Ominous soapers
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Mary Worth, 4/14/24
Are you feeling down, my friends? Depressed? Abandoned? Do you worry that nobody loves you, simply because, in many ways both large and small, you have with your own actions made yourself unloveable? Well, just think about this: maybe someday you’ll rudely bump into a child because you’re deep in your own internal pity party and not watching where you’re walking, and in doing so save that child’s life. Wow! Really makes you think! Or, it would make you think if you even notice that it happens, which you won’t, because you are, and I can’t emphasize this enough, incredibly self-absorbed.
Judge Parker, 4/14/24
Look, I wish no ill upon Judge Parker. I hope it continues to grace the funny pages, both physical and virtual, for years to come. But I will say that, if any comic strip, soap opera or otherwise, decided to wrap things up, there are a lot worse ways to write the final chapter than a rogue CIA agent preparing all the other characters for a murder-suicide pact.
192 replies to “Ominous soapers”
MW: The most unbelievable part of this scenario isn’t the amount of coincidences set up to turn Wilbur into some sort of accidental hero (and bloat his ego more than his Subway order) but rather the fact that the Moyverse allowed a child under the age of nineteen to exist. I’m not convinced that this isn’t some pituitary deficient adult that Wilbur “saved” because there isn’t some Karen rushing out to scream at him for pushing her baby.
MW:
“Wow! That coulda been me!”
****
Wait a minute. That kid thinks that he could have been the car that destroyed his ball? — how could that possibly come to be? That would have to be, like, a reverse anthropomorphization, right?
MW:
“You can have an impact anywhere you are.”
— The Tonguska Asteroid which destroyed significant parts of remote imperial Russia on June 30, 2008
Mary Worth: Ha, Wilbur just saved a kid’s life? — not heroically, by pulling him out of the path of a speeding car, but stupidly, by being a self-pitying jerkwad who doesn’t watch where he’s going and knocked the kid down on the sidewalk. I mean, we might wonder why this kid’s house is right in the middle of a bustling business district, suggesting that our Mr. Weston is about to become the victim of yet another scam. But it’s more likely that he’ll be hailed as a hero for no good reason… and we can only hope that video of what actually happened comes out just as he’s accepting a key to the city or something.
Hi and Lois: In 2013, the federal guv’mint paid too much money to have an outhouse shipped to Denali National Park instead of building one on the premises. And guess what, Hi is still mad as heck about this misuse of his personal tax dollars! Sure, his own enormous suburban home probably has a private bathroom for each family member (while his alcoholic neighbor has an equally large yard that he can whizz in after every eight beers). But if some freezing hiker in the Alaskan wilderness wants a nice place to do his No. 1, Hi will make sure that the folks on Reddit hear about it, by gum!
@Bob Tice: Or possibly 1908. One of those.
Wilbur *is* a hero. But unlike Wonder Woman’s Magic Lasso, he has his Miracle Whip.
JP:
“I thought I’d let myself in. Again.”
“How do you manage to pass through walls, anyway, Mom?”
“Why, of course, through the same transporter device they use in Star Trek, you silly goose!”
Slylock Fox-I’m sure Slylock is thinking of dusting something else of Cassandra’s.
MW-Mommas don’t let your kids grow up to be Wilburs.
FC-Jeffy plans to run away and hide in an abandoned comic strip.
Blondie-“Dagwood, my son, have you ever been beaten with a golf club?” “Not today.”
JP-Wow. Didn’t take Ces long to grow bored with a story and to trot out the CIA once again.
MW-Josh, how did you get the less eye searingly bright version of ‘Mary Worth’?
Cross Comic
1) Wilbur– as human in MW:. Narcisstic Wilbur becomes hero through no fault of his own.
— as dog in SF: #2 pug tries harder and wins damsel’s heart. Unfortunately, the chocolate candy poisons her so dog#1 induces vomiting to save her.
2). Sarah– as child in RMMD, she unwittingly poisons dog, then saves it by inducing vomiting.
— as woman in PHANTOM, she promised to support jack as* spouse in his expensive prank on loyal employees.
MW: “Also a hero to animals” feels like the perfect exemplar of Worth-speak. Awkward, unnecessary, bordering on non-sensical, it really encapsulates the packing peanut-style dialogue that makes this strip so fascinating.
JP: “The important thing is that, dead or alive, we keep the money. That is the family motto, after all.”
Slylock Fox: Cassandra “last dusted several months ago”? She’s a dirty, dirty girl, and Slylock is here for it, man.
So if they don’t give him the money, the entire Judge Parker cast dies.
If they do give him the money the entire Judge Parker cast dies.
