mary’s going to fix everyting. “When the Sea shall give up her dead,” Mary finishes, and the rifles roar.
9CL – So, to recap, Alistair and The Twins have both aged twenty years overnight, but everyone else in the strip is still the same age. The Twins are now acknowledged to not be two separate people but just a collective that speak in unison and go everywhere together with arms around each other’s waists.
And now Alistair wants to marry both of them.
This strip has been a trainwreck for a long time, now it is upgrading to a trainwreck that then has a Boeing plane crash into it and set everything on fire.
When this all resets, will The Twins become separate five year old girls again, or just remain two halves of a single being that suddenly grew boobs and became sexually irresistible?
Purple Stripeybutt: Wait, Cape Grandiose, Texas? As in FASCIST! Texas?
I take back my excitement on a “New Adventure”. This is going to be a retread of the liberation of Gravelines, but with Diana, Heloise, Savarna, and the Bandar Nation leading all the abortion-seeking women out of the state.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
Hey, he’s fertilizing ’em!
The kid got a little mixed up in biology class, but he means well.
Luann-Join us for the next two weeks as Luann comes to grip with mortality until she finds out that Mrs. Horner is still alive.
@Peanut Gallery:
He’ll stick in his thumb and pull out a cherry.
H&L – I have one note: in panel one, Hi mentions “newspapers.” In panel two, he uses the singular pronoun “it” to refer back to the original plural noun. If you aren’t going to have a punchline, at least have consistency.
DtM: Alice is angry that Henry came to the dinner table in a polo shirt instead of his usual suit and bow tie. Mother SAID not to marry him! Low class, Mother said.
DT: Boing boing, we bounce plot and character again. Is Pierce the suicide from three weeks back? Where are Gabriel the blackmailing old-fashioned linotype publisher and the chesty Angel Twins? Where is Baseball Benson the behatted whorefucker and his irritable receptionist?
MW: this is an opportunity for a Hagar and Mary Worth crossover. Give Stellan a sendoff in a wee little Viking longboat.
Hi should actually be happy he’s still getting carrier delivery of his newspaper — in many parts of the country, the print edition is now delivered by USPS — which means much earlier deadlines and thus much staler news. https://news.usps.com/2024/04/29/usps-is-delivering-more-newspapers/ . But I guess it’s a running theme here that the legacy cartoonists are way out of date on anything cultural.
What did Jack stick his thumb in? And if it was Luann, what would he pull out?
Oversnark apologies to Liam, who already answered the question.
HtH: Off to burglarize the Gibbelins! They should have marinated themselves first, to save time.
JP ”I was just about to get married, and he fucked my fiancée.”
VERY excited for Mary Lawton’s pending takeover of Hi and Lois.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
What did Jack stick his thumb in? And if it was Luann, what would he pull out?
A cherry. Albeit a tart one.
MW: Burying the dead goldfish is a promising idea. It could be Mary’s way of getting through to Wilbur, or even humiliating him. Hear me out on this:
Wilbur claimed his depression is about losing his pet goldfish. Mary knows this is bullshit. Wilbur doesn’t care about this goldfish; it’s a stand-in for his failed relationship with Estelle, and that’s what he’s really “mourning” the “death” of. Mary’s calling his bluff. She’s going to make him find a goldfish coffin, put this now-freezer burned carcass into it, carry it on a long boat trip, say an awkward eulogy, dump it into the sea, and probably watch it get eaten. She’s going to make him do with the goldfish what he needs to do with the lost relationship it represents.
And if Wilbur ever identifies the true purpose of this dog-and-pony show, Mary will say “oh, we’re just laying Stellan to rest. Isn’t that what you said you wanted?” This would be a Grade A meddle.
Of course, this won’t happen. Wilbur will probably fall off the boat and live for the third time, get CPR from a younger, prettier version of Estelle who falls for him instantly, and somehow have the winning lottery ticket in his pocket. But let me dream for a day.
Luann: Dilbert had a running gag that he’d “lost his father,” when in fact he’d lost him at the mall. His mother was confident that one day he’d turn up.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: 9CL: And Edda’s reaction is about herself, rather than the fact that he seems to see her daughters as some sort of abstraction.
CS: And this is only coming up now?
H&L: Our newspaper gets delivered by car around 6:15. As a kid, a friend of mine had an afternoon paper route. That’s completely lost to history. Anyone out there ever had a kid try to sell them a subscription to “Grit”?
I’m very excited to see Cape Grandiose, Texas, in the Phantom. Because I take it to be a sideways reference to “March Grandioso,” traditionally played by the Longhorn Band at Texas football games. One thing they don’t play is “Pomp and Circumstance,” which is never played at commencement ceremonies.
@Little Guy: Thank you for noticing that, what excellent news! Welcome back, Manley — you can start off with some busty rocket scientists, and then let Diana, Heloise, and Savarna take the lead roles. Oh, and that jungle queen from the rival tribe is welcome, too. And fifty percent of Jungle Patrol.
