All the delivery guys can tell they aren’t getting any tips
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Blondie, 3/14/23
Normally, the purpose of Blondie is to deliver laughs to comics lovers everywhere assure its readers, who are on average shockingly old, that their instinctual distrust and loathing of any novel cultural or technical developments from the past three decades are well founded. Unfortunately, today’s strip misses the mark, as pickleball is a trend that is almost entirely driven by Blondie’s core demographic of semi-active seniors. Ironically, this makes the exchange here, in which a couple of fortysomething guys express bewilderment about it, sort of loop around back to making sense again.
Beetle Bailey, 3/14/23
Big news, everyone! The good folks at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC have become aware of the existence of app-based food delivery services! Based on today’s strip, they definitely think that they’re just restaurants that you can use your phone to order food from, but it’s a start.
Hagar the Horrible, 3/14/23
Ha ha, it’s funny because the physical injuries Lucky Eddie has suffered in combat pale in comparison to his mental and spiritual trauma, yet his supposed best friend Hagar is positively gleeful at the thought of sending him back into battle!
160 replies to “All the delivery guys can tell they aren’t getting any tips”
Dustin: Joke’s on Walt: the company dinner is really at Salad Town. Double joke on Walt: the paper napkins are to small for him to spit his broccoli into. Triple joke on Walt: Helen’s coworkers make Frazz look like a lazy couch potato and triply self-righteous on diet and exercise.
Last night in my readings I came across the term “toxic megacolon.” I free-associated that with Laura Jensen. It doesn’t take a Sigmund Freud to figure this one out.
Blondie: Cookie (is that his name?) is headed for the back room to pull his pickled pork.
Family Circlejerk: Thel’s not jutting as well as usual. Apparently Jefy altered the art to fit the “joke.”
Beetle Bailey : that, or Sarge is suscribed to three different services so he can order the same exact thing three times.
*******
Crankshaft : Wait, aren’t the Beatles supposed to be the Jeff&Pam’s thing? Isn’t Crankshaft supposed to be too old to have liked them, having been in his 20s in the 1940s?
…. I just realised that would mean Crankshaft is old enough that him pining over 70-year-old women STILL has a huge age gap.
********
Dustin : I wonder if the writer of this strips realises some of his audience might not be familiar with Cheesecake Factory and not realise it’s a restaurant franchise, and instead assume DustinDad is just gonna park himself at the end of a conveyor belt and have freshly-made cakes just dumped into his gullet.
********
Family Circus : “Used to”!? … I mean, sure, Thel’s not particularly well drawn today, but the idea that she’s lost it is just… absurd.
********
Hagar the Horrible : …Does Lucky Eddie still have hands, or are his casts that shape because they’ve been amputated and he now only has nubs? Because Dr Zook would reassure Hagar that Lucky Eddie can be sent back to the frontlines immediately either way.
*********
Slylock Fox : EXTRA DIFFERENCE : in one panel, the director is yelling at the cowboy actor for kissing the wrong actress and ruining the shot. In the other panel, the director is yelling at the cowboy actor to put more emotion into the kiss because the scene where he kisses the sidekick instead of the love interest is the movie’s big turning point.
Dustin: I know your husband is annoying, but is it really necessary to claw out your own eye?
Six Chix: Another Tuesday cry for help. How long before this turns into an active shooter situation?
Blondie: “I also put my pickle balls-deep in that blonde who runs the catering business down the street! Turns out she’s married to some lazy gluttonous loser with severe blood pressure-related ED! Ha! Anyway, want some brisket to go with your limp sausage?”
BB: Apparently these food delivery app services operate like roving stadium snack and beverage vendors. “Panera Bread heeaah, getcha painfully upcharged Panera Bread soup-and-sandwich meal heeaah.”
HtH: “We’re going to have to amputate both your arms, but with that helmet you’ll make a great battering ram.”
There’s something about Dagwood talking about pickleball and not ending up with the chef having to fend him off from devouring every jar of pickles that just seems off.
MW: Kind of takes getting used to after hyper-available Wilbur I guess
Six Chix If it helps, sweetie, I’ve been reading your comic for years, and I think I can assure you that nobody has any expectations that you need worry about.
MW: It’s hard to know what kind of disgusting black stain has ruined that booth upholstery in the first panel. But from what we know of Mary’s soul-sucking, emotional-bloodletting, pain-thirsting visitations on unsuspecting neighbors, we can be pretty sure that she’s not casting a shadow.
RMMD: Sarah is too young to know that a curmudgeon is funny until you have to live with one. Some day, kid…
MW: Even ubermeddler Mary must be getting tired of Estelle’s droopy sad sack routine.
SF: With virtually everyone in their orbit being annoying to them, it’s annoying that the Forths haven’t learned to deal with them.
HtH: The doc might get a more accurate reading if the stethoscope actually went under his hood.
When Sarge goes to jail for using the army credit card to fuel his binge eating, who will the laughing then?
Me. That’s who.
Hagar’s smiling because Lucky Eddie will need to die pretty valiantly in battle to make up for the whole mermaid thing in the eyes of the Valkyries, and Hagar doesn’t want him to miss his chance.
