Shocking that she went with rhubarb and not bacon, since this strip does the obvious thing 100% of the time
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Blondie, 8/3/22
I feel like it goes without saying that today’s Blondie is some real sicko shit. Obviously it’s very gross that Blondie made this nightmare in the first place, or that Dagwood said “I look delicious!” or that he says he hopes he looks “half as good to you in real life” as this breakfast abomination, which looks real weird and fucked up, actually, but to me the worst part is that he’s eating it upside down. Like I know it’s turned that way so we, the readers, can get a good look at it, but if you gave someone a pancake decorated to look like a human face and they started eating it from the forehead side, I would absolutely believe they were a serial killer with no further information needed.
Gasoline Alley, 8/3/22
Good news, everybody! That spaceship they built in Gasoline Alley out of garbage actually worked! Why is that “good news,” you’re probably wondering? Well, assuming that the geopolitical situation in the Alleyverse is more or less similar to ours, the boys manning the radar machines over at the Strategic Missile Forces of the Russian Federation are probably pretty on edge when it comes to unexpected rocket launches coming from the continental United States, so with any luck the sprawling Gasoline Alley cast of characters is about to be wiped out in its entirety by a series of nuclear explosions.
Shoe, 8/3/22
This is only tangentially related to the strip here but my usual epithets for the anthropomorphic creatures in Shoe and Pluggers are phrases like “bird-person” or “beast-man” and it occurs to me that “people person” is technically what the opposite of that would be.
Mary Worth, 8/3/22
“Like, if you treat them real shitty, for instance! It turns out that other people can feel emotional and physical pain, just like we can? Real fucked up, isn’t it.”
216 replies to “Shocking that she went with rhubarb and not bacon, since this strip does the obvious thing 100% of the time”
Wilbur seems overjoyed at his daughter’s emotional blindness. “I’m not the worst I’m not the worst” he cries within.
MW: The real question is how can Dawn eat at all when she’s facing a photo of Wilbur in a speedo.
Using bacon for Dagwood’s cowlicks would bring the strip squarely into Breaking Bad territory, a development I am 100% foursquare behind.
MW: People fall out of love over the smallest things, like groping your ex’s boob in front of them, or letting them believe you’re dead for a week. It’s crazy, really.
Marvin: So she wants a new house that’s exactly like the old one? Why? It can only be because she wants to get away from the pervasive stench of forty years of Marvin poop.
Shoe: “Bird bird” is the word.
Blondie: Blondie knows her husband well, as well as his fetishes. This is the best compliment she could possibly give him! Her reward: tonight, Dagwood will for once forget his food urgings and give his wife some sexual attention. Why Blondie would want sexual attention from a person who happily devours an upside-down portrait of himself after happily exclaiming that he looks delicious is a separate question.
@Pozzo:
Shoe: “Bird bird” is the word.
Which is weird that Josh didn’t know that, because Everybody knows about that “bird bird” is the word!
“Life is brutal, Dawn.Brutal.Even the dog I got to be a chick magnet hates me.”
“Ha haaa, I once went into an angry tirade at Estelle because she wouldn’t marry me, got roaring drunk, insulted the hell out of her at karaoke, fell off a ship, survived, pretended I was dead for a week for laughs, and she was so pissed she dumped me! I don’t get it.”
MW: Okay, set me straight here. I thought they were having dinner at Wilbur’s place. The exterior view looked like Charterstone. Where are they? If it’s Wilbur’s condo, his having a picture of himself prominently displayed where he can gaze at himself every time he eats would make perfect sense, but the place looks way too tidy for it to belong to a slob like Wilbur. On the other hand, if it’s Dawn’s place, BOOKS? Can Dawn read? Also, as a side note, that pot of chili looks a lot like a garbage pail. AND WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO HOLD A FUCKING SPOON??!!!
MW: Normally it would be heartwarming to see this scene of father-daughter bonding and mutual help, but considering that this is Wilbur and Dawn giving each other relationship advice it’s more a case of the blind leading the blind.
Mary Worth – Do not accept relationship advice from this man. Don’t accept anything, in fact. If you can return his DNA, do it!!
MW:
“People fall out of love for the smallest of things.”
“You don’t have to explain, Dad. Remember that time you left the bathroom door unlocked while taking a shower.”
JP: It seems Abbey is so distraught that she forgot to put on her wonderbra this morning. Droves of disappointed readers leave the comic.
Mary Worth: “People fall out of love for the smallest of things…” like your tiny penis, Wilbur!
Sally Forth: And today Hilary learns a valuable lesson: psychotic breaks are hereditary.
Blondie: I’m with you on the direction of the plate, Josh. I don’t like it when strips break the fourth wall, and in this case it’s almost like we READERS are being invited to enjoy that nasty concoction before Dagwood gobbles it. Thank goodness we have not thus far been similarly expected to chow down on Dawn’s…chili.
Blondie got inspiration when Dagwood said “Eat me.”
Wilbur telling us people fall out of love over the smallest things is a reference to his dick and myriad former girlfriends.
@Uncle Lumpy:
MW: “Wilbur seems overjoyed at his daughter’s emotional blindness. “I’m not the worst I’m not the worst” he cries within.”
Since Mary took over his agony column during his travels, Wilbur is suffering from severe meddling withdrawal. He’s just been aching to give relationship advice again, so of course he’s overjoyed. That Dawn has seen his own failures with her own eyes and is likely to take his advice with a grain of salt doesn’t matter.
Blondie uses the plural “pancakes” that look like him. Next, she’ll be serving him the rest of his body. Will he also eat his torso upside down, i. e. “crotch first?”
DT: So Marina really does have the hots for Dick, as was speculated about yesterday. Do earth males look especially sexy to Lunarians? Or is she just after his DNA? Or is it a honeytrap? Interesting questions, but the most pressing one is: how will Tess react when she hears about this from Mysta or Honeymoon?
MW: You still lied to him Dawn, FFS.
Blondie: Is… isn’t rhubarb really bitter unless you cook the heck out of it at which point it’s not going to line up in neat lines? Why would you serve someone rhubarb like that?
GT: I didn’t know Gil could fly a plane! We see today that he’s in the left seat (captain’s position), which explains why Ms. Holmes called him “captain” yesterday, and the comments about how he got lost and almost ran out of gas.
The questions remains: who is the mysterious Ms. Jones? Her clothes look professional, so did he hire a co-pilot or did the plane come complete with a pilot? Small planes like this don’t require a co-pilot, so why pay for one? Is she the reason why things aren’t so good between Gil and Mimi? This comic has suddenly started to get at least a wee bit interesting.
FC: I spent way too much time figuring out that PJ’s head wasn’t Dolly’s ginormous shoulder with a weird tattoo.
That bird lady does not have bird legs. Shouldn’t they be skinny and yellow and scaly, rather than plump and white and smooth? Oh, why am I nitpicking — she’s crammed her wings into SLEEVES, for heaven’s sakes, and she’s got a mop of HAIR on her big ol’ birdie head. She ain’t no bird, she’s just bird adjacent.
Somewhere, Ed Crankshaft thinks, “An unidentified object flying past the moon and it’s not one of my grills?”
Human civilization could be wiped out in a nuclear holocaust and somehow, someway, Walt Wallet would survive.
“I used to be a people person. Then some people turned me into a bird.”