H&L: where “dead of night” is about 9 pm (going by that waxing crescent Moon).
H&L: “I used to deliver newspapers on my bike. Now they are downloaded digitally in the middle of the night so I can read them on my mobile device at my leisure. Damn you, technology!”
CS: Oh, lord. This again. At least this time Jeff’s inner child is colored to look translucent and not like a solid, flesh-and-blood boy. Still annoying as hell, though.
GA: Ok, so we have downed power lines and people wandering around a wet yard in the dark after a severe thunderstorm. Shouldn’t the electric company guys be telling Walt and Gertie to get their keisters back in the house?
MW: I always think of the Burial at Sea in the movie “Blackbeard the Pirate,” with Robert Newton chewing the sails as Blackbeard, and William Bendix as First Mate Worley. A foursome of pirates pick up the deceased by his arms and legs. Worley says, “For distance this time,” and they swing him back and forth as Worley recites a rhyme along the lines of “One for the money…” and on the last line they let go and he flies over the side, supine and head first. The best reason to watch: Linda Darnell.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: What did Jack stick his thumb in? And if it was Luann, what would he pull out?
You don’t want to know.
Phantom: Oh great, a whacky Elon Musk, Space X parody.
MW – And stuffed flounder at the Bum Boat, after? Don’t push it, Wilbur….
Phantom – This would make a good SFx! How many phallic objects can you find….
H&L – Cheer up, Hi – it could be a homicidal maniac….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Zits: I totally relate to this one. I raised three boys and any time one of them started a conversation with “Don’t freak out” or words to that effect, my initial response was to groan dramatically “Oh, god! What now?!”
Unfortunately, my initial response was the correct one waaaaay too often.
“Comms, Ground Control. Vox check.”
“Vox check, roger, read you five by five.”
“Fuel, LOX check.”
“LOX levels green.”
“PR, Ground Control. Spox check.”
“Spox are ready to engage with media.”
“Catering, Ground Control. Lox check.”
“Bagels and lox holding steady, check. Cantaloupe levels low.”
“Fix that. Social Media, Ground Control. Dox check.”
“Ready to dox critics, Ground Control.”
“Terms and Conditions, Ground Control, box check.”
“Box is checked and we own it all, over.”
“Space-Ox One, we are ready to roxs, so hold on to your soxs!”
MW: Wilbur, Mary and Jeff gently release Stellan to the waters where he will spend eternity. Wilbur is crying, Mary is softly singing “Nearer My God to Thee” and Jeff is face-palming. As Stellan slowly sinks into the sea a barracuda breaks the surface and, in a lightning-fast strike, devours the goldfish. Closure.
@Liam: Wilbur sleeps with the fishes…I don’t think so. Even fish have standards….
@Bob Tice: #12
Pun rating: GOAT!!!
I had a morning route. All sorts of opportunities for mischief when you’re out there with no one else around.
I remember ads to sell Grit. They may have been in comic books. I didn’t know much about it, and apparently Grit wasn’t something for city slickers. I was recently talking to a friend from South Dakota, who knew all about Grit. It was at the barber shop and had puzzles and stuff.
MW: Y’know, Karen and June, public conservation agencies around the world have been desperately trying for years to explain to people that it is an extremely bad idea to dispose of aquarium contents in oceans, lakes, ponds, rivers, etc. It really is a very bad thing to do. Google “invasive seaweed” and you will see a litany of global horror stories. As just two examples, look up what Caulerpa has done to the Mediterranean Sea, and look up the San Diego emergency declaration from three weeks ago about invasive seaweed there.
Yes, Wilbur’s fish, by itself, probably won’t cause any problems. But you are still sending the wrong message to your readers. Thanks for nothing.
22 @jroggs: Has “Jeff meets Flash” really not been done yet?
I thought it happened in 2021 during the Comic-Con trip where Phil Holt rose from the dead. But it turns out Jeff wasn’t on that trip.
MW: I recently watched :Black Sails” about pirates in the Bahamas.
I imagined them wrapping the fish in a shroud weighted down with lead then tipping it off the edge of the ship’s railing on a teeny tiny plank.
Now Baja Gaijin’s mashup makes me imagine Mary getting Wilbur impossibly drunk, placing the fish on his chest, wrapping them both in a shroud and sliding it into the sea. Mary then flushes the other fish down the toilet.
Bonus tracks if Wilbur’s rent is automatically funded by his bank account, which is automatically funded by royalties from his advice column. Nobody ever needs to know…
@56 Liam: I don’t know what “Mary Fredos Wilbur” means but I’m all for it, whatever it is.
@Little Guy:
#36. PHANTOM:. It is indeed great to have Mr. Manley well and back at work. I’m guessing that little Space Ox joke was his gift to us.