Blondie: I genuinely enjoy the almost flirty relationship these two have. You can just imagine Lou standing over a big pan of pickled pork that morning, trying to figure out the best way to surprise his best customer with the special of the day. “Ok, I’ll let him sit down, peruse the menu a minute, then plant a seed by casually bring up some facts on pickle ball…”
BB: That dude in black has the face of someone who has delivered to Sarge before. “Look man, I’m just going to set the box down and back away slowly. please don’t start until I’ve reached the door, I don’t want to see that again.”
HtH: I like how the medieval doctor somehow has a stethoscope, but doesn’t have a clue how to use it. “Yes, your wounds are sounding good Eddie. The black bile has stopped bubbling and the blood is humming nicely. We’ll need to validate all this with a CAT scan, or course — could you grab Muffy over there?”
Luann: Is that a maternity dress? Wow, who knew that inspiration for true art required unprotected sex with a sasquatch woman and an eight month buffer?
MW: Karen Moy has completely forgotten that Estelle was happily married for decades.
JP: Having completely defanged any potential conflict from the proceedings by jumping ahead several months in the future where everything is okay, Marciuliano promptly leaps back to the moment where he left off to have Lil Dunk continue narrating off-page events. Despite fleeing the lake house shootout in such a panic that he couldn’t even snap a few phone pics of the crime scene on his way out, Sam the World’s Greatest and Only Trustworthy Investigator decides the best move when people are being gunned down in the driveway is to open the front door and crowd the frame with your ex-wife and some kid to gawk at the fresh corpses. After all, why even pretend that these characters aren’t clad head-to-toe in indestructible plot armor at this point? And besides, Lil Dunk has too much hardboiled inner-monologuing to do about what he calls his father. It’s just a shame that, despite being one of the most important characters in this story, we never got a name for Lil Dunk himself before he transformed into a hermit thrush to raise a new family.
FC – The strip’s been around for over sixty years, yet they’re running one from just three years ago.
HtH: Lucky Eddie was clearly upset thinking of the fate of Staurakios, his beloved emperor laying in bed and taking months to die. I didn’t know Lucky Eddie served in the Varangian Guard but it makes sense.
Eddie converted to Christianity and hopes to die in bed after repenting from his sins. The witch doctor still keeps the old faith and doesn’t understand that “good news” means “euangelion”, so he tells him that he can soon go to Valhalla by dying in battle
MW: Exactly how many dates have they really had, not cancelled? Enough for Estelle to be “in love?” Is Luann guest-writing this story?
@Ettorre:
[Dr Zook] doesn’t understand “good news” means “euangelion”
Actually, Dr Zook is so ahead of his time he DOES know that, but thinks Evangelion means “get in the robot Shinji”.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: The cook in Blondie is named Lou.
@jroggs: #16
“we never got a name for Lil Dunk himself”
Offspring of a full-fledged “Dunk” could be described as a “Dip.” Of course, pretty much every character in this storyline could be described that way also. Or possibly with a slightly longer version.
Apparently food delivery can enter any military base by just saying they were summoned by the app. That’s good news for spies
You can really tell Dagwood and Lou are up on current trends by how they are reading a newspaper.
@Ettorre: #24
My sister-in-law used to live in a gated suburb. It was very, very secure, because no bad folks would know the code for the gate, only the residents and, of course, every delivery person for every restaurant within fifteen miles.
MW – Estelle and Dr. Ed had TWO dates. A YEAR apart! The extent of their intimacy was one kiss! And…she’s “in love” with him?
Maybe Estelle deserves Wilbur after all.
Pibgorn: So it looks like Brooke finally given up on the narrative mess of clueless medieval twits frolicing in a pond and remembered this was supposed to be a Pibgorn origin story.
Blondie – Like Lou’s food, the creators of Blondie would rather reheat some old comic art to talk about pickleball than actually use it as a new idea and location to put the strip’s characters in for humorous effect.
HtH – Lucky Eddie doesn’t even take his oil-can-hat off in the hospital? Is that thing welded to his head?
Beetle Bailey-Sarge picked the restaurants on those services that had the lowest delivery fees.
Spiderman-“Including MJ my wife whose money keeps me in a lifestyle I’m accustomed to.”
Six Chix-Jeez. My sides sure are splitting from all these funny jokes you tell.
JP-“That summer me and my band played a backyard concert and sang songs about werewolves.”
MW: Has anyone suggested that Estelle is crazy? Ed cancelled several times? Wilbur is stalking her? She’s in love with Ed after ONE date?
Maybe she deserves Wilbur.
BB You know, I’ve never done service, but I am reasonably sure that a senior sergeant doesn’t share his quarters with a private. But then, why do I even bother.
CS: Of the few things in life I’m sure of, one is that Crankshaft, Max, and Hanna are not now nor have ever been Beatlemaniacs.
JP: HEY, I was just getting interested in the birds in the nest story! Gotta be better than this.
GT: No snark today. Nice tribute.
Beetle Bailey: “So many options,” thinks the cyclops. “But where can I get more wine for Sarge, Son of Neptune?”