Blondie: “Blondie: Is… isn’t rhubarb really bitter unless you cook the heck out of it at which point it’s not going to line up in neat lines? Why would you serve someone rhubarb like that?”
I don’t find raw rhubarb very bitter. It’s quite sour, though, a bit like biting into a lemon. I guess that all the sugar in the pancake will offset that and make it taste rather refreshing.
@Charterstoned: In fairness to Dawn, it looks like she learned her spoon handling from Wilbur. I thought yesterday’s spoon view was carelessness on the part of the artist, but today’s shows it is a family technique.
Blondie editors cropped out a message urging fans to make and post pics of their own special Dagwood pancakes after being unable to find a satisfactory hashtags (rejecting #dagjacks and a portmanteau of Bumstead and pancakes, #bumcakes, which was too prone to autocorrect).
Luann: Is that “maybe I’m really a shitty dad” or is that “yeah, time to lock you up with just an abacus and a bunch of business books, worthless daughter”? I can’t tell with the Evansii.
GA: Too lazy to do math this early, but a direct trajectory that would make the moon in a few minutes, ignoring orbital mechanics….. that’s fast. And the trope that the moon is right there for aiming….
MW: “Maybe you should start yelling and swatting his cat around. Or get a dog.”
DT: Slip her the tongue, Dick! Or slip her the dick, Tongue!”
Phantom Phanfic: Remember when it took a week to kill the Constable? It’ll be two weeks for the bullet to find Kit.
Dagwood: The “Breaking Bad” reboot we never saw coming. I look forward to Elmo exclaiming, “Science, bitches!”
OTF: Imagine if she was visiting a website for snarking on comics….
GT: So now we know “Captain” meant Gil as the pilot. The controversy was so intense in the comments section of the strip, it rivalled “That’s a butter knife, not a steak knife!”
GA: Too bad they didn’t get onboard the rocket before it took off. They would have been given the ride of their lives (or what remained of their lives, which wouldn’t be very long), and, above all, we would be rid of a couple of annoying characters. Of course, it would have been preferable if it had just blown up, taking the entire cast with it. In lieu of that Josh’s nuclear scenario sounds rather appealing.
Blondie: There’s nothing sick or shocking about this. Just a woman cheerfully trying to poison her husband, that’s all. American as apple pie … which she’s also poisoned, just to be sure.
GA: My favorite detail from this is in panel three when Jimmy says, “That’s our rocket!” Uh, yes, Jimmy. Way to state the obvious.
Shoe: So … Cosmo has his therapy sessions outdoors? I’m, like, 60% sure there are buildings in Shoe.
MW: I suggest that the Westons trade haircuts. Wilbur gets Dawn’s sassy, chin-length bob. Dawn gets Wilbur’s alpine-rope-toss-style combover.
MT – Honest Ernest? – Boom! Dropped from my reading list again!
Luann – Well that was . . . refreshingly honest.
MW – Sometimes people gaslight themselves into believing they are sane.
GT – If this strip becomes as engaged with sportsball as Rex Morgan is with medicine and Judge Parker is with law, I might just keep reading it.
Blondie – And she was humming the Justin Bieber hit “Why Don’t You Just Eat Yourself” the whole while she was cooking it.
@Little Guy:
“GA: Too lazy to do math this early, but a direct trajectory that would make the moon in a few minutes, ignoring orbital mechanics….. that’s fast.”
That’s not just fast, that’s pretty damn fast! That seemingly idiotic idea with jalapeño-spiked moonshine for fuel seems to have been a stroke of genius!
“And the trope that the moon is right there for aiming….”
In comics, the moon (or whatever planet you’re going to) is always in just the right spot!
CS: “NO, you little shit! *I* won! *I* won and you lost! I won twelve straight and you lost every one of them! Hahahaha! Now go get another dollar out of Mommy’s purse, loser.”
FW: “Ha ha, you’re very clever for an alcoholic, sir. I’ll bet you were a riot at the bar. Why don’t you come up here and put a lampshade on your head and tell us some more jokes.”
Blondie – And in honor of you dear, I grew these two cantaloupes….
GA – it really flew! An’ who gives a shit that China monitored the launch and nuked Taiwan in retaliation. Totally worth it….
Shoe – They kept giving me the bird for shitting in their heads….
MW – Yes…crazy…also maladjusted, psychologically broken, unstable, chronically depressed and just plain mentally ill. And those were his good qualities….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
RMMD: I’m experiencing a case of déjà bored.
JP: “Now be a dear and finish scrubbing the bathroom. I left a real mess in there.”
@Charterstoned:
“MW: Okay, set me straight here. I thought they were having dinner at Wilbur’s place. The exterior view looked like Charterstone. Where are they? If it’s Wilbur’s condo, his having a picture of himself prominently displayed where he can gaze at himself every time he eats would make perfect sense, but the place looks way too tidy for it to belong to a slob like Wilbur. On the other hand, if it’s Dawn’s place, BOOKS? Can Dawn read? ”
I think consensus is that Dawn is living in her dad’s condo. Perhaps she does the cleaning? And I guess that Dawn at least can read a little, since she mananaged to get accepted to college (unless, of course, she was sexually involved with the staff even before she got accepted, which doesn’t seem out of the question).
“He saw me eyeing other guys,”
Dawn sighs into her kale.
“… And caught me in those little lies,
“That set our ‘ship asail.”
“Now where will I find love?” she moans,
“The creepy, clinging kind?
“O where in all of Charterstone
“Is there a man so blind?”
Then like a lightning bolt it struck,
The answer to her prayer—
“I know one other clueless schmuck
“I bet I could ensnare!”
“With My New Man I’ll gad about,
“And cruise the estuary
“Then dine on trout and not put out
“Once I steal Jeff from Mary.”
9CL: At least today’s strip doesn’t feature Amos and Edda. Also, can anyone think of a more romantic word than “fleshly?” Mm mmm, Cronenbergian.
Luann: Tiffany’s dad seems like someone who would unironically use the word, “pix.”
CS: Of course, Ed knows that as an adult, you’re supposed to let the kid win at least some time, even if it means that you have to cheat to lose. He just doesn’t want to do it.
FW: Are we supposed to sympathize with Funky here, or is Batiuk deliberately setting him up as a not just an asshole, but an annoying asshole? No, I don’t think Batiuk uses that kind of irony; this is probably Batiuk’s way of getting back at some investment advisor who gave him bad advice just before the bear market started.
Dustin: In his famous treatise, “Hop on Pop,” Dr. Seuss did indeed advocate for remaining active. DustinDad should get Dustin to hop on him.
FC: Nice that they got to stay in the Tenement District of New York City.
CS: Mitch grew up like three years since the last time he was in this strip. That’s weird. What isn’t weird is that Ed will certainly flip the board right after this exchange.
FW: “Sir, this isn’t an AA meeting where you can hold others hostage with your little ‘bon mots.'”
MW: “Like threatening to kill their cat, or pretending to be dead. Little things.”
Many a comment has been focused on the food / the spoons / how the spoons are being held, and well, here’s another one: what in the actual hell are they eating? It comes out of a Dutch oven. It is green. It is being eaten with a spoon. Mushy peas? Broccoli souffle? Froot Loops strata with every color but green taken out? And look, not for nothing, but I just attempted to eat while holding my spoon like Dawn, and then like Wilbur, and it was doable, but not comfortable. Drawing is hard, I get it, but they could be eating literally anything else. C’mon, where are those salmon-colored discs this strip is so famous for? Or grey lumps? Mary Worth is a place, man, you gotta immerse me in your world!
