You’re going to be doing the voice in your head for at least a week
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Blondie, 5/12/22
You ever stare at a sentence for a long stretch of time and become increasingly convinced that it doesn’t really make sense as something a native speaker of 21st century American English would say? Probably not, as you don’t have a semi-successful comics blog you’ve got to churn out content for every day, but the point is that “How much are you wanting?” fell into that category, for me, until I finally convinced myself that it would sound right if it were in a comical fake Irish accent from an old-timey movie. “How much are ye wanting then, lads?” See, doesn’t that sound better? Or at least funnier? Wouldn’t it be funnier if Dagwood spoke in a comical Irish accent? Have I finally cracked the code necessary to read Blondie every day and find it funny, after all these years?
Hi and Lois, 5/12/22
“Is that why your face is constantly immobile, your mouth perpetually in an O of surprise? The price of beauty is wearing a dead mask, every day of your life?”
The Lockhorns, 5/12/22
The long, unkempt beards of Greek philosophers were meant to signify that they were so invested in the life of the mind that they couldn’t be bothered to concern themselves with ordinary, quotidian matters like hygiene, and in the early 20th century, many men at Ivy League colleges indulged in a similar aesthetic impulse for similar reasons, making a vogue out of a disheveled, slovenly style of dress. In the 1940s, students at the elite women’s colleges cast off their girdles and began to imitate their male counterparts, and a key part of their new uniform was a baggy cardigan referred to as a “sloppy joe sweater.” This is a long-winded way of me saying that fine, I admit it, I was wrong, the Lockhorns are definitely not Millennials.
175 replies to “You’re going to be doing the voice in your head for at least a week”
“… whatever you might lack in finances, you sure make up for in love and kindness.”
Dagwood Bumstead: “How much are you wanting?”
Greg Wilkins: “I love you, son. Now turn off that ‘rap’ junk and let me smoke in peace.”
Hi and Lois-“It’s called foundation.” “Is foundation another word for whore?”
RMMD-Just lie to Rex and say that you are into rough stuff.
FC-If Mary Worth was the babysitter it would be nothing but muffins.
Spiderman-“That way through the pink and Art Deco district.”
MW: Reading “Mary Worth” these days makes a good substitute for sleep aids.
@Charterstoned: It takes a special kind of talent to take ideas like “abused woman is shot at by her husband, who hits dog instead” and “woman going through a mid-life crisis is hit on by handsome young student” and make them dull, but there you go.
9CL – Ok, so the opening scene at the concert was meant to show that Chedda took a pregnancy test and then carried the stick with her for the rest of the day until five seconds after she walked out on stage, at which point it was “oh, lookie here, I’m pregnant!” showtime. She even made it an excuse to cancel the concert.
I’m still not expecting him to follow up on all the bad karma she’s earning by proclaiming herself “a mom!” the second the line appears in the window. He doesn’t write drama or suspense. With Edda he only allowed there to be complications with her pregnancy after first having God Herself (Sister Caligula) announce that there would be no worries, and Edda would give birth to two creepy, eyeless, soulless – though physically healthy – little vessels.
Seriously, though, what about those two incredibly disturbing little homunculi has inspired Brooke to birth a whole passel of them to wander the void creeping people out?
Blondie: A character known for being gluttonous, lazy, miserly… if it does turn out that Dag has been from Ireland all these years, Chic Young is going to get creamed on Twitter.
Hi and Lois: It’s funny because Lois strives to look perfectly beautiful for her husband all the time, while her husband strives to play golf with his alcoholic friend as frequently as possible.
The Lockhorns: After a year of college in the 1940s, Loretta became a riveter for a munitions factory. Leroy was fighting for the other side.
@Rube: I must admit, I’ve been thinking they were in Mary’s apartment, just by the industrial supply of muffins. So when Mary left today, I was thinking, “WTF!” I briefly considered going back through the archives just to confirm their location, but the very idea was wearisome. It’s just possible that it IS Mary’s condo, and Mary is just wandering off to another place she only thinks might be hers.
FW: Anyone who’s ever complained about the elderly talking too much should be forced to read the conversations between Funky and Les.
Lockhorns: Loretta always seems to be stuck on “Nagatha Christie” and “San Francisco Smug” with no in between.
MW: Finally, The English Patient equivalent of conversations is over. Even smug as hell Mary Worth can’t handle being around this mushy-headed bimbo…not that she’s really put any effort into this storyline at all.
RMMD: Clayton fears chastisement from Rex Morgan over the drunk that almost bricked him. Not that I blame him when Rex has perfected the male equivalent of the Resting Bitch Face.
‘horns: Leroy has a “sloppy joe” sweater, too. It’s just a regular sweater that got stained badly when he was eating a sloppy joe. He can’t bear to throw it out.
H&L: Dot, why not ask the real questions, like why is your mother rubbing a hard-boiled egg on her face?
Blondie: Are Alexander and Cookie dating? If so, do not underwrite this, Dagwood.
When Dot hears “Foundation”, she thinks of cement and not the prestige TV series based on Asimov’s books. Is it another sign of failure for Apple TV that they could not even be noticed by a legacy strip? Or is it a sign that they are cool?
Haha! Don’t you just hate it when you’re carrying a manila folder from one corner of the featureless void in which you live in to the other, and you come across your wife, standing in front of a swivel mirror, trying on sweaters from the 1940s that she’s pulled out of a box from the attic?
Ahhh The Lockhorns. As relatable as it is timeless.
9CL – This also shows that when she got the positive result from the test she didn’t bother telling the father(?) but instead started planning an elaborate scheme to disclose her condition on stage in front of an audience of thousands. If she knows her husband at all she knows he is cripplingly shy and would be humiliated by the whole thing to the point of passing out from embarrassment, but she doesn’t care, he’s just a tool for her to use to annoy her parents and give her a baby. So he was left as clueless as … well as clueless as he always is. She could drop a baby out and have it dangling there by the umbilical cord and he still wouldn’t have any idea what was happening.
“You value family over money” could actually be a cool reference of how Dagwood would rather be disinherited by his rich parents than give up the love of his life, Blondie. But I know it’s too much to ask Blondie to do something with the non-sandwich-based lore
Blondie: “How much are you wanting?” sounds a bit like the Indian sub-continent to my ears. Dagwood uses this phony accent whenever he wants to pay off the kids monetary requests in Rupees.