MW: A lot of you Mudges are suggesting that Estelle DESERVES Wilbur. Well, I disagree. Estelle should have to EARN Wilbur. In fact, at this point she should have to GROVEL in order to win him back. She should EMBRACE his ENDEARING QUIRKS and show him in all the ways she can that HE IS HER MAN! True love doesn’t happen after two lousy dates and a little piano music. No, it develops slowly, only after a grueling courtship that includes heavy drinking, lots of karaoke, and repeated instances of loathsome inconsideration, exposing all the good and bad, all the highs and lows of love that will last a LIFETIME. It’s Wilbur who deserves Estelle. He’s been faithful. Ish. And now it’s up to Estelle to prove that she’s WORTHY of him.
At least, I think that’s what Mary is about to advise.
Hagar – Geez, Lucky Eddie, you’re a viking with access to 20th-century pillows and stethoscopes. How much more good news do you need?
@astroboy: Lucky Eddie is the Tin Woodman from the Wizard of Oz, in an early stage of his transformation.
Don Abundio, translated:
“And now, The Lives of the Cowboys”
“Binge-watching is great, isn’t it?”
“Yes”
“We’ve been here three days!”
Hägär the Hörrible: “Please give me good news, Doc!” “I’m sorry, Eddie. There is no cure for missing nipples. You might want to look up Poland Syndrome on WebMD while you’re at it.”
@Blinky the Wonder Wombat: Give Brooke time. We’ll be back to seeing underage buttocks in no time flat all the while questioning what little sanity we have left.
Dr. Zook, to Hagar: “You had better go sack a castle now if you’re planning on paying me to wipe his ass for the next three weeks.”
@jroggs: HtH: “We’re going to have to amputate both your arms, but with that helmet you’ll make a great battering ram.”
***
Reminds me of this chestnut:
Kids go to Johnny’s house and tell him mom that they’re playing baseball and ask if Johnny can come with them.
“Why, children,” says Mom, “you know Johnny has no arms and legs.”
Kids: “We just want him to be second base.”
What would really be going on in today’s Beetle Bailey is a not very tense stand-off at the main gate to the base, where a bored contract guard is telling these drivers ‘we don’t allow food delivery on base, call your customer and tell them to meet you here.’ Oh, the drama!
@astroboy: MW – Estelle and Dr. Ed had TWO dates. A YEAR apart! The extent of their intimacy was one kiss! And…she’s “in love” with him?
Maybe Estelle deserves Wilbur after all.
***
One date, on which Wilbur ejaculated when taking his pants off. And she fell in love with him.
@Government Cheese: #32
You forgot to mention the number one proof Estelle is crazy: she seeks out Mary for advice.
@Blinky the Wonder Wombat: PIB – Yay! She’s finally turning into Pibgorn! Another 5-6 years of this and we may be able to wrap this up. If she doesn’t set the whole cast on fire with her mind and force us to start over again first.
9CL – Yay! This concludes another episode of “Off-Panel Theatre”. Had this been drawn by someone who gives a shit, you’d have finished watching an exciting scene as Highschoolers made out in a Corvette parked in front of the school, and had water-filled balloon bombs thrown at them! As it is, we had Edda and Amos in a featureless void -except for a floating windowsill – talking about what they saw.
FC: “What do you mean, kid – ‘used to be’? What about these?” (Thrusts chest forward to accentuate jutting)
HtH: Why is Lucky Eddie looking so dejected in the second panel? To a Viking, being back on the battlefield soon should be very good news indeed! Because those who fall in combat go directly to Valhall, where they’ll drink mead with Odin and their fellow heroes for all eternity, but those who die in sickbed will get a bleak, joyless afterlife in the death goddess Hel’s underworld.
Blondie – Most of what I know about Pickleball I learned from my shrink, who is a recent convert. Lest you think he was oversharing, he mentioned it in the context of me starting tap dance lessons at the age of 48, because you’re never too old to get into something new. Although, let it be said, that as an out-of-shape, bigger gal with bad knees and ankles, and no sense of rhythm, it wasn’t a natural fit. And I don’t care. It’s not auditions for A Chorus Line. Because Dance 3, Looks 3.
That said – my above qualifications would probably make me a darling of the pickleball set.
Do not, under any circumstances, search Urban Dictionary for pulled pickle pork sandwich. I can’t believe they got that one past the censors.
Mary Worth: Yeeeeeep, as anticipated, Dr. Ed has canceled multiple times on Estelle.
This is starting to smell more and more like Moy is planning to throw Estelle back together with Wilbur and is trying to justify it by making Dr. Ed a workaholic.
SFx: Now just what is going on here? Does the dog actor playing the cowboy have an eye problem? Or is he some sort of horse-loving pervert? Or, even worse, is this the introduction of a porn flick where the scene will end with an interspecies threesome?
No doubt some moral guardian will soon call the cops, and this will turn out to be the most sordid chapter yet in Slylock Fox’s memoirs. Unfortunately, the investigation will not be fit to show in a newspaper comic for kids, so we’ll just have to guess at the outcome.
SFx: Sid, is that horse one of your clients? Is this really part of her contract?
Blondie: The Blondie team must have breathed a sigh of relief. Normally they have to stretch to bring a recent trend back around to Dagwood’s obsession with food, but today it’s baked right into the name!
HtH: That will be quite an accomplishment since the last swordsman Eddie faced chopped off both his hands.
FC: “Yes, I used to be sexy, but look where that got me.”