Marvin: Actually it doesn’t bode well for you. She’s doing your brother.
GT: PANEL 1. “Yeah, these new electric planes are really economical!”
PANEL 3. “Maybe she was screwing the mailman?”
PANEL 3. “Um, Gil, maybe you want to pull up on the throttle a bit. Or are you so upset you’re planning to kill us both in a spectacular blaze of misguided glory?”
The final entry for Shoe should be the characters realizing they’re birds and just flying away, leaving behind their clothes and their trappings of what they laughingly call human civilization.
MW – Dawn has now spent 3 days trying to maneuver that spoonful of green spicy lettuce chilli into her maw using that bizarre thumb-over spoon-gripping technique and even with the assistance of her extend-o-neck she still hasn’t namaged. And I am kind of enjoying that. Mainly because there’s little else to enjoy during this boring dinner.
(seriously, try gripping a spoon that way and mime eating from it. Don’t use real food, it’ll probably end up on the table. . I think I gave myself carpal tunnel syndrome.)
@Inspector Gotcha:
GT: “Um, Gil, maybe you want to pull up on the throttle a bit. Or are you so upset you’re planning to kill us both in a spectacular blaze of misguided glory?”
No, Gil is just so elated at winning that trophy for the umpteenth time that he’s going to do some aerobatics. I’m not sure that Cessna is really built for that, though. Tomorrow: Gil miraculously survives the crash caused by his reckless maneuvering.
“Yeah, these new electric planes are really economical!”
Electric small planes actually are a thing now that the Pipistrel has been certified. It’s only got about an hour’s endurance, though, so they’re better not be going very far.
Blondie’s own plate looks the same except it works like a voodoo doll. She spears it with a fork and Dagwood collapses to the floor.
MW: Last time we saw Estelle she was toasting with Mary and Dawn, celebrating the common bond that came from their relationship with Wilbur. But it turns out that as soon as she could, she dumped him and left Mary and Dawn with the hot potato. Maybe not all is lost for her!
“namaged” = “managed.” Stupid dyslexia.
Crankshaft seems taken aback by the stupid thing his grandson said. News flash, dude: kids say stupid things all the time. Deal with it.
S: The way the second panel is drawn, it looks like that the Shamalayan twist is that the Perfesser is so alienated from people that even the therapist is a figment of his imagination
MW – Estelle and others have broken up with Wilbur when they saw his smallest thing.
9CL – Oh, hey, maybe we can retcon this couple’s origin story as well!? Make them have been in love since birth but kept apart by the evil Church. Then we can have thirteen-year-old versions of each of them who hang out at the playground together and discuss their love for each other until CPS shows up and puts an end to the whole farce.
Last week we saw Dagwood dreaming about eating a sentient being, now he rejoices at eating himself. “Blondie” switched to a vore fetish comics so seamlessly that we barely noticed
@Weaselboy:
CS: “Crankshaft seems taken aback by the stupid thing his grandson said. News flash, dude: kids say stupid things all the time. Deal with it.”
To be more specific, what takes Ed aback is that somebody is seriously suggesting that he should let them win. That just doesn’t exist in Ed’s world.
GT – Is Gil about to join the Mile High Club? This is getting good…
MW: What’s in this chili? It seems to be making Wilbur and Dawn stupider. They’re devolving. Give it a little more time and it’ll be Flowers for Charterstone.
At that moment, Dawn realised how low she had fallen. Not only had she been dumped by JARED but the lecture was not coming from Mary but from WILBUR! Time to grab a bottle of Whiskey and start the Aldo solution!
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
Mary tries her best by topping Wilbur’s Mary Muffins with ground Viagra, but nothing can compensate for Little Wilbur.
Blondie: I guess we should be grateful Blondie is depicting Dagwood’s face. This could have been a triangular pile of short spaghetti with the rhubarb lined up in the middle and the strawberry in between. “Eat ME, Dagwood!”
GT: Gil’s decision to hire a full time stewardess for his little Cessna has put a strain on both his finances and marriage.
Archie-Archie puts his leg on the table. “You see this scar.”
RMMD-Congratulations, Tildy! You’re pregnant!
MW-Like Estelle falling out of love with Wilbur over his falling off a cruise ship and letting her believe he was dead.
JP-What was a good comic to what will be an awful comic.
FC-“There’s a family in the building next door with some real ugly kids looking at us.”
FC-Cue the demolition of the building.
MW: The lying didn’t come BEFORE the eyeing, the lying was a defense mechanism brought on by the decrying of the eyeing. If Jared hadn’t been publicly mortifying about the eyeing, there’d have been no need for lying. And don’t even get me started on the spying.
RMMD: Tildy seems to be one of those people who attain a great age without ever having gone to a hospital.
9CL: Well, for a nun and a priest that IS pretty wild, at least, the Pope would think so. At least they’re not standing up to their pubic bones in water.
LUANN: Tiff displays her greatest skills: deflecting and guilt-tripping.
BLONDIE: Blondie will do anything to get a few healthy morsels into her husband. We probably don’t want to know what the next pancake is going to resemble.
FW: It seems like there’s a boundary line for snark. “Can you describe an investment strategy for $35,000? I drank the rest” is at least germane to the discussion. “Where did Jack and Jill get that kind of money, sell the crown?” is being an a$$hole.
GT: I’m still confused by this strip, but entertainingly so. Shouldn’t have Gil arranged the pickup before he flew? Is Mimi living in another state? And why does he have a stewardess along?
Luann: Well, maybe if you asked your dad first if you can open a business in his home. I understand there’s this invention called “email.”
Oh good god, now I’m advising Luann characters. Am I turning into a TruFan?
Shoe: I can only come to the logical conclusion from today’s strip that the bird-people in Shoe did not used to be bird-people, but in fact were born and lived as people-people, and some horror wrought by mankind turned them all into bird-people and the perfessor is only now reckoning with the trauma he still carries from this experience.
Today I learned those things on Dagwood’s head are cowlicks. I always thought they were alien antennae.
@astroboy:
“GT – Is Gil about to join the Mile High Club? This is getting good…”
Gil and Mimi joined the Mile High Club already on their honeymoon trip, so that’s old hat. He’s trying to join a much more exclusive club now, by having sexual intercourse while looping the loop in a Cessna.
I appreciate that there appears to be a formal dining table in the kitchen just for Dagwood.
GT, panel one – Is Gil being sarcastic or does he not realize that his plane runs on fuel? “Yeah, screw driving. Too expensive. My Cessna here runs on the tears of students who didn’t make the football team.”
Blondie: I was going to gripe about how inexcusable it is to serve pancakes without butter or at least some kind of syrup, but then I noticed that in panel 3 Blondie is lustfully sucking on Dagwood’s cowlicks and now I don’t care about anything anymore.