“Fine, in USD that’s about 25¢ each.”
Lockhorns: Leroy looks glum because he remembers how long it took him originally to get Loretta’s sweater off in high school.
9CL: Yep, she’s getting ready to pee on another stick. The waiter, who should be used to these shenanigans, is still dumbstruck. Somehow, the Overlook Twins are experiencing fear for the first time.
Luann: At the Evansi drawing and writing cave:
Greg: Do you think we should make Stef sympathetic? Like, at all? People seem to hate her.
Karen: Wait…isn’t that the point?
Greg: I kinda feel bad now, so I was thinking we should do something to humanize her.
Karen: *sigh* How about an unplanned pregnancy?
Greg: Ooooh, that’s a pretty touchy subject for our audience, whom I still believe to be tweens. Definitely, not weird incels and snarkers.
Karen: Uh huh, Dad. All right, um, she gets accepted to an elite summer dance program, then. Girls will identify with the dream of going to something like that. At least, that was my fantasy when I was a child. Certainly, not working on this freakin’ strip for the rest of my life…
Greg: That could work, but we need to make her sad about it, in order to realistically show how fragile she is. How about she’s scared she’ll fail, and she’ll be away from her family and her boyfriend?
Karen: Sure, great.
Dagwood: I always found the fact that Blondie and Dagwood’s children looking disturbingly like their parents predicts that the Bumstead gene pool is going to be more shallow than Blondie’s thought process.
H&L: Once again, Lois contemplates if she should just call her brother at the military base and see if she can be Miss Buxley’s temp.
MW: We know Toby’s going to just dither around but Mary’s obviously got an itch that’s only going to get scratched if she goes back to harassing Estelle. “You really should remember how much of a catch Wilbur is, dear…because if you think I’ll forget Dr. Jeff saying you’re attractive, you don’t know Mary Worth, bitch.” I hope Libby gives Mary’s seat the same treatment she gave Wilbur’s.
The speed with which Dagwood’s family would have had to go from famine diaspora immigrants to class-obsessed gilded age industrialists would probably be a pretty compelling story, not gonna lie.
The Lockhorns: I was thinking “I am pretty damn old, and I have never heard of a ‘sloppy joe sweater’, how old is Bunny Hoest”? But I see that she’s actually 90, so the reference makes perfect sense for her, if nobody else currently living.
Okay, so it’s actually Blondie but we all know it’s pretty much been Dagwood for decades…
Blondie: Now I’m going to imagine Dagwood crying “Feck!” when he runs into the mailman.
Lockhorns: Leroy sadly realizes that; “Yeah, she did have that same body in high school. What was I thinking?”
Dustin: Fitch will end up paying this lawyer $1,000 and end up in jail for two years for a DUI.
FC: “Remember to stay in the living room. My friend is coming over, and we’re going to need an hour to talk about stuff. If you hear screaming and pounding, that’s because he’s got some really exciting news.”
MW: Two days later: “Oh, Mary, how could it have gone so wrong? All that blood!”
CS: What? Lillian’s still there. Get it?!? I’ve got nothing for this extremely banal series, even by Batiuk standards.
FW: “Let’s see if there are any other funerals we van stroll into so we can continue this conversation. Loudly. While their loved ones grapple with the death of a cherished friend or family member.”
Blondie: Really enjoying that look on Dag’s face in the middle panel. “Love? Kindness? Valuing family over money? What kind of malarkey is this?”
H&L: If you squint, you could almost interpret this strip as being progressive (today’s girls think more about construction/engineering than makeup!), if you look over the fact that Dot has no real interests/personality other than being a child.
Lhorns: Proposed Panel 2: Loretta turns around to reveal the front of her sweater is covered in ground beef stains.
MW: So Toby came to Mary with the Helen problem and she ostensibly solved that by doing nothing. Now she comes to Mary with the Cal problem, and we’ll see if she “solved” that as well by doing nothing. Next, Toby will come to Mary because she left the milk out on the counter overnight and doesn’t know if she should drink it or not. I think Mary is going to nail this one.
“a comical Irish accent”
Ha! Get back to us when youse learn how to pronounce ‘aluminium’, silly Americans.
MW: Unseen panel 3. Mary thought balloon: “Worth, you magnificent bastard, you did it again!”
CS: Yeah right, Bean’s End had a sale on antimatter and Ed jumped all over it.
FW: I’m sure Bob Dylan really appreciates the death-related shout-out. Being acknowledged by two of the most loathsome a-holes in all of ccomicsdom could do wonders for his brand.
RMMD: Maybe, just maybe, he could finesse that broom with one arm, but I’d love to watch him at work trying to mop piss off the men’s room floor with one arm. Wringing out the mop would be especially funny.
Blondie – Everybody wants me lucky charms….
H&L – Is it made up of that Constitution that has been ground to a powdery dust….
Schlockhorns – A Plugger still fits into his raccoon coat – boola boola baby….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
H&L: “No! Cement is what’s between your ears!”
LH – The Lockhorns are clearly of the WWII generation, that’s always been clear. The reason we can see them as they are is because they’re on a world so incredibly distant that their images are only reaching us now. Which means they’re too far away to ever reach us and be a part of our world, for which I guess we should be grateful.
FW: Yeah? Ask Mary Sue Sweetwater if everything’s OK, you self-centered d-bag.
Lockhorns: Leroy’s expression is contemplative – if it’s worth taking an old-style beating from Loretta to be able to make a comment about how he ended up with sloppy seconds.
DtM: “Yo, Dad. Watch that seat. I almost got whacked on my Johnson.”
H&L: “The price of beauty is wearing a dead mask, every day of your life?”
See also, botox.
In Book 2, Lois dons her war paint to battle The Mule.
50/50 shot Mary keeps bringing Toby pot muffins to help her chill the fuck out…
The Lockhorns know that the best jokes require the audience to spend a couple of minutes on Google or several on Bing.
DICK TRACY: “Cops!” Er, no, that should be “Cop!” Is too much coffee making you see double now?
LOCKHORNS: “I called it that because in high school I was dating this boy named Joe, who had some strange kinks. I can still see the stains.”
Blondie – “Always after me lucky sandwiches. They’re Dagwoody delicious!”