Hagar the Horrible-Hagar would make a great World War I British general.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:This was the day Thel had been waiting for Jeffy’s whole life. They can finally live their lives together, away from the rest of the family, who just simply never understood their special bond.
Blondie: I was going to say I’ve never heard of pickled pork a quick search shows me no less than Alton Brown has a recipe online. So I apologize for thinking of snarking.
GT: Don’t keep us in suspense. Did Milford hold onto its 50 point lead?
@Tom: Workaholic, alcoholic–it’s so hard to decide between them!
“The good news is that the time travel experiment was a success, and I brought back this miraculous piece of medical technology. The bad news is that I’m not actually putting the stethoscope in my ears, so it’s not actually doing anything. The worse news is that a stethoscope, even if used correctly, isn’t going to help with your missing hands. The even worse news is that I have a pair of iron gauntlets I’m going to weld on to your stumps. The worst news is that we have no anesthesia. But the best news is that you’ll be known as Eddie Ironfists in the new Edda!”
9CL: Shouldn’t it be “Sister Stephen”? There are multiple saints by that name (the most famous being the early deacon stoned to death while the future St. Paul watched in the book of Acts), but not a single one of them uses the “v” spelling.
C’shaft: I mean, personally I would be more relived that Crankshaft isn’t singing about an underage girl.
Dustin: Dustdad is definitely the kind of guy who eats a Cheesecake Factory entree in one sitting. And still has room for dessert.
Luann: I’m not sure if Bernice’s main concern being her unshaven calves makes her the least sexually aware character in the strip, or the most sexually aware.
MW: I mean, that history is mostly limited to Wilbur and a scam artist, but I can see why they would make Estelle a little anxious about relationships. Especially Wilbur.
Phantom: “What is this ‘love’ of which you speak?”
Pib: So it took two and a half months for Brooke to work up to drawing future-Pibgorn’s technically-naked leg? Sounds about right.
RMMD: “Always laughing about resisting the sweet, sweet embrace of death! What a weirdo!”
Pib: I wonder, did he spend the last three months trying to figure a way how to write his way out of this mess, give up, and draw this doodle, or did he forget that he had a second strip for three months, and then draw this doodle to make the syndicate happy?
JUDGE PARKER: “Good thing Sam opened the door in an active shooter situation so I can be good and traumatized by seeing yet another family member with their brains splatter all over the ground. Thanks, Sam!”
@63 TheDiva: on Mary Worth: Did you forget Estelle’ “Week of Disastrous Dates” montage? Gave us Bummy McBummerson!
MW: when will Estelle get around to asking Mary about her preferred brand of vibrator?
@Blinky the Wonder Wombat, Pib: He didn’t even bother looking at the last published edition, because she threw her red skirt at the two guys. Unless they are turning into Pibgorn.
I think he was looking at Ces and Moy and thinking someone else was stealing his glacial thunder.
Now, with PibOrigins, will her parents get killed leaving the movies, will her uncle die at the hands of an unapprehended criminal, or will she receive super powers by travelling through a cosmic storm?
Blondie: I prefer to think that Dagwood and Sandwich Guy (I don’t remember his name and I frankly don’t care to) are just sports illiterate and don’t understand any sort of physical activity besides eating. “Baseball? I don’t know what that is but y’know what I do understand? Stuffing my fucking face.”
Beetle Bailey: Can’t wait until the arc where Sarge gets dishonorably discharged for using army funds to buy lots and lots of takeout.
Hagar The Horrible: Eddie’s scheme to get washed out of the army by injuring himself on purpose Vietnam-style fails, as this is the Middle Ages and Vikings don’t especially care if you’re “of sound body and mind”.
@Little Guy:
I think Pibgorn’s origin is that she left the Island of Manic Pixie Dream Girls to save Man’s World, but now can never return. Or she was doused in chemicals and struck by lightning (the lightning bolt is later revealed to be herself traveling thru time). Or she was the closest person, geographically speaking, and a dying alien said “Meh, good enough” and bestowed the powers and title of Pibgorn to her.
CS – You’d think with Ed’s obsession with fire, he’d be singing Sixty Candles.
Wary Morth:
“He isn’t into me, and that’s the problem. I need him to be into me every night. And with a name like Harding he ought to be sued for false advertising!”
____________________________
Inner Beautystan:
“Stop fantasising about my hairy legs and put this on. You’re going to be what’s her name from The Crucible. You know, the one who accuses everyone else and gets them murdered as witches. I think that’s the right role for you.”
____________________________
Höggêr zé Härrïblé:
“The head bone is connected to the neck bone and the neck bone is connected to the hand bone, and the hand bone is where you have the heart, right? So if I put my stethoscope on your hand I can hear your heartbeat! Odin, I love being a doctor!”
____________________________
Andy Capp:
“… and make sure he isn’t in it. I mean, drop him off at the cemetery first, or at the hospital if he’s not quite dead of alcohol poisoning yet. Just make sure my wheelbarrow’s free.”
@Little Guy: PIB – “He didn’t even bother looking at the last published edition, because she threw her red skirt at the two guys.”
I’d forgotten this detail. Of course, it happened four strips ago, so last October.