JP: Is Abbey supposed to be remotely sympathetic here? She is livid with Sam and cannot forgive him solely for thinking that maybe she really did burn down her B&B. As a reminder, Abbey has been complaining about the B&B from the get-go. She whined about the contractors while they were building it. She whined about how much hard work it was to manage (even though she only ever checked people in and out while seemingly pushing all the other duties onto Marie). She whined about how it was hemorrhaging money, adding the financial angle to the list of motives. She whined about how she would get blamed for the fire the moment she saw it and moped about it for months, adding the appearance of a guilty conscience. And oh yeah, Sam was shown video footage of her burning the B&B down. Can’t help but think Abbey’s being just a tad unreasonable here.
DT: It’s hard to track down the specific air temperature and composition details from the Googling I was willing to put in, but based on what I’ve been reading about lava tubes I’m pretty sure Dick Tracy should be very dead rather than just a little sweaty.
GT: As the new-look Gil Thorp continues its trajectory into the harem romdram genre, today we’re left to wonder if Henry Barajas has decided to retcon the Thorplings back to pre-adulthood. It certainly seems that way. Hell, we’re running out of things Barajas hasn’t changed. At this rate I expect Gil will soon be quitting coaching to become the art teacher. Will he style himself with a manbun and a goatee next? Nothing is safe or sacred anymore!
9CL: Are we even supposed to know who these people are? As far as I can tell, this might as well be Edda’s mom and one of the Nazi spies from the Space Slattern arc.
Blondie: I don’t know if “auto-vore” is a thing but I am definitely not looking for it with safe search off.
MW: I appreciate Dawn’s desire to avoid seeking Mary’s advice at all costs, but if she’s reduced to going to her dad for help maybe she just needs to bite the bullet.
Shoe: Spoken like someone who has worked in customer service, or spent any amount of time on Twitter.
Blondie could’ve said “hair,” but she opted more accurately for “cowlicks,” as if to say “Yes I will put effort into your meals and treat you as a better husband than you are, but not without working one little dig in.” Have never respected her more.
DtM: If they ditched Henry and the kid, it wouldn’t be a bad strip just having Alice walking around in her Capris.
MW: Their experimentation with chopsticks over, the Westons have trouble readjusting to Western utensils.
MW: “People fall out of love for the smallest things, Dawn. Lying, lust for others, alcoholism, selfishness, stalking, animal abuse, bad singing, public embarrassment, hiding on a hedonistic island for days…who knows why? And I’m a chick magnet. Is the new girlfriend hotter than you?”
GT: “Tora, tora, tora!”
It’s somewhat subtle but today’s Carpe Diem is NSFBG!
Wilber: Just buy him some BBQ, get some aggression out at Karaoke, and slip Mary $20 to guilt him into returning, and we’ll be back to the status quo in a month or so
love is... winning her over with your spaz dance.
MW: Wilbur appears to have fangs in P1. Here I thought he was only an emotional vampire.
You know what? For once I don’t care about the bird-beast-people dichotomy in Shoe. I want to know why the Perfesser [sic] had to walk through a puddle of Pepto-Bismol on his way to his therapist. How else did his shoe soles get so pink? Clog-dancing on a My Little Pony?
9CL: “Fleshly moment” is a new low in anti-erotic Brookeisms.
BCN: I like how “big stretch” is a sound effect. Every cat owner supplies it naturally.
C’shaft: Crankshaft needs to take a lesson from my grandmother, who would shuffle the Candy Land cards in such a way as to make the game move as quickly as possible.
DT: (Googles) Huh, Antarctica does have active volcanoes. Learn something new every day.
FW: I mean, I get why Funky is not interested in planning for his future as he’ll die of cancer well before he’s able to retire, but does he have to be a dick to everyone else in the seminar? (Though in fairness it’s kind of the advisor’s fault; he should know to ignore Funky’s raised hand by now.)
GT: Yes, because if there’s one thing planes don’t need it’s gas. Especially gas that costs several dollars more per gallon than standard auto fuel.
Luann: Wait…Clan Evans AGREES with me that Tiffany’s dad should be assisting her business ambitions rather than leaving her to her own devices and then getting mad when she inevitably makes mistakes? I….I think I need to lie down for a moment…
MT: Has it ever been established where the Trails live, at least in a broad regional sense? Because that kind of makes the difference between “sure, whatever, put your boring lawn in” and “excuse me, the Colorado River is barely a trickle of piss at this point so what exactly do you plan to use for water?”
Phantom: Diana should have realized her mistake when her groom showed up to the wedding in his work spandex.
RMMD: Tildy’s the patient where the nurses draw lots to see who’s going to be forced to deal with her.
Hagar the Horrible: And she goes out with the Prince of Norway, Lute dumps her and she mopes and groans around like Dawn (Until Hagar walks in, strikes her with a viking club and says, “Suddup, brat!”)
Shoe: If the therapist were to shave her legs, would there be orange-ish scaly “skin” under the feathers?
9 Chickweed Lane Classics: Some girls can be bought off with such ease.
Aunty Acid: Ugh! Look at that ugly thing! And that fish is no beauty either.
@Hibbleton:
“DtM: If they ditched Henry and the kid, it wouldn’t be a bad strip just having Alice walking around in her Capris.”
I misread that as “Alice walking around in just her Capris”. That wouldn’t be a bad strip either, but it would be for a different audience.
Bliss: SID! Just what did they hire from you for this strip?
@Sequitur: He’s a fan of The Bangles.
I call BS. There’s no way tablets exist in Gasoline Alley. Absolutely no way. You can’t tell me it’s not just Hootin’ Holler but with a few paved roads. I refuse to believe it.
9CL – This is the ex-priest and ex-nun who both quit the Church so they could get married, in a huge triumph for Brooke’s anti-antidisestablishmentarianism. Which is a word with so many syllables I can’t believe Brooke hasn’t managed to sneak it into his dialogue more often.
We last visited them to learn that, despite leaving the Church, they don’t know what birth control is and also they both fuck as their sole means of resolving marital disputes, like every one of Brooke’s couples does, and have had exactly seven fights since they have been together, and thus have seven small children to raise, which they do by leaving them on park benches for strangers to watch.
Shoe-He ate some undercooked people.
Blondie-You should see the sausage that Blondie made for herself.
@jroggs:
“JP: Is Abbey supposed to be remotely sympathetic here? ”
…and to your long list you could add that she’s treating Marie in a really shitty way, inviting her as a friend and then expecting her to work for free.
So I’ve asked myself the same question. Maybe Abbey is behaving the way to really accentuate what an unpleasant person she is, and she is being set up for some karmic retribution – the readers are not supposed to feel sorry for with her in her misfortune, but rather to gloat. But, no, this is JP. Surely there are no such nuances in JP.
@TheDiva, DT: Who knew “The Land Unknown” was a documentary.
Luann, meta: I love how there’s a remnant of TruFans who remain convinced Tiffany is “crying fake tears and playing the Daddy Card to get out of trouble”. The hate is strong with them.
@TheDiva, GT: Not to mention the Carbon Footprint. Hey, Jules, want to mash up Mark and Gil?
Yaffle: Not only is this not safe for Baja Gaijin, it could cause a cardiac arrest!
9CL: A good reminder that, no matter how central it is to this strip, the appeal of sex is that it is naughty.
Phantom: We’re now getting a hallucination within a dream sequence.
Crankshaft: He won’t say “Lands End,” but the game of “Sorry” is faithfully reproduced?
FW: Irritating.