Hi and Lois – “Don’t knock this stuff, kid. At these prices, it must be making a fortune for the Hari Seldon Cosmetics company.”
@Hibbleton: DtM: “Yo, Dad. Watch that seat. I almost got whacked on my Johnson.”
* * *
Tomorrow could lead us into the classic (classic defined as during the internet era) joke:
Mr. Wilson tells Henry he injured his penis in a surfing accident. When asked to elaborate, George explains, “I had to shut my lap top quickly when Martha walked in.”
I acknowledge the oversnark but still have to say that I thought Loretta’s “sloppy joe sweater” was a sweater reserved exclusively for sloppy joe day at the high school cafeteria.
More importantly – did Josh just stumble upon the origin of Ian’s chinbeard?!
FW: You’re a Plugger if you check the newspaper obituaries every day for your favorite celebrities.
— Thanks to Tom Batiuk of Ohio
Inwardly, Leroy sighed. Clearly the mirror had eaten his wife and sent her evil universe twin in her place. All the signs were there. The attempt at ‘dressing sexy’ that was a miserable failure. The smile. The friendly tone in her voice. The little goatee. As he wandered back toward the living room, he was torn, as he always was in these situations: the shotgun or the Viagra?
RwO: Now isn’t this a lovely scene? You probably think it was difficult findin’ a Butterfly with a French accent? Actually it wasn’t. Barbara benefitted from our special online training course, “How to speak with a comical foreign accent” … the same one Pierre took. French is the most popular option. She’s thinking of callin’ herself “Babette” now. heh heh heh
Of course we also provided that fine ensemble of Caterpillars – we let the Rhymes with Orange staff supply the little berets and the “silk” scarves. Yeah, supply chain problems caused them to hafta use responsibly-sourced rayon instead, but it was a good-quality substitute. I don’t think anyone noticed….
Blondie: Cartoonists create word balloons as part of the artistic design, then adapt the dialogue to fit into the space allotted, which contributes to awkward phrasing like “How much are you wanting?” It’s a difficult skill, to be sure, and only made more challenging by attempts to make the art as reusable as possible. Which invites us only to deeper mystery: can you imagine toiling over the drawing board day after day, cramping your fingers, slowly going blind, so that when the boss yells out, “Hey Marshall, I got a hot one! Five lines of dialogue, two medium, three short!!” you can say, “Yes, Mr. Young! I’ve got Alexander with baggy jeans and Cookie looking hot as always, your tee time’s just moments away, sir!”
9 Chickweed Lane: Excuse to draw sexy lady gams: achieved.
Dick Tracy: Excuse for police brutality: unlocked.
MW:
The District Attorney stepped toward the witness box and leveled his gaze at the attractive blond sitting in the stand. She had an uncommon mouth, and still her expression was vapid. “Are you telling me that the defendant did NOTHING?” he demanded. “Do you expect us to believe that after all that time, and throughout the entire episode, Mrs. Worth took no action whatsoever??!! Why did she not do anything at all to solve your problem?”
Perry Mason rose immediately and addressed the judge. “Objection, Your Honor,” he stated firmly. “Prosecution is calling for a conclusion on the part of the witness!”
“Sustained,” the judge assented.
Hamilton Burger tried another tact. “Then can you tell us WHAT Mrs. Worth did, other than provide you with a muffin that you claim not even to have finished–”
“Objection, Your Honor!” Perry Mason stood again. “On the grounds that the question is irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial!”
“Sustained,” the judge assented. “Mr. Prosecutor, you will refrain from this line of questioning!”
“But Your Honor…!” Burger complained, “Counselor for the Defense is trying to portray the defendant as innocent, not just of any wrongdoing, but of any ‘doing’ at all! It’s impossible that Mrs. Worth simply sat there, drinking tea and nodding!”
“Your Honor, not only is it possible, I intend to prove that Mrs. Worth did just EXACTLY that!” An excited buzz ran through the courtroom. Just then, the courtroom doors opened and Perry’s private detective, Paul Drake, entered quickly. “Your Honor, may I have a moment?” Mason politely inquired of the magistrate, and quickly stepped toward the gate in the aisle. “What have you got, Paul?”
“My men have searched through this entire storyline with a fine-tooth comb, right from the beginning, and our investigation shows that absolutely NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. Not a thing! Mrs. Worth has been in her condominium complex for weeks, ever since this situation first developed, and she hasn’t done a thing besides bake muffins and eat them with her neighbors. She hasn’t gone anywhere or interacted with anyone other than the witness, and she has not taken any action whatsoever. Believe me, there’s nothing here.”
“Thanks, Paul,” Perry nodded, and turned to the judge. “Your Honor, I request that the charges be dismissed on the grounds that Prosecution can not prove that any action whatsoever has taken place, either to advance the situation or to resolve it.”
“Objection, Your Honor!” Hamilton Burger leapt to his feet. “Lt. Tragg here arrested Mrs. Worth precisely BECAUSE of her actions–”
“–Which can not be proved to have occurred!” Perry Mason finished for him. “Your Honor, other than sharing muffins and tea with the witness in her apartment, Mrs. Worth has been NOWHERE, and done NOTHING. Her actions in this matter have been entirely non-existent! With all due respect to the previous witnesses, Sid! Agent to the Animal Stars! and Melody, this entire case is nothing but a mare’s nest!”
“But, Your Honor…!” Burger pleaded in desperation. “There must be some action that can be attributed to the defendant!”
The judge regarded Mrs. Worth. The woman sat next to Mason’s private confidential secretary, Miss Street, but had not interacted with her even once during the course of the trial. She merely looked straight ahead, expressionless.
Her only movement was to smoothe her purple cowl-neck shirt. The judge himself could not imagine the woman doing anything. She sat there, placidly, offering no clue as to her thoughts or plans. He could not even figure out what her motivations might have been, had she done anything to alter the course of events. In fact, he mused, there had been no events to alter. The case was completely without merit. He directed his next remarks at the District Attorney. “The Court has considered this matter and finds that the defendant has had absolutely no impact on the course of events. Case dismissed.”
Everyone in the courtroom stood as the judge left the bench, and eventually everyone filed out–everyone except Mary Worth. She sat alone at the defendant’s table, and idly watched an insect that had landed on the polished wood surface. She smiled slightly, then murmured, “They are probably looking at me…let them. Let them see what kind of person I am. I never hurt a fly. I hope they’re watching, they’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know ‘because she couldn’t hurt a fly’.