This was clearly a plot point, as there was no reason otherwise for her to suddenly hurl her skirt up into the air and block people’s view for a half second. The point was to establish that she is now naked under the waterline, so that the dweeby prince would swim along behind her. But, that was six months ago and apparently she has the skirt on again somehow.
In the first, botched, attempt at this story, Pib had telekenesis at this point and used it to kill everyone. Now, she is pyrokinetic in this version, lets see if she can be constrained for murdering the rest of the cast for long enough to finish this mess … likely some time in 2033.
Pigborn:
Y’know, GetHelpBrooke could have just dropped the last ¿three? years of this endless “storyline” and just posted this one panel, which in any case makes no sense in his 12 year old medieval girl frolicking naked story, and have done with it.
Blondie – I know what the euphemism pulling a porking pickle means. Game on….
BB – You Go Menudo! Yum….
HtH – The good news is we’re really all just worm food, if you really just think about it….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Anonymous: #70
I always liked the origin of the Golden Age second banana speedster superhero, The Whizzer (no giggles now!).
“(T)hey flee to Africa where Bob gets sick from fever and in need of a blood transfusion. While Bob is unconscious, he is approached by a cobra, but is saved by the sudden attack of a mongoose. Dr. Frank saves Robert by a transfusion of the mongoose’s blood, and soon discovers that his son has developed super-speed.”
I realize Pib isn’t especially mongoosy, but couldn’t she develop her powers by an transfusion of butterfly blood or something like that?
Time to sell all of our stock in those companies. They’re definitely on the way out if Beetle Bailey is aware of their existence.
@Myrtle: Somehow Moy finds a way to make Estelle disturbing in any situation, doesn’t she.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box:
What’s especially infuriating is that Pigborn used to actually be a fairly good strip when it started out. Before GetHelpBrooke started reimagining Shakespeare and things like that.
@Shrug:
She could be…..bitten…….by a radioactive moth? Maybe?
@Ukranazi Stepan: I’m just going to you’re talking about the reboot of Mary Worth – Mary Moth.
@Baja Gaijin:
Bum Bummerson was awesome! Messily stuffing his face and sticking Estelle with the bill!
Then there was Red Redneckson, the sexist caricature who wanted to order for the little lady!
@Voshkod: MW – I was hoping the reboot would be set in a future where laughter is forbidden and can result in a death sentence. Mary joins an undercover group that watches old recordings of comedians from the days before some Yahoo passed the Serious Laws. They meet in secret and muffle their laughter. They call it Wary Mirth.
@gardenornament: re SlyFx: Yes, that is one of our clients making a guest appearance today – she’s Melba Mare, one of Melody’s lesser-known cousins.
And before you get the idea that this scene is somehow “inappropriate for kids”, let me point out that it’s a representation of mankind’s (and womankind’s) love for the noble Horse! While it’s meant to be a “staged scene” with the director, these two-leggers have let their emotions get the better of them in their admiration for the Equine species! This is a beautiful scene of shared respect and appreciation of all living creatures
not some sleazy interspecies threesomeMelba does have her own personal
bodyguardhandler on the set.BB – Sarge certainly won’t tip. But a game of “just the tip”? Ask!!! Tell!!!
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: I’m not sure if I should applaud or pelt you with muffins. We’ll go with applause. Well done.
@Ukranazi Stepan: “Pigborn used to actually be a fairly good strip when it started out.”
Brooke has a good, creative, and absurdist sense of humor that could be put to good use. The problem is he can’t keep his fetishes in his pants. So the stories seemed to go off the rails on tangents like Pibgorn swallowing a branch of the Thorn Tree, or the Magic Telepathy Dildo, or Pibgorn’s lady parts being replaced with robot lady parts.
I think it bottomed out with the Nose-Picking Troll, who represented his readers. Nose Picking Troll was fond of videos where women are pierced by swords. Another case where it is hard to tell if this is the author’s self-delusion speaking, and he doesn’t see the similarity to his own preferences, or if he is intentionally making fun of himself.
@Voshkod: No muffins? :'(
MT- “Also I need to head back to my room and….uh….freebase some heroin. Yes, loves me some smack!”
Luann: Borenice suddenly realizes she needs to work on her clamscaping.
SFx: A gag about a movie cowboy kissin’ his horse instead of his lady friend would work better if everyone involved weren’t animals of different species. I’m not even sure what species the cowboy and lady friend are supposed to be.
RMMD: Kids being small seems to throw off Beatty’s sense of proportion. Here’s how Sarah could look better without a tiny face, and with a bit less of Beatty’s overused facial lines.
MW: Mary will pimp Wilbur by telling Estelle “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” but Estelle already knows what she wants in the bush.
Luann: The Evansii seem to have found a new game: hint at some sexually titillating stuff to follow, and then defuse the situation and leave everybody
disappointedrelieved. They usually wait a few strips, though, but this time I think they jumped the gun. Would it really have been a problem to let the TruFans stew in the belief that Bernice was going to get naked for a few days?I mean, anybody who is excited at the prospect of seeing Bernice naked deserves to be left to stew for a few days before their hopes are shattered, right?
Why are comics now mentioning actual brands? Dagwood a few days ago, Beetle Bailey today?
They used to universally go out of their way to make badly disguised brands “Fakeboot” or “GooberEats” – now they’re just using them directly.