This is wonderful!!
MW: “Why can’t I have a rubber ball like all the other kids? Stupid crystal.”
JP: Wow, a few days ago I was actually thinking that Ces could be setting us up for a stealth conclusion of this strip, but figured that couldn’t be the case. But with all the emphasis on the word ‘end’ this week I’m having second thoughts. Would they actually do that without any publicity?
MW: Oh good grief, we’re about to see Moy’s interpretation of Dennis the Menace. ‘Heeeeeyyyy Mister Weesssttoooonnnn!’
JP: I’m not really up on these things but wouldn’t an immoral ex-agent with the ability to walk through walls, apparently, simply kill Pavel and put an end to this?
@Hibbleton:
Yeah but then what would everybody talk about?
MW: This is why I always tell children they shouldn’t play with their hollow porcelain spheres outdoors. Not because they might get run over by a car; that just builds character. But they could get trampled by a waddling loser who inflicts upon them his contagious sense that they shouldn’t be alive… but they are!
JP: Everyone has spies watching spies watching spies. How does Helena know she’s the end of the line? Well, obviously… because. Sheesh, what a stupid question.
@Hibbleton: Not to mention the fact that April had the drop on Pavel and his henchman last week.
FC: The witch’s gaze held life in place
And froze the flow of time.
The progress of the human race
Locked into the sublime
Of youth so treasured by the hag
She favored no advance.
The young could not for freedom beg
Or barter, only dance.
Their flight would thus necessitate,
If hopeful to grow tall,
The watchful stare a fast abate
And then unheeded call.
The youthful ones’ retreat was borne
On tiny feet; they fled.
But no escape, yet so forlorn,
Could be to witches pled.
And so the children still there play
Much to the crone’s delight;
A bright and perfect sunny day
That never shall know night.
MW: Wilbur absentmindedly bumps into a guy and dislodges the grape he was choking on. Keeps walking. Bends over to tie his shoes and trips armed felon running from police. Doesn’t notice. Gives comprehensive directions to a fellow looking for a hat shop on Bagel street. Uneventful.
Thus begins Moy’s updated telling of It’s a Wonderful Life.
MW: The dialog in the last panel is incredibly unnecessary and from most other strips would be a demerit. But from Mary Worth it’s the model of restraint. I’d half expect another panel with a bystander telling the kid how lucky he was.
@Hibbleton: “It’s a Wilburful Life” has the infamous quote of how every time a mayonnaise jar is empty, an angel vomits.
Luann-And here is a problem with comic strips. They have adult characters who due to a sliding time scale would have been in the Seventies or Eighties and yet they are being written by people born in the Forties and Fifties and acting as if it’s still the Nineties.
Mary Worth: They boy shouldn’t be alive, but he is! He’ll be the subject of Wilbur’s next column of the same name.
Pluggers: “You’re a plugger if the books you read have lots of pictures, large print and not many pages.” So they’re finally admitting the pluggers are almost illiterate dimwits. It’s about time they come into the sunshine of truth.
MW: Hey, if Wilbur had been walking just a little faster, the kid would have barreled into him and WILBUR would have exploded under the wheels of the mysterious army-green van. I think the kid was given a job by the syndicate, and he just fucked up.
MW: This is the absolute purest Wilbur Weston strip. Fight me!
MW: You’d think that kid would have the presence of mind not to get his head exploded by speeding cars, since that appears to be his home?
JP: Is it possible to rename this strip to 9 Coincidence Lane?
MW — Isn’t Wilbur supposed to be writing a self-help/advice for the lovelorn newspaper column? Can’t he squeeze a little “I’m a hero to my readers” juice out of that lemon?
Tony Dungy’s quote makes more sense if you remember him as a Pittsburgh Steeler and the most recent NFL player to both intercept and throw an interception in the same game.
9CL – Amos is the award-winning, world renowned cellist. Edda accompanies him on the piano.
At their last concert, Edda made sweet love to the piano on stage for several minutes, mocked Amos, stole his pants, and sent him out to watch from the audience.
Now, Amos isn’t even performing. Edda is going to fuck the piano on-stage, and she doesn’t want Amos to get in the way.
It’s amazing how little this strip with a focus on music and the arts has to do with music and the arts.
The author is obviously struggling to fill space, we go back to the same scenes over and over and over again. They are children making out with each other for the first time, with sloppy wet kisses. They are treading water at the beach with only their heads visible.
Why can’t he write the strip about music and the arts and these two performing musicians? Instead the concert sequences universally collapse into live on-stage sex shows.
He’s just too much of a pervert to stick to a plot.