CS – “Yeah, back in 2018 you could pick up a couple of 30-pound bags if anti-matter at Home Depot, no problem. Now with the supply chain issues the world is facing, the shelves are pretty much bare in the anti-matter aisle.”
FC: Not surprisingly, Lil’ Billy as Bil’s alter ego draws the baby sitter’s torso as one giant boob.
@Charterstoned: wow
9C: Gah! Despite only being a few weeks pregnant, she’s going to give birth right here, right now on the table. She will produce a perfectly-formed (well, perfect by Brooke’s standards) little homunculus that will immediately begin chastising the beefwits in the room for not defining “woman” as Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday.”
Marvin: You’d think that Marv’s near constant diaper full of undigested food parts would be a never-ending source of interest to Bitsy’s olfactory organ but go figure. Marvin the person really is that detestable.
Luann: I’ve met goldfish with better short term memories than these clowns.
Panel 1 is the worst of it. “What’s got her undies in a knot?” Well, for the past several weeks, you’ve been openly gossiping with your friends about how much Stef fucks, which isn’t particularly nice.
Then you put up a Fuck Hut™ up in the hallway explicitly BECAUSE she fucks so much—which, if you think about it, is maaaaaaybe a little slut-shamey?
Then you decided Stef was using the Fuck Hut™ too much (not that any of you losers ever fuck), and so y’all decided to limit her access to the Fuck Hut™ AND start charging her money to use it. Because, you know, she’s a slut and sluts need to be shamed for their sluttiness. On top of that, you goaded her boyfriend into saying she wasn’t worth $10/a fuck—basically tagging her not only as a whore, but a low-quality whore.
The next two panels are these two character essentially gaslighting each other and the poor saps who read this strip. “Oh, she’s not mad because we all called her a cheap whore and a slut to her face, she’s upset because she’s… um… OH! She’s scared to fail out of dance school. Yeah, that’s it.”
JP – “… and Sam is annoyed that his wife is just a petty arsonist while his buddy is married to a professional assassin, so Randy wins that pissing match.”
@brendancalling: It also seems to have been forgotten that Tiff doesn’t have to be sitting in a little dorm room listening to Steph fuck. She has access to a huge house where she’s usually free to do whatever she feels like— how many college kids would give up on that?
MW – “Wish me luck!”
“I certainly will, dear. I hope you get lucky.”
“Thanks Mary! You really do understand, don’t you?
Fun fact: As of last week, there are twenty-eight movies set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So for now, the MCU is tied with Blondie.
Blondie: Even George McManus couldn’t be arsed to keep up Jiggs’s first-gen Irish accent in Bringing up Father, and let him lapse into contemporary American. Same thing happened over in Abbie the Agent, who grew progressively more goyische as early-century boffo ethnic jokes fell out of favor.
@Scudder: @Charterstoned:
I returned to the brownstone on West 34th, only to find Fritz and Theodore waiting at the door.
“Archie! Thank goodness you are back. He refuses to eat!” Fritz said. “And there is a woman in the office… with a muffin recipe!”
Theodore added, “Mr. Wolfe has locked himself in the orchid room! I’ve never seen him like this.”
“Is it a trim, attractive woman, sixty something?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s right,” said the chef.
“It’s his old nemesis, Mrs. W! Theodore! Call Inspector Cramer. Fritz, bring salmon squares and beer to the office. I’ve got to find Saul Panzer.”
Luann – “Ok, so maybe I am a little horrible?” means “Ok, you realize you can plow me like the south 40 while Stef is gone?”
FC: IS that babysitter supposed to be their grandma? In that case, the melonheads have a radically different view of her than the good people on this site. Probably because they get cookies and ice cream and we don’t.
@cheech wizard:
Kip gets his two acres and a mule.
CS: “And where did you get that antimatter? It’s not exactly something you can buy at your local WalMart, he he”.
“From the particle accelerator in my basement, of course.”
Why not? It’s about as credible as the rest of this story.
FW: I was more of the impression that Funky belonged to the generation that would worship Elvis as a god. But of course Elvis isn’t around anymore, so I guess he has to peg his hopes on Dylan instead.
Lockhorns – There’s a way to do this joke without having to resort to 1940s garment slang. Try “scrunchie”. Or if that’s not clothing-y enough, mittens, hat, scarf, socks.
I have a sweater I bought from Abercrombie and Fitch about three years before they started serving the anorexic hottie market – it’s a giant olive green wool cardigan with a hood. It was oversized then – today, it would probably just look like a cardigan – but I take a small amount of joy in knowing I have an article of clothing from college – Abercrombie, no less, that fits.
Also – does anyone remember when Banana Republic leaned into their jungle-themed store name and their shops were really cool looking and had mystique? Now they’re just white and sterile.
@Rube: The same for me: I’m pretty old, and I never heard of a sloppy joe sweater. My mother was a teenager in the 1940s, so I’ve heard of Zoot suits and some of the dances and music that were popular, but sloppy joe sweater is a new one.
@Charterstoned: Bravo!
@Oversized Garden Ornament: I have a policy of never reading FC when Billy takes over, so I didn’t see this one. Is the sitter holier than thou Grandma? If so, don’t feel bad – it’s that “ice cream” that’s pumped full of air and comes in big tubs.
@Scudder: I’m going to station myself at the peephole behind the trick waterfall painting. This should be good!
@Oversized Garden Ornament: Funky and the others were just little kids when Bob released the Big Three — Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde — but they were teenagers when he reasserted his Buddha Nature with Blood on the Tracks. So the Dylan reference works fine.
@Peanut Gallery: Pfui.
FW – Bob Dylan? No. Keith Richards is the go-to for that.
JP – This exposition dump is forgivable, since Neddy hasn’t been around and walked into the middle of the situation without knowing what was going on. However, the story is still execrable and the characters are still entitled assholes.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: The twins could have stepped out of Village of the Damned (the 1961 version), except that the terrifying mutant children weren’t obsessed with sex.
Why is Chedda standing on the table in the restaurant? Yeah, I know that it gives Brooke the opportunity to draw her legs without bothering to draw boring things like faces, but why? That’s the kind of stunt that would get a customer thrown out and banned from a restaurant. And what does it have to do with suddenly being a mom? Is she looking forward to popping in to the hospital nursery to show off her legs and maybe glance at her baby?
