Mostly thowaways
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Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/28/24
Remember the “30-50 feral hogs” guys? He briefly amused Twitter in 2019 when he demanded to know how he could protect his children from the aforementioned quantity of swine if he didn’t have access to an automatic weapon for personal use, but then we all learned that feral hogs are a real problem and that he might’ve had a point. Today we find out that the bears are learning to use the feral hogs as weapons, which shows that our whole reliance on firearms is obsolete. Only a good guy with a feral hog can stop a bad guy with a feral hog! (The bad guy is a bear in this scenario.)
Panel from Dennis the Menace, 4/28/24
Hey, kids, did you know that the “Diners Club” card was the very first credit card? No, of course not, because you’re not a million years old and Diners Club was long ago outcompeted into a tiny niche by Visa and Mastercard. Today’s Dennis the Menace (the joke is about going out to dinner, don’t worry about it) is the beginning of a great new partnership, which will help educate children and young people about the Diners Club brand! Money well spent, I say.
Mary Worth, 4/28/24
Mostly I wanted to show you today’s Mary Worth throwaway panels so you could see Iris with heart eyes, inflamed with lust by Wilbur’s display of casual violence. But as part of my duty of keeping you up to date on the comics, I must also point out that Wilbur actually saved that old man from a careening car rather than hurling him into its path. Wilbur just keeps winning! I personally am not a fan.
234 replies to “Mostly thowaways”
Wilbur daydreams that the Rogaine® is working.
MW:
[A plaintive Wilbur sings to himself as he ambles distractedly down the street]:
Hello, snarkness, my old friend
I’ve come to hawk miscues again
Because derision, crossly seeping,
Left its seeds while I was bleeping
And misgivin’ that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sounds of violence (SCREECHHH! KRRUNCH!)
In senseless schemes, I walked, a drone
Narrow streets of Charterstone
‘Neath the “Hey, schmo!” of a street tramp
I turned my collar to the trolls encamped
When my eyes were grabbed by the crash of plebeian sights
It split the site
And touched the bounds of violence
And in the faked-up blight I saw
Ten drowsin’ people, maybe more
People walking without speaking
People sneering without listening
People citing wrongs that voices never shared —
No one there
Perturbed the sounds of violence
“Fools,” said I, “you do not know —
Violence, like my pants, will grow
Hear my words that I might leach you
Take my smarm that I might screech, too”
But my words, like violent brain flops, fell
And echoed in the swells of violence
And the people bowed and swayed
To plebeian odds they’d made
And my whine flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And my whine said, “The words that ya scoff at are written on the schlub-made walls
And sentiment stalls
And blisters in the sounds
Of violence”
MW: In the Maryverse, the role of god is that of an enabler.
BGSS: I’m sure that “Ol’ Snort” is part of deep Snuffy lore, but honestly, on first read I thought that Jughaid was asking his uncle if he feared bears more than cocaine addiction.
MW: Oh, I get it! Wilbur wishes he was a hero, when in fact he already is one, what with him saving the young and elderly alike from certain death on what must be the most dangerous city road in California. Except…shouldn’t heroes generally be aware of the danger they’re putting themselves in? Isn’t that disregard for your own safety to save another what makes you a hero, regardless of if you consider yourself one? All due respect to Mr Shusterman, I think a hero should rise about the level of a real-life Mr Magoo.
MW: Next in the fantasy Wilburman gains a new nemesis when the World Wildfire Fund criticizes him for attacking an endangered species.
FC: An exasperated Dolly tries once again to explain the emancipation petition to her disinterested father.
“Dammit, Daddy! I’m the party of the first part!”
Snuffy Smith: Ah, Hootin’ Holler — it’s a town so backward that human beings are about 15th on the food chain.
Dennis the Menace: Dennis hates his mom’s cooking so much that he’d rather eat in a restaurant that only serves fish. And not just deep-fried fish, like Red Lobster before the health nuts got to it. Still, his dad is pretty darn mad that he ignored his $24 piece of grilled salmon and spent the entire night dunking French fries into tartar sauce.
Mary Worth: Many commenters have complained about the old-timey metal garbage cans that apparently dot the urban sidewalks of Santa Royale. And they are pretty unrealistic — but on the other hand, you don’t get the same satisfying “Krrunch!” sound when a car runs into a California-friendly trash bin made of high-density polyethylene and merely pushes it closer to the recycling bin and organic-waste compost bin.
Slylock Fox: As a result of Slylock’s “melted ice” plan, a layer of moisture remained between the statue and base that eventually caused a moldy smell to permeate the entire town square. Luckily, it’s a town full of giant animals, which means that’s hardly the worst smell they deal with on a daily basis.
MW-I seriously doubt that man can still be alive. Look at the angles. His are clearly underneath the car and should have been crushed.
MW-The car just happens to leap over the old man.
FC-“Extremely dry” You would be too raising these four kids.
@pugfuggly:
Re MW, I’m thinking Eli from Last of the Summer Wine.
MW: Wait, didn’t the car run up on the curb to AVOID the man? In any event, pushing people into the street is a piss-poor superpower. “Oh, look! It’s The Jostler! Save me!”
BG&SS: Because the bear is just #@!!% tired of Snuffy siphoning from his still.
MW: But wait, wouldn’t the car not have swerved onto the pavement if Wilbur hadn’t pushed the man into the street, making the whole thing a wash?
MW: The car clearly wouldn’t have had to swerve onto the sidewalk if the old guy hadn’t fallen into the road in the first place. Causing a accident that by some miracle didn’t kill anyone (I think? Has anyone checked the driver is OK after totalling their car against a wall?) – that’s about Wilbur’s level of heroism.
MW: This is next-level male bovine excrement. In reality, the reason that car hit the trash can would have been as a result of swerving to avoid hitting the old guy who Wilbur knocked into the street. In fact, IIRC, in the last strip the car was headed straight for the old man, which makes this an especially egregious case of informed heroism.
Does Moy just have a thing for schlubby incompetent guys with combovers?
I’m old enough to remember Carte Blanche, another pre-Visa credit card. Well, I actually remember a Krazy Kat animated cartoon where she used Cat Blanche. I had to have my mom explain it to me.
“This is what having imagination is like, right?” -Karen Moy, professional writer. (It just amuses me Wilbur has a vivid, persistent wish fulfillment daydream that occupies his mind to the point of making him a danger to himself and others while at the same time being present enough to pity himself for his habitual radical self-involvement that makes him so unheroic.)
@LBSC: In reality, you would be correct. In the reality constructed in the caption boxes, the car was apparently swerving all over the road previously, and so Wilbur is accidentally heroic because in his utter carelessness he pushed the old man into the street and out of the path of the improbably-careening car.
Combined with Wilbur’s utter contempt for Zak, who while not the brightest bulb has shown himself to be a far better man than him, I find this scenario either infuriating, nauseating, or both.
BG and SS:
“Dang them undistributed middles!”
Mary Worth: I believe it’s more logical to conclude that the car veered off course because the driver was trying to avoid hitting the man who was pushed into the street, mainly because bad things are usually Wilbur’s fault.
MW: is KM actually trying to sell the message that a fat, delusional garden gnome becomes a hero by bumping into people in a fantasy fueled rage?
RMMD: Michael wanders off and gets himself accidentally locked in a kennel. Vet tech Kristi enters carrying a 12 gauge shotgun.
“Well, well, what do we have here? Heh, heh.”
Hogs don’t kill people. Bears with hogs kill people. The 2nd amendment in Appalachia reads a little differently. The right to bear hogs?
Iris: It’s not just her name, it’s her superpower! Just wait ’til she shows Wilbur her tiny daggers!
That car is destroyed by the garbage can it hit. What the hell was in it?
MW: I… what? But the car… it swerved to avoid this exact… what is happening? Unless… no. No, it can’t be. Has Mary finally done it? Has she assumed direct control over the text boxes to deliver authorial endorsement of Wilbur’s endearing quirks?