Frazz: Dumb kid didn’t even realize Mrs. Olsen made her do math. 0%
Luann: “I think Ariana heard us yelling, but she must have been in a hurry to get somewhere, because she started sprinting.”
CS: It still astonishes me that we’re meant to feel sympathy for Crankshaft whose “favorite” hardware store is closing, when he’s been established as buying all his crap from Bean’s End, an online seller, for the past several years.
FC: Grandma said; “Children grow up when you’re not looking” when she found Thel knock-out drunk.
Mary Worth: Wilbur absentmindedly bumps into Nola Wolvenson, displacing her rage/pity from beta loser Dan Smithers to alpha loser Wilbur himself. Nola throws Wilbur under a literal bus: SPLOOF!
9CL: “I’m playing from memory” is the joke, right?
Zits: I’m glad they censored out Connie’s threat. No doubt it was vile and physically improbable.
FC: Good job, Dolly! I’m assuming your goal was to convince your dumb-ass brother to live in a garbage can, and the Oscar the Grouch gambit had already been played out.
DT – Are you sure you want everyone emptying the drawers int your bags given that you just caused them all to shit themselves?
MW: I like how this is portrayed as Wilbur being a hero when if he’d done the same thing literally a second later, he’d have shoulder-barged the kid right under that car.
MW-And from that day forth to avoid becoming like Wilbur that young boy gave up mayonnaise and took up alcohol instead.
CS: I actually like this one. There are some strangely narrow businesses out there, in brick-and-mortar space. A long-beloved store with broad appeal failing, and an extremely niche product taking over the same spot, rings true. This is the kind of irony the Funkyverse is always aiming for but never hitting.
This should have been a standalone Sunday strip instead of a week-long mopefest. And Ed Crankshaft alone should keep a small-town hardware store in business. But, credit where it’s due.
MW:
“Hey, Mister! — will you be my hero?”
“Why? Because my bumping into you possibly spared you from being hit by that car?”
“Nah, because you can be my hero if you play ‘Carmac the Magnificent’ with me — I have an obsession with it. Are you game?”‘
“Sure, kid. ‘Winkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod.’ ”
“I give up.”
“Name a contraction that’s a synonym for nictitation, the current U.S. secretary of state, and the fictional land where you go when you fall asleep!”
“Gosh, Mister! — you’re really swell! You’re my hero!”
JP: Everybody dies!
CS: is Jeff the Emasculated occupying a grave in Crankshaft’s basement? Where is he? How come he never spends any time with his grandson.?
Jungle Jim – Although he is anything but conceited, Jim cannot help feeling smug as he stands on the deck of a ship, watching Puerto Rico recede into the distance. “Well, I’ve wrapped up another case, free of any messy emotional entanglements,” Jim thinks to himself. “Except I keep getting this feeling there’s one loose end somewhere that I forgot to tie up… What could it be?”
Meanwhile, back on the beach, Kolu is disporting himself with Kitty and Lil. “‘Nice substantial business-man’!” thinks Kolu. “That good one, Tuan Jim!”
Note: For the past several weeks, today’s strip has been the last installment of Jungle Jim on Comics Kingdom. :-(
@jroggs: JP: Everyone has spies watching spies watching spies. How does Helena know she’s the end of the line? Well, obviously… because. Sheesh, what a stupid question.
Spy vs Spy vs Spy. The female spy in grey always wins.
That kid’s gonna grow up to be into sploofing, isn’t he? “That coulda been me! And next time . . . it will be.”
MW – “You can drop a load of crap anywhere you go.” Dung-ey Tony….
JP – Prepare! Get your heart right with Molach….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Mary Worth: The lesson we’re supposed to take from this is that Wilbur, by being in the right place at the right time, is a tool of the universe. And speaking of tools. . . the lesson it really sends is that Wilbur knocked a child flat on his ass on the pavement, muttered “excuse me,” then continued down the block, wishing he could be somebody’s hero.
DtM: Classic mediocre joke for a Sunday comic, an old chestnut no one ever needs to hear again — standard Dennis material, in other words. In the good old days, Martha’s favorite actor would have been a studio-promoted hunk like Clark Gable or Errol Flynn.
As a mid-period Boomer, a teen or young woman in the early 1970s, it looks like Martha swooned over….Elliott Gould? Did ANY female sit in a theater watching MASH or The Long Goodbye thinking “Mmmm MMM. Want me a piece o’ THAT.”
JP: April needs volumizing hair product. She looks like the “before” picture in a shampoo ad. Let’s show those gunmen a bouncy, healthy mane, like Mom’s.
