Oh, Mindy’s heart is gonna explode if she goes into labor, BTW
Post Content
Dick Tracy, 11/26/19
Oh, wow, a couple of beloved comics characters from a cancelled strip are being revived, in … Dick Tracy, what an extremely surprising development! I won’t deny you the pleasure of taking your own journey through Steve Roper and Mike Nomad’s Wikipedia page, in the course of which you’ll learn that it was originally a wacky Native American minstrelsy strip called Big Chief Wahoo that morphed into a hard-hitting adventure strip starring two white guys, written for decades by Allen and John Saunders, the father-son team who also wrote Mary Worth for most of that stretch. I’ll only note that we seem to be out of the strip’s original continuity — its run ended with Roper and Nomad in their 60s and Roper standing over the grave of his dead wife, who divorced him from an insane asylum and gave birth to a daughter she never told him about — and that Proof Magazine (which does investigative reporting and not, like, articles about geometry, I think) must have a rental insurance premium as high as Woods and Wildlife’s if Steve’s extremely chill reaction to his car getting blown up is any indication.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/26/19
I always find it funny when repeated tropes/running gags with some basis in reality just drift further and further from their original germ of truth until they veer into truly nightmarish territory. Like, dogs are territorial animals and sometimes distrust strangers coming onto their turf, which is why they can be aggressive towards postal workers, meter readers, and other outsiders who have reasons to visit hundreds of homes a day; but the form this conflict has taken in the world of Mother Goose and Grimm is that Grimm, a sapient dog who can think in English sentences, hungers for mailman flesh.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/26/19
“They’re all exceptional — in the sense that we had to make exceptions to our policies to hire them, because most of them did very poorly in medical school. Ha! I’m kidding, of course. Fully two-thirds of our patients survive surgeries here, probably you’ll be fine.”
Six Chix, 11/26/19
Oh, this is nice! This lady’s friend is a ballerina and got a high-profile role, so she’s coming out to support her and watch the big performance! If anyone knows what the “joke” in this strip is, I’d love it if you could shoot me an email explaining it to me.
184 replies to “Oh, Mindy’s heart is gonna explode if she goes into labor, BTW”
H&L: No matter how well Hi shaves, Lois is not going to be interested if his bag keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Murky Tail:
“Mingma? Oh no! He’s been kidnapped by Yetis! Don’t worry, Mingma, we’re coming to save you!”
“Uh…Dr Camel….his shattered corpse is lying right there, its head smashed by boulders.”
“That’s just what they want you to think!”
Wary Morth:
Maybe….maybe it’s not pregnancy after all, just fluid retention from kidney failure? And instead of Yak dumping Gravid Irish, we’re going to have Yak dumping Possibly Terminally Ill Irish? “The odour of death is upon you, and I’m too young for that!” And then Weelbur donates a kidney, proving he’s a Good Man, and Irish is his again?
Mary Worthless:
All right, she gained weight, but she isn’t 150 kilos, or anything close to that.
Also, an observation I forgot to make on yesterday’s Mary Worth:
Weelbur (eavesdropping through until window): “Auggh? She said Auggh? Clearly we’re soulmates and we’re meant for each other! But she’s with Yak! Auuuuuuuugghhhhhh!”
Hootin’ Holleristan:
Is Ol’ part of Bullet’s name? When he was a newborn puppy, was he Baby Bullet? Did he grow up to be Young Bullet, and then mature to Middle Aged Bullet? Why am I even thinking about this?
@Sequitur No. 167 yesterthread:
Please do not stop commenting on capsules, powders, suspensions, syrups, injections, or suppositories, though. Thank you.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver: That Mindy is a real downer. I’d botch the operation just to not have to listen to her anymore.
Six Chix-There is no joke.
Slylock Fox-I agree, Max. Slylock is a dip.
Slylock Fox-I had no idea Slylock was a Peeping Tom.
RMMD-Poor Rex having to sit this surgery out.
MW-“Gee I wonder what could be happening to Iris,” he asks sarcastically.
MT-“Mingma?” Camel then takes a look over and sees that a rock has crushed Mingma. “Mingma! NO,” Camel cries out in despair.
JP-“There is my but and if you want to make a movie with me you have to ride it.”
FW-How thrilling. How exciting. A whole week centered around remodeling. When will Les show up to make it all about him.
FC-They end up having four melonheads. Believe me that is not a happy ending.
The other issue in Six Chix is that the one person in the row with black hair, perfectly matching the chair and lower stage front, is also the only person drawn without a neck, so it appears as if she is somehow crouched in a black hoodie in the middle of this row, and alas, she is our speaker and focus. Perhaps they attempted to cover for the pointlessness of the text by making the artwork incomprehensible as well.
Family Squickus: It’s funny because Bil doesn’t know how to explain an old-fashioned term to a kid who may not have heard it before. Outsmarted by his own creation! What would Dr. Frankenstein say?
What The Funky: This is the point where you need to get a psychiatrist to evaluate mom’s mental state. Unfortunately it’s also the point where some loving, clueless relative denies there’s a problem. The surprising thing is that Batiuk didn’t make Funky the clueless one.
The Funky Munky: Don’t worry, Folly, by the end of this week you’ll feel Melinda has lived with you for decades.
Judge Cratered: Basically, the producer wants a “high concept” script. Well, the script stinks but she’s high enough to make up for that.
Judge Mental: Lady, “April spied on us, invaded our home and repeatedly threatened us” isn’t a sign of friendship anywhere outside of Westview.
Judge Dreadful: So you’re going to ask Runny and Needy to write a second script, and you expect it to be better? That’s the sort of thinking that gives us more Star Trek series.
Marked Down: So that’s how you survive a major landslide: Find the one boulder that isn’t moving and hide behind it.
Happy Trails To You: Pity the rain didn’t dampen Camel’s enthusiasm for being a big drip.