RMMD: Remember how Candy just vomited up an entire baking pan’s worth of stomach contents? Terry Beatty doesn’t! So here’s Sarah, cheerfully letting the dog lick her face! It’s so cute I could just retch!
DT: It sure is lucky that some dealership replaced Batman’s forward-firing anti-tank rockets with vertical-launching fireworks. Would have been a shame if B.O. Plenty was just screwing around with things he didn’t understand and blew up the frigging police station.
Luann: We joke about these characters being shameless assholes, but now Luann even has self-recriminating tantrums when she accidentally extends simple courtesy to another human being. No Bernice, though. She’d never make such an amateur mistake.
JP: …Mother of God.
The car isn’t ‘careening’ – that would mean it was turned over on its side so that barnacles could be scraped off.
The word you’re looking for is ‘careering’ (swerving around in an unpredictable way) or ‘caroming’ (ricocheting off things at speed).
Yes, this is what passes for my berserk button.
MW: I want to see a mashup of Wilbur pushing Pavel’s kid out of the house.
JP: There is still an 83% chance of them still being alive. It’s Ces.
@Tedious Dullington:
Given that this is Mary Worth, can we be entirely sure about the barnacles?
JP: Right. So I’ve got a few tiny issues with this. Let’s just start with the biggest one.
Why in the goddamned hell did Helena even go to Pavel’s compound?!
She didn’t do anything! At all! In fact, her presence only made things significantly more complicated! Without her there, Rurik is free to plant the explosives and blow the place whenever convenient! Did she just want to die? Was it that important to her to deliver this incredibly lame one-liner? What was the point of this dumbass stunt? (Not that Mrs. Palpatine’s demise is even believable, anyway. Helena’s body will not be found and her status will remain deliberately ambiguous until Francesco Marciuliano runs out of ideas and decides to bring her back.)
Speaking of people not doing anything, where are the fucking protagonists? Why is it always these side characters and one-offs who end up doing all the work? It’s not as though any of us were expecting anything from Randy, but where is April? This story was all about her at the beginning, setting up her frustration with domestic life and personal stakes in dealing with Pavel, then Helena showed up and April just vanished! Did she know her fuckhead mom was going to kill herself like this? Why did we not see this conversation? And you know what? Fuck Randy, too. Yes, he’s a worthless dipshit, but he’s still supposed to be a judge and a husband and a serial victim of these cloak-and-dagger schemes, so you’d think he’d have some input to add to this discussion as well. But no, as always the protagonists just made a bunch of pointless mouth noises until someone else showed up to fix all their problems. Every goddamned time. The closest thing we’ve recently had to a main character doing something proactive was Alan harassing diner customers every day about his stupid daughter. Before that… Sam catching a ride to Judge Duncan’s lake house, maybe? And even then it was Gloria in the literal and figurative driver’s seat. Why does this keep happening?
And Rurik? Who the shit even is Rurik? He’s single-handedly determining the conclusion of the story through actions with staggering character implications, but he’s functionally existed in this universe for all of about five frigging minutes. Remember Lev? Actually competent and responsible, had an established caring bond with Alina, introduced at a time when the loyalty of Pavel’s henchmen was questionable? Why not him, if anyone? Not that this traitor concept works for anyone given this lazy level of development. How did Rurik end up connected with Helena? Why was Rurik ready and willing to murder all of his friends and colleagues, people who trusted him and would have put their lives on the line for him? How did he get these explosives and plant them around the compound so extensively? Why does he care about Alina? How does he think he will get away with this? Does he not have family and friends back home who will be the target of reprisals by this worldwide criminal enterprise? If we’re lucky, we might get an answer to one of these questions, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for even that much; indeed, I’m pretty sure this story is going to treat Pavel’s organization as though it has been completely destroyed now, so it’s all over and just stop thinking about it.
Speaking of Alina, it was pure chance that she barged into Pavel’s office. That couldn’t have been the plan, so how was it supposed to play out? Was Rurik going to grab Alina from her bedroom or the living room on no pretext? How was he even able to get her out of the house? Remember Alina’s abduction a few months ago? You know, that little thing that started this whole idiotic Pavel plot? You’d think Pavel would have precautions in place after that to make sure nobody stole his daughter again, especially after he started hemorrhaging funds after his victory in getting the arms business data was retconned into losing all of his money. But fuck it! Francesco Marciuliano doesn’t give a shit about most minor characters’ lives, but Alina is a named child, so the evil little shit needed to be deus ex machina’d to safety no matter how implausible it was.
Can’t wait to see how the epilogue spins this nonsense even further. But for now, celebrate the Parker family’s latest amazing victory.
DtM: Not sure what Martha’d be putting in her wicker basket while gardening that requires the use of a hand spade. I doubt she’s digging up truffles. Grubs and earthworms as a protein supplement? That might explain Wilson’s crabbiness.
MW — This makes about as much sense as a bear carrying a feral hog. . .
BGSS: That bear confused “javelin” with “javelina” (the words have different linguistic roots, but you can’t expect a bear to know that), and then compounded the error by picking up a boar.
MW: The illustration clearly shows someone losing control of their car attempting to avoid hitting the old man. Wilbur is responsible for that damage.
This reminds me of the time a friend and I were walking down a sidewalk in Coral Gables and noticed a car jumping the curb a few feet behind us after it had jumped the curb. Before we could quite recover from the shock of avoiding injuries, the driver of the car, some kind of Oldsmobilish boat car, backed into the street and kept going on their way.
If I were Judge Parker and saw jroggs coming, I would quickly disguise myself as Reply All.
Luann: A better joke might have been Luann saying “Thank you” and the cashier handing her change and saying “You’re welcome.” Luann then bitching “how am I ‘Welcome?’ It’s my money….”
Eh, maybe a little too subtle for the audience. Let’s go with bashing Starbucks.
MW: Monday: While daydreaming, Wilbur shoves an old woman and her walker under the wheels of an oncoming vehicle. Tuesday: The vehicle that ran over the old woman was an ambulance. Thank God Wilbur got this woman to an ambulance! What a hero!
Mary Worth: Are you telling me that car swerved apropos of nothing rather than swerving to avoid the man who was abruptly shoved into its path?
MW: So we’re rewarding Wilbur for being a boorish oaf knocking down children and the elderly but because they don’t get hit by cars, he’s going to be seen as a hero. Another one of his “endearing quirks” in action along with animal abuse and public intoxication. If he takes candy from a baby, he’ll probably get a medal for preventing cavities.
MW: In the continuing adventures of Wilburman: Wilbur drop kicks a baby out a window. There was a spider on the windowsill. The baby lies broken on the ground below, thinking “Wow! He saved me from that spider!” Wilbur makes good on his threat to strangle Libby but stops just before she dies. What a hero, saving her from choking! Wilbur stabs a man repeatedly in the abdomen while acting out a gorilla battle. The attending ER surgeons find a mass in the man’s intestines, which would not have been discovered if not for Wilbur!
Frazz: Now Mrs. Olsen is going to have to endure digressions about carries, kills, and hairpin net shots.
Luann: Christ, what an asshole. Anyway, I’m sure Karen Evans is a delightful person to deal with as a service worker.
CS: Lillian invited Dinkle back because she couldn’t get enough of that sweet, sweet ass. She’d better get it in while she can, since Dinkle is going to prison for fraud, I guess?
MW: Musk’s latest self-driving car still can’t successfully hone in on Wilbur.
MW: Loath as I am to contribute to the over saturation of the term “gaslighting,” I can’t think of a better word for what Moy is doing today. That car clearly jumped the curb trying to avoid the old man in the road, but we’re supposed to believe it was headed for the sidewalk all along and if not for Wilbur’s heroic shove which left the man immobile on the ground for multiple strips, he definitely still would have been standing right there at the point of impact instead of just walking along going about his life. What’s that line from Chicago? “What are you gonna believe, what you see or what I tell you?”
MW: And the driver of that car? Sergeant Frank Drebin.