Mary Worth is a strip about an emotional vampire who feeds on others’ misery. Because she is old and wise, she has maximized her efficiency, maintaining a small polycule of Charterstone residents who are generally pretty good at making themselves miserable with little effort on her part. Occasionally, she’ll give them some encouraging blather to keep them from giving up entirely and to keep them in her orbit. A small price to pay for the feast of despair that is an hour or so spent with Wilbur.
In this plotline, we explore others’ imperfect attempts to emulate Mary. For instance, there’s Jared, a codependent whiner who’s never really happy unless he’s nursing some broken soul back to health. But the key word there is “broken,” not “health.” The closer that soul gets to actual health, the more “unappreciated” Jared feels, and if she persists in her unseemly self-esteem, he’ll move on to some new victim…er, I mean “patient”…no, wait, “girlfriend” maybe? No, I think I was right the first time. This can produce a fair amount of misery, as can any scenario involving others spending time with Jared, but it’s a lot of work for comparatively little reward. Mary is beloved by all; Jared is loved by at most one person at a time (maybe two, if they’re sisters) and rightly repulsive to everyone else.
Today, Wilbur gets into the misery-vampire game, and he starts out strong. “So, you flirted behind his back and lied to him, and you DIDN’T see the breakup coming?” is some Worth-worthy passive-aggressiveness, for sure. But then he can’t help himself: “People fall out of love over the SMALLEST things,” he sighs, inexorably drawing his mental focus back to himself and his many, many romantic failures. It’s OTHER people’s pain you need to focus on, Wilbur, not your own!
@Charterstoned: It has been repeatedly established that Wilbur keeps a ton of books in his house. I have never once seen him reading, but yeah, he sure does own books.
@Pozzo: Gaah! That’s an earworm I could do without.
@Oversized Garden Ornament: Batiuk does this a lot – has his characters behave like dicks to people who are only trying to do their jobs. They’re in positions like salespeople, receptionists, nurses, and restaurant wait staff. I don’t get it. It isn’t funny, and it only makes his star characters look like petty, arrogant assholes.
A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now, because this time it’s a moonshine-powered jalopy of a rocket launched by hillbillies and none of us will be safe because if they can do this so can al Qaeda and ISIL and Iran and Hezbollah and Aum Shinrikyo, the Hatsfields and the McCoys, the NYPD and the Freemasons and PETA and anyone else with access to a screwdriver and some high-octane booze.
@I speak Jive:
“Batiuk does this a lot – has his characters behave like dicks to people who are only trying to do their jobs. They’re in positions like salespeople, receptionists, nurses, and restaurant wait staff. I don’t get it. It isn’t funny, and it only makes his star characters look like petty, arrogant assholes.”
Yes, I’ve noticed it before, but this time it was particularly blatant. Funky may distrust people who are trying to sell him financial solutions, and some distrust is certainly warranted, but so far he’s not indication at all that this guy is not perfectly honest.
I wonder why Batiuk does this. Is he trying to get back at people who’ve wronged him by putting them in his comic and letting his characters say what he didn’t think of saying himself? Is he deliberately creating unlikeable characters? I wouldn’t think so. Or does he honestly believe that this is how good people behave – in other words, does he have the same kind of personality as his characters?
Gil Thorp-Nothing like flying across town to go to the grocery store.
JP – Everything is about to change? Is this going to turn into a strip with interesting, coherent stories and likeable, relatable characters?
Rex Morgan – Tildy has an oxygen monitor on her finger and has an IV line, but why isn’t she on a heart monitor? Especially when she was having chest pains.
Arlo & Janis – Gee. He didn’t praise her matchless beauty and tell her that he worships her.
Speed Bump – The bird at the table knows that Sophie Driver started out as a merch girl.
Vintage A3G – Yeah, Bradley is prime marriage material.
@Uncle Lumpy: Magnificent.
FC: So the hotel walled in the Keane family…seems appropriate somehow…oh, wait – that’s a *window* the kids are looking out of…it’s a room with a view! Of bricks and concrete!
@Oversized Garden Ornament: Yeah. Why did he sign up for this presentation? Maybe Holly forced the issue, and he’s behaving like this partly to annoy the advisor and partly to get back at her.
I remember that he was doing this dickish sarcasm routine with a nurse when he was in the doctor’s office. Who does this in real life?
I think your first theory is right. I would add that Batiuk thinks that they’ve wronged him, whether or not they actually have. He resents them for some reason, and he doesn’t think until much later what he should have said. It’s disturbing that he thinks this is appropriate behavior for anyone.
MW: “People fall out of love over the SMALLEST things. And apropos of nothing, if you ever want to frame a cat by putting cat poop on beds and furniture in a condo, be sure the cat’s owner is out of the condo first.”
@Uncle Lumpy: Genius!
Sherman’s Lagoon: They forgot to color today’s cartoon so I did it for them.
I got too bored to do the last panel.
@I speak Jive:
FW: “Yeah. Why did he sign up for this presentation? Maybe Holly forced the issue, and he’s behaving like this partly to annoy the advisor and partly to get back at her.”
It was pretty obvious that it was Holly who wanted to go and she more or less had to drag Funky there.
The question is still why Batiuk seems to think that it’s acceptable behaviour to take that out on the advisor. Because I don’t think he’s deliberately painting Funky in a bad light.
@Uncle Lumpy: #1
He is positively *grinning* as he says to her, “And you *didn’t* see the breakup coming?” (thinking to himself, “Yesss! Dawn is a chip off the old block, after all!!) sheesh!
@Charterstoned: #11
Hmmm…are those books or VHS tapes (since Wilbur probably hasn’t advanced his knowledge of technology past the VHS era…)?
FW: Funky, Les isn’t here to cheer you on as your enabler. Let the man do his pyramid scheme in peace without your big fat mouth.
MW: Unlike her walk with Cathy who was ignored because guy ass is more compelling than being told how shitty of a person she is, Dawn’s only got one guy to ogle in her dad’s condo…and it’s her dad.
RMMD: “Oh, good, you’re alive. Now back to the Caddy!”
@Daisy:
MW: “Hmmm…are those books or VHS tapes (since Wilbur probably hasn’t advanced his knowledge of technology past the VHS era…)?”
My guess is books. Even if neither Wilbur nor Dawn may be the intellectual type, Wilbur is a free lance journalist/writer, and he’s bound to have some reference books around from before you could google everything.
Shoe – “What happened?” “They took Soylent Green off the market.”
MARY WORTH: This is an interesting character study for our favorite father-daughter pair (conclusion: they have none). I love the way that they’re both enabling and passive-agressively berating one another over their shitty love lives. “People fall out of love over the smallest reasons. You blatantly ogle other people’s asses in front of them; you fake your own death, people just have unreasonable expectations about relationship these days!”
We can also see just where Dawn gets her unwarranted self importance and entitlement from. If Wilbur thinks lying and sexually assaulting people with a gaze are “small things,” then “big things” have to be groping and stalking ex-girlfriends, abusing pets, throwing drunken temper tantrums, ruining dates, not letting anyone move on from him, and letting people thing he was dead for a week.
“What, Jared can’t love you for just doing that? Well, that’s his problem!”
@Uncle Lumpy: Bravo!
@I speak Jive: Does he realize that regardless of why he writes this kind of story, the result, for many readers, is unpleasant rather than funny? Presumably not.