In any sane world, Wilbur’s attention seeking behavior would have been nipped in the bud by a reasonable psychologist. But of course Santa Royale is not a sane world as it seems to be more like a larger scale version of Ira Levin’s Stepford so of course his behavior is enabled and even encouraged by Czar Mary who seems to wish that the 1950s never ended and is trying to recreate it.
MW: Oh heck, Mary and Jeff could just use the fish as bait to catch their next meal at the Bum Boat.
@Liam: my thoughts exactly
H&L: (“Well, Actually” warning) Well, actually, many newspapers have stopped home delivery entirely and now rely on the tender mercies of the USPS, which often gets the paper to you within a day or two of publication*. Hi should be sadly reminiscing for the day when “the paper” was delivered at all.
*It’s such an issue that Vermont Sen. Peter Welch has introduced a bill to make USPS improve its delivery of newspapers.
Who’s counseling Wilbur when a seagull snatches Stellan out of Wilbur’s hand while shitting on his head?
@39 Philip: In my linked mashup, the shark got Wilbur. No messy remains to recover.
@109 Maltmash3r: I wanted to make that mashup; I didn’t have sufficient clip-art.
Somehow all I’m getting from Hi is the typical “the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and it’s all the millinial’s fault”
@Noel: #40
Re. MW: Exactly. Wilbur is, in most respects, a child. Mary is his mother figure, and she is infantilizing him. It is mortifying to read.
@Maltmash3r: “Arr, I got me eyepatch right after I got me hook. A seagull pooped in me eye.”
@White Rabbit: I believe that role was written with Joe Besser in mind. William Bendix’s, not Linda Darnell’s.
Is Jeff an angler? He could use Stellan as bait!
@Baja Gaijin: I like to think the shark blew up because it tried to eat Wilbur.
@Ukulele Ike: (Seriously, the Blackbeard role was meant for Charles (Captain Bligh) Laughton. Love to see a scenery-chewing competition between him and Newton. Robert Mitchum and Victor Mature were also supposed to be in it)
Phantom: Finally, they’re writing about an actual African person.
@Baja Gaijin:
Mary is going to take Wilbur out on the boat and have him shot in the back of the head. It’s a reference to the end of ‘Godfather II’.
@Daisy: Mary and Wilbur have one of the most toxic relationships I have ever seen in any media. It’s a lot like a mother enabling her son’s worst qualities with weirdly incestuous undertones despite them not being related. Rather ironic considering how Mary shut down Aldo for being forward due to him wanting to romance her but Wilbur gets encouraged despite having turned into a much more unhinged version of Aldo. But I suppose she thinks it’s okay because he’s not making any moves on her so he’s free to harass other women…
The Phantom-“Have you heard of the prophecy about three coming before two?”
MW: “Would he do that for me?”
“No. I’m just yanking your chain.”
Bacön: So… a giraffe is an elephant’s trophy wife. Now… imagine a giraffe and elephant making love together.
H&L: “I used to deliver newspapers on my bike. Now it comes by car in the middle of the night. Wanna fuck?” “Go back to sleep.”
I was a long-time newspaper veteran. I started as a paper boy delivering on my bike and later drove my car chucking papers on driveways. Starting with that first delivery route and culminating as a journalist and editor at newspapers, my time in the industry was longer than three decades, but Hi and Lois gave me pause. I know the free weekly sometimes appears sporadically on my driveway, but do daily papers still rely on hand delivery?
@Sequitur: So… a giraffe is an elephant’s trophy wife. Now… imagine a giraffe and elephant making love together.
The giraffe will never let it go beyond necking. And the elephant will never forget it.
When I was a kid, Hi and Lois were a fun, loving family and I enjoyed reading when I was a kid.
Now it’s devolving into Ed Kudlick levels of “Everything sucks!” rants.
Well, I guess I can indulge in other childhood nostalgia that hasn’t gone downhill, like The Simpsons and Sesame Street…. wait a minute…
Mary Worth: Evil shadowy palm tree looks suspicious.
Like it’s going to snap the other palm tree in half… with its palms.
I apologize for missing this yesterday, but a belated happy Scratchy Scrotum Day to everyone. The day was celebrated yesterday here in the US. It’s September 9 in Europe.
FC – And that lamp is an antique. Seriously, was Thel taking some “medicine” when the little shit was hitting the ball with a bat in the house? I can’t stand seeing a kid tossing a ball inside the house, and I would freak out it the kid hit the ball with a bat.
JP – Here we go. Which is it – mob? Meth cartel? Rogue CIA agent?
Rex Morgan – Shouldn’t the bully be giving Parker a wedgie by now?
Crankshaft – And we think the males in 9CL are emotionally stunted.
@Baja Gaijin: MW mashups – I like the first one and the third one, but they all work.
@Weaselboy: Hi wouldn’t make that mistake if he’d learned to diagram sentences in high school.
@erdmann: Re GA – Funky Winkerbean did something similar years ago. Lisa’s Legacy Run happened during a downpour, and several people stood along the route with PLUGGED IN hair dryers which they blew over the runners to dry them off. I will never forget that because of its incredible stupidity.