@Uncle Lumpy: Maybe not a mule, but he’s definitely getting her ass.
@Peanut Gallery: @Ukulele Ike: The doorbell rang…
Why, it’s Lord Peter Wimsey!
@Scudder: Did Bunter come along, to take the photographs?
Am I reading the subtext of the exchange in Blondie correctly?
Alexander: “You’re a shit provider.”
Dagwood: “I’ll show you, how much money do you want?”
@Uncle Lumpy: COTW? (I got the reference).
Blondie: Love and kindness mean nothing in today’s world. Good parents give their children money. Lots of money.
MW: “Tell you what, Toby, why don’t you send Cal over to talk to me? It’s possible that with a few private one-on-one sessions, I mean talks, I could take his mind off whatever’s bothering him. I’m open all week. Don’t forget, now!”
@Charterstoned: #3
And thanks to Mary, the next time I have a difficult life issue to deal with, I’ll bake muffins. Lots and lots…and lots…of muffins. They may not give me the insight I need to work though the problem, but if nothing else, all those carbs will make me feel much better.
Lockhorns: Sounds like the Sloppy Joe sweater is a precursor to the “Annie Hall look,” which is a late-Boomer thing (1977).
love is... wondering who the father is.
The *DAGWOOD* is proud of his brood already the void forms within them demanding precious resources to fill its emptiness. Soon they will be ready to leave his world and burrow into a new one demanding endless tribute of sandwiches and sacrifices from its inhabitants.
@Sequitur: It’s neither Amos nor Hugh.
LUANN: So Stef is throwing a temper-tantrum because she’s terrified that she’ll fail at her “elite summer dance program” that’s send her far away from her family. Good thing it’s just an “elite summer dance program” then and not college where…oh wait. (Also, all this time, was this studious dancer was just perfecting her craft through the time-honored tradition of semi-publicly fucking her boyfriend all day? Wow the criteria for acceptance at Nomi Malone Lapdance Academy is elite!)
LUANN (2): Boy I bet Mary is kicking herself that some wet-behind-the-ears college kid has surpassed her at slinging guilt-tripping bullshit.
Mary: “Estelle, Wilbur been acting like an ill-tempered drunken boor because…um…he’s trying to get into an elite dance program and he’s…gonna miss his family or whatever. That makes up for being an thoughtless asshole right? You should apologize for being insensitive to his needs.”
Repeats from end of yesterthread:
GT: Other writers –
*Word gets around not to bunt off Gregg or get beaned*
*Word gets to the coaches*
*Word gets to Gil*
*Gil has a word with his players, finds out Gregg is blind*
Rubin –
*Word gets around not to bunt off Gregg or get beaned*
*Never bring it up again, satisfied that a plot hole has been filled*
Luann: Revised P3: “Again, Boo-Freaking-Hoo! HEY STEF! Get your Kip-loving ass out here! I have a T-Shirt of mine for you. You think YOU’RE the only one who had failure issues with family disconnect?”
FW: No, Batty, it started with Lemmy at the end of 2015. Check it out.
What’s going on with Comics Kingdom? They seem to have been looking at CNN+ and thinking, “What a great idea! Let’s see how many people will pay for our stuff!”
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: Jughaid is sing ’bout Mary Beth to Samanthy Jane. At first that might seem to be not so smart on Jughaid’s part but it sure is better than singin’ ’bout Samanthy Jane being a real pain.
@Peanut Gallery: Oh please! Tell us what’s going on.
// Mary Worth’s ancestors hailed from Wold Newton, you know. It’s all a family affair.
Crankshaft: Crankshaft pooped on his grill before sending it out into space. As it rounded the Sun, the Sun said, “What the hell is this fresh shit?” and flung it back to Earth.
FW – Just a reminder that Bob Dylan was awarded a Nobel Prize in literature, but Batiuk still hasn’t won that Pulitzer Prize.
Frazz – Sure, he has a doctorate, but he’s not fanatical about exercise, so Frazz and Caulfield are still superior.
Judge Parker Vintage: “Then supposin’ I grab her again?”
Then Kenny Rogers said, “You got to know when to hold ’em…”
MW: Up next; Mary brilliantly markets her muffins as Edible Stress Balls.
H&L: That perpetual “O” of surprise comes from the realization that one has been a mother for some 68 years. I wouldn’t say no to some of that foundation.
Lockhorns: So, Loretta went to one of the Seven Sisters for her MRS degree? Well, there was some money down the crapper!
@Tom T.: Yeah, it looks like they paywalled everything. It started yesterday.
The regular strips can be found elsewhere (I read them on the Seattle Times website), but there are several vintage strips I follow that can’t be found anywhere else. I did manage to access the vintage strips at CK on my phone again today, but I don’t know how long that will last.
I don’t know what to do, other than swear a lot. I hate the thought of giving that clusterfuck website my credit card information.
@Tom T.: Yeah, I just noticed that my “bookmark each strip and open all in tabs” led to tab after tab of panels with that dog with the idiot grin.
Until I opened them in Firefox’s “Private Window.” (hint, hint).
Thimble Theater (aka Vintage Popeye): Today starts a new story and we find a gal with Popeye arms.
Popeye Arms is the worst hotel ever.
9CL
They’ll skeeze you
And sleaze you
Just to unease you
They’ve got Orphan Annie eyes.
They’ll forget you
And upset you
Just to beset you
With creepy Orphan Annie eyes
THANK YOU for explaining what a “Sloppy Joe Sweater” is. I now do not have to imagine it as a souvenir of Loretta’s, shall we say, “glory days.”
@I speak Jive: 9CL – “Why is Chedda standing on the table in the restaurant? … And what does it have to do with suddenly being a mom? Is she looking forward to popping in to the hospital nursery to show off her legs and maybe glance at her baby?”
Having already announced her pregnancy – cough! – I mean that SHE IS A MOM to an audience of 3,000 disappointed ticket holders, she’s got the bit in her teeth and is going to milk this for all the attention she possibly can. After the diner, it’s off to the Nail Salon, and then to MSG where she hopes the Knicks are still playing so she can address a sold-out crowd.
And all while wearing a skirt so short that when she stands on top of that filthy diner table to make her announcement, most of the victims can personally verify what she has going on up in there.