Stories like the current one remind me that one informal definition of “funky” is “smells kinda bad.”
Just a quick reminder, this isn’t the first time a rocket was built out of junk, Anyone remember “Salvage 1” with Andy Griffith?
Personally I hope Estelle gets back together with that veterinarian she was on a date with before Wilbur ruined it (and Mary too because she brought him there). He seems like a nice guy, handsome, stable career, good with animals…the perfect guy to move on with.
love is… describing the effect she has on your penis.
GA: Playing around with rockets and explosives can kill real people, so I’m hoping this rocket might change direction and cause a little havoc with the Dick Tracy moon people, because why not.
@GMBigKev: I bake with rhubarb a lot, and it’s not bitter, but it’s seriously tart. We used to eat it as kids by dipping raw spears in sugar, and even then it was sour enough to make your body shudder. In a nice way, but still. Unless you are the knid of person who eats a lemon like an apple, you need to sweeten your rhubarb.
So the thing you never do, when cooking with it, is to serve it in big sticks like that. You cut it into little pieces so every bite is sure to have some sugar on it.
I think they just couldn’t think of any other fruit that comes in stick form, and the concept of slicing a large fruit, like a melon or a mango or a papaya or even an apple into sticks was just beyond them. Shoulda used bacon. Or sausages.
BLONDIE: Josh, how could you diss the sultriest Blondie yet? Blondie is obviously trying to butter up* her husband up for some early morning martial relations. Can’t you taste the suggestive innuendo?
Blondie: “You know, if you ever want to return the favor, you can eat me for breakfast anytime.”
Given how this is referring to, this is probably literal.
@Oversized Garden Ornament: #117
Very good point!
@agony:
Blondie: “I think they just couldn’t think of any other fruit that comes in stick form, and the concept of slicing a large fruit, like a melon or a mango or a papaya or even an apple into sticks was just beyond them. Shoulda used bacon. Or sausages.”
They could have used celery, but I guess they wanted something fruity for that sweet pancake and forgot how sour raw rhubarb tastes.
Bacon or sausages would of course have been much more in character for Dagwood.
@Poteet:
FW: “Does he realize that regardless of why he writes this kind of story, the result, for many readers, is unpleasant rather than funny? Presumably not.”
Batiuk may realize it, but I don’t think he cares. Of course, no creator can live in constant worry that someone, somewhere, may find their work unpleasant, because then they would only produce bland, saccharine-tasting works, but I think Batiuk’s attitude is that if somebody doesn’t like their comics, it’s their problem.
@TheDiva: Historically MT was set in Georgia, I believe. At least that’s where it was drawn. These days, who knows.
@Needless_Exposition: #124
I thought the same thing, too. That would be a lovely outcome for Estelle, and we’d get to see Wilbur in a jealous snit all over again!
@2+2=7:
This is perhaps the most blatantly sexual Blondie strip ever. You just have to replace sex with eating, and apply Freud’s theory of the oral phase…
@Anonymous: I do!
Oh my gawd, I’m old.
Next week Blondie uses her bra as a Hello ™ mold.Eat up ,Dag!
@Garrison Skunk: Jello mold,misspell check!
@Oversized Garden Ornament: I’d like to be wrong, but I decided years ago that Batiuk is Les, and this is really how he sees the world. What’s interesting here is that I do see some movement, from say Crankshaft, who was supposed to be awful yet lovable, to current strips which depict awful as lovable. In this sense he’s as out of touch as Karen Moy, who clearly thinks people must care about the Westons. We are supposed to be sympathizing with Funky, not the poor planner. The cruelty is the point.
Phantom: Hey, big boy. You’re on company time. Waltz down memory lane on your free time.
Phantom: So, with all of that hoarded treasure at his disposal Stripey still wouldn’t spring for a tux.
FW: Hey, if I wanted smartmouthed jackassery I would’ve invited Les Moore.
FW: Today’s strip reminds me of a radio ad I heard a couple of years ago for one of those financial planning seminars. One of the requirements to attend was you had to already have a net worth of $500,000. My first thought was if I had a half a million at my disposal I wouldn’t need your fucking seminar because I’m apparently doing OK on my own.
FC: Ha-ha. Bil booked them in the last remaining Bowery flophouse.
FC: The building blocking their view must have been designed by June Brigman, with its tell-tale cracked stucco.
Dustin: Notice that Ed Kudlick’s doc is just Ed with a chin.
@Oversized Garden Ornament: It’s one of the things that bugs me about a lot of comics writers – they won’t know anything about a subject, but instead of spending five minutes on wikipedia to get a basic outline, they just wing it. Working on the assumption that if they don’t know something, neither does anyone else.
Luann and Funky Winkerbean are probably the worst. And of course 9CWL.
Funnily enough the legacy comics are not usually the worst offenders.
Blondie: PancakeS, plural? I only see one stinkin’ pancake, Little Miss Caterer. That’s like giving a single nugget of Purina to a starving rottweiler. You best come up with at least a dozen, or you’ll find out exactly how wide Dagwood can open his jaws.
Those are cowlicks? Is that canonical? I always thought he styled it that way on purpose.
In regards to Shoe, I feel compelled to point out that while he’s complaining about “people” HE’S the one wearing his damn shoes on the couch. Worry about your own level of inconsiderateness first, you ass-hat.
@Oversized Garden Ornament: I find that cooking also changes the flavor of rhubarb (in addition to cutting the sourness a little bit, especially if you add sugar, as people usually do) … I find raw rhubarb to have a more vegetal flavor that goes with savory dishes.
@MsAnthropesMr: I always thought he was some sort of insectarian ET….
@Alter Ego: Ye must be Irish, cuz me penis be Dublin! I usually only get to use that on St Pat’s day….
@Sequitur #90: re Bliss: No, I don’t have any Ravioli as clients heh heh heh Didn’t get a call from the Bliss team today. Now seriously, do YOU see anything moving on the plate? I don’t think so. My guess is that he’s havin’ hallucinations. According to my clients who’ve worked there, some recreational drug goes on …
@Little Blue Bicycle: FW:. This sort of mouthing off would have been considered countercultural when Batiuk was young. Think of Jack Nicholson telling the waitress to hold the chicken between her knees, in that awful movie we’re supposed to like. Regardless of actual social class, the financial planner, like Nicholson’s waitress, is plugged into the System by which the Man has made Funky’s life endlessly difficult. Funky sees himself striking a blow for the little guy.
@agony: Yup. Rex Morgan and the writer’s lack of interest in the actual practice of medicine are one of the worst examples.
LUANN: Come on, Tiffany’s pop. How can you not by impressed by a grown-ass woman who uses the term “college smarts” (snicker) unironically?
LUANN (2): Tiffany: “Maybe if you were better at teaching me how to use crocodile tears, dad….” (proceeds to fake-cry)
@agony:
Yeah, save that shit for Twitter, where it belongs! (grins)
MT: I guess I don’t mind the garden-turned-into-lawn theme, because it does happen, and sometimes for dumb reasons. I’ve seen that. But the way it’s being done is in MT is notably stupid, and that is annoying. Let’s go back to the rash or the tiger jerks, Jules. You don’t need three balls in the air.
@Little Guy:
Re: Luann. Of course theTruFans hate Tiffany. She represents every girl/boy that looked down on them/wouldn’t give them the time of day/turned them down/were out of their league to begun with since childhood.