@Baja Gaijin: It’s from one of the Godfather films. Michael Corleone took his hapless brother Fredo fishing, and only one came back.
My morning paper came an hour late today, while the summer daylight was out in full, and I still had to walk down to my mailbox to get it. But please, go on about your problems, Hi Flagston.
@erdmann: Thanks for the GA observation. Yes, stupidity reigns again in the strip that should perhaps be called, given the behavior of the characters, GASOLINE FUMES.
9CL: This strip might have played a little better if Alistair were a young child asking Edda if he can marry both Polly and Lolly.
And the sad thing is, he is a young child in the present day, but this strip is a flash-forward for some reason.
It would also help if (a) Alistair were not drawn as a clone of Amos, (b) the cartoonist had not referred to Polly and Lolly as Alistair’s cousins three times last week — meaning by courtesy, not by any actual family relationship, and (c ) Polly and Lolly had not already shot down the idea of him marrying both of them in Saturday’s strip.
Actually, I take it back; what would help would have been throwing these strips away and writing something else.
@I speak Jive: Ironically, I had more automatic respect for comic-book fans during the period before I found CC and resumed reading CRANKSHAFT and FUNKY WINKERBEAN after a gap of many years. I know that actual comic-book fans are human beings like myself and cannot be like these fictional dweebs. But the Batiuk Effect is still a problem.
9CL: Every three months or so, I read one 9CL strip as a kind of vaccination. Today’s comments seem to indicate that today should be the day. *looks at strip* Oh, yuck. Sure enough, that’ll do it until September.
Phantom: A West Texas water tower doesn’t need to be more than seven feet tall.
MW I remember an episode of the Cosby show from roughly 40 years ago where holding a funeral for a FOUR-YEAR-OLD’S goldfish was treated as ridiculous. But, yeah, it makes sense for a middle-aged man.
Hey, team Hi and Lois!
“I used to help my Dad clean his carburetor … now all the cars have fuel injection!”
“Our landline had a dial … the new smartphones don’t even have buttons!”
“You remember when pork chops used to taste like something?”
You’re welcome!
MW — If we’re lucky, Dr. Jeff will complain about the cost of the fuel to run the boat for this.
@Rube: At least Rudy had the good sense to take a dump after the “funeral”. It was a great episode.
@Bob Tice:
PIGSPHANTOMS-IN-SPAAAACE!This might be interesting. Or it might now. Who knows?
@Rube: I think four years olds having a goldfish funeral makes sense in teaching young children about the concept of life and death in a way that they can understand. A middle aged man, however, should have already flushed his goldfish down the toilet and not put him in the freezer.
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: You’ve been busy! Great work with Rhymes With Orange, Bliss, and Speed Bump. Plus I see that you have another placement in Andertoons.
I hope that you plan to give your intern a bonus at the end of the quarter. Unless he screws something up in the next two weeks.
@Poteet: Yeah, being a fan of comic books is fine as long as it’s just one part of one’s life. That’s not the case with Batiuk.
9CL – Outlander (the time travel one) already did this plot.
9cl — reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the whole gang gets to high school, and we find out at prom that the bully as somehow knocked up both twins (Terri and Sherri).
Then, of course, I was reminded of an IRL episode of the same. A few years ago, one of the boys in my high school Sunday School class got kicked out of his home by his father for “dating”. He moved in with his girlfriend’s family, where he then preceded to get his girlfriend and her identical twin sister pregnant. I still SMH in wonder at all the brilliant decisions made by everybody involved.
(Aside from all that, I think Alastair could do better than marrying into Edda’s family. The rule “don’t stick your $%^* in crazy” probably refers to crazy’s offspring as well.)
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
@Sequitur: I’m sorry but this was all I could think about.
9CL-That’s not Amos?
@Daisy: I could make it a little better, with the help of AC Clarke and his book “2061: Oddessy 3”:
The barracuda (or whatever) eats the body of Stellan. A few minutes later, the barracuda surfaces, vomits up the body of the goldfish, then promptly dies.
@130 I speak Jive: Thanks on the Fredo-ing.
@Liam: “9CL-That’s not Amos?”
No, that is Alistair, Xiulan and Hugh’s child. He was three years old last week but then suddenly grew twenty years overnight. He dresses in the same hideous lime green sports coat as Amos, but Alistair has a big jutting chin, while Amos has no chin at all.
I assume this will all be written off as a dream sequence. We’ve aged The Twins into twenty-somethings with boobs and legs, so they are now appropriate love interests. Alistair wants to marry both of them, because they have merged together and now both speak at the same time and go everywhere with their arms around each other, so they are essentially a single character.
@134 Poteet: Yeah, reading these comic-book themed story arcs in Crankshaft makes me ashamed that I read and enjoy comic books. Of course, reading anything at all in Crankshaft makes me ashamed that I read and enjoy comic strips, too.