DtM: If Dennis is stealing 50-year-old jokes from Art Spiegelman, he’s more of a menace than I thought.
(Of course, the joke was at least 50 years old when Spiegelman stole it in 1973, but in his case it’s HOMAGE.)
9CL: Yay, the Overlook Twins are getting fucked up advice on relationships from their narcissistic Mummy!
“Mam, sut ydych chi’n gwybod pan fyddwch chi wedi dod yn fenyw?”
“Mae’n pan fydd y bachgen yn stopio gweiddi “Ew, gros” pan fyddwch yn cusanu ef.”
“Dyna’r moesau sylfaenol, ond mae’n anodd iddyn nhw.”
“Ai dyna pan ddaw yn ddyn?”
“Na, bachgen yw e. Nid yw’n dod o hyd i ferched gros mwyach.”
“Pa bryd y daw yn ddyn ?”
“Nid yw hynny byth yn digwydd mewn gwirionedd. Ond mae’n mwynhau’r cusan.”
“Mae’n aml yn cael ei gamgymryd am ddyndod, ynghyd ag atgyweirio ceir.”
“Beth yw’r gyfrinach o ddod yn fenyw?”
“Ar ôl iddo cusanu chi, ac mae’n ei sawru, ac mae’n dweud “Rwy’n caru chi,” ac mae’n ei ailadrodd heb adael nac yn rhwystr am weddill ei oes.”
“Wedyn beth?”
“Rydych chi’n cael dweud, “Ew, gro-o-o-oss,” a’r cyfan mae’n ei wneud yw eich caru chi’n fwy.”
Zits: Jeremy and Sara are walking along the Slip-n-Slide. I hope Wilbur comes along to knock them out of the way.
FC: Let me just express my appreciation that Dolly, not Jeffy, was the example child for “windy.”
MW – Sure, let’s pretend Wilbur is the hero in this situation! As the narration box daydreams…
Snuffy – I thought the answer was going to be “A bear drunk on Ol’ Snort!”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don Abundio brought his pogo stick to the office today”
“So he can peek over the cubicle walls?”
“No…”
“So he can tell employees they’re getting bounced”
“Exit, pursued by a bear”. I did not expect to see Shakespeare on the funnies page and certainly I did not expect to see him on “Barney Google and Snuffy Smith”!
Luann – This reminds me of something I heard in Toastmasters during the 30+ years I was in it: never end your speech with “Thank you.” I agree in the sense that a speaker should have a better ending, one that makes clear that the speech is finished rather than the, “Uh, I’m done but no one knows it, so I’ll just say “Thank you” to let them know I’m done.”
However, the rationale behind not saying Thank You is that you, as the speaker, are the giver. The audience is the taker. By their applause, they are thanking you. Since you were the giver, you should not thank them.
How arrogant. The audience gives with its time and attention. There is nothing wrong with a speaker indicating appreciation for that.
Leave it to the Evansi to illustrate that arrogance in comic-strip form.
Snuffy is usually such an enthusiastic supporter of the constitutional right to bear arms, but he’s a hypocrite, because he opposes the right to arm bears!
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I thought the best phrase to conclude a speech was, “Please clap.”
MW: Let’s say that Wilbur is legitimately a superhero, but his power only activates when he is daydreaming about winning back one of his exes. After five to ten more of these episodes at most, the daydreams will be too cringey even for him, and he will have to watch more and more people die because he’s no longer in denial.
I wonder who is Wilbur’s biggest enabler? Is it Mary Worth who constantly insists that he has “endearing quirks” and willingly gaslights women into staying with him? Or is it Karen Moy/the universe who just loves to make this self absorbed schmuck come out of literally every situation smelling like roses when he should be dead or learning some sort of hubris?
Moy really thinks that Wilbur is some sort of lovable oaf in the style of Homer Simpson. But in reality, he’s more like the worst qualities of George Costanza and Peter Griffin because even Homer has his limitations on how terrible his behavior is. After all, Homer has tried to commit suicide at the mere thought that he might have given his wife a black eye (which he didn’t). Meanwhile you have George being so frugal that he caused the death of his fiancée by buying envelopes with toxic glue for their wedding invitations and he treats the whole thing like a joke later on. And no need to mention Peter’s repeated abuse of literally everyone he knows for the sheer pleasure of his own amusement.
Wilbur is not a lovable loser. He’s a self absorbed, narcissistic manchild who only cares about himself and his current gratification. Is it any wonder why his own daughter (who has a lot of his negative traits) doesn’t see him as a supportive parent but rather a wallet and a place to live?
BG&SS – Ah, yes…the Hootin’ Hollar 2nd Amendment! The right to arm bears….
DtM – Great idea! A dead cockroach you can stick on your plate after you’ve eaten 3/4s of the meal! Don’t leave home without it….
MW – “Baal works in mysterious ways.” OJ Simpson
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Dennis Jimenez: “If the sandwich doesn’t fit, you might acquit.”
MW:
I see that Iris is a devotee of the shoegazer band My Bloody Valentine.
@Needless Exposition: *must, damn it.
The real heroes are the garbage-men of Santa Royale! That huge SUV was completely destroyed just by crashing into a garbage can, which to be that heavy I must assume is made of uranium!
@taig: One of my favorite parts of A League of Their Own (not the “No crying in baseball” – I hated that line) was Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan signing a ball for a couple of kids, who then look at the ball as say, “Wow. ‘Avoid the Clap. Jimmy Dugan.'”
JP: Relax, folks! Leonardo is OK! Ya see, they had a seven-minute delay between the first panel and the kaboom. Time to get Leo’s head back through the wall and get him outta there. Oh, Helena and Pavel left too – they’ll probably turn up again sometime. But I’m not sure Leo will get another gig here … I think they’re now suggesting that the explosive device was in his “roaring” mouth! Acting as a surveillance camera was just a red herring!
Oh, Melody – we saved the remaining containers of your Mane n’ Tail grooming products. I know that stuff is not inexpensive…
I have to say, that actually this Mary Worth storyline makes perfect sense. We have seen plenty of evidence that Wilbur is such a black hole of contemptible negativity that a merciful God would not allow to exist. The only way to justify his role in Creation is that he is a tool of divine providence
How stupid do the writers of MW think we are? Or can’t they draw? It’s obvious that the only reason the vehicle is careening that way is to avoid the bloke who has been pushed by hallucinating Wilbum into the street. The injuries and/or blood/deaths of the occupants of the vehicle are on Wilbum’s hands.
If the old guy who got pushed by Wilbum was a New Yorker, he’ll add “dumb $h!+” to “stupid @$$” and “÷[#*$k you” to complete the triple play.
Mary Worth: Coming up this week: Wilbur wanders through a political rally, past security, and shoves the governor out of the way of an assassin’s bullet; all of Santa Royale is abuzz about the identity of the mysterious stranger, wanting to find him to hang the “Stupid @$$” medal around his many chins.
MW – The narration box and I disagree as to what actually happened. NB says Wilbur saved the guy’s life. I say the car swerved to avoid hitting the guy because Wilbur pushed him into the street. There’s a fine line between heroism and involuntary manslaughter.
“I wish I was a hero” [Five minutes later] “I wish I had a hero… sandwich”
Wilbur’s heroism can only be accidental. If the victims he saved knew they had been saved by Wilbur’s erotic dreams, they would wish they were dead
You know, Jughaid, the fight with the boar could leave you with an injury to the knee that will allow you to be recognised when you returned home after twenty years. On the other hand, this only happens to heroes and what you are you? Nobody
The bizarre thing–well, ONE of the bizarre things–about Wilbur is that his imagination has gotten duller as his real life has gotten wilder. Remember when he pictured himself as the heroes of movies like The Matrix and Titanic? Sure, these were movies from the end of the last century, but at least that was a recent enough period to be part of Wilbur’s formative years: Plus, Titanic was once the highest-grossing film of all time and The Matrix was a cultural phenomenon that had a sequel just a few years ago. These aren’t your usual go-to references for the comics page, either!