Nary Worthit: Iris, the mayo fumes you inhaled from Wilbur were good for at least five extra pounds.
The Phandumb: Of course they will go back to Rhodia, Kit. Of course they will. Evil, violent fascist invaders are sensible folk who always quit at the first sign of trouble.
Rex Morbid, Medical Dweeb: Don’t worry, Mindy, the surgical team won’t touch your giblets.
Rex Moredumb, Mental Defective: “They’re exceptional! They’re an inspiration to us all! And they always mean so well!”
It’s a Six Chix. When have you ever known there to be anything even vaguely resembling a “joke” in Six Chix?
Important question: Is trufans pronounced true-fans or TRU-fens? The latter sounds more insulting, but I want an official ruling here.
Funkyverse : I was hoping that this week, that’s actually running on Thanksgiving week, were going to be “Eating too much food will result in health problems later in life” (Crankshaft) and “OH GOD I HATE MY RELATIVES SO MUCH I WISH THEY WERE DEAD I WISH I COULD MURDER THEM” (Funky), but it looks like that’s not where it’s going (Crankshaft seems like “those evil gym instructors getting angry at me for refusing to do a single pushup!” and Funky “Man, your routine, and even entire home layout, changing to accomodate a new person moving in sure is wacky!”). We’ll still have that Batiuk screwed up and visibly thought Thanksgiving was last week, though.
****
Mother Goose and Grimm : “Mailman’s seat of polyester pants”-flavored canned dog food. There, made it slightly less disturbing for Josh.
****
Six Chix : The non-joke is that “Sugarplum Fairy” is an extra role, with many different dancers also sharing that role, and the lady is not singling out which of the many fairies dancing on stage is her friend.
@Schrödinger’s Droopy: (on MT): Or as Edgar Cayce says, turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones.
Um….the joke in Sick Chicks is…..that the “ballerinas” are painted on a screen on the stage background? I’m pretty sure those ballerinas are painted on a screen on the stage background. So her friend is a painted figure? Probably?
@LXIX: Personally, i pronounce it TrueFAns, but then I’m not telling anyone how to pronounce it.
@Liam: Six Chix-There is no joke.
That should be the strip’s official tagline
JP: Publisher: “What it really lacks is [waves hand toward framed ‘Lisa’s Legacy’ book jacket] cancer!”
Phantom: Since he put them in the same sleeping bag, they aren’t likely to talk about this trip again either.
MT: Anyone else hearing Dr Camel’s voice as Hank Scorpio’s voice from the Simpson’s?
But she’s a Sugar-FREE plum fairy! Get it? That’s a joke! Half of one, at least. Completely unsuited to a visual medium, because it’s Six Chix!
Six Chix – The joke is that she is referring not to the dancer, but to the REAL Sugar Plum Fairy. You know, Joe Campbell, who’s mentioned in Lou Reed’s 1972 hit Walk on the Wild Side. They’re all going out for soul food later.
The joke in Six Chix is that the lady eats a lot of candy. So much that she feels personally acquainted with the supernatural being who brings candy into the world. It’s actually not a bad joke.
JP: Since the studio is only interested in the terrible screenplay because the writers are “friends” of April, I suspect Ms. Nielson is in cahoots with the CIA to flush out the fugative, who will be certain to make an appearance protesting all the changes made to her “story”.
That *could* be an interesting development in a better written comic.
@Zla’od Yesterthread No 125:
Luann’s period was back in the days when Evans still had the creative integrity to do something remotely controversial (which had its last hurrah with Dirk and his roof rage problem). As I recall even then the period storyline had angry Trufans writing in to protest. These days Evans wouldn’t dare mention any such thing.
@Jihadi Colin: *roid rage. Not roof rage. Though rage on the roof would be all kinds of awesome.
“Forget about it Josh, it’s Six Chix Town.”
@Jihadi Colin:
1) Those aren’t Kilos
2) What about transdermal patches?
What makes Six Chix extra special today is the placement of the balloon in front of the lead dancer. Instead of just the frustration of a poorly written joke, we get the frustration of having the only interesting part of the scene blocked for no obvious reason. Double payoff! (For Martha Gradisher, this week’s winner of the “Who hates our readers most/” contest)
@Peanut Gallery: Thank you, came here for that.
Six Chix has recognizable figures, and not that scrawly, lopsided, shaky-line crap they usually serve up. So they had to do the equivalent of their customary inscrutable job with the words.
Dick Tracy: Steve Roper? Mike Nomad? Butch firefighters shooting fire hoses? This strip couldn’t be gayer if its lead character was named for…oh. Oh…
DT: Another day, another character, another baffling chin. I’ve heard the term ‘chin butt’ before, but I don’t think I’ve ever really seen one before now…
MGG: I mean, seeing as this universe is populated by anthropomorphic birds, are we sure that isn’t the mailman that they’re about to eat right now? The whole scene makes a lot more sense if it is.
6Chx: Ha ha, it’s funny because…it’s some kind of old-timey homophobic slur..? Seriously, that’s about as much sense as I can make of this.
FW: They raised a child in a house with one shower? Westview seems to be just up the road from Gasoline Alley.
9CL: A week of implied boinking. And so far one gets the impression that this may be the first time they’ve done this, at least since the honeymoon.
Luann: Someone reminded the Evans who owns the restaurant!
Luann: “Thanksgiving meal?” Who says “Thanksgiving meal?” Is it not the actual dinner they’re invited to?
”Swing by around nine PM and we’ll let you scrounge through the scraps. With any luck there’ll be enough dry turkey left to put together a couple of sandwiches. Should be plenty of cold Brussels sprouts, though.”
@Richardf8: Those too. Everything except tablets.
Rex Morgan, M.D.: “Our surgery team is above average, each and every one of them.”
“But Rex, that makes no mathematical sense.”