Hi and Lois-Hi longs for the day when lonely older women would seduce him.
@I speak Jive: Oops! Scratchy Scrotum Day is September 6 in Europe. June 9 in the Us.
Crank: “I used to work with Flash Freeman. Then I spontaneously quit to run a pizzeria for some reason, and left this elderly man as the only writer for an entire line of comics! I’m sure he’d be delighted to do me a favour!”
Curtis: Greg, Diane, I grant that utter horror is the appropriate response to the idea that, for the next few weeks, your son is going to be at home, all day, every day. But why are you staring at me like that? I can’t do anything about it!
DT: It turns out the stuff on the suicide victim’s desk may have belonged to the suicide victim. The plot … continues!
Also, the top comment on GoComics is that the strip is now available on the CK site. Okay, but it’s also available not on the CK site, so why would anyone choose otherwise? Are there a lot of masochists reading Dick Tracy? Actually, that would make sense, never mind.
GT: Wow, it’s a rare batter who isn’t phased by Gil’s special “paint a basketball white and chuck that at them” play!
H&L: Everything I know about newspaper delivery comes from the comics, but the classic comic strip scenario is that the paperboy was always in a hurry to get it over with, so the paper would be chucked into puddles, trees, or the roof, and then the adult would yell at them. Therefore, I conclude that Hi, having been yelled at as a kid, resents developments that prevent him from getting proxy revenge on a new generation of kids, which is exactly what’s wrong with our society.
HtH: It’s weird how I can accept the moat having a rubber bath plug as comic strip whimsy, but I’m still annoyed that the creators don’t seem to know how deep a moat would be! Why, if they hadn’t pulled the plug, Hägar’s band would have found it impossible to enter the castle without getting their feet wet!
JP: You know, when these two suddenly announced they were getting married after a year of not appearing in the strip, I kind of assumed they’d had conversations in that time, it was just that we hadn’t seen them. Guess not.
Pluggers: Look, I don’t like thinking about the fact the 1970s were fifty years ago any more than anyone else. But at this point, it’s entirely possible that a Plugger grandmother had blue hair as a youth, the first time it was fashionable!
S4th: Honestly, Sal, at this point I’m not sure Ted’s work does entirely expect him to come in, or cares if he doesn’t.
CS: Just how old is Jeff the Eunuch supposed to be? By his looks I’d put him just shy of 60 at the oldest. That would make him a kid growing up in the 70s. No kid in the 70s wore a flat-topped crewcut, not without a gun put to his head at a barber’s chair anyways.
CS: Used to work with Flash? The guy barges in at Atomix Comix unannounced more often than Bob Hope used to crash the Tonight Show.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: #99: I remember those sell Grit ads from comic books too. The only time I ever saw an actual copy of one was when somebody brought some into school back in 8th grade. Most of it looked like feel-good news for small town pluggers. Nothing disturbing or controversial to give great aunt Matilda the vapors.
When I was a kid I delivered the Rochester Times-Union in the afternoons. On particularly snowy days my grandfather would take me on my route in his Dodge Polara.
Fuck you, Hi.
@I speak Jive: I apologize for missing this yesterday, but a belated happy Scratchy Scrotum Day to everyone. The day was celebrated yesterday here in the US. It’s September 9 in Europe.
***
I am touched and honored. And at the Saints game yesterday, someone had the preliminary temperature entered from about two hours before the game. It was such a nice temperature that I never revised it, and it is in there as the official gametime temp. Thanks.
@147 Needless Exposition:
I could see how that would come to mind. Now, in your example, who got the bone?
I appreciate the non-woke nature of Dennis the Menace. If women ain’t smiling, they’re mad or tired, bottom line.
Nowadays they come up with depression, repression, menopause, vaginal leaking, unfulfillment, you name it.
Anyway, you raise a boy, you’re mad and tired 24/7.
@Sequitur: I would say Feeny since William Daniels was also K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider.
“The Secret to Staying Married to a Dingbat” by Sally Forth, $29
@Needless Exposition: Preach
@Dr. Auschlander: Where the hell is Erlich?
@seismic-2: Bwahaha!
Mary Worth: Mary thinks she’s being nice by offering the goldfish a “burial at sea,” but I think she’s overestimating Wilbur’s energy and industriousness. Just wait till everyone finds it just floating in the chlorine during the next Charterstone poolside margarita party.
Hi and Lois: The only one I know who still subscribes to a print newspaper is my 90-year-old grandma, and she just scans the headlines and does the crossword puzzle. (She used to clip coupons, but they don’t even have those anymore.) I told her she could do the puzzle on her iPad, but she saves that for online casino games that technically aren’t “gambling.”
@Ukulele Ike: Robert Mitchum and Victor Mature were also supposed to be in it
Which one of them in the Skelton Knaggs role?
@BigTed: MW — reminds me of the “snickers” scene from Caddyshack.. I can see Mr. Al(l)ora taking a chomp of ol’ Stellan and proclaiming “It’s still good!”