At that point, Wilbur was mostly a guy who preyed on middle-aged ladies’ low expectations, a passable father, and a probably terrible advice columnist. But since surviving million-to-one odds after falling off an ocean liner, Wilbur has been appointed an agent of fate itself, preserving the lives of the young and old alike with no effort. His life story is, in its way, now as impressive as Neo’s.
But what fantasies preoccupy him while he’s deciding who lives and who dies? He imagines himself as a schlubby superhero in the mode of Adam West and Burt Ward’s Batman, which itself was a parody of the original superhero template from the 1930s and 1940s. There’s no CGI’d physique on Wilbur, no cinematic universe for him to be a part of…hell, he doesn’t even get a colorful villain-version of Zak to fight, something like “the Tech Bro” or “the Yak.” His superhero name is just “Wilburman”! It’s…it’s…it’s…just “Wilburman”!!
Before doing Mary Worth, Karen Moy worked on The Legion of Super-Heroes, so I refuse to believe she couldn’t do a more contemporary superhero fantasy if she wanted to. Wilbur’s lazy imagination is a choice.
“I’m sorry sir, but we don’t accept Diners Club or Amex. Don’t you have other credit cards?”
“No. I’ll just do without buying these condoms, what’s the worst it could happen?”
Dennis. Origins of a menace
Dick Tracy : … Remind me, is Batman real, or a fictional character, in the Tracyverse? Because I wanna know if B.O. Plenty just won a car that runs on an ATOMIC BATTERY or not. Because if he did, it would be bad for everyone involved (bad for B.O., because he can’t easily buy fuel for his new car, bad for everyone else, because B.O. Plenty now has access to a NUCLEAR DEVICE).
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Luann : gotta love the opinion this strip has of food service workers, you know, when 75 % of the cast works at running a restaurant.
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Mary Worth : the thing with this “Wilbur is an accidental hero while lost in his thoughts of how much he hates his exes’ new boyfriends” thing, is I dread that it’s going to go into the Rule of Three, meaning we have yet another week/vignette of this to go through, but I don’t know how they’d properly crescendo… How do you “top”
(bottom?)Wilbur demonising a guy who’s perfectly nice and respectful to him, equate being a hero with beating him up and stealing his girl, viciously shoving a random person while acting out the violent fantasy?DtM: I suppose most people nowadays know about the Diners, Club credit card from the 1963 Danny Kaye movie, but I know about it first-hand since in the 1980s I worked for a company that gave its employees a Diners’ Club card to use on business trips. I quickly found out that even by then the card had been so marginalized that most places didn’t accept it. The company that I worked for undoubtedly knew that too, but they were cheap.
Does anyone remember an episode of Johnny Bravo, where Johnny puts on a VR Helmet, and with the helmet on, he’s walking all through downtown causing chaos to everyone and everything, thinking he’s just fighting bad guys.
I thought to myself, “this episode is really stupid”
But after seeing today’s Mary Worth, I take it back!! That episode is pure GOLD compared to this dreck!
Also, to quote the Darth Vader parody in the episode’s VR simulation. “The idiocy is strong in this one.”
Anybody remember when Dawn was trying to seek out advice/comfort from her father because she was having relationship problems (i.e. she was scoping out other guys in front of her then boyfriend and practically grinding on them behind his back which made him quite upset)? Wilbur proceeded to commiserate about his failure of a love life and Dawn had a horrific nightmare that she was turning into her father. And apparently she’s still traumatized by it that she fled the state because her estranged mother is better than her neglectful oaf of a father.
MW: Wilbur is ecstatic when he finds that his actions have been captured on a doorbell camera and featured on the evening news. He’s not so happy when the newsman refers to him as Snacky Chan.
@Roscoe: lol
Snuffy Smith is a career criminal, so are we sure the bear is the bad guy?
***
I swear, if this is going to have the old man think Wilbur saved him from getting hit by that car on the sidewalk, the car that clearly careened off the road to avoid hitting the elderly gent If n, I’m sending dozens of feral hogs to the comic syndicate. If next week has Wilbur shoving an attractive middle-aged woman who thinks he saved her from being pulverized by a bus and falls in love with him as her hero, I’m going to give those feral hogs to bears. If Wilbur gets some sort of commendation from the city and praise from the media and the public, I’m going to give those bears kerosene and lighters too to set the hogs ablaze.
MW: how can anyone believe this repulsive troll has credibility as an advice columnist?
“No true hero ever believes that they are one” is indeed a quote from Neal Shusterman. A character says it in UnBound, book 4.5 of the Unwind dystology, which is a word I didn’t know before, probably because Shusterman made it up.
On Twitter I’m “Ork on the WAAAAGHpath“, so I know a fair bit about orks (not “orcs”, dammit, orks from Warhammer 40K) and one thing I do know is that orks often use squigs as extremely dangerous living weapons, so I wouldn’t laugh at a bear using a pig as a weapon either of I were you. 9
MW: Oscar joins Mr. Hooper on that great Sesame Street of gold in the sky.
9CL – Todayx Edda gives dating advice requested by her five (six? four?) year old children.
Edda has only ever been with one little boy her entire life and as a result her advice is somewhat sketchy. “Force yourself sexually on the child until he acquiesces and stops resisting” and “He will never mature and become a man” and “auto repair is for beefwits, real men call their wife to fix the car”.
Pick an orphan boy who lives in the sandbox, sexually assault him until he stops resisting, and then force him to do your bidding “without let or hindrance”, which is a saying real people used all the time back in 1938 or so, I presume.
Six Chex In Search Of A Punchline:”…and stop staring at my udders my eyes are UP HERE!”
@Aaron: Don’t worry, Oscar is three thousand miles away and sorely lamenting the waste of a perfectly good trash can.
TIL Josh is a Second Amendment guy. Who knew?
God, I’m sick of “Mary Worth Sundays” here.
JP Explained!: Rurik has been secretly in love with Alina for years, and plans to keep her chained up in his basement until she reaches marrying age.
There’s a big to-do on the interwebz where women say they’d rather find a bear in the woods than a man, because the bear wouldn’t sexually assault them and if they were attacked by a bear, people would believe them. I felt sure Snuffy was referencing this — yes, I know, I’m an eternal optimist.
@Peanut Gallery:
Did they actually have “cubical farms” in the 60s(?) when this was drawn, or did the artist just draw an office without a ceiling?
BLONDIE: I’ve never understood why people order food they could make for themselves at home quickly, to taste, and knowing it’s history.
DOONESBURY:. Not cool to make fun of therapists (what with reluctance to get treatment) or dementia (what with your and my conditions).
FRAZZ:. Agree totally with Caulfield. As humorist Garrison Keillor once opined, “People don’t read it [newspaper, internet] for the news but as a directory to the news. They then go and find out for themselves what the real story is.” I played badminton as a kid, no feathers involved.
JP:. As Gomer Pyle used to say, ” Surprise, surprise, surprise.”
FC – Most heartwarming tableau I’ve seen here in a long time: a mother keeping fluids just out of reach from severely dehydrated children.
MW: It looks more to me like the reason the car swerved onto the sidewalk in the first place was to avoid hitting the man. So really it’s less Wilbur saved him and more the driver did. But who am I to question the judgment of the omniscient narration box?
Also, what, is Wilbur going to keep pushing people out of the way of cars while lost in thought? At least mix up the scenario a bit. Maybe Wilbur could have pushed him out of the way of a falling AC unit.
Judge Packer: House go boom. Tomorrow, summer comes to Calverton. Next Fall Helena steps out of the woodwork during inane discussion between Randy and April; Randy rolls eyes, “Can no one rid me of this turbulent pest?” Helena grimises. So the world turns.
MW, Australian version: Wlillbutt Goes Walkabout.