Did SVB collapsing give them new vigor? Did I miss a Supreme Court decision?
MW: why doesn’t Queen Mary the Frigid tell Estelle to look for a man who does nothing but give her unearned praise? That’s what works for her. Have I ever mentioned I don’t like Mary?
MW: “He cancelled your dates several times?”
“Well, once. He was swamped with sick pets.”
“What? Good gravy, Estelle, grow up! People give me a hard time for trying to put you off with Wilbur, but from my perspective you’re the perfect couple, infantile, clueless. and entitled. Here, I’m leaving, pay for your own $&@@€£ salad!”
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: It being Pi Day, might I suggest something more along the lines of lemon meringue?
FC – Yeah, her boobs used to be a lot bigger when the dad drew them. Your brother was kinda uncomfortable with that.
Between Friends: Christ. I really miss Retail.
What happened to last week’s narrative, about Slut Friend cheating on her latest boyfriend with the rich handsome French executive from France? Down the memory-hole? So we can bitch about the helpful salespeople this week?
MW – “I’m in love with him Mary, but I don’t know if I can trust myself anymore.”
“Then go back to Wilbur, my dear. He’ll never break your heart, because you don’t give two shits about him in the first place!”
Blondie: It’s Pi(e) Day, and they’re wasting a lame pickleball joke that could have waited a day or so,
BigPorn – Ok, I’m confused. Her virginal status seems to have been very important here, but then how could she be transformed into Pib, who gets drilled like the Louisiana coast at every opportunity? I sometimes wonder just who’s the real suckubutt here?
@gardenornament: LUANN – “The Evansii seem to have found a new game: hint at some sexually titillating stuff to follow, and then defuse the situation and leave everybody disappointed relieved. They usually wait a few strips, though, but this time I think they jumped the gun.”
Ah yes, another case of premature non-ejacutation. Luann is full of them. Figuratively, at least.
Mutt & Jeff: And so, children, that’s why we started calling them “Jeff and Mutt”, back in 1952.
@cheech wizard: PIB – I don’t think her virginity is all that is is cracked up to be. Less a plot point than just the author’s infection with Tales of Ribaldry, which forces him to leave all the endless sexual entendres to have an ambiguous resolution. Heck, over in 9CL Edda might as well be a virgin for all that we actively acknowledge that she and Amos have made it past the point where Amos gets all excited then collapses in a heap.
Pib has spent well over a decade now in either reruns, abandoned attempts at a story with an original plot, “re-imagining” of Romeo and Juliet if Romeo was a virginal adolescent and Juliet was the town hoor, and four plus years on “The Provenance of Pib”. I don’t know where the 48 readers who still “Like” today’s installment came from, but that must be most of the ones that are still left.
BG&SS: People don’t believe me, but Snuffy quit drinking and making moonshine way back in the early ’70s of the last century. (Sometimes I feel very old indeed.)
It was kind of a big deal at the time. It was in the News section of the newspaper, even.
@Charterstoned: “It being Pi Day, might I suggest something more along the lines of lemon meringue?”
My sect does not observe Pi day because of the irrationality of it all. 3.14 is not all there is to it.
I observe Pi Approximation Day, aka July 22nd. 22 divided by 7 is 3.142! In honor of the occasion, I smear pie around my mouth and then try to build a suspension bridge that ultimately collapses because of the rounding errors.
@Ettorre: Brings to mind the Saga of Biorn.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: True. And it’s not clear if she bonked the young friar during their first aqueous encounter or if that was just more medieval titillation.
At any rate, I liked it much better when she was tiny and slept in a candle flame. Though even then, the prince and his advisor were signs of the dismal things to come.
JP: Wait a minute, we’re not going to find out anything else about the brown thrasher or possibly thrush, including why she/he flew so far up in the sky for no particular reason when Spouse Thrasher was busy hunting for insects? “Where the hell have you been? The kids need caterpillars!” “I was serving as a temporary narrator for a JUDGE PARKER comic strip story involving mayhem, murders, and senseless dialogue, and doing that required that I fly waaaaay up into the sky, far above the trees!” “Lay off those fermented mountain ash berries or you and I are done! And go hunt in that white oak while I take this maple!” “*sigh* Yes, dear.”
Crank: So I understand why Max and Hannah look surprised in the first panel, but what about Ed singing the correct second line prompts the looks of disgust(?) in the second? Are they thinking “Dammit, that doesn’t rhyme with the altered first line and it’s not even a malapropism. Has he finally forgotten his own schtick?”
Anyway, I was reminded of the Scottish/Australian folk singer Eric Bogle, who I once heard belting out:
Well, she was just seventeen,
She was short, fat and mean,
And the way she looked would make a blind man swear.
I should have danced with her mother, (oh!)
But her mother wasnae there.
FC: And that was the moment that Jeff Keane joined Team It’s Not Like Anybody From The Syndicate Actually Reads These.
JP: Given the dramatic improvement in Li’l Dunk’s speech over the course of
this storyabout ten minutes in-universe, promoting him to narrator makes perfect sense. Well, as much sense as anything else, anyway.OTF: The character who doesn’t like spending time with other people liked not spending time with other people. The character who’s supposedly really good with people is surprised by this.
