This will not be your beautiful wife for much longer
Mary Worth, 11/15/05
Yeah, reciting lines from a play! Or, you know, incredibly stilted dialogue from a lame soap opera comic!
OK, so because I am a little paranoid and self-important (aren’t these two sides of the same coin?) I wondered if “Josh” — who shares my name and hair color and penchant for trashing the dialogue in Mary Worth — weren’t a subtle homage to my greatness from the soapmeisters at King Features. I floated this theory to Mrs. C., who was with me until the part when I noted that this Josh was a workaholic.
Anyway, lots of good action in this strip — in motion line form! Watch out, Josh, Jane’s got a pointy nail heading right for your eye! He responds the only way he knows how — by grabbing her on the upper arms and rotating his freakishly oversized shoulders back and forth, hoping to somehow calm her down or at least induce motion sickness. Actually, with the big shoulders and the vibrating, it kind of looks like he’s wearing David Byrne’s big suit from the “Once In A Lifetime” video. Except this being Mary Worth, it’s been dyed electric blue for the occasion.
Thomas
November 16th, 2005 at 9:32 pm
whohoo! first!
Liz
November 16th, 2005 at 9:55 pm
What’s with the hairdos on these women? I am probably acquainted with about 300 people that I see regularly and 1 of them wears her hair in a bun. Yuck. Why does everybody have their hair in an upsweep? The one person I know that wears her hair up everyday would be really pretty if she would do something with her hair. She looks like she is stuck in a different era.
Kaliflower
November 16th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
Actually, in the second panel, he kind of looks like he’s doing some cunning side-stepping dodge technique while simultaneously pushing her to the side. Either that, or he’s suddenly decided that they need to dance. Hey Josh! This ain’t no disco!
Marc
November 16th, 2005 at 10:21 pm
Yesterday he said “Is this all your idea? Did someone provoke you?” Is it me, or in the Sunday strip when she announced the divorce, she flashed the paper at him, which was convienently opened to Dear Wendy? Wouldn’t it be common sense for Mr. Hand to read that letter and see yes, some tranny guy from a WASPy area in California gave your nail pointing wife her incentive? I would love to see this storyline drag on til May where Josh tracks down Wilbur and tries to murder him. But before Josh get to his apartment, Mary is in the lobby, front hallway, vestibule (as some call it) and getting her mail. She sees a disgruntled man running into the elevator and thinks “Hmm. Rita is gone…….Wilber!” She then shows us her lovely gams as she takes the steps and bangs on Wilbeu’s door, but Wilbur can’t hear because he is singing along to Broadway plays and dancing in an electric pink and yellow mumu (moomoo? sp?)
hacky
November 16th, 2005 at 10:21 pm
Either that, or he’s doing a Jane-bobble!
andrew
November 16th, 2005 at 11:05 pm
Ha, I read the headline and thought, “Is he actually making a Talking Heads reference or am I just crazy?” It turns out that, while I may still be crazy, I’m not that crazy.
Talking Heads combined with soap opera comics… I’m so turned on by you right now. In a totally heterosexual way, of course.
Jimmy
November 16th, 2005 at 11:20 pm
#2 Liz… I dunno. I kinda like their hair. But then I’m partial to flips and beehives; they had to put me away for a few months back when shag haircuts came along and ruined everything. For a while there, everything was Klute: but not every woman was Jane Fonda. I grew up in Brooklyn, where hairspray usage from 1962-1963 tore the initial hole in the ozone layer… Italian women were not satisfied unless their hairdos prevented the people behind them from witnessing Transubstantiation during Mass. So these Mary Worth hairdos bring to mind a kinder, gentler Amerika…
MLH
November 16th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
Perhaps the authors, or whatever they are, are lapsing into Jane Austen – first you have the characters say “reconsider our union”, and the next thing you know, we’ll be hearing about “handsome curates with a thousand pounds a year.”
2fs
November 16th, 2005 at 11:57 pm
The Mary Worth “Josh” is, well, kinda womany for a guy, particularly in the first panel, with that little dollop of curly hair at the back, the collar aligned with the suit just so, that fetching curved line of the cheekbone…[slaps self]. Uh, was I saying something?
Sheila
November 17th, 2005 at 12:13 am
That dialogue makes NO sense. She wants to dissolve the marriage so they don’t STIFLE each other? I thought her problem was she was LONELY, because he’s a workaholic — how the hell is she “stifled” by a guy who’s never home? WTF? Is she just reading these lines out of a “get yourself a divorce” handbook or what? They have nothing to do with her actual situation!
jdh
November 17th, 2005 at 2:04 am
you know, sheila and mlh are both right.
jane is clearly not only on a different page (from both herself and josh), but she’s in a different book. but once she finds her place in Mansfield Park and he realizes that he belongs in a Stephen King novel (all work and no play make josh a dull boy), this union will dissolve in a matter of seconds.
or it could be the other way around, depending on how she decides to dissolve the union.