@matt w: Oooh man, I read the first book in that series back in my youth librarian days. The concept is magnificently bizarre: the United States fights a civil war over abortion rights before coming up with the compromise that all pregnancies are required to be carried to term but children between the ages of 13 and 17 can be legally “unwound,” or disassembled for organs and other tissues. (Remember, this was during the post-Hunger Games YA dystopia boom, so the brunt of all societal ills inevitably fell on teenagers.) The concept doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny, but did serve as a backdrop to some pretty effective narrative.
Which prompts the question: would stripping Wilbur for parts benefit society in any way? On one hand, I can’t imagine you’d get much use out of them: his eyesight’s terrible, his heart and lungs have never done a hard day’s work in their lives, and his liver has been suggested to horrific abuse. On the other hand Wilbur would no longer exist, and Shusterman describes the unwinding process as a horrific nightmare which the subject is completely conscious for the whole time, so the idea of subjecting Wilbur to it feels very satisfying.
MW: And so, by pushing a man out of the way during his daydream, Wilburman saves the day!
…Even though the car likely crashed because it was swerving to avoid an innocent old man…
…who was pushed onto the road in the first place by Wilbur…
…And no indication on if the driver is okay…
…um…
…uh…cue the Wilburman theme!
https://youtu.be/HAChq41MUHU?si=1CO0ID-t5ypOzw1j
So Wilbur is supposed to be…George Bailey?
@Hibbleton: Luann: well, the strip IS written by someone named “Karen.”
@Roscoe:
Mayonaise Squad! In SPLAK!
Special Guest Star Matt Le Blanc (shown slumped over wrecked car’s steering wheel)
Tonight’s Episode: Sploof! goes the Weasel (titles show ‘Twas Wilbur Killed the Beast’)
Mary Worth: this story has really pissed me off. Look, Wilbur is a schlub, an oaf, a self-obsessed jerk, incapable of healthy relationships, and quite possibly an alcoholic. But he is NOT intellectually disabled, and this internal monologue is like something out of “Bill” (starring Mickey Rooney). It’s just bad writing, even by recent MW standards. I’d go back to “dogs are great” over this crap, at least then I’d just be bored instead of bored and offended.
And it’s worse because the CT story with Dawn could have been fun, depending on the setting. She could be in New Haven, eating apizza (as they call it), wandering around Yale, a romance with an Eli (and an argument with her mom), even a mugging! Mary’s been to NYC—Moy could even transport Mary out to visit, and she could take Metro North into NYC with Dawn and Dawn-mom for a girls’ day in the city.
So many options, and they chose this crap.
MW: Ugh, no, Karen. Mr. Shusterman isn’t saying “a true hero accidentally stumbles into doing heroic things without even being aware of it,” he’s saying “a true hero consciously does heroic things but does not recognize them as heroic because they’re acting out of a sense of compassion and justice, not out of an overinflated sense of ego.” Quit trying to pass off Wilbur’s self-absorbed rudeness as evidence of some deep inner nobility, you’re not fooling anyone and you’re just confirming that Wilbur has no genuine good qualities for you to write about.
MW: I have an ominous foreboding this is heading in the direction of peak Wilbur assholiness.
MW: BULLSHIT
BUULLSHIT
I’m generally annoyed by Mary Worth, but I’m genuinely angry. They know Wilbur is detested by a good chunk of readers, they triple down on his loathsome traits… but he gets rewarded, or at least not punished for being a loathesome sack of rancid mayo.
JP: Is Honey Ballinger’s father in the house again?
#100 Lazy. Please delete half your uuuuuuus. That long string has messed up the screens of our phones.
Thanks in advance.
Welp, this is unreadable even on a Kindle. Phones are totally fucked.
RIP Sequitur’s phone
RIP everyone’s phone
Santa Royale really shouldn’t have hired Jack Napier as traffic planner.
C’shaft: Harry’s making that Million Little Pieces guy sound like a reliable autobiographer.
JP: Really, Helen? That’s the line you want to go out on? What about, “And the final password is ‘see you in hell’,” or even just a simple “gotcha”? You might want to punch up your dialogue, just in case this gets retconned as you faking your death again.
Luann: “It’s bad enough we have to interact with minimum wage workers, do we have to show them basic civility as well?”
Mary Worth – Am I the only one who noticed the reference to the Alan Parson’s Project video for “Don’t Answer Me”? The protagonist’s girl is going out with a gorilla who he eventually punches to the moon very much like the panel, then he and the woman have googly heart eyes.
Arlo and Janis: Arlo is gonna fuck Janis al fresco in the backyard (if not the backdoor).
Mary Worth: Okay, I call bullshit. The car was very blatantly only swerving BECAUSE the old man fell in the road. It was not oncoming when Wilbur shoved the guy. Even if it were… I mean, c’mon. Wilbur’s new gimmick is nobly saving people’s lives by rudely bashing them out of his way during a hallucinatory manic episode and being so self-absorbed with his creepy fantasies that he never realizes it? Even for this comic, this is just sad.
Jeez, even the TruFans are calling out Luann’s attitude.
Mary Worth Mashups: I reworked the today’s strip a little. You like?
@brendancalling: As long as it’s not al dente.
@Baja Gaijin: I like the old man being pushed into the car’s path. I also enjoy the explosive finale.
FC – Billy gets “foggy,” but Jeffy is dense fog.
Weather for HTT Grandma – frigid with occasional bluster.
9CL – Uh, no. There’s a short cartoon from Disney, made around the 1950s,
that explains it pretty well. It was a staple of health classes in the 1960s.
My Girl Scout troop saw it when I was in 5th grade.
It says a lot that Mummy is so narcissistic that she only thinks about how it
means that boys will become attracted to her.
@Baja Gaijin: Your edits are already proving that you have better writing and comedic timing than not only Moy but literally every other soapy comic writer combined. Well done!
@Ukranazi Stepan:
The Wizard of Oz novels, used the term “Ork” years before Warhammer or even Tolkien.
They were odd little bird creatures with propeller appendages that allowed them to fly. (I can’t remember if the propellers were on their heads or their behinds though)
@TheDiva:
In turn, I remember George Lucas saying that “The Best Villains are ones that don’t see themselves as villains”
Yeah, because Darth Vader with his “JOIN THE DARK SIDE!!” totally didn’t see himself as evil…
Unless Lucas doesn’t see his own villains as very good.
Luann You asked them to do something for you. They did it. You acknowledge it. That is why you say “thank you.” Dumb@$$.
@I speak Jive: If you’re talking about the famous Disney Menstruation Cartoon, I watched it on YouTube recently. I had had no idea it existed! Loved how the girls on the verge of “womanhood” (“tall and short, fat and thin!”) were all drawn like gorgeous Hollywood starlets. I’ll bet THAT really built up the bloated little preteens’ self esteem.
I somehow misread “automatic weapon” as “aromatic weapon”. I think I prefer my initial reading: “how he could protect his children from the aforementioned quantity of swine if he didn’t have access to an aromatic weapon for personal use”.
MW (via Ruben Bollings): “Lucky Ducky!”
@Garrison Skunk: Office cubicles were indeed introduced in the 1960s, and apparently they caught on quickly.
I inserted some carriage returns in #100; would someone with a phone please tell me if it’s enough?
…aaaaaaaand Josh is also on the case; never mind!
[Resists temptation to add four lines of “aaaa” to aaaaaaaand.]
I’m disturbed by the way the I in “Dennis the Menace” is dotted with a tiny version of the titular character. It’s barely formed, just a few crude lines suggesting a blankly smiling face with a hint of cowlick. Yet it’s self-contained, like a viral particle carrying the essence of Dennis-ness. Is each particle capable of replicating the whole? Has this “Dennis,” which first found eternal existence by transferring itself to new artists, at last found a new way to propagate? It’s beyond Menacing, frankly.
@Keep scrolling: The right to bear hogs?
Close. The right to boar hogs.