@Charterstoned: #48
*STANDING OVATION!!*
P.S. Love the reference!
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: 9CL: From the way she’s posing and others are reacting, it looked to me like Xiulan had pulled open her shirt. That doesn’t make sense in the context of a pregnancy announcement, though, plus Brooke is not a breast man anyway.
@Uncle Lumpy: Makes me wonder if Dagwood’s dad told him to turn for that danged Paul Whiteman back in the day.
LUANN – This has to be one of the clumsiest plot twists ever. Out of nowhere, at the end of this whole sequence, suddenly her boyfriend makes this announcement. Nothing we’ve seen prior to that panel has even hinted in any way at any kind of inner life that the character has other than as a blow-up doll who exists for the other characters to look down on because she gets laid consistently. Now, suddenly, she’s been accepted to an “Elite” dance school! Maybe that’s what she was doing all those times in the Fuck Hut – practicing for her audition? Or did she just mail in an application and not have to practice or try out at all?
Lockhorns: Leroy’s just jealous, because none of Loretta’s clothes fit him. And believe me, he’s tried.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: And apparently she never talks to her roommates, not even to brag, even though they are around all the damn time.
@made of wince: My autocorrect says “Leroy” should be spelled “Person”. Okay, if you say so. But I have my doubts.
@Tom T.: 9CL – The diner patrons are all from out of town and don’t realize that Chedda comes here every day to order cheeseburgers and then make a spectacle of herself frotting her husband on top of the diner booth. Flashing her hoo-ha while she announces it’s occupied is actually somewhat restrained for her.
Oh, and Hugh is late again. He was walking into the diner when a woman held a door open for him and he got so scared he wet himself and is currently hiding outside in the bushes. Or maybe he’s just busy with his meeting of the unincel club, composed of males who are sexually active against their will?
@Sequitur: What fresh hell is this shit….
Bliss: You may remember I told ya last week we’d begun to limit our clients’ appearances here, due to rumors of staff use of illicit substances. Well, they assured us everything was legit there and our clients were in no danger or at any risk of untoward happenings. But then I look at today’s panel and I have to wonder if this doesn’t put Bailey in a compromising situation!
Intern, I think you’d better get over there and find out why his Murakami novel and his kibble aren’t on *his* side of the bed! I mean, where’s the respect for him?
@Ukulele Ike: A Plugger’s sloppy Joe sweater is covered in pulled pork and BBQ sauce….
Being a character in a newspaper comic must be its own little slice of hell: every single day you perform for the masses, having to deal with nosy neighbors or parasitic children or your obnoxious spouse. And then it just resets the next day where you learn all over again that your next door neighbor won’t stop meddling in your affairs, all your children want from you is money, and you married a bog creature who crawled out of the primordial ooze yesterday. Yet you’re powerless to stop the cycle from resetting and resetting and resetting and resetting…
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: I was going to point out that even the waiters seems surprised by Chedda’s behavior, but then I realized the diner has a high turnover rate.
@taig: Yep, you’re so right.
And there are also all the would-be employees and customers who step in, see some variation on the constant themes of narcissism and boinking, and remark to each other “No way in hell!” and step right out again, never to return.
Luann – “That’s just the problem, Tiff. You’re a little horrible. That’s all. You’re supposed to be the harpy in this strip and you’re fallin’ down on the job. Stef is doin’ her best to pick up the slack but she just can’t cut it by herself – making Luann look good by comparison is too much of a burden for any one woman to bear and Anne Eiffel hasn’t been seen in months! So buck up, bitch up and do yer freakin’ job! Frankly, this “sensitive Tiffany” bit is a bit weird – it’s creepin’ me out!”
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: It’s called gaslighting. The Evansii want us to forget that the past two weeks have been about openly slut-shaming that filthy monogamous whore for fucking her boyfriend a lot, gossiping about her overactive “problem” libido, and getting her boyfriend to say she’s worthless.
Nah, she’s upset about dance school. And that black eye/bloody nose? She’s just clumsy, she walked into a door.
LOCKHORNS: I appreciate the history discourse on Sloppy Joe sweaters. I’ve never liked cardigans much, but my mother loves them. She was in college in the Forties.
@Poteet: Meanwhile, restaurant management (or is it administration, I forget) is just, “Well, they own the diner, so, whatareyagonnado?” with a shrug, followed by a shiver.
@taig: Re LUANN, bwahaha! I mentally added one additional line — Karen: *picks up wine glass and drains it*
@Poteet: I love it!
@Austria:#42 my first thought was around something like that
Lois is doing a great job with her makeup! She’s exactly the same color all over!
CS – Check out who’s stealing valor! The antimatter is in the rumballs and everyone knows it!
Luann – Check out Kamos coming to Stedda’s defense. Thrall!
PBS – Are Pastis and Xunise dating?
@I speak Jive: #94
The last couple of days I was able to read all my favorite vintage strips on the Seattle PI comics page – I just typed in the name of the comic in the search box (without quotes – e.g. Rip Kirby) and the comic opened right up. Also, I can still read CK comics (old and new) on my iPhone without the paywall, but don’t know how long that privilege will last.
JP – “Sorry for the clumsy exposition dump.” OK, Ces doesn’t have to do any writing outside of Medium Large anymore. That phrase can just go in every dialog balloon in JP and SForth, and everything would make sense.
So what do you call a tableful of discounted, factory-reject Sloppy Joe sweaters?
“How much are you wanting” sounds normal to my ears. It might be a Midwesternism (the evasive “are you wanting” versus the direct “do you want”). It’s the kind of thing you’d say to open a negotiation to buy a car or something at a garage sale (“how much are you wanting for this lawnmower?”). True masters of indirection would employ “how much do you think you would be wanting”, of course.
@108 Dennis Jimenez:
I meant it the way I said it.
how does Cookie even walk? I get she’s there for eye candy but crap. the Kardashians are going to be dialing her up for her plastic surgeon
@Catt: The tit-to-waist ratio is pretty extreme even for a comic strip character, isn’t it?
As a millenial who attended an elite women’s college, there is nothing I can imagine we as a set being more likely to do than affecting a crappy cardigan from the charity resale shop and writing anything from a facebook post about it to a senior thesis called “Masculinities in Our Minds: Separating Queer History From the Pragmatic Rejection of Femininity in 1940s America.”