@Guillermo el chiclero: CS: In this comic, everyone was a kid in the 1950s, regardless of their age now.
Sally Forth-It’s 5:30 a.m. do you know where your husband’s sanity is?
Ian Mollusk. Remember the name.
9CL: Edda looks awfully pink and perky today for a lady of fifty years. Maybe tomorrow we’ll see 75-year-old Juliette doing parkour.
S4th — Ted is supposedly a “Strategic Sourcing specialist”. We ‘mudges snark at that (and rightfully so), but I just ran into a contact on LinkedIn with the same title. Need to ask her (1) if its for “real”, and (2) what it actually entails.
@I speak Jive: re Andertoons: Yeah, it’s no Bearmania 2023 but we’ll take it. My Intern has done a great job bringin’ in the business for the one-panels lately. I, of course, have been tied up with all the drama of Willa and Stellan, trying to squelch all the unfloundered rumors! But it seems we are heading for “closure” of some sort there. so maybe I’ll now be able to take some “personal time” for self-care and recharging. I’ll be at the spa for the rest of the day….
oops, I accidentally used one of the forbidden words in m post #173. Sorry.
MW: To get Wilbur to stop his whining, I suggest we start a Go Fund Me account to replace his fish. I hope if we all get together and donate, we’ll be able to reach our goal of $1.25.
@Uncle Lumpy: I remember when decent lamb chops wore panties. Talk about moral degeneration….
@Ukulele Ike: #117: Newton also played Long John Silver in the Disney version of Treasure Island. It was the accent he used that permanently sealed the “talk like a pirate” accent in the public’s mind.
In the movie Blackbeard Linda Darnell’s handmaid was played by Irene Ryan, who we all know as Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies.
@Guillermo el chiclero: In “The High and the Mighty,” Newton played the Broadway producer who’s scared of flying. He dialed it back quite a bit for that role. And Irene Ryan in “Blackbeard” was a lady-in-waiting. “In waiting fer what?” Worley: “A man, mos’ likely!” The movie is full of jokes. And if you watch it, try and figure out how they ever got off that island!
Newspapers were delivered by car before sunrise when I was a kid in the 90s, but nowadays they wouldn’t make a loud “slap” sound as much as a faint thump.
You could argue Mary Worth is, in fact, being rather cruel to Wilbur by allowing him to further indulge his depravity.
@Bravo McGuire: MW: To get Wilbur to stop his whining, I suggest we start a Go Fund Me account to replace his fish. I hope if we all get together and donate, we’ll be able to reach our goal of $1.25.
To get WIlbur to stop his whining, I suggest an unknown assailant murder him.
@6 Bob Tice:
Sex.
@Abomynous: Wilbur is they type of person to whine about having nothing to whine about.
@Guillermo el chiclero: @White Rabbit: Buncha goddam Blackbeard boffins. I guess I need to watch it. (Never saw Newton’s infamous Long John Silver, either. My entire pirate movie experience is solely Captain Blood, come to think of it, unless we’re counting Reap the Wild Wind or The Prisoner of Zenda or Princess Bride)
MW:
Wilbur: Would he do that for me?
Mary: Of course not, but I’ve got him whipped.
@Activist 1234:
#104. PHANTOM:. Oops, I guessed wrong. I saw tomorrow’s strip and the Space Ox joke is not just a little gift by Mr. Manley but a central part of the arc’s intro. Let me think, parody is a defense to libel, amirite?
MW: suttee would be better than burial at sea, provided Wilbur joins the goldfish on the funeral pyre.
MARY WORTH: Nice to see that Mary Worth has learned the power of efficiency and is going to combine the story’s denouement with her usual “Bum Boat Cruise” victory lap (“That’s going to save all sorts of time,” Jeff exclaims.)
MARY WORTH (2): I going to have to get my Regina George on here, but note to Mary Worth
hate-readersfans (hah! Like there’s a difference!): Stop trying to make “Wilbur drowns at sea” happen. It’s not going to happen! We’ve already have two attempts and each time the sea just vomits him back out grosser than before. I mean, even if he were tossed of a boat in cement sneakers, like, a friendly mermaid would rescue him and drag him back to her undersea cavern…much to her immediate regret.@Needless Exposition
:
Mary's Worst: "Would he do that for me? I can be used as a personal floatation device." "Wilburp, I know I'm supposed to be feeding your ego, not breaking it down, but I gotta be honest with you, no woman worth her Moron's(Tm) brand salt wants to end up floating around the Pacific Ocean on top of your belly." (Mary turns to camera) "Yes, folks, take it from me, Mary Worth, Moron's brand salt is the only brand I use for that special flavor of my Salmon Squares! Moron's brand salt: Bitter enough for Mary Worth, it'll be bitter enough for you!" Send in five Moron UPC symbols plus 25 cents in coin by September 32nd for the new 2024 Mary Worth Cook Book! while supplies last."