Random thought. The point of Wilbur is he’s supposed to be rage bait for the readers. Moy has said she likes to write him infuriating and controversial to capture the readers’ attention, which, I guess you can’t argue with results. But it’s like she thinks having the universe randomly reward him for being awful makes the “character” less likeable. “Look at this chump treating people like props in his personal drama and getting away with it through no effort of his own, isn’t he the worst?” says the person who decides to let him get away with it for the fiftieth time. No doubt, unless he actually gets a medal for his heroic actions today but people take issue with him causing traffic accidents, Moy’s author avatar character will once again forgive him on behalf of the other characters and explain to them he needs them in his life in order to learn to better himself.
@Joshua K.: Artist George Tooker invented the office cubicle in 1966!
MW: You know who’s the real hero? The driver of the SUV, who swerved just in time to avoid hitting that helpless old man!
MARY WORTH: I actually like this strip because now I can just repost yesterday’s script to brag about my mad clairvoyance skills (for predicting trite, hackneyed plot twist.
(Fire up the ol’ Delorean to travel to the faraway time of “yesterday):
MW: The owner of that garbage can surveys the scene and thinks, “I guess I shouldn’t have filled that can with those bowling balls with depleted uranium cores.”
I’m sorry, I refuse to believe that that car was headed for that trash can before it had swerve around an old man being flung it its path. Honestly it’s hard to believe there was ever any danger at all when the driver has had the better part of a week to react.
FG: Looking at that Ice Giantess she-hulk, that royal ancestor of Queen Fria who schtuped one must’ve had balls of steel and a titanium dick.
Mary Worth: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Socrates
Isn’t that a better quote to hang in the first panel? Wilbur merely floats through life, not really living it, oblivious to anything that doesn’t cater to his own selfish wants of the moment.
Here, I’ll go ahead and say it: Wilbur is not admirable. Fight me.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Whoa. I was so distracted by Korro’s incessant whining that my eyes just shot over that panel, assuming it was a guy. That’s a pair of arms even Michelle Obama would be envious of.
I’m finally looking at this site today and it seems I missed some of the fun with an anti-phone entry.
Oddly enough, I’m looking at this on my laptop and not my phone.
@Davis:
So Wilbur is supposed to be…George Bailey?
______________________
“It’s A Wilbur-filled World”.
Tomorrow in Mary Worth: the old man runs up to Wilbur and plants a big wet kiss on his lips to show his gratitude. “You’re my @!#$%^&ing HERO, @$$Man!”
@Bob Tice: WOW. As someone who has had all the original lyrics embedded in my brain since high school, I am impressed.
Dustin: Maybe the big black eye by way of the school bully may have seemed comical back when “The Little Rascals” were filmed in the 1930s but as someone who has to deal with hovercraft parents on a regular basis (and special needs parents are the worst), today it would cause lawsuits and heated parent-teacher conferences with shrieking mommies. Inflicting an eye injury that severe, where the kid could’ve been easily blinded, would earn Big Ned a one-way trip to the same alternate school that Captain Butterknife over in Gil Thorp got sent to.
@138 The Breathtaking Bonehead Brothers:
Yeah, well kinda…
FG: No, Korro. The Dragonman doesn’t want your blood. He just wants to open up a can of whoop ass on you.
@Ukulele Ike: Yes, that’s the one! I didn’t know it’s on YouTube, although everything seems to end up there.
The leaders of my Girl Scout troop arranged to show it at a meeting and invited girls’ mothers to watch it with us. I’m thankful that they showed it, because I had no idea, and my mother sure wasn’t going to tell me about it.
This isn’t exactly a subject for polite company, but it’s what is usually meant by “becoming a woman.” It’s mind boggling that Edda didn’t give the little psychopaths some age appropriate information about their bodies changing. Instead she ties it to men becoming their thralls.
@Sequitur:
Yes, it was antiphonal.
LUANN: As a reminder, Luann’s parents run a bistro (diner? Coffee shop? Whatever, it’s someplace where they serve food and drinks) that’s supported by the work of underappreciated service workers (we just spent time with one of them last arc). Just something to keep in mind as you ponder the delightful working conditions that must make up the Fuze’s business philosophy.
LUANN (2): Comic Strip Editor: “Uh-oh someone accidentally sent us the Dustin script by mistake. (Sigh) Hell, I don’t know who this ‘Ed Kudrick’ is, but let’s just put his goobledy-gook in Luann’s speech bubbles anyway. I’m sure it’ll be fine. I late enough for my tee time as it is!”
DT: Okay, Crimestoppers Textbook, but if Dick had his way, he’d be allowed to arrest anyone who “thought like a burglar”.
Heath: Pug-tossing: the sweet spot between “surreal whimsy” and “this cat is just a complete asshole”.
MW: I would really like to believe at this point that Moy is in on the joke, somehow. The idea that she’s decided her primary audience is right here at the Comics Curmudgeon, and we pay more attention to the strip when we’re annoyed by unjustified praise of Wilbur, so she’s just going to ramp that up to even more absurd levels wouldn’t make this strip better, but would at least make it more explicable. I would also like to believe similar things about the increasingly nonsensical counterplots in Judge Parker, or Crankshaft doing an entire week about how very humble Tom Batiuk is regarding his genius. But I don’t. This is just what these comics are.
SFx: Quick tip for the crowd: don’t stand on the sunny side of the statue, because when the ice on that side starts to melt faster than the ice in shadow, you’ll be in front of a frictionless slope with a heavy statue on it. Slylock’s lousy grasp of physics won’t save you then!
Phantom: “I don’t understand, the audio link worked perfectly when Captain Weeks and I were here. I mean, the Unknown Commander left us hanging for a while to mess with us, but surely he wouldn’t do that again!”
PV: The Cat came back!! Yeah,
you thought she was a gonershe took a few weeks off but is now back to finish off bad guy Witgar! Her role didn’t end with leading the heroes to the Black Stone… Nosiree, she’s gonna be the ultimate protagonist in this drama! Wish I knew where she came from and how she knew all about the story before they sent out any casting calls…6Cx: The unexplored genre of Bovine romance! We’re used to seeing these two do either stand-up or pasture crowd scenes, but we now see their sensitivity and depth on display as they share a tender moment! Plus a nod to their nursery rhyme heritage! Definitely a moooooving performance!
@Sequitur: Yeah, well kinda…
Interesting prediction. We’ll check back in a few days and see how close you came.
@148 The Breathtaking Bonehead Brothers:
That is no prediction, that IS tomorrow’s strip.
Mary Worth writers: remember in Calvin & Hobbes when Calvin would imagine himself as Spaceman Spiff or a dinosaur while actually just annoying his teacher or something? Let’s do that, except pathetic.
@jroggs: “Spring Comes to Cavelton….”
Prince Valiant – I love the artwork in this strip. So much action and attention to detail.
I also noticed that the cat is watching, stretched over three narrow panels. I hope that’s foreshadowing that he’s going to get involved in the fight.
Mary Worth – I don’t have an opinion on whether the car was going to hit that old geezer. I can’t get past Wilbur’s obsession with being a hero. It looks like he thinks that Estelle loves Dr. Ed because he’s a hero veterinarian, and that Iris thinks that Zak is a hero.* He doesn’t realize that they connected because the men are caring and treat the women with respect. “I want to be a hero!” is immature. A better goal would be thinking about how to become a more caring person. And Wilbur is alleged to be an advice columnist who guides people in their relationships.
Wilbur, the fact that you’re not a hero isn’t the reason nobody likes you. They don’t like you because you’re an asshole.
*Actually, Iris was the hero – she saved Zak when he almost plummeted over that waterfall.
MT: It’s great to see the invasive-exotic cheatgrass scourge getting attention. And if Mark’s advice to pull it out is being offered to people dealing with small backyard-type infestations, that’s also great, though apparently cheat may have to be pulled for several years.
However, a hundred million U.S. acres are now infested with cheatgrass. Diverse control methods are needed, and that includes herbicide. Also, native flowers should be planted as well as native grasses, and Mark is holding flowers himself. Those are pretty, Mark! What are they?