Phantom: “But … I am the Phantom and I can’t get that to work!”
@Shrug: “Curse this acid! It’s in the wound and stingin’ like blazes!!!”
Archie: Hey wait a sec… that’s just Betty!
// She curled her hair or something. Veronica will have to do a beehive or something now.
@Ukranazi Stepan: I’d like to challenge that opinion. In the very first narrative Pibgorn is murdered by the succubus, who also severs her wings in a queasy and unfortunate castration scene.
The infamous thorn tree appeared soon afterward.
MT: ”There’s plenty of fresh mountain air right here at the cabin, so I’ll just stay here and sniff it — we’re in the mountains. Their air is all around us.”
@Less Scudder , less filling!: All the girls on the DeCarlo model, except Big Ethel, look the same except for haircut. I think I read one time that DeCarlo used his wife for a model. Anyway, it even applies to his cheesecake work, which is basically panel after panel of Betty/Veronica getting spanked.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: There was a joke on UK Twitter a few years back that you should celebrate Approximate Pi Day with a casserole with a pastry lid. (It being a longstanding meme on UK Twitter that this is not a pie, however much pubs might try to serve it as one.)
Of course, in the UK July 22nd is 22/7, just as today is 14/3, so it doesn’t exactly work in the first place.
@Shrug: “Dr. Frank saves Robert by a transfusion of the mongoose’s blood…”
Did the mongoose survive? There can’t be much blood in mongeese, you know, and after saving young Bob from the cobra, it would be a shame to lose the critter.
@Ukulele Ike: I thought that was a pretty good story. I didn’t mind the supernatural violence, given these are supernatural characters, one of whom has a return address in Hell. But even then, the prattling prince and his aide were insufferable clues of what was to come.
Love Is-That special someone who fills your holes.
Pibgorn: World’s worst yeast infection.
@Rube:
The 1990s’ Archie television retrospective was a Big Ethel revenge melodrama: she had matured into a bombshell vamp that no one recognized.
@The Scudder Knows: #105: I remember when Snuffy giving up moonshining was big news. What they didn’t tell us was he gave it up because there was no longer any money it (all of those dry counties in the South finally went wet) and switched to brewing meth instead.
@cheech wizard:
Pibgorn origins: cyanobacterial impetigo. Don’t fuck in the lake, kids.
@Poteet:
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? – T.S. Eliot
April is the cruelest month,
When Spring comes to Cavelton. – C.E.S.
@Poteet: Thank you, Ms Poteet, for that field report update on the Brown … Bird family! I’m sorry to say they didn’t get a call back for a second appearance in Judge Parker. After they went to all that trouble to relocate….
I gotta say, they feel like they were a little “used” by the JP management – just a one-day distraction from the malarkey to symbolize the “passage of time.” But those chicks were such an audience favorite that we’re lobbying for an encore, maybe when they need filler in the Sunday throwaway panels as “summer comes to Cavelton”…. They grow up so fast.
What is going with GoComics? The first comic that appears when you click on one is yesterday’s.
@gardenornament: You should read the archives, because Josh did an EPIC rant about this obnoxiously common attribute.
FC: Am I still sexy? Well, honey, the nice man who owns the topless bar in town who wants to hire me thinks so.
FC: Thel whips off her top and smothers Billy between her puppies. “Is this sexy enough, you little shit?
FC: Go ahead, Thel. Just dump that bowl of splak you’re mixing right on Billy’s head.
FC-“I used to be a stand in for Veronica Lodge over in ‘Archie’ what does that tell you.”
@Liam: Daylight savings time.
@Uncle Lumpy: #121: I actually had a co-worker who lived that high school reunion revenge fantasy. As a teenager she was very obese and had no social life to speak of. In the intervening ten years she hit the gym and started eating right so that by the time of her reunion she was quite hot-looking. For the reunion she wore a skin tight halter top gown with a thigh high side slit. Guys that wouldn’t give her the time in high school were crawling over each other to get to know her.
@Ukulele Ike:
” What happened to last week’s narrative, about Slut Friend cheating on her latest boyfriend with the rich handsome French executive from France? Down the memory-hole?”
It seems so. That plotline was just left hanging in mid-air. I hope the writer will return to it.
”So we can bitch about the helpful salespeople this week?”
Overly helpful salespeople can be annoying, but comic creators thinking that sniping at them is funny are even more annoying.
@gardenornament: Next week: Slut Friend and Black Friend go to a store and are furious when no one waits on them.
@Guillermo el chiclero:
” FC: Go ahead, Thel. Just dump that bowl of splak you’re mixing right on Billy’s head.”
Thel is too understanding a mother to do that. She knows Billy is too young to know the meaning of sexy.
That won’t stop her from crying inside and seeking comfort in the ”mom bottle” in the top cupviard, of course.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Cookie is Dagwood’s daughter. Lou is the diner guy.
FC: After the kids have gone to bed, Thel thinks of her lost youth. “But I’m still sexy,” she thinks. “I’ll show them that I’ve still got it! Tomorrow, I’ll dress to kill – miniskirt, fishnets, a tight top without a bra, the works.”
Then she remembers her position as a role model, the perfect mother, a church-going pillar of society. “What will people say? And what will Bil’s mother say? She’ll force him to divorce me.”