Blondie, meta: FWIW, I didn’t understand what Josh was talking about — Dagwood’s sentence looked perfectly fine to me — until I got to the bit about the “comical fake Irish accent” and realised the disconnect was simply that I am not a native speaker of 21st century American English, but 21st century Scottish English, which has some grammatical similarities to Irish English, including that one.
Crank: Oh, so you don’t like that sufficient blast to put a grill into orbit should have killed Ed and his entire family (and tragically didn’t), huh? Well, what if we told you it was the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter, a force greater than all the explosives on Earth? Keep arguing and on Saturday we’ll reveal that Ed accidentally recreated the conditions of the Big Bang! Don’t think we won’t!
FC: Ha, Billy’s engaging in a bit of wish-fullfillment by pretending the babysitter (is that the right word? I feel like babysitters look after kids for one evening, and you need another word when the parents have actually packed a suitcase) is a pushover. Or possibly that the babysitter exists, and isn’t just a note saying “microwave meals in the freezer, try not to eat the rat poison, see you on Sunday”. I mean, they’ve left Billy to do Daddy Keane’s actual job, what does that tell you?
FW: The way this is phrased, I get the distinct impression that, in the Funkyverse, the celebrity obituaries include, every day, an announcement that Bob Dylan (and possibly other cultural touchstones like William Shatner or Michael Caine) isn’t dead yet. One day, it won’t be there.
MT: “This place cut more corners than a pie bakery! One that baked square pies, I mean!”
“Ah, you also get your pies from Pie Are Squared?”
Phantom: Colour me completely unsurprised that all the time he was training at the monastary, Kit never bothered to learn the language.
RMMD: Good news, Clayton, Rex isn’t very bright and has zero interest in his patients! Well, it’s good news from a secret identity perspective, at least.
@I speak Jive: I know, right? I’d be willing to give them the twenty dollars at this point *sigh*, but giving them access to my credit card info feels dubious.
Given the general demographics of comic-strip addicts, they really should have an option for sending checks.
@Malda: HAR! Hoping to see that one again tomorrow.
@Horace Broon: “In the news today, Lisa Moore remains dead.”
I know there are some Comics Kingdom subscribers here. Per my yesterthread post pasted below, none of you have ever actually had any problems, right? Right? *nervous laugh*
***
Great. Fabulous. Now it looks like I’ll have to try to subscribe to COMICS KINGDOM, and I seem to recall enough grousing about their crummy website and crummy service, here on CC, that I suppose they will be hacked and my credit card number will be used to purchase a new Lada Vesta somewhere in Chelyabinsk.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box, Luann: Does this include Helen as Ian’s student in Mary Worth?
Honestly, I’ve seen toddlers melt down more maturely in supermarkets.
9CL-“Mummy, I don’t thinks she’s wearing panties.”
@Ukulele Ike:
Well, to me it’s more a question of Dylan being a bit on the sophisticated side for them (though not for Les, of course).
@Poteet: I hate to bring bad luck on myself, but I am a CK subscriber, and my life hasn’t ended up on the dark web yet. I think.
@Liam, 9CL: “….and there’s a monster ready to eat us, Mummy!”
Blondie: Dagwood had better not try this whole “make up for in love and kindness” bit on Mr. Dithers if he values his life.
Lockhorns: Okay, if Leroy was a WW2 veteran and Loretta had some munitions factory job on the home front, you could say they’re aging…not terribly.
9CL: I tend to think this waiter keeps changing restaurants in order to get away from these dingdongs but they always catch up.
C-Shaft: Okay, I’ve been willing to play along up till now, even if that’s meant mostly ignoring the whole thing. But if you’re telling me Crankshaft has some conception of “antimatter” then no, sorry, I can’t make that leap.
DT: I was about to call Sam Captain Obvious, but on reflection I’m not sure an exchange of gunfire automatically counts as “really stir(ring) up something” by Dick Tracy standards.
FW: Geez, Tom! Why don’t you just stick pins into a curly-haired ragdoll?
JP: In all honesty I had forgotten that the whole “Sam thinks he saw Abbey committing arson” thing was still out there unresolved, and it looks like that makes at least two of us (the other one being Ces.)
WofI: Some kings go for public beheadings, other’s prefer three behind the ear.
@Horace Broon: Aww, don’t be so hard on the kid! I mean, how fluent are you in Huuuh Hunnh?
9CL – Chedda is just making sure she doesn’t make her audience violate the #1 rule of talking to a woman who might be pregnant – unless you see a baby coming out of her right that instant, don’t assume she is pregnant. The whole diner has been fired from their job as her gynecologist and are now her obstetrician.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: “don’t assume a woman is pregnant”
Forgot to add “or a man”. Because men can get pregnant too. From the dawn of time until 2021 only a complete idiot would have made that claim, but apparently now you’re evil if you don’t accept it as self-evident.
Lockhorns: I’ve always thought of the couple as being about 15-20 years older than me. I first started reading it as a teen in the late sixties (of the last century! I always kind of knew about unpleasant older people like this. I still do, but damn they are OLD these days!
So, kudos to Leroy, who parties with a lampshade hat at least once a month.
// It’s funny how the decades just passed by us boomers. We’re all still young and cool and beautiful. Clean living, I guess.
If they think a paywall’s gonna make me pay to read newspaper comics, they got another thing coming.
Is the paywall only for certain comics or is it, like everything on that site, poorly programmed? Because I read Mary Worth just fine a minute ago and now I can’t.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: #142
“C-Shaft: Okay, I’ve been willing to play along up till now, even if that’s meant mostly ignoring the whole thing. But if you’re telling me Crankshaft has some conception of “antimatter” then no, sorry, I can’t make that leap.”
Possibly he got the whole idea/concept from old STOS reruns…or perhaps in his own semi-demented state he hears it as “Aunty Matter” and believes he’s communing with the spirit of his long-deceased great-aunt. Or he’s morphing into Thorax from 9CL, who reputedly has a wormhole in his tool shed. In the comics, anything is possible!
@Poteet: I think I paid for mine wit Paypal, so CK got my money but not my secrets.
9CL – Y’know, the split panels obscure the fact that she has paired a green turtleneck sweater with a black micro-miniskirt and purple hose ensemble. Because SHE IS A MOM NOW.