@I speak Jive: I heard about it on one of the lefty-pinko news sites I frequent. They were covering some red-state politicians who had voted to cancel such basic sex ed in the schools, and the article writer said, “Christ, just show ‘em the Disney Menstruation Cartoon. It does a better explanation than most human teachers!” And she provided the link.
(Didn’t want you thinking I regularly search for videos about “12-year-olds gooshing blood,” or “becoming a woman,” as Brooke puts it)
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: I hope you’re right about the cat.
By the way, nice job with Bizarro. Those Animals must have experience as artist’s models to be able to hold themselves so still.
@Uncle Lumpy: You must be familiar with the P.D.Q. Bach composition, Breakfast Antiphonies.
@Uncle Lumpy: It would work. That strip is unreadable.
PV: Yaaaaay Extended Foreground Cat! Woot woot! As always, PV art rocks!!
Also, the logo on Witgar’s chest means “I Am The Asshole.”
@Ukulele Ike: It didn’t occur to me to wonder why you watched it. I’m glad that those sites are aware of it. I think I saw it in health or gym class in junior high, too, but the showing at Girl Scouts is the one that’s burned into my brain.
MW: So, everything to do with Wilbur and the old man aside…did we just see someone die here? Because that car looks pretty destroyed, and they certainly didn’t put in any sounds or anything to suggest the driver is ok. Shoving the elderly is fine and all but the hero we really need right now is someone making a 911 call.
@brendancalling: @brendancalling:
#97. MW:. Let’s put things in perspective. Writers actually have been listening to us! We wanted a new character and they gave us the retired officer with autocratic personality.
We so tired of him some even begged for another Wilbur story. I guess we just can’t be pleased. With that, I sure hope Wilbur isn’t portayed as an accidental hero. He’s just self-absorbed. Like many of us. Perhaps that’s why we loathe ourselves, I mean him. Wilbur.
BULL. SHIT. Wilbur did not save that old man’s life. You can’t convince me that the car was going to plow into him if he was just walking down the street and Wilbur wasn’t there; if anything the car was swerving to avoid him and Wilbur killed someone else. Sorry Moy, you can’t convince me that Wilbur is anything other than a cancer to society (and the comics pages).
MW: Folks, it’s Show Biz 101… there’s no such thing as bad publicity! Gotta keep the clicks comin’ and outrage is the best motivator. Sure workin’ for ’em today…
No one needs to worry about your favorite Animal talent appearing during this Wilbur nonsense. The Ladies have agreed to our terms on that – especially for Willa and Stellan, Wilbur’s ostensible “Pets.” If it does *appear* that they are part of a scene, please know they are being replaced with special ops stunt doubles who are trained to handle all types of *situations*…
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!:Thanks for all the news! We count on you!
JP: Ye gods. I realize all the actors playing these characters are fine, including the child actress playing Alina, but this still seems mighty drastic. Couldn’t they have waited to blow up the house until the kid was a few dozen miles away? According to the Saturday strip, she was still where she could see the explosion.
@Sequitur: That is no prediction, that IS tomorrow’s strip.
Which part of the word Bonehead are you failing to understand?
@Poteet: I realize all the actors playing these characters are fine
Don’t be so cavalier. Stand-ins and stunt performers in the comic strips bear an unusually high risk of injury.
@I speak Jive: I saw it in fifth grade — all us girls and our mothers were invited to a special after-school showing. Afterward, I remember complaining to my mother as we walked out to the car that I knew menstruation was going to be worse than that dumb cartoon showed, and that reproduction should be an optional add-on anyway because some of us didn’t want kids. My poor mother put up with a lot from me.
@The Breathtaking Bonehead Brothers: The falling safes and grand pianos alone make those guys uninsurable.
MW: Several astute Mudges have observed that something bizarre would need to be in the metal garbage can for that can to destroy a car. Good point, and I am intrigued by whatever is sticking out of the can in Panel Four. I think it’s supposed to be just some generic disgusting substance that comes in three colors, but it seems more mysterious. And now it’s gone. For all we know, the can and/or the mysterious substance was frantically trying to attract the car in order to save the dude who was knocked down by Wilbur. If so, the self-sacrifice will probably never be noted.
@The Breathtaking Bonehead Brothers: Thank you, I needed that reminder. I appreciate their sacrifices.
@Poteet: A baguette and a bunch of celery?
@70 Anonymous: on Luann: 75% of the cast may work at the restaurant; Luann, her family members, and the bitchy leech in Brad’s old room feel themselves too good to work there.
@77 Professor Well Actually: On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog. At the Santa Royale Shopper, no one knows you’re a Wilbur.
@91 Unca Bob: on Judge Parker: Soooo, Helena becomes like Gerald in Sally Forth. Figures.
@I speak Jive: In Wilbur’s eyes, Iris can’t be a hero. She can only be a damsel in distress and obviously it wasn’t Wilbur’s fault that she left him; she was abducted by a gorilla. Because women can’t be strong in Wilbur’s universe. They have to all fawn over him as a pillar of strength even though he’s built like a marshmallow that exploded in the microwave. Only Wilbur matters in Wilbur’s universe.
@109 brendancalling: I’m pretty sure they boinked this morning too. Janis doesn’t like wasting Arlo’s morning wood.
@117 The Rambling Otter: Birds with propeller butts seems more of a Dr. Seuss thing.
@I speak Jive:
#152. PV:. Thanks for highlighting Cats strong but subtle performance, I’d totally missed it.
And Sid, those animal performers in Bizarro either are expert performers are have been medicated. Might you send your intern over again,? We care.
@Poteet: #170: Maybe the garbage can had some collapsed star matter in it, whose gravitational pull was strong enough to suck that car into it.
MW: Kudos to Moy for coming across the Iliad this late in life. The hero getting the girl however, albeit forcefully, doesn’t play out so well in modern media.
Re formatting problems, If I post two less-than signs together, I have to force quit my frozen browser.
@179 Hibbleton: Half the times I’m editing a “Wilbur” panel my computer spontaneously reboots.
Dennis Minus Menace Beyond the Throwaway Panels: I see Dennis has been studying his Henny Youngman Joke Book.
MW: Yeah, but check this out, Mr. Shusterman (via Ms. Moy). I’m pretty sure a true hero doesn’t think that heroism is manifested by beating up your ex’s husband as an anthropomorphic ape and turning her into an emoji-faced drone, either.
SSmith: One animal learns to use another as a weapon. Big day in the Revolution, and it’s not even happening in Slylock Fox!
9CL: One of the Overlook Twins asking Edda when you know you’ve become a woman is as clear a warning as I’ve seen in a while to keep the Pepto-Bismol handy.
C-Shaft: Lillian is already in Harry’s choir and just spent time with him and his Napoleonic ego at the book expo, but she’s intentionally spending more time with him at her own place of business. She’s as much a masochist as a sadist.
Curtis: Cuts off before the best part, which is the principal saying, “Mrs. Nelson sent you down here for WHAT?!?”
DT: It really is some kind of magical car if it allows you to put on a fireworks display right in front of the police station without a license and not get fined.
JP: I…don’t think you could smuggle that much explosive into the compound without it being detected. Or did Pavel make the mistake of hiring MacGruber?
Luann: The “I don’t tip” monologue sounds better coming from Steve Buscemi.
Phantom: So this is the storage closet for priceless cultural artifacts that won’t fit in the cave?
WofI: Yesterday the Wizard and Sir Rodney play-acted being pirates as an excuse to get drunk. Today he and Bung go fishing as an excuse to get drunk. “Wizard” starts with “W”, as in “Bill W.” Much to think about here.
@Ukulele Ike: Bwahaha!
@Guillermo el chiclero: Oooooooo!
LUANN: Oh, YUCK. There is no point in running a long story that is apparently intended to persuade readers that Luann is a delightful forever-nineteen potential-filled pixie girl, and then present this strip on Sunday.