@Poteet: re MT: Yeah, we’ve got Tigers waitin’ in the wings and other Wildlife on standby for the Roadside Zoo. Once they were hired, the meter started ticking. They get a base pay whether they’re on panel or not.
Nice job by Sedgwick “Squeaky” Squirrel today in the foreground. Don’t worry, he knows to stay off the chemically-treated grass there.
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: Nice job with the birds in Speed Bump today. One got to perform.
@brendancalling: Luann has some of the worst TruFans I’ve seen considering they cheer on our “heroine” being at her worst, they thought Delta was all “YAS KWEEN SLAY” when she was just being annoying and self righteous, that Bernice is a “good friend” when she passive aggressively insults Luann to her face, and thinking Tiffany is fully deserving of every single horrible thing happening to her
Flunking Wrinkled Brains: Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a Montoni’s Pizza, After he supped, Jack threw up, and Jill started barfing soon after!
@156 Garrison Skunk:
Ah! A Funky Winkerbean mantra!
!@Oversized Garden Ornament:
. Shoulda used bacon. Or sausages.”
_____________________________________
…or Snausages™ if you can pry them away from Daisy.
Gassed Up Alleycats: “Once upon a time a Junkman had a dream:I wanna build a space ship, fly to the moon,salvage the junk that’s up there and come back. So he built a space ship and he flew to the moon,who knows what they’ll do next?”- “Salvage-One” opening.
I LOOK DELICIOUS…
Blondie had planted the suggestion. It was one she had worked on for decades. Her devil’s bargain of ageless, unfading beauty in exchange for millions of sacrificial victims to The Dagwood had worn her down. Would The Dagwood turn on itself? Attempting to devour the void within and thus destroy itself or would it collapse into a singularity that would suck in the entire universe?
Either way, she would finally be free.
@agony:
TBF – MW absolutely failed in almost every conceivable way with the cruise ship story line.
@Tom T.: #148: I’m glad you brought up the famous diner scene from “Five Easy Pieces” because I thought the same thing about Batiuk’s personal hard on against service workers. When I first saw that movie as a youth we cheered on Nicholson’s temper tantrum but now I sympathize with the harried waitress having to put up with Nicholson’s spoiled, petulant man-baby. In fact, his character is overall unlikeable in today’s eyes but it was the late 60s/early 70s, the peak era of the anti-hero.
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: If that’s a squirrel, he’s wearing a pretty obvious chipmunk suit and you’re taking jobs away from legit chipmunk actors. Honestly, I’m disappointed in you, Sid. Gonna have to make a call to the American Chipmunk Society on this one.
@Voshkod: re MT: I think your eyes deceive you, VK. Don’t you see his tail curling up around his back? I guess to the uninformed it *could* look like Chipmark markings, but we can’t all be Animal experts, now can we? No need callin’ the Chipmunk Society. By the way, can you use any Squirrel talent? Our Salute to Squirrel promotion is still goin’ on…
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: I could use some squirrels.
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: Too late. You’re gonna up to your ears . . . well, shoulders . . . ok, knees . . . fine, ankles – look these things are really tiny – in angry chipmunks by tomorrow. Try not to step on too many of them.
MW: The Gospel According to Wilbur
“Maybe he was…until he wasn’t. People fall out of love over the smallest things.”
If that isn’t a quote for the ages, I don’t know what is!
@Someone Somewhere: Remember, Wilbur writes an advice-for-the-lovelorn newspaper column for a living.
DT: This is Dick Tracy. She may, in fact, still be being too subtle.
MT: I realise that Violet’s only role in this strip is to be Wrong about stuff, but huh? If she thinks that we in the UK say “garden” when we mean “lawn” (we don’t, we call it a lawn), what does she think British English for an actual garden is? Does she think we just don’t have them? Because we do. The BBC did not fill 53 seasons of Gardener’s World and 44 of Beechgrove just talking about grass.
MW: “I thought Jared was crazy about me. So crazy that I could do whatever I wanted and he’d never dare question it. How do I get a transfer to 9 Chickweed Lane?”
(I’m aware that I have previously portrayed Jared’s reasons for the split as at least something of an over-reaction. As I said at the time, my greatest scorn will always be for whichever one of these awful, awful people is currently talking.)
I’m a little disappointed that Blondie didn’t add a couple bananas underneath, to represent Dagwood’s perpetual flesh turtle-neck.
GT: Get a load of the Amazon! Gil’s gonna have his hands FULL in a couple of minutes.
DT: Go for it, detective. What happens in Antarctica stays in Antarctica.
Luann: Say that again, Tiff, but in fluent French. By achieving that skill you’ve already shown yourself to be the intellectual heavyweight of the strip.
Blondie: Three scoops of vanilla ice cream, maraschino cherries on the bottom two scoops, blackberry eyes on the top one, and all topped off with melted pineapple fudge. Not saying it would work as a dessert, but it could be Blondie’s self-portrait.
MW: One thing that’s been driving me crazy here–among many, obviously–are the way these two have spent the last few days scooping weird green stuff into their gobs. It’s like peas, but peas that will stick to your spoon when you turn the spoon sideways. Anyway, if you’ve been wondering how Mary Worth of all people got to be Charterstone’s cooking go-to, just take a look.
Shoe: Strangely, Cosmo’s shrink hasn’t told him to keep his gross feet off her couch, at least while he’s wearing those filthy hightops with which he tries to hold onto his youth.
MW-Let us never forget that Wilbur made people think he was dead.
Blondie-And a small thin sausage.
At least Dagwood gets to be the one who cannibalizes his own face. This is far better then the fate of Ziggy, who had to watch as his face was devoured by a collection of small animals. Well, I assume that eating your own face is better, but frankly the scenario depicted in both strips would seem to be more nearly appropriate for a character in Dick Tracy.
Gasoline Alley-Take that, Dick Tracy!
GIL THORP: Gil: “I want to save money on gas. And what can be a more fuel-efficient mode of transportation than a plane, amirite?”
DT: Talking about giant lava tubes has gotten her in the mood for, well…
FW: Funky proves once again that just because you’re in recovery doesn’t mean you can’t drive other people to drink.
GT: I…think it takes a little longer to get a plane above the clouds than that. Unless this is a painfully slow conversation even by soap strip standards.
Two days ago, we were told that the green glop on Dawn and Wilbur’s spoons was Dawn’s signature, spicy “chili.”
“Birdpeople, who need Birdpeople, are the cluckiest Birdpeople in the world” – Barbara Starling.
FUNKY WINKERBEAN: Why doesn’t this financial expert just tell his followers to invest in shitty pizza. That’s where the real money is apparently!
FUNKY WINKERBEAN (2): The only way this dumb arc would be even remotely worthwhile is if later on if mustachioed-dude crashed Funky AA meetings, constantly interrupting his off-topic filibusters with sone bad puns of his own.
@Anonymous: #123: I remember that show. For the short time it was on it was one of my mother’s favorites. Remember the Harecules Hare cartoons from the 60s? Every time the villain got him trapped in whatever metallic junkpile he’d always whip out his mallet and turn into his guided missile, or guided muscle, since it was shaped like a muscular forearm and clenched fist.