Remember when Edda did the “I’m a mom now!” routine by showing up late for her concert wearing a baggy sweater and proceeding to lecture the audience that they had better just sit back and bite it or her grandmother who was the bicycle for Patton’s third army will glower at them until they wet their pants? At least she waited until after actually giving birth….
@80 Daisy: Carbs? Mary’s muffins are made of mucilage, shredded palm fronds, and burnt pubic wigs.
@92 Sequitur: Someone should tell that guy his hair chinstrap’s supposed to go under his chin, not his nose.
@96 Sequitur: She works at the sperm bank as the collection agent. By the looks of her forearms, she’s reaaaly good at her job.
@103 Calvin’s Cardboard Box: I don’t care what it takes to end this supremely braindead storyline. Generations of collegians got laid in their own dorm rooms by hanging a sock or tie or something on their doorknobs to alert their roommates to hang out at the student union for a while. No need to involve the CERN supercomputer to determine an equitable boink schedule for a bizarre barely enclosed living room shower stall.
@135 Poteet: Use Daisy’s suggestion to use the Seattle PI website and search for your favorite vintage strips. I just went over there. It’ll show a few weeks of strips on one page!
@Little Guy: 9CL: “Look mommy, the Eye of Sauron. And it’s opening.”
Yes, I am ashamed of myself.
For those of you still interested in CK, try accessing it from your browser’s incognito mode. Worked for me. (But for how long?)
@richardf8:Indeed. And it’s so much easier to cancel the scheduled deductions in cases where the payee is not responding to requests to halt a monthly deduction.
It’s been my experience that halting monthly charges always involves at least some degree of hassle. At a minimum, it requires having to reach an actual human and attempt to explain the problem (on one occasion, I had to go so far as to file a formal dispute). Unless, that is, the deductions have been set up employing Pal-Pal as the intermediary. With PayPal, all one needs to do is log-in, select which scheduled charge he or she wishes to cancel, and click, done.
@Baja Gaijin: #152
I…I…I…can’t even conceive of such an abomination…I think I’m going to cough up a hair and mucus bolide the size of a small asteroid…
I think all this proves is that Loretta has made a bargain with the devil for slowed aging (and, by extent I suppose, that Leroy is her pitiable eternal thrawl to torture and force to do her bidding).
The fact that she doesn’t have *eternal youth* just goes to show that she went to a *budget* coven and is an indictment of the sorry state of the Witchcraft-Industrial Complex in America.
Flunky Wrinkled Brains: “I know as long as Ray Stevens is alive,then everything is beautiful.” “Hey, Flunk, that gives me an idea! I drop my pants and streak through this funeral, making everything about me as it rightly should be, plus it’s great publicity for the book.” “I think that is what Mary Sue Sweatwater would have wanted, Les.” “Really,Flunk?” “Well, no but I just love seeing you humiliated, Les.”
@156 Daisy: You can’t conceive of such an abomination? Toby Cameron’s been holding one for the past couple of weeks.
@152 Baja Gaijin:
That was a semipopular moustache style in the 1970’s and late 19th century. I think Shrug has something simular.
@159 Sequitur: Shrug has bushier sideburns right down to his shaven chin, less rakish rogue than guy who knows everything. That’s a compliment, Shrug, if you read this comment.
@159 Sequitur: Shrug has bushier sideburns right down to his shaven chin, less rakish rogue than guy who knows everything. That’s a compliment, Shrug, if you read this comment.
// The stupid system logged me out between preview and posting of the prior comment.
@161 Baja Gaijin:
Stupid system. A pox to its innards!
@162 Sequitur: And it’s outards too!
The guy in vintage Judge Parker has a beard that is the inverse of Ian Cameron’s.
@164 seismic-2: Ian’s chin strap is properly placed on his chin. Notice his scalp hair is in the right place versus the guy in Vintage Judge parker? His slid back on his head.
He suggests to me what Sean Connery’s character in Zardoz would have looked like, had that character been based on President Chester Alan Arthur.
@seismic-2: The tough guy in Vintage Judge Parker has been reminding me of S. Clay Wilson’s depraved dandies from late ‘60s underground comix for two days now. Especially when he had the glasses on.
@Poteet: The secret to the latest “premium user” push on the part of Comics Kingdom is in the cookies that they set up in the browser. If you disable their ability to set cookies (and remove the cookies that they have already set up), then you can see the images just fine. Last night I removed their cookies and it worked for a short while. I tried blocking cookies only for comics kingdom in my browser (Pale Moon) but that didn’t work for some reason. I had to continually delete their cookies to see images today. However, I downloaded a cookie manager add-on and had it block cookies from comics kingdom and I was able to see the images without any problems. If you don’t want to become a premium user, then that is an alternative.
@taig: @richardf8: @Baja Gaijin: @GrafSpee: Thank you all for your advice and information. I really appreciate it.
MW: The Vapid Scoreboard will be updated at some point in the near future, when I figure out how I will read MW from now on.
@170 Poteet:
I’ll give you a boost for Thursday and Friday.
Here’s Thursday and
Here’s Friday.
MW: Vapid Toby Face Scoreboard Day Seventy-Nine — Vapid 48, Non-Vapid 86
With a grateful tip o’ the hat to Sequitur.
I’m sure this is a very neurotypical way to beg for money in a socially acceptable way, but taken at face value it looks like Alexander is using irony to passive-aggressively tell his dad he, Dagwood, doesn’t have any affection for his children but only understands his financial obligations to them, and Dagwood offers to pay them off to ease his guilt. Ha ha, it’s funny because men don’t have feelings am I right.
Au contraire, my dear Josh!
Blondie: “How much are you wanting?” is 100% something I would say. No different from, “What are you doing?” or “How’s it hanging?” “What are we eating today?” The Be + -Ing verb form is standard English for a continuing state or action. (“That’s Dagwood. He’s always wanting another sandwich. And his kids. Always wanting a $20 here, a $20 there. How much are they wanting this time?”) It’s actually quite descriptive. More common in AAVE and Southern speech, but acceptable anywhere.
As for the Lockhorns, sloppy joe sweaters were actually quite stylish as vintage “retro” clothes when I was in college, and I am just a smidge too old to be a Millennial, so for Loretta to say she wore one in high school is a completely believable Millenial-ism.