"Mary, please don't mention Salmon Squares in front of my dead fish's corpse." "Sorry, Willburp, but don't interrupt the commercial."
-Garrison Skunk
REX MORGAN M D : The look of exaggerated mild-mannered befuddlement really sells the pain and apprehension of being bullied there, Beatty.
Parker: “Oh golly gee-wilikers, I’m getting my ass kicked.”
@Niall Horan’s Popup ad: H&L. Has there been a time in the last thirty to forty years when newspapers weren’t delivered by cars in the night?
_______
Scratchy tells me THE NAKED TIMES has featured midnight delivery from unmarked cars for the past fifty eight years.
@Daisy: … and an apt metaphor for anyone attempting any type of relationship with Mary Worth.
@White Rabbit: #179: Newton also played the persistent Scotland Yard detective Fix who hounded Phineas Fogg in “Around the World in Eighty Days”.
FG: I wonder how they expect the prisoners to eat with those hand restraints. Maybe the Hawkmen guards have to spoon feed them like babies. Here comes the choo-choo into the tunnel! Open wide! Whoo-whoooo! Yummy!
I’m not even going to ask how they handle calls to nature.
Late Thread Cuisine: Ever wonder what a Zakumocchi Dog is? Hint: hot dogs, weiners, and frankfurters are not involved. Nor are poodles.
@194 Guillermo el chiclero: Mr. Scotty beams out the poop.
mw oh wilbur haven’t you learned by now that every one even jeff will do what ever mary says including giving your dead pet a burial at sea and if your not careful wilbur you may accidently take another fall off a boat for daring to question mary . luann if nothing else luann will have something new to write about how the receptionist ment that mrs horner moved to another facility to get away from luann and co at last though would not be surprised if she is indeed saying mrs. horner has sadly diedl.
@195 Baja Gaijin:
308 yen. That’s $1.96 American. Not paying that for something I don’t want.
I’m giving you this but you may not want it.
@Needless Exposition: #120
I couldn’t agree more. Almost all of the relationship dynamics in this strip are horribly skewed. I don’t think Estelle and Ed are dysfunctional, and perhaps not Iris and Zak, but on the spectrum of ludicrous dysfunction, everyone else scores spectacularly high.
@Baja Gaijin: It looks like shih tzu.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: #149
That, sir, is spectacularly dark!
@Bravo McGuire: #176
In a show of spectacular generosity, I will donate $2.00.
@198 Sequitur: That round thing on Wilbur’s coffee table, the thing in the white square, I think I’ve seen on a mid-century monstrosity recipe card. Yeah, no mashup tomorrow.
@200 taig: Did you misspell “shit splat?”
@Sequitur: I wouldn’t bother cleaning up but instead talking to the fire department and taking a hose to the place.
@Daisy: I couldn’t agree more. Mary and Jeff’s relationship always feels like he would rather be anywhere else (hence why we rarely see him) and she sees him as a meal ticket to use how she wants. I theorized long ago that she’s basically his beard because she thinks his life would be ruined if he came out of the closet so she’s blackmailing him. Toby and Ian look more like a father and daughter than a husband and wife, especially in the last story that focused on them. Mary seems to be both acting like she’s parenting Toby and being her best friend while trying to mold her into what she wants her to be. Saul and Eve had a good friendship until someone on the writing team was frothing at the mouth because how dare they only be friends; opposite gender friendships don’t exist! And of course, Keith and Kitty is a new relationship built on lies and deception because the truth would absolutely destroy them.
@204 Needless Exposition: Maybe give a herd of goats a try first. Less water damage.
@Garrison Skunk: Mary Worth, the original Morton’s Salt girl.
@Baja Gaijin: They stopped having me at the egg salad. I have only met a few people who actually liked egg salad and they were all middle aged smokers who could barely taste anything.
@Baja Gaijin: I think those goats would end up with food poisoning just from that table alone. At least June is finally trying to make the place look like a pigsty.
@203 Baja Gaijin:
If that thing on the table is pizza it’s the most ghastly pizza in the world.
The best you could do with that is repeat what you did today and there’s no point in that. Maybe an unusual inspiration will hit you.
@206 Needless Exposition: First, Japan’s egg salad is far better than its American counterpart–I don’t like egg salad except in Japan. Second, two of the donuts have soft-boiled egg slices. Third, there are three different donuts. You don’t have to eat the icky one.
@207 Needless Exposition: Hmmm.
@208 Sequitur: Oh, it’s PIZZA. Ew.
@Sequitur: I’ll bet that the same pizza Wilbur was eating when Mary was going on her platitudes rant, cementing my guess that he was trying to poison himself.
@Baja Gaijin: Japan has been able to take the “comfort food” of America and actually make it palatable, truly showing that their cooks are level ten Gastromancers.
@Baja Gaijin: I meant “shih tzu.” See, you mentioned “poodle” in your late thread cuisine post, so I ran with it by choosing another breed of dog that happens to sound like “shit.” Come back tomorrow and the four days after that as I run this joke into the ground Funky Crankershaft-style.