“Huh. I suppose it doesn’t. Buck, think you could take another nailgun to the forehead?”
@Ukulele Ike: Hey! Unlike Jihadi Rose, I like Brussels sprouts!
GT: You can handle this, Chet Ballard! Mick Mulvaney has shown you the way!
…and, mysteriously, Ali’s House is back. Repeats of the horrid originals, I guess. The comics world can’t support a My Cage, but a POS like Ali gets a second chance.
A dog eating a mailman is wrong, but understandable since he’s a carnivore. Now, a goose eating a turkey…that’s just fucked.
Dick Tracy: I was a huge fan of Steve Roper and Mike Nomad back when the strip was running — beautifully drawn, and plausible action sequences. As in Judge Parker and Jonny Quest, the nominal lead gradually took a back seat to the more action-oriented second banana, though you wouldn’t know it looking at Sam Driver today. I don’t know what the heck Race Bannon is doing these days.
None of the comics really inspired any comment from me today, so all I have to say is whenever I see Baby Blues on Comics Kingdom’s homepage, all I can think is how goddamn tiny those kids are. They’re supposed to be, like, elementary school-aged (I think), but they could fit inside their mother’s mouth, the way they’re drawn. It bugs the shit out of me.
@Ukulele Ike:
Yeah, that strip started out with a great concept and some good characters, and completely blew it.
MW: “How am I gaining so much weight? What the…Wilbur! Get out of there!”
LXIX: “I’m a pathetic wretch and this is the closest I can get to reflected glory!”
@Jihadi Colin: “Roid rage”? I didn’t remember that Dirk had hemorrhoids.
Josh, I don’t even think Six Chix know what the joke is supposed to be in any of their strips.
Dick Tracy: Roper and Nomad’s forays into old-fashioned ethnic-themed drama seem to be continuing, considering that their car explosion happened outside the (apparently Thai-style) hotel called “The Siam.” “Are you staying somewhere in town?” “Yes, Siam.” “Okay, are you ready to tell me where?” “Yes, Siam.” “Stop screwing with me. Are you going to tell me or not?” “Yes, Siam.” “Aaaaugh!”
Mother Goose and Grimm: Ma Goose is horrified, but not by the idea of a dog eating a mailman. She just spent the afternoon stuffing her cousin.
Rex Morgan: “Tomorrow’s surgery should go just fine,” says Rex. “Did you notice I included the word ‘should’ there? Please acknowledge that verbally. Oh, it’s no big deal — that’s just something our lawyers like to have us do for some reason.”
Pluggers: You’re a plugger if you eat an apple pie and joke about it “keeping the doctor away.” Also if you drink a pint of whisky every evening and call it “taking my medicine.”
MW: If Iris were pregnant, should she be gaining weight and inches this early? I assume she’s in the first month of pregnancy; the baby can’t be very developed yet.
@Uncle Lumpy: Race Bannon got sideswiped by a COBRA plane while battling for the Goliath serum.
@Noel: Oh yeah? I’d like to see what kind of comic strip you could do that doesn’t bug the shit out of people. Lick my sack.
MW – shenanigans. No woman on the planet weighs herself fully dressed. Especially not wearing shoes. Iris can’t be pregnant because she is some sort of sentient being faking human traits. She was going to eat Wilbur’s brain and gave up trying to find it.
Six Chix: she doesn’t mean the dancer, she means the actual Sugar Plum Fairy. Urban Dictionary also suggests it might be a drug thing (though, reading beyond the first definition yields some alternative interpretations.)
@Everything is Better with Monkeys: Shoes and a turtle neck sweater. Never happens.
9CL: Brooke’s spending the week of Thanksgiving reminding us why gratitude and being thankful are so important, and it’s because his strip has an emetic effect so that we can, like the Romans of old leaving the vomitorium, get right back into that party and go to town on that turkey again, baby. Stuffing, or potatoes this time? Ha ha ha.
6C: The joke is they’re watching actual fairies; minuscule creatures that are humanoid only in the vague outlines of their bodies and in nothing else.
MG&G: The premise of the joke–that Grimm can discern different flavors in human flesh based on profession–leads me to think he’s about to give a rousing rendition of “A Little Priest” at the Thanksgiving table, which would be either the best or most horrifying thing to happen in this strip.
MW: No way Wilbur could be the impregnator. When he ejaculates, all that comes out is sawdust.
@Everything is Better with Monkeys: Drawing feet isn’t easy. Drawing bare feet is even less easy. Take it from any cartoonist, or from me.
9CL: If we’re lucky, both of them will forget to come up for air.
C’shaft: “Oh, never mind, you seem to have died. Luckily your check for the month has already cleared.”
GT: If Chet justifies his behavior by going into an impassioned rendition of “Rose’s Turn” I will forgive almost everything about this arc.
Luann: Calling it now: Tiffany’s dad backs out, probably so he can jet off on a last-minute weekend getaway with Anne (not the easiest thing to do on a holiday weekend, but never mind), leaving Tiffany to turn up at the deGroot house where she’ll be welcomed with open arms by Our Heroes, who are wonderful and generous and kind even to evil trampslutwhores who don’t deserve it.
MW: Iris wouldn’t get to the weight gain stage of pregnancy without obvious symptoms, so something else must be up. Maybe cancer? I’m going with cancer.
6C: The joke is that this is clearly Act I scene 2 of The Nutcracker, and the speaking audience member is spoiling the overwhelming dramatic tension of What happens next??????? by referring to a character who doesn’t appear until Act II. Oh the risible churlishness!
@Banana Jr. 6000: A bit of bloating would be expected, but weight gain in the first trimester isn’t very dramatic–depending on how bad the morning sickness hits, some women even drop a pound or two. Iris shouldn’t be seeing any weight gain that she wouldn’t see from an overly indulgent Thanksgiving weekend.