She sighs, knowing that her days of dressing sexy are long gone. “I need a drink. A stiff one. I hope Bil hasn’t discovered that bottle in the cupboard…”
@Rube:
“Next week: Slut Friend and Black Friend go to a store and are furious when no one waits on them.”
That sounds like an Dustin strip. Maybe there will be a cross-over? Like one of the Friends gets in legal trouble and hires Ed as her lawyer. Hilarity ensues.
@gardenornament: “You dumb fat fuck! I retained you to represent me in a small claims court action! How did I end up with a 20 year prison sentence!”
MW: Hmm. Am I supposed to find Estelle absolutely loathsome?
@Noel:
No, that’s Lillian. Estelle is the future hag. Common mistake.
@gardenornament: Later after three neat shots of brandy, Thel wondered, once again, where the missing ‘L’ had gone. “I married I guy named Bil. B . . . I . . . L. Where’s the other ‘L?’ What the H . . . E . . . L?” From his cold bed, Bil could hear her giggle.
@Voshkod:
After yet another shot of brandy, Thel stumbled into the bedroom, giggling. ”I’m shtill shexy! Damn shexy! Take me, Tiger without an L!” and collapsed on the floor, unconscious.
”Not again,” Bil thought. ”Maybe Mother was right about Thel after all.”
@Voshkod: “Thel wondered, once again, where the missing ‘L’ had gone.”
The L was there all along. Just ask Thel.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: True; Thel took the L when she married Bil.
@Voshkod:
” True; Thel took the L when she married Bil.”
So before they got married, they were Bill and The?
@gardenornament: Let’s just say they weren’t Bilw and Thel.
Phantom:
Kit: How come she takes you seriously? She never takes me seriously!
Babudan: I threatened her with the death of the guy she doesn’t have to take seriously!
@Voshkod:
”Thel took the L when she married Bil.”
I guess people always say that when a bombshell like Thel marries a boring-looking guy like Bil, but sje must have seen something special in him. Too bad the comic doesn’t show that.
BB: While I’m not a user of food delivery apps myself I’d be somewhat surprised if I buzzed three of them and they all came equipped like ballpark hotdog vendors.
Blondie: Dagwood and Lou only need one game in their lives and that’s Food Poisoning Russian Roulette.
FC – Ah, Billy has moved out of the oedipal phase and into the menacing phase.
DtM – Ah, Dennis has moved out of the menacing phase and into the phase where you invite all your friends to your birthday party. I don’t know what you’d call that besides properly socialized. Alice apparently misses the days when he was an antagonistic little asshole no one wanted to be around.
6C – Today we learn why Xunise is so dysphoric. She’s a great horned owl trapped in a woman’s body. That’s why she can turn her head like that.
C-Shaft: On balance it’s better for Crankshaft to mangle the lyrics than sing about a teenage girl.
Dustin: It will be grimly funny—or perhaps just regular funny—if Ed brushes his teeth before going to the Cheesecake Factory bash and gets shot on suspicion of having advanced rabies.
FC: No, Jef Keane, this one is not so nice you had to run it twice.
Luann: The Evansii have lost interest in Piro already, which is understandable. A weird side-effect is that they’ve remembered the whole Bernice/Nil/muse thing, which is not appreciably better.
MT: When you see him thinking disparagement about a guy with “an itchy trigger fist” you just want to scream “Who are you and what have you done with the real Mark Trail?”
Phantom: There are no editor’s notes in today’s strip about anything being “in the Bandar tongue” so I choose to believe the asterisks mean that both the Phantom and Babudan are finishing all their sentences with “asshole.”
Pibgorn: So Luda’s got green scales on at least one leg now? I guess we’ll start to hear an explanation for that one sometime in June.
RMMD: Hank Sr. has been buried alive once and isn’t eager to relive the experience. The things that a horror comics artist does for research!
@gardenornament: I think it’s such a common trope that people barely comment on it anymore.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: “Pibgorn: So Luda’s got green scales on at least one leg now? I guess we’ll start to hear an explanation for that one sometime in June.”
She seems to have come down with a touch of that gangrene that’s been going around. So, her superpowers so far are pyrokinesis and suppurating flesh wounds. It’s not much of an origin story to this point, but maybe it will improve over the next dozen or so installments, if the heat death of the Earth via Solar expansion doesn’t come first.
@TheDiva: I don’t know if they still do it, but the best thing I remember about Cheesecake Factory’s menu is how they had this selection of 300-500 calorie entrees you could order and feel less guilty about your 1200 calorie cheesecake slice.
@MKay: Sarah is too young to know that a curmudgeon is funny until you have to live with one.
Hey!
@richardf8: I don’t think Bianca was drawing herself today. Unless she’s gone blonde.
@gardenornament: Bil had a TERRIFIC sense of humor. He had to concentrate to not get any of it into his daily comic.
@Josh: Hey, yourself!
@Ukulele Ike: I suspect either pumpkin guts or peroxide was involved.
The Familliar Mucus: Billy discovers he’s a furry when a classmate draws Thel as a “sexy kangaroo” and Billy doesn’t know how to react.
@Baja Gaijin: “Toxic megacolon” is either going to be my new band name or my new go-to insult.