Actually, given Wilbur’s history with boating — specifically, falling 250 feet off a cruise ship into a hard and cruel ocean and still, still! somehow surviving, much to the disappointment of not only his loved ones but the many fans of Mary Worth — I would say a burial-at-sea for his fish would be the cruelest and most terrifying thing imaginable, and therefore endorse the plan whole-heartedly.
@Boomer: Personally I love how they’re trying to push the idea that a “burial at sea” is respectful when most of the time it’s to get rid of a corpse.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: September 6, surely.
@Rube: There was also an episode of “Taxi” where Tony was mad at Bobby when Tony’s fish died from Bobby’s trademark neglect.
@210 Needless Exposition: Uh, Wilbur’d already eaten a slice or two of the pizza over the past week or so of strips. This one is completely intact and discolored beyond normal range. It may be too rotten even for sanitation goats.
@212 taig: That whooshing sound you just heard was your comment flying over my head. Sorry.
@Baja Gaijin: Oh, hey, Montoni’s Pizza can indeed be fossilized. Shame that Wilbur was their only semi regular customer and couldn’t save them from that health department disaster.
MW: I was hoping that Mary would host a combo Charterstone Pool Party/Viking Funeral where Willa would have to fire a tiny arrow at Stellan’s matchbox beir thus setting it, the overly chemicalled pool, and then the wine soaked denizens of Charterstone on fire.
Snark your way out of that one Toby and Ian. Worst case scenrio is everyone survives and Wilbur still claims superiority because Mary said so.
@218 Needless Exposition: Maybe Wilbur got it at the New York City Montoni’s going-out-of-business sale.
@Baja Gaijin: Or perhaps they attempted to open a Santa Royale branch only to have it be run into the ground by some incompetent moron who didn’t wash their hands and said that the cockroaches and rat droppings were “flavor enhancers.”
@Needless Exposition: What, you’ve never seen What’s Up, Tiger Lily (1966), the first ever film by sexual pariah Woody Allen? The re-dubbed Japanese spy thriller that ended up being about a top-secret egg salad recipe?
”A salad so delicious you could plotz.”
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: I’m sure that real identical twins never tire of media depictions in which identical twins always dress alike, do their hair alike, speak in unison, spend all of their time together, and don’t have distinct personalities. And I’ll bet that female identical twins in particular just can’t get enough of dudes assuming that they can TOTALLY have a threesome because they’re the same person, basically. Great writing by Brooke to combine all of those.
@Needless Exposition: Well, I like egg salad, and I’ve never been a smoker, but I mostly only like it if I made it.
@Majicou: As a longtime fan of the Legion of Superheroes, I’ve always been terribly envious of Bouncing Boy getting to fuck Triplicate Girl.
@Poteet: Coming up in future episodes of Mary Worth: Wilbur decides it’s wrong to keep plants and animals in captivity, and heads out to a local waterway to tearfully grant their freedom to his favorite Zebra mussels and prized water hyacinths.
@222 Ukulele Ike: I thought you made that up. I was wrong.
@Ukulele Ike: I might be out of his age range but I would prefer to plotz away from Woody Allen.
@Majicou: That I can understand. I think I’ve been around some really bad egg salads where it’s tossing together eggs and mayonnaise and praying that it stays together.
@Needless Exposition:
♫ But I don’t know what to do with those tossed salads and scrambled eggs.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: I’m confused? A 9CL character or two got boobs? I thought that was just a bigporn thing!
@Baja Gaijin: @Needless Exposition: When it comes to Hollywood perverts, I can give up Woody Allen, but I adore the works of Roman Polanski. I also dig Richard Wagner.
But I would watch Tiger Lily again. Funniest movie the little shit ever made.
@Tom T.: Re: Dilbert-in the briefly syndicated TV Show they found him living in all you can eat Buffet. He couldn’t be coaxed out, because he was still alive and therefore had not had all he could it.
@Maltmash3r: Can we NOT have a Mary Worth/Wallace the Brave crossover, please?
@233 richardf8: Request granted. I don’t know Wallace the Brave.
@Needless Exposition: I like egg salad, although it’s something I eat only occasionally. A local restaurant makes egg salad sandwiches on olive bread, which is really good. And I’m a lifelong non smoker.
@I speak Jive:
I enjoy smoking a good egg salad wrap.
Hey, don’t judge.
H&L: Hi is the type of guy to be mad that playground equipment is safer for kids now. Because when HE was a kid, the shoddily constructed playground cut him up and gave him tetanus.
It is hard to imagine that Mary’s intentions with Wilbur aren’t “this time, Wilbur stays drowned.”
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MW: As Jeff engages Wilbur in the procedures for casting off, Mary stealthily loops the anchor chain around Wilbur’s ankles and encourages him to put his heart into casting Stellan far out into the sea.