CRANKSHAFT: And to think I considered Harry deeply obnoxious BEFORE this story…
@Baja Gaijin: Like the third one. Nothin’ like a good BROMPH! to start the day.
And don’t worry, folks, Wilbur get his wish. Unfortunately.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: On Curtis: Curtis gets sent to the principal’s office so much he just went there on his own.
@jroggs:
Even as loathe as I am to give this writer and story any credit, my interpretation of the setup was that yes, Helena went to Pavel with the intention of going out in a blaze of glory (thus providing the ‘end’ she said needed to come when she magic’d her way into Randy ‘n April’s house) while Alina’s little interruption was purely so the strip’s clunky as always method of showing us that she was even still around.
Now, who’s still betting that Alina’s mom is April (who should be serving multiple life sentences for murdering several people both foreign and domestic) versus Ann-Doris (currently at large for one suspected murder and probably guilty of several more?)
Ooo, new prediction! April is Alina’s mom and Pavel was Norton’s brother, just to make things extra icky and stupid!
@Poteet: #168: My elementary school showed one of those films to the fifth and sixth grade girls. They were all herded into the combo gym/auditorium and the doors were locked shut and all windows closed to keep us boys from peeking. You’d think they were electing a pope in there. Years later my sister asked me if we boys ever got a “becoming men” film. I said hell no. We had to learn the old-fashioned way, from locker room jokes told by the older boys to filching our dad’s nudie magazines.
Back in the 70s the National Lampoon even did a takeoff on that. The boys gym coach herded all the boys out of the classroom to go see a hygiene film. Once the doors were locked and windows sealed the girls started stripping nude and comparing and critiquing each other’s lady parts.
And now…
Melody Mare drinking a beer.
At least the good news is that Wilbur remains miserable.
@188 Dr. Pill: I wouldn’t say that [cough]mashups[cough].
MW: I see the problem now! Santa Royale is one of the test environments for those musky self-driving cars, or autonomous vehicles, as they’re laughably called. No wonder you can hardly stick your neck outside without being run over.
mw next wilbur goes to the karoke bar to drown his sorrows and learns that he got his wish as mary scowls the driver of the crashed car for not almost hitting wilbur. luann never thought luann would show traits of a karen good thing bernice is there to set her straight geez luann saying thanks for something like your over priced cofffee doesn’t hurt since the barista doesn’t get paid enough dealing with now ungrateful young customers like you . luann
@Sequitur: You scamp! Now you know that’s not moi drinking a beer! First of all, that looks nothing like me… with that scraggly mane! And I have to avoid beer products due to my gluten sensitivity. I might partake of a nip of oat kombucha on occasion…
@Downpuppy:
Once Ces starts retconning he might as well give her some better lines as well.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: I meant @TheDiva: of course.
@Dr. Pill: Be funny if he, Derrick, and Onion were all subjects in a particularly cruel social psych experiment.
Late Thread Cuisine: In honor of the Mary Worth Mashups.
@Baja Gaijin: “Hake” is the sound I made when I saw this.
@Pozzo: Carte Blanche appears to have been relaunched under the aegis of–wait for it–Diner’s Club. Together they seem to be big in Japan and Russia.
@201 Baja Gaijin: That looks like it would actually be a pretty good meal if you just, um, took the ingredients and made something entirely different out of them.
@Baja Gaijin: Nice fish choice!
Hake is generally considered a sustainably-sourced fish, and is now sometimes being used in place of cod. So perhaps I might consider…*stares at photo* …umm. I shall leave this particular hake dish for others to enjoy while I find another hake dish that features lemon or caramelized onion or asparagus or some other such. This tomato thing just does not appeal.
@201 Baja Gaijin:
Oh, my god. It bled out!
MW: This week we will find out that the car is driven by Aldo Kelrast, who somehow survived the drive/dive off a cliff, in much the same fashion that Wilbur survived his plunge off of the cruise ship.
The other thing that bothers me about today’s Luann is the money she paid to the beleaguered worker who should be grateful about Luann deigning to contribute to the worker’s salary most assuredly came from her parents.
@202 taig: Yup.
@204 seismic-2: Well, yeah.
@205 Poteet: Picky picky. This dish has no sliced olive eyes staring at you, not encased in aspic or lime Jell-O, nor has any visible crustacean parts yet it’s still a “no.” No pleasing some people.
@206 Sequitur: Just like the people in my recent mashups.
@Baja Gaijin: Oh, for goodness sake, get that tomato away from the hake.
@Baja Gaijin: At the very least, they kept the aspic out of it but that poor fish really was a bleeder.
So is the deal that Wilbur is the Kwisatz Haderach? Wilbur sees the far future and does horrible things to set humanity on the Golden Path? In God-Emperor of Santa Royale, the galaxy is ruled by a giant sandworm Wilbur?
Judge Parker: Helena’s bosom is three sizes larger than usual in the first frame. She totally packed the C-4 in her brassiere.
She will emerge from the conflagration with a flesh wound.
@Garrison Skunk, @Joshua K.: I did wonder about that. Also, I’ve never seen a cubicle with a door that closes, but apparently they exist. Just another of the innovations incorporated into the panopticon of Abundio, Inc.!
@212 Needless Exposition: That’s an understatement.
@215 Peanut Gallery: I’ve seen cubicles with hinged doors and sliding doors yet had walls I could easily peer over. You don’t make that mistake
twelve timestwice.@Baja Gaijin: The House Special at The Bum Boat! No wonder Dr. Jeff sticks with the surf n’ turf.
Didn’t I make a fascinating hake observation the last time you served us hake? Yes — there’s a lot of hake in the Irish Sea, so it’s a popular food fish in the U.K. and Eire. But it doesn’t swim as far west as the U.S. coast. Are you feeding us some gat damn furrin fish?
@217 Ukulele Ike: You brought up hake as a better substitution for some other fish in some other recipe. Since you seem to know about them, do they bleed so much during cooking?
@Carolina Boy:
#215. JP. What puzzles me is that so many of the guys here get the hots for dangerous, armed women. Yet no one but you now has even mentioned Blythe/Helena’s allure.
Slylick Fox And Komix For Kinx: Sly’s seen this episode of “Banachek” —- Gary Lockwood made the statue out of a rubber/styrofoam material, making it lighter then it appears and easy to destroy for the insurance money.
@Poteet:
@Baja Gaijin: Nice fish choice!
_________________________
Fan mail from some flounder?
@221 Garrison Skunk:
This is what I really call a message!
@222 Sequitur: That cat does NOT like that turtle.
@223 Baja Gaijin:
I thought it funny how the turtle, lickity split, took off after the cat.
@224 Sequitur: Small turtles move fast! It’s the big ones that can’t.
@225 Baja Gaijin:
I do believe you’re right.
Baja! Comics Kingdom has a cartoon that’s a maze. You can help a superhero get to his objective. Mazetoons!
@226 Sequitur: That must be a Plugger snapping turtle. The ones I’ve seen can sprint quite quickly.
@227 Sequitur: You suckered me into clicking that EVILSCARY link.
@228 Baja Gaijin:
Don’t you want a superhero to vanquish an EVILSCARY?
MW: I for one am loving this Wilbur storyline! As I love all Wilbur storylines!! And by love, I mean love/hate. I’m stuffing my face with popcorn, seeing where this will end up. And I hope it ends up with President Biden giving Wilbur a medal of honor.
@JustSomeGuy: Wilbur has been in the strip since 1993. He has earned five Presidential Medals of Honor from five different presidents.
This week on TikTok, the “man or bear” question went viral. Most women revealed that they would rather be trapped in the woods with a bear than with an unknown man because they are scared of men. I like to think that Snuffy and Jughead discussed this harrowing fact shortly before transitioning into “But what about a bear vs. a feral hog?”
@Guillermo el chiclero: You’d think they were electing a pope in there.
***
*doubled over laughing*
@233 Poteet:
Who’s the Pope of Iowa?