@181 Guillermo el chiclero:
Oh, great. Now I have, “Hurry, hurry, Harecules!” stuck in my head.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: Unless this has been retconned too, Diane and Francis are still Catholic, they just aren’t in the religious/priestly life anymore. Before their marriage, they indicated their desire to wait to have sex, as that was in keeping with their religious beliefs. I believe Francis is a lay canon lawyer with the Archdiocese of New York. I don’t think Brooke would ever have a character formally disavow the Church. He probably thinks that having a priest and a nun leave their respective vocations to get married while still being practicing Catholics, is super rebellious of him.
(Please excuse me prolonged absence from commenting. My mental health has been taking a real beating over the past couple of months, but there is a perverse solace to be taken in the utter predictability of the non-adventures in 9CL, MW, FC, the Funkyverse, etc.)
Dawn is definitely her father’s daughter.
Sherman’s Lagoon – Gee, it’s just like the ending of The Wizard of Oz!
@Sequitur:
That strip really needs a rimshot.
@186 Garrison Skunk:
A rimshot you say?
Being Ed Crankshaft means never having to say you’re sorry.
@185 Peanut Gallery:
Yeah, that ending to The Wizard of Oz is my favorite part where they’re all goovin’ to YouTube TikTok dance videos.
Bliss: “Honey, what was the date on that can of Chef Boyardee?”
DT: “Now, Earthman, my training was that you will tell me all of Earth’s secrets. Or must I perform the ‘lip-contact maneuver’ again? You seemed unfamiliar with it.”
@Edda’s Piano Bench Has Seen Things: 9CL – You are correct that they still are practicing Catholics. A recent arc made it explicit that they don’t use birth control, have sex every time they have an argument, have had six (soon to be seven) arguments ever, and have six (soon to be seven) children. So they are allowed to have sex whenever they want but choose to only do it when they have had an argument, and then a baby always follows. Then they left their six children on a park bench for Arthur Peel to watch (a stranger to them all) so they could fake fight and then conceive number seven. Parenting in Brooke World is remarkably poor, so much so that Amos and Edda are about average for the strip – completely indifferent to their kids and never allowing them to inconvenience their parents or their parents sex lives.
@Little Blue Bicycle: Yes, drawn in Georgia. “Lost Forest” is a subdivision near Atlanta and it’s where Ed Dodd lived and had his studio. But set there? I don’t think so. The distant views of Mark’s cabin show mountains, lakes, and lots of trees. The views are generic, but they (and the animals shown) look more like New England than Atlanta. I suppose Mark’s Lost Forest could be in the mountains of northern Georgia or western North Carolina, but it is certainly not suburban Atlanta. And Dodd was born in the far northwest corner of Georgia, so that landscape may be the basis for Lost Forest.
JP: I’ve decided I don’t like this comi. I’ve also decided I might change my mind if Abby worked off her anger through a pillow fight, wearing her frillies.
@Little Blue Bicycle: The first Jules storyline established that it is indeed Georgia. But I don’t think Jules knows anything the setting, so she just flies Mark to places she’s been and gives Cherry this shit to deal with. I mean, really.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: You leave your children sitting around for strangers to watch, and YOU TOO could end up with a professional puppeteer for a daughter. HEED MY WARNING.
@Needless_Exposition: Luann has some of the worst TruFans I’ve seen considering.[….] they thought Delta was all “YAS KWEEN SLAY” when she was just being annoying and self righteous,
Oh dear god, you should have seen the hard flip the Trufans did on Delta when she had the unmitigated gall to call Luann immature to her face (well, over the phone.) They were screeching to the heavens about wanting to never EVER see her face in the strip again (and Evans actually obliged on that front: Delta hasn’t appeared since.)
https://www.gocomics.com/luann/2014/11/12
@Sequitur: Viking life is brutal.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: GT – My guess is they took off from the deck of an aircraft carrier and they’re diving straight into the ocean.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: As I recall, Diane was in labor at the same time as Edda. This begs the question of why the twins can’t hang out with Diane’s insufferable brood, rather than being voyeurs to their parents’ sex lives? The kids would all still be inhuman changlings, but they’d be acting age appropriate for once.
@Edda’s Piano Bench Has Seen Things: I hate to be boring, but “begs the question” does not (or did not used to) mean “leads to the question,” though this frequent misuse is making the distinction a lost cause. “Begging the question” is a logical fallacy in which the argument’s premises assume the truth of the conclusion. It is a type of circular logic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
@allangary: Can’t it be construed to be a contracted form of “Begs one to ask the question”?
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: Sid, I’m glad to know your Animal Talent will get paid no matter what. It’s a win-win. The Animals get the respect and compensation they deserve, and we readers know that MT has a financial incentive to get this Sunny Soleil shit over with fast. Pardon my French, but I’ve had it up to here with that big-hatted idjit.
On another topic, I really hesitate to say this because I have very great respect for you and your work, and I don’t want you to think otherwise. It’s just that to me, that fine performance in MT sure looks like the work of a chipmunk, not a squirrel. Frankly, I think you’re under enough stress that such a rare mistake would be very understandable. You have to think about so many clients and so many potential roles.
How long has it been since you took a good vacay? You need to keep your own well filled if you want to keep giving water to others, Sid. Just sayin’.
@seismic-2: That’s what has led to the problem. People who have not taken a course in classical logic hear the phrase and reuse it thinking they know what it means. If you mean “leads one to ask,” then say that. Don’t use a term from classical logic incorrectly. That makes the language flabby. See Edwin Newman’s Book “Strictly Speaking.”
“Massive” does not mean large, it means great mass for its size. But, I despair. And the misused phrase “I could care less” when the speaker means “I couldn’t care less.” People argue that the speaker is being ironic. But I’ve asked scores of people who misuse the phrase, and they never claim to be using the phrase in that way, They are merely repeating a misuse they have heard from others while insisting that is the correct way to say it..
@allangary: > “Massive” does not mean large, it means great mass for its size.
According to whom? I submit that “massive” simply means having great mass. That can be because the object is especially compact (a neutron star), or it can just be because the object is very big (an entire galaxy). Having “great mass for its size” is the definition of dense.
@204 allangary: Is “massive” an appropriate descriptor for Pluggers? Asking for a friend.
@206 Baja Gaijin:
I think the word you’re looking for concerning pluggers is “hefty”.
@Sequitur: Remember when your Mom took you shopping for back-to-school pants, and the fits came in “slim”, “regular”, and “husky”? Pluggers’ lies to themselves start at an early age.
@207 Sequitur: Wilbur Weston’s “hefty.” Pluggers are “brobdingnagian.” I was wondering if I could lump “massive” into the description too.
@208 seismic-2:
Is that a case of “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”?
@209 Baja Gaijin:
Maybe they’re just large!
What are we still doing up?
@210 Sequitur: After watching that clip, I can’t sleep. THAT WAS TERRIBLE!
@allangary: Can we talk about “agreeance” and the way some people use reflexive pronouns when they should be using dative or accusative?
@311 Baja Gaijin:
It’s only Popeye.
@213 Sequitur: Based on that clip, I’m not watching anymore of that movie. [shudder]
I was going to post this mashup tomorrowthread but I don’t think it’s good enough for prime time.
@215 Baja Gaijin:
Since we’re on the subject of Popeye, maybe it would have worked better with Olive Oyl instead of a bagel.