@Noel: “but they could fit inside their mother’s mouth, the way they’re drawn.”
Yep. Think what a major advantage that is in maintaining discipline.
Oh and Wren has been growing a lot. She’s almost as big as Darryl’s nose.
Whatever you do, don’t let their shoe size exceed yours; ask Walt Duncan about what happens then!
Six Chix: What’s sad is that the person who wrote this thinks this is hilariously funny. When she wrote it coffee squirted out her nose and she pounded the table while laughing like a hyena. Now, every time she thinks of it she giggles and snorts.
I’ve always enjoyed comics crossovers. The possibilities are tremendous. Imagine a DT – Funky Winkerbean crossover, in which Dick blows everyone away and is puzzled when their dying words are all “Thank you . . . .”
The Six Chix “joke” is clearer if you know that sugar plum is a Brit word for candy.
As for Mary Worth . . . y’all are awfully one-size-fits-all about pregnancy! A few things I can tell you:
— not everyone gets morning sickness
— the majority of the weight gain is fluids, and that can start at any time
— the most consistent early symptom is sore breasts, but of course that could also be explained by Zak and Iris’s favorite pastime
— and most importantly — if she’s in perimenopause and had already stopped menstruating regularly, she could be two or three months along without having had any obvious symptoms until the actual baby weight gain kicked in!
My money’s still on pregnant. Sex only causes cancer in Westview.
@LXIX: Mayo
MW: Regarding the possibility that Iris has made it to the second trimester of pregnancy, when weight gain starts to become obvious, without a single clue, this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve thought, “Nobody is that stupid,” while reading MW. In MW, everybody is that stupid.
DT: “Sam, I’d like you to meet Steve Roper and Mike Nomad. Notice how they both have strong, angular chins? Chins that could cut glass? And notice how they don’t have gigantic, Howdy Doody-esque freckles on their cheeks? See, this is how real men are supposed to look.”
MG&G: You’d figure that, by this point in the strip’s history, all the other characters would be used to Grimmy by now. But look at those expressions. Not a heavy-lidded “here we go again” face to be seen among them. They’re all shocked and horrified. Grimmy has crossed a line with each of them.
RMMD: “And you won’t actually be going under a knife, Mindy. It’s more like a gauntlet of saws and multi-bladed scraping tools. Does that set your mind at ease?”
Six: “I also have strong connections to the nutcracker community, and I don’t want to shout ‘cultural appropriation’ just yet, but …”
Hagar again descends into Chronenberg-level body horror with the sight of a mermaid with scaled-over breasts. It’s like the color monkeys realized they could go to town with the blue, took a Frank Booth-sized hit on the nitrous oxide tank and went to town.
@Sally: I thought “Turkish Delight” was the Brit word for candy. Or maybe the Turkish word for anal sex? I always mix those up.
@Everything is Better with Monkeys: Naked, after peeing, and before showering.
@Sequitur: Just like Brooke McEldowney thinks he’s writing scintillating, witty, sophisticated comedy.
Ripley’s – They came up with savory cupcakes and didn’t think of mushy peas?
9CL – I’m starting to wonder if Brooke has a one track mind.
6CHX: Is her friend the fourth fairy from the left? Because that chick’s ass is 12 feet off the stage in a grand jeté. I’d be proud as hell to know her, too. And, you know, grateful.
@Ukulele Ike: So do the Brits.
“The biggest risk for you would be to go into labor. So, like… don’t do that. That’s something you can just… not do, right? By the way, did you know you can just buy a medical degree from some half-rate university in a third-world country?”
@67 boojum:
I think the fourth fairy from the left got hung up on that tree.
@69 Green Luthor:
“And did you know you can ‘practice’ medicine and never get it right just a someone who’s forced to learn the piano?”
@Sally:
Now do “fairy.”
Luann: It occurs to me that she doesn’t say they’ll be eating. The DeGroots may just be looking for wait staff.
@Dondi’s Dad: Here I am with a completely straight-faced explanation of what I think the joke might be. The lack of necks is crucial.
The person talking and the person next to her are supposed to be children. That’s why they’re shorter than everyone else. The dancers are also children, as sometimes happens in The Nutcracker, though maybe not with the Sugar Plum Fairy? It’s supposed to be funny that a child is using the phrase “personal friend of mine” which is generally used by adults to distinguish real friends from business acquaintances and the like, or at least to pretend to make the distinction.
This has been a theory of what the joke in that strip might be.
@Joe Blevins: As we all know, Sam is a man, just not a human man. He’s a leprechaun man. A… Jewish-American leprechaun man.
MGG: The title character is a bird. Have we considered the possibility that the turkey was the mailman, and Mother Goose is stunned because after all her trouble to turn him into a nice meal, the dog would have actually preferred eating someone factory-processed?
@Green Luthor: The biggest risk for you would be to go into labor, so don’t. You have money, right? I have money, and I’ve never labored a day in my life; people didn’t even make me attend my classes.
9CL- I see Chedda is curing Tamos of his hiccups.
@Ukulele Ike:
Turkish Delight and Anal Sex have
threetwo things in common.1. Potentially messy
2. Both sound like they’ll be reasonably enjoyable, but apparently, they’re an acquired taste.
3. My husband doesn’t get either of them as much as he’d like.Oh my god. I should have known not to go there.
(ahem) So how about that Ali’s House, huh? What a buncha clowns!
@TheDiva: Since the true early signs of pregnancy are unmentionable in comics, this is the trope that substitutes — mysterious weight gain. Soon Iris will faint and come around to a smiling doctor telling her she’ll soon be hearing the patter of little feet in the house.
It is a favorite trope of old movies that men (doctors) have to tell women they are pregnant because the poor things are too dumb to know anything about their own bodies. The epitome of this is “Yours, Mine and Ours,” in which Lucille Ball already has six children and yet needs a doctor to tell her she’s pregnant again.