Mibbitmaker
November 17th, 2005 at 3:41 am
Josh, could it be that – maybe – the Josh character is indeed a take on you, but created to *get even* for the mocking of MW?
And maybe Jane thinks she’s Archie Bunker for some reason. We’ll know if she says “Stifle” again, but also calls MWJosh a “dingbat” (which’d also prove my first point, btw).
Dan
November 17th, 2005 at 6:03 am
I totally thought that guy was a girl in the first panel. Mike Patterson looks more manly.
Chawunky
November 17th, 2005 at 11:08 am
Frightening 1: Jane looks like Young Mary Worth Chronicles in the first panel there.
Frightening 2: My first brief visual pass by Jane’s dialogue led me to the briefest impression she was saying “you fartknocker!” instead of “you’re the workaholic!”
Sassy_Rocks
November 17th, 2005 at 11:09 am
Sheila, you should be a divorce laywer (maybe you already are one). The stifle concept would be appropriate if HandJobJosh were the jealous or clingy type but he is an aloof workaholic, so it makes no sense whatsoever and the way Jane takes Wilbur Weston’s inane advice hook line and sinker reminds me of other really dumb, gullible women in Mary Worth and Mark Trail.
rich
November 17th, 2005 at 11:50 am
Is that David Byrne’s big-shouldered, oversized jacket, or Sally Forth’s?
Bill Peschel
November 17th, 2005 at 12:17 pm
“you’re reciting for a play”
What fartknocker says that? Am I taking crazy pills here?
Zorba the Geek
November 17th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
#10: “Is she just reading these lines out of a ‘get yourself a divorce’ handbook or what? ” Yes, Sheila, it’s called Divorce for Dummies, but even that is written at way too high a level for her.
joeypants
November 17th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
I read both word balloons before I realized she wasn’t speaking to another woman. He’s looking pretty femme in that first panel.
Erik
November 17th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
God! Why why why does Mary Worth always break the 180-degree rule? I fact, I see several flagrant examples of this in nearly all the soap strips. Is there something these people did not properly learn about visual storytelling or what?
RBF
November 17th, 2005 at 3:13 pm
Talk about stifling! The MW dialogue for the past few days HAS to be a joke – sounds like something out of a Snoopy novel (and not even befitting his “It was a dark and stormy night” prequel).
And this has gotta be the most amicable “I want a divorce.”
“No. Are you sure?” converation EVER.
Frank Drackman
November 17th, 2005 at 5:34 pm
I hope they find Wilburs headless corpse in a shallow roadside grave while Mr. Workaholic makes a flower pot out of his skull
Dark Star
November 17th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
#7 Todays secret word is Transubstantiation
It’s a common word, used everyday around the house.
Islamorada Girl
November 17th, 2005 at 9:01 pm
Mrs. Hand looks like Eva Peron. Does she want to dump Josh so she can take over a South American country?
Sheila
November 17th, 2005 at 9:30 pm
You know what’s REALLY weird about ol’ Jane Hand, is the way she wears a business suit and those conservative post earrings, when she’s apparently NOT employed outside the home and rich enough to just sit around on her ass all day.
I mean, really — I’d be in a sloppy bathrobe & me furry slippers. And smoking a pipe.
Library Cat
November 18th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
re #25
Sheila you’ll probably never see this clear back here several posts ago but “Mary Worth Lite” aka Mrs. Hand does have a job according to the strip of October 27th. Although it does not seem that she has to be a workaholic about it. Here’s the link, I hope doesn’t screw up the page: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/mary.asp?date=20051027
But man, I love the image of the pipe, that would rule!
TheRay
November 20th, 2005 at 12:23 am
WHERE’S MARY?? I miss her subtle condescendence (is that a word?), her platitudeness (I KNOW that’s not a word) and, most of all, her overall geriatric HOTNESS. Wherefor art thou, most meddlesome of meddling maidens?
Linus
November 25th, 2005 at 6:48 pm
Hello! If you’re new, welcome to the anti-For Better or For Worse site. If you’re here, you must hate FBOFW, or you’re nothing but a good, decent human being who must be shot at by us. We are the evil ones who hate the Pattersons, and we will complain and complain until everyone gets tired of us and leaves the Comics Curmudgeon in droves! We have no real lives except to hate the Pattersons! We’d like to admit the comic stopped being good only a few years back, but we must hate the comic all the time because we will be nothing successful like the Pattersons! Fear us!
Scocad
November 27th, 2005 at 12:12 pm
Linus: Cut and paste, cut and paste. Waah waah waah!
Haw….
Anonymous
June 15th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Byrne wasn’t wearing the big suit in the “Once in a Lifetime” video (from the film Stop Making Sense); he first appeared in it during “Girlfriend is Better.”