6ix Chix: “Pssst. The Sugar-Plum Fairy is a personal friend of mine. Also, you can see the outline of the Nutcracker’s wiener right through that leotard.”
Sexy Rexy Morgan: “Why couldn’t you just have the stork bring you a baby, like all the other moms?”
6C: The joke is, they’re at the Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo, and the SPF is danced by Olga Doumeyafeva. What’s the matter with you people, don’t you know a joke when you see one?
RMMD: Everybody in the operating room is exceptional, but that covers a lot of ground. Remember Carlin’s line that somewhere, there has to be a worst doctor in the world. And that doctor would certainly be exceptional.
MG&G: Grimm was well trained in Obedience School, earning passing grades in Heel, Roll Over, and Pray To An Unseen Deity.
6Cx: I’m guessing that the joke, such as it is, is supposed to be a take-off of parents bragging on their kid who happens to have a spear-carrier role in the school play to anybody within earshot.
Dick Tracy: “Steve Roper is an editor at Proof magazine. Mike Nomad is a private op, who also moonlights as a stunt double for Flattop.”
6C: The Sugar Plum Fairy is the reverse of the Friend of the Devil.
MG&G: “The Mailman” Karl Malone!
Ziggy: He found out that he couldn’t board the plane because he didn’t…”PUT ON SOME PANTS AND SHOES!”
Can’t believe you passed up the opportunity to discuss the fish-fucking/implied squid-fucking in Hagar the Horrible today.
@I speak Jive: Naked, after peeing, and before showering.
One fun way to play The Comics Curmudgeon Game is to start at the bottom of the page and work your way backward, and try to guess which comic each comment is in reference to, then click the link to get your answer. I guessed 9CL on this one.
Curtis: It wouldn’t be Curtis is if didn’t reach into the usual storyline conceits and recycled the “Curtis complains about the cousins that come over for Thanksgiving that we never get to see because Billingsley would have to follow through on his elaborate exaggerations for how freaky they are, leading into a generic shot of the city on Turkey Day” bit on the week of… wait, he’s not doing that? He’s instead trying to beg his father for money for, what, the 943,621st time? I want my routine, dammit! I’m going to write to my congressman!
Rex Morgan, Malpractice Lawsuit: Tying into Mother Goose & Grimm’s terrible attempt at Disney references, I can only assume Rex Morgan hired Dr. Nick Riviera to help with the operation as part of the “Dated Comics Synergize with Disney+” initiative.
Six Chix: Hmm… I’m guessing the joke might be someone bragging about “Oh, I’m friends with the performer”, when the “joke” (and I’m using the term in the loosest sense since it’s Six Chix) is that there isn’t one solitary Sugar Plum Fairy in these plays unless it’s a strange one-person show, but instead a whole troupe of dancers. When you’re not able to determine what exactly the person is talking about, the joke loses its meaning. It would be better if, for example, during the climatic moment where the Nutcracker and the Rat King have the sword fight, and the Rat King’s costume starts to fall apart moments after someone in the audience bragged about doing the wardrobe. But, again, that would involve two of the most important elements of comedy; timing and awareness, to which none of the Six Chix staff have that ability.
Pluggers: Pluggers don’t like listening to their doctors and instead warp anecdotal advice to fit their narrative. I’m curious who their version of Dr. Oz is, because I’m certain that most Pluggers worship him over people who, you know, spent 10-15 years of their lives in med school and don’t try to hawk phony treatment options on that thing Rhino-Man doesn’t have anymore.
6C: If you read Six Chix expecting it to make sense,the joke’s on you.
@89 The Breathtaking Bonehead Brothers:
Now available in a home version!
MW: Every time I ask, just how clueless can Iris possibly be, I remember she once dated Wilbur.
6Chix: The joke is they’re to enjoy Fame the Musical and that crazed woman with the dilated pupils is having an episode.
FC: After they took copious amounts of drugs.
Crankshaft: Ralph is dead.
9CL: With any luck they’ll both drown.
@matt w: 6chix: All I can think is that it’s a reference to Lloyd Benson’s classic line in his (1987?) debate with Dan Quayle: “I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a personal friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
Six Chix rarely helps disprove the “women aren’t funny” fallacy.
JP: The way that studio boss is ominously pressing the button on her desk in the last panel she’s probably activating the trapdoor that will drop Neddy and Ronnie into the secret CIA interrogation chamber.
@Ukulele Ike:
Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have gone there either.
So, that Nancy, huh? What’s with her hair?
6C: I’m just going to visualize a second panel, in which the response to bragging about knowing one of the dancers is the traditional “Christ, what an asshole!” and call it a day.
MW: Iris should get on WebMD and search for “unexplained weight gain after lots of sex”. The answer might surprise her!
MG&G: A real goose would just be doing what geese do every other day of the year: turning grass into poop that covers all the sidewalks in the park.
Pluggers: “It’s good the doctor isn’t around, because she told me to stop eating so many pies if I wanted to keep my blood sugar numbers under control.”
DT: I’ve never heard the expression, “private op.”
@104 Tom T.:
He’s standing next to corporal art. Together they’re hard to look at.
@Randy: I regret to inform you that already did a Funky-Dick Tracy crossover. Nobody died. It was about old comic books, obviously.
Dustin-“What a coincidence. This lawyer wants to see the cookies of the girls on this site.”
Bizarro-Not safe for Baja although it does involve clowns leaving this planet.
One of those ballerinas is leaping at least 10 feet into the air. Does evidence of superhumans in the Six Chix Cinematic Universe count as a joke?
DT: Tulza Tuzon is more of a tragic figure than anything else because he can never move far enough north to be with his true love, Portlind Pokatello.
RMMD: “Why the other weekend I saw Dr. Franklin shoot a double eagle on the links and that was with a borrowed set of clubs.”
6C: Let’s just say that the cartoonist’s misperception that there’s something funny or endearing about going to see The Nutcracker and namedropping about your “close personal friends” in the dance company is just that—a misperception.
DT: Tulza Tuzon is more of a tragic figure than anything else because he can never move far enough north to be with his true love, Portlind Pokatello.
RMMD: “Why the other weekend I saw Dr. Franklin shoot a double eagle on the links and that was with a borrowed set of clubs.”
6C: Let’s just say that the cartoonist’s misperception that there’s something funny or endearing about going to see The Nutcracker and namedropping about your “close personal friends” in the dance company is just that—a misperception.
Six Chix-This one always with the name dropping am I right.
@110 Liam:
You read my post from last night, didn’t you.
@y164 Sequitur:
9CL: Wait, which one of them farted?
HtH: Hagar the Horrible became Lucky Eddie’s Ultra-Naughty Hentai Adventures so gradually we hardly even noticed.
JP: The movie can only go into production on the condition that Keanu Reeves plays the lead in a long blonde wig and the occasional leather skirt. April approves wildly, natch.
MW: “Oh well, at least I haven’t had to buy tampons for the last three months. Wonder what that’s all about.”
Zits: Pierce asks Jeremy if any of the ads mention genital warts. You know, just out of personal curiosity.
@Sally: the Six Chix “joke” is clearer if you know that sugar plum is a Brit word for candy.
Well, kind of? I mean, it’s pretty archaic even here; I mostly associate it with the Sugar-Plum Fairy, and the American poem about Santa, where “visions of sugar plums dance in their heads”.
I think you’re right that the joke is something like “this woman is ‘personal friends’ with Tchaikovsky’s personification of sweets, because she loves sweets”.
Ok, everyone talking about MW has made me wonder. Iris is gaining weight, and we presume it’s because she is pregnant. But…how well does that work if she didn’t actually change what she eats? The new mass still has to come from somewhere; normally pregnant women eat for two, as they say. If she’s not, wouldn’t she be left exceptionally hungry all of the time? Is that not something else she should notice?
@Old School Allie Cat: Nancy had an illicit affair with Calvin and gave birth to Lindesfarne, the hedgehog in Keven & Kell.
@pachoo:
She has a tumor. It is filling fast with what could be best described as mayonnaise. If she doesn’t get it looked at soon, I fear for the worst. The worst being having to climb up three panels and make an appointment with Rex Morgan.
Tom T @103: Dashiell Hammett wrote several short stories and two novels* about the “Continental Op,” an otherwise unnamed investigator working for the Continental Detective Agency of San Francisco, and based on his background with the Pinkertons.
But yeah, usually you hear “private eye” or “private dick” (snicker).
* Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. The former is an absolute classic, later adapted by Akira Kurosawa into the brilliant film Yojimbo. The latter is a piece of shit.
@Sequitur:
Nope.
Hagar the Horrible-“Cthulhu says hi.”
@115 Ukulele Ike:
Susie and Sluggo are going to be furious.
@118 Liam:
Great minds, etc.
Six Chix – You’re all wrong. The joke is that the woman is speaking during the performance and no one is shushing her.
Did you know that Tulza Tuzon is “Azlut Nozut” spelled backwards? The genius of Chester Gould still walks among us.
Luann-And to remind everyone that Luann’s parents run The Fuse.
Six Chix: It’s absurdly funny because they’re obviously watching Swan Lake, not The Nutcracker. Can you imagine the good-natured ribbing that woman will receive from her companions during intermission? I can, and it is delicious.
MW: I have no snark left, none, this storyline has defeated me. I can only hope the mother from Alien will burst out of Iris and kill everyone in Charterstone.
6C: This is a high school production isn’t it.
Pluggers: I bet that’s mailman pie.
FW: Holly still thinks of it as “the guest bathroom”, which I assume means she’s ready to turf her mother onto the street if they have out-of-town visitors. Luckily, nobody wants to visit them.
GT: Should Mrs Ballard really be reacting to the news that her husband violated the trust the school had in him with sardonic amusement?
HtH: We joke about Lucky Eddie dating outside his species, but somehow not much is made of the mermaid doing the same thing. Now we learn she used to date outside her phylum, before deciding she wanted a boyfriend with a backbone. (And somehow ending up with Eddie instead.)
JP: The mistake they made was basing it too much on the things that actually happened, so of course it ended up as a narrative mess where nobody talks like real people.
JP 2: “We love that your script is based on a true story, we just hate the things that happen in it.” Huh, it feels like I’ve seen that in a comic strip where someone looks at a terrible screenplay by an unlikable creator’s pet before. Oh, dear god, is Neddy the new Les Moore? Could we at least have got rid of the old one first?
MW: No, no, no. If you want to build suspense in an “Is this woman pregnant?” storyline, you need to start with the announcement that the baby’s being born, and then do everything up to then in an interminable flashback that goes on for months, but at the same time somehow doesn’t feel like it’s covered more than a couple of weeks, strip time, even though it goes right up to the announcement, and also features the main characters despite the fact they were involved in other storylines at the time.
Re: 6C: @Horace Broon:
I guess that makes Wilbur personal friends with the Purple Scotch Fairy.
Now I’m envisioning a “Dance of the Wilburbabies”. It’s… frightening.
JP: If a big Hollywood producer thought your screenplay was shit but liked the underlying idea, wouldn’t she just….steal the underlying idea? Do I just have a bad outlook on big Hollywood producers?
I also have a sinking feeling that the big Hollywood producer is about to say “Of course, we will want YOU to play yourselves in the movie!”
Hagar the Horrible: Most people are going to focus on the mermaid’s gangrenous torso, or all the interspecies boinking, and that’s fair. But I’d like to make sure we don’t completely skip over the fact that the squid has surprising accuracy and ink pressure to be able to not only hit Lucky Eddie, but to coat him so thoroughly with so little collateral damage. That took practice. This was premeditated. The squid has probably spent months, maybe even years, waiting for the perfect time to strike
Heathcliff: I’d like to know how the Nutmegs feel about this authoritarian display put on by their cat
Phantom: Did we ever get a reason for Devil growling at that guy? Is it actually just because the dog is a racist? Also, who names their dog “Devil”? Did Walker get his daughter a hamster named Goebbels?
Pluggers: This plugger’s wife won’t even get off the couch when his heart attack hits
Rose is Rose: Where did this blonde lady that looks identical to his wife come from?
@Everything is Better with Monkeys: MW – shenanigans. No woman on the planet weighs herself fully dressed. Especially not wearing shoes.
Count your blessings. The proof draft sent by June Brigman to the comics syndicate had Iris barefooted on the bathroom scale – the standards guy said “have some decency, woman” – and this hastily substituted version was the result. June can draw an extremely realistic ingrown nail when she feels the scene calls for it, and this is a task that the inker/colorist would probably get right. Yes, count your blessings.
DT: “Tulza Tuzon”? Are they sure about the spelling? (Are word-balloons canon?) Hmm, I wonder whether they have siblings with names like Austin, Helena, Diego, etc. (With a few gratuitous z’s added for effect)
@Conynaut: (On Phantom): Devil is a wolf, not a dog. In the original story (which I have not read, but this is what I’ve gleaned from online comments) Phantom was asked to deal with a pair of beasts terrorizing the Bandar, called “Big Devil” and “Little Devil.” Big Devil turned out to be a wolf, which Phantom killed–only to learn that Little Devil was its puppy, which he raised.
(Strangely, Devil doesn’t look very much like an African wolf. Also strangely, he’s lived much longer than the average wolf lifespan–same as dogs, basically–would lead one to suppose, considering that GWW has had him since before he married, and that his kids are now about 16.)
@Everything is Better with Monkeys: Every six months, I visit my doctor and get weighed as part of the visit. Before I leave the house, I weigh myself while completely dressed and wearing shoes. This is how I know by doctor’s scale is off by at least five pounds.
Dick Tracy-Proof Magazine? Isn’t that the magazine about magicians?
Dick Tracy-Proof Magazine? Isn’t that the magazine about alcohol?
@Flipper: Ballet geeks are soooooo immature!
@pachoo: Ooo, good clue! If she were pregnant then surely she would have developed sudden cravings for pickle-flavored sherbet or what have you.
@literarylottie: The Church of the SubGenius founders (the real-world ones, who were from Texas) coined the term “prairie squid” to refer to women. I’m surprised the PUA movement hasn’t adopted it.
Six Chix is based on the idea that division of labor is the key to efficiency in humor production. Its continued existence is evidence that no bad idea ever dies.
@Old School Allie Cat: Also: the Greeks and Turks argue about which country it originally came from.
@Danielakiiki: By pulling him underwater. (No, not that way! Get your mind out of the gutter!) Drinking water cures the hiccups. (Or do you have to be upside-down?)
6chix: it’s not actually a performance of The Nutcracker. It’s some other ballet, and this lady is mentally ill, barely in touch with reality, and is saying any old shit that comes into her head. Now THAT’S …….. not funny. No. Let’s leave it at “there is no joke”.
@Ukulele Ike: Google Translate informs me that the Turkish word for “anal sex” is…”anal seks.” (I guess Turkish is just badly-spelled English.) But the Turkish word for “sodomy” is apparently “o?lanc?l?k” (ogancilik, but with a diacritical over the g and no dots over the i’s). I’m not asking my Turkish friends this.
@pachoo: This woman is alarmed that she weighs 150lbs! I image lots of peri menopausal women are staring daggers at her for that fact alone. She SAYS she’s eatyas she always had, but would she really be aware that she ate an extra teaspoon of rice with her extra chopstick load of green curry?
And I don’t care how Thai is traditionally served; it’s just EASIER with chopsticks!
@odinthor: This is what’s known in the business as a “faux pas de deux”
@LXIX: Mayo…and then when it hits the ceiling, *splak!*
@Ukulele Ike: #117: Yojimbo was remade as A Fistfull of Dollars in 1964 with Clint Eastwood in the Toshiro Mifune role and as a Prohibition era gangster film titled Last Man Standing in 1996 with Bruce Willis in the Mifune role.
My hardbound pulp story collection (I’ll wager you have that same book. The dust jacket features a Chinese guy, though he looks Mexican to me, pointing a pistol at the reader.) has a Continental Op story titled 60 Minutes (or maybe One Hour) because the action takes place in the space of one hour.
@Tilaney: Maybe they’re both off by 2-1/2 pounds.
Six Chix: Because it would be SO FUNNY if somebody was close personal friends with a real fairy, right? Right? Hilarious! Gotta get that down in cartoon form.
@I speak Jive:
…writing scintillating, witty, sophisticated comedy
Depending on the definition used, I’ll give him sophisticated:
i.e. to pervert or corrupt (an argument, etc) by sophistry, pretentiously or superficially wise, or deceptive; misleading
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sophisticated?s=t
MW: Maybe Iris is going to inflate and float away, like Harry Potter’s aunt.
DT: I do not have to check the Internets to know that Steve Roper did not have a chin as massively jutting as THAT. Little Poteet, one of Steve’s fans decades ago, would have found it disturbing.
MW: If Iris didn’t want to run the risk of embarking on another maternal adventure, she had options. And apparently she didn’t make use of them. But that’s fine, it’s great, it’s one more reason why I will have no qualms about laughing heartily as she realizes what has happened. Thanks for the future schadenfreude, Iris! What a great holiday gift! And congrats, you and Zak are pretty enough that your baby will be a looker, unlike those horrifying Wilburbabies.
@Horace Broon: My favorite thing ever written about sugar plums, from Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales:
Sally: “Big brother, I hate to wake you on Christmas Eve, but I need your advice. I was sound asleep, when all of a sudden, visions of sugar plums danced in my head. What are sugar plums?!?”
Charlie Brown: “They’re sort of round pieces of candy.”
Sally: “Oh, good. I was afraid I was freaking out.”
I thought the ballerinas in “Six Chicks” are children, and the people watching are their parents. So the person speaking is the mother of the kid playing the sugar-plum fairy. Am I overthinking this?
Damn, that Steve Roper backstory is a SAGA. It reminds me of an English Professor I had who wrote a trilogy of novels tracing 20th Century America through the evolution of a comic strip.
And also of a Mad Magazine parody of a sitcom that started out something like “Happy Days” and ended up with an 11-year-old Korean war orphan as a truck driver with a pet chimp.
“It turns out Tulza Tuzon is the person responsible for putting the drug in the water supply that has created a generation of men with freakish facial features! Sometimes the chin bone is as sharp as a knife. In my case I have a chin dimple so pronounced it looks like I have a pair of meaty testicles on my chin, sometimes they look like Howdy Doody came to life and became a pedophile! Oh, and we’re the lucky ones. Too much of the drug and and the poor child has terrible facial deformities and a propensity to criminal insanity! You could say this Tulza Tuzon is responsible for the whole city being weird as hell, to be honest.”
@158 toxic:
So, you’re Captain Preppy?
6C: The joke is that the woman is not referring to anybody on stage. She is insane.
MW: Isn’t Iris 50+? At least that’s how it seems to be drawn. If she’s in her 40s I’m going to be really depressed because I just turned 40 :p
My point is, I thought the gap between her and Zak was such that it was the subject of ridicule? And how is she preggers? I just can’t buy it.
That means Wilbur is my age and…..I need a drink post-haste!!
@Sequitur:
I don’t get that reference at all and I googled it.
@162 toxic:
Think Crock.
@Robbie: Have you encountered the wonder that is “Pibgorn”?
@toxic: This kind of reminds me of the Aces vs. Jokers series.
@Zla’od:
I assume that like most things, it originated in China.
I’m going to hell, just to be clear*.
*If there is one – I am not convinced, which is a further reason I would end up there.
@Zla’od: George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass’s Wild Cards, you mean?
It was a great concept to be sure. Not sure about the execution, I haven’t really read any of the many, many stories.
The thing about creating a world where huge swaths of characters, though, means you run out of the good ones quickly and have to make up weird ones. (Sometimes this works well – see JJBA.) From looking up the Wild Cards
characters, my favorite “wtf” superpower that the authors created was Lazy Dragon – he can transfer his mind into any object and animate it to make it do his bidding, but it has to be shaped like an animal and he had to have made it by hand.
@Alex Parker-Spencer-Driver: *huge swaths of characters have superpowers
Rex Morgan: “The lousy ones are on the afternoon shift.”
Wednesday’s Early Comment
Mary Worth: Weight gain, losing hair by the clump…Iris is turning into Wilbur Weston. And I don’t mean that as a compliment.
@Baja Gaijin: In that she’s patient zero for the mutagenic W-Virus. Looking forward to Moy and Brigman’s first ever sci-fi body horror storyline!
It won’t be the strip’s first though. Remember how there used to be a little girl with a tummy-brain?
RMMD: I keep thinking about the GEICO commercial where the patient being prepped for surgery asks the nurse about the surgeon and she replies “Oh, he’s…OK.” Patient-“Just OK!?” And the surgeon enters, exclaiming “Guess who just got reinstated! Well, not formally.”
@172 Alex Parker-Spencer-Driver: Who could forget about The Fighting Wilburbabies, a body horror if I ever saw one?
@173 Avoiding the Madding Crowd:
Oh, yeah. That commercial always makes me think of Rex Morgan but it’s for AT&T not GEICO.
Just saw Wednesday’s MW – and I can say with confidence the pregnancy notion is a swerve and Irish is fucking dying.
@Alex Parker-Spencer-Driver: On one hand, a google search indicated that hair loss is a thing that often happens during the first trimester. On the other hand, the hair loss is usually limited and involves mildly increased loss of hair all over the head, not hair committing suicide in dramatic scary handfuls, which is what Iris seems to be experiencing.
If the basic theme here is going to be Iris having a pregnancy that makes Rosemary’s pregnancy look like a hammock nap in the Bahamas, this should be really good. Though Doctor Jeff will be a very poor substitute for Doctor Sapirstein. Mary as Minnie Castevet is much more promising.
[whispering to date while watching The Nutcracker when the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy begins] the sugar plum fairy is a personal friend of mine
Six Chix
When disembodied face appears and tells you they know someone in the performance you and the rest of the audience are watching, you pay attention.
I’m not saying it makes the Nutcracker any more special or that it makes Six Chix any funnier. I am just saying we should pay more attention and not piss off the disembodied face!
There’s no explanation for today’s “Hagar the Horrible” strip that doesn’t at least invoke the concept of tentacle porn.
S-M: That last panel profoundly expresses the deep-core essence of Newspaper Spider-Man. *awe*
@Baja Gaijin:
I remember the Fighting Wilburbabies. I loved that song about how it’s all right.
You know how cartoonists get to take the annoying encounters in their daily lives and tell newspaper readers around the world about them? I think that’s what’s going on in Six Chix here, but in a positive way. The art, while extremely lazy as always, has a level of detail that suggests to me the cartoonist is drawing from memory. They really did go to the ballet, and the Sugar-Plum Fairy really is their friend, and now they get to tell everyone about it. Without revealing any personal information, of course. But still nice. Okay, so there is in fact no joke, but I mean, this is Six Chix, we don’t usually expect that.