JP: Marciuliano and Manley can’t keep eliding over the gaps in what characters realistically would know by “having someone” conveniently placed to dole out information off-panel. Eventually all these double agents and moles will realize all they’re doing is passing exposition around, and the entire system will collapse.
MW: Wilbur is hailed as a hero; it goes instantly to his head. While basking in the adoration of the Charterstone Biddy Society, he boldly declares his expectation that Estelle will take him back. Estelle gently informs him that she’s quite happy with her successful veterinarian boyfriend. In the middle of his ensuing bitter tirade Wilbur lets it slip that his “heroism” was merely a coincidence brought about by his selfish ignorance of the world around him. All the women groan and throw up their hands in exasperation. Wilbur wonders what he did wrong. Mary shakes her head and says “That’s our Wilbur!” New story in 2-4 weeks depending on how much Mary and Toby gossip about the aftermath.
There, that should carry the strip through at lest September.
@taig: CS: Ed could have kept the hardware store afloat on his own, judging by the amount of crap, stuff and things he buys from Bean’s End.
@Ukulele Ike: I’m not sure how well Elliott Gould was received by women at the time, but it seemed like Hollywood went through a schlubby period, so you had Gould, and people like Walter Matthau and Joe Don Baker being sold as leading men.
If Wilbur was on that bridge contemplating suicide Ala It’s A Wonderful Life, the angel would just shove his ass off the bridge. “Happening to a be standing in the right place to save that kid’s life doesn’t change the fact that you suck in so many ways,” Clarence said, as he shoved a useless lump off the bridge. “Trust me, it’s for the best for everyone.”
Have to say, Wilbur may be middle-aged, paunchy, and balding, but I don’t think I’d arms wrestle him. Packing some GUNS there, buddy!
RMMD – Candy OD’s on chocolate, but her suffering is mitigated by the pot that Sarah had mixed in to the batter.
MW: Finally a worthy successor to Newspaper Spider-Man. Watch and be amazed as Wilbur’s ineptitude, general unpleasantness, and frustratingly good luck make him the savior of all in Santa Royale, entirely by coincidence!
@Jerp+jump: I feel like we’re long overdue for the Mary Worth comic where she talks a friend into committing suicide like The Simpsons predicted back in the mid nineties. And we all know who the “friend” is.
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women: Moy is trying so, so hard to convince everyone that Wilbur is the Homer Simpson of Santa Royale, lovable even in the midst of his overwhelming idiocy and selfishness. But Homer has a whole universe that operates on such levels of extremity and surreality that his own extreme, surreal characters flaws are acceptable as a piece of the whole. Mary Worth is….not exactly realistic, more like it exists in the world of those “true stories” people pass around on Facebook. But it results in Wilbur’s behavior not being comical and endearing, but just plain ordinary dickishness.
I love spy novels. I’ve read all of le Carré’s work. I can talk about the Cambridge Five, Angleton, Ames, and Hanssen with ease. I say this to make clear just how annoying Judge Parker is right now. We have domestic CIA operations, we have an international arms dealer just showing up in US jurisdiction without consequence, we have the families involved. It’s just so stupid. So let’s script-doctor this sucker!
April Mom was CIA, Directorate of Intelligece, expert in counterproliferation and the weapons trade. She was an analyst, careful watching Pavel’s organization, writing up reports that maybe her supervisor read, but then got filed. Pavel’s two-bit, you see, it’s not like a discussion of his ten million dollar trade with a Somali warlord was going to get into the President’s Daily Brief. Bored and smart – a dangerous combination in intelligence – she decides to reach out to Pavel. Warn him, get a payback. It goes perfectly; she gets some cash, Pavel makes the trade, but she’s not smart enough, leaves fingerprints all over everything. CIA calls FBI, FBI swoops in, April Mom’s in jail, Pavel writes off the bribe as the cost of doing business, no one in Cavelton is involved at all, and we can go back to the pretty pretty horses, OK?
JP: where’s John Wick when you need him?
@Professor Well Actually: It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if we get a story tomorrow about Crankshaft waiting for an order from Bean’s End.
C’shaft: Hey, the hardware store limped on for about a century with only two customers (okay, one customer and one child) at any given time, so I’d say it had a good run.
Luann: Cary Grant died in 1986, Jimmy Stewart in 1997, Katharine Hepburn in 2003. With two young adult children, Frank and Nancy are at most late Gen X and probably early-mid Millennial. She should be naming Brat Pack members, but Clan Evans probably thinks “Molly Ringwald” and “Judd Nelson” are made-up names.
Pluggers consider reading a chore only to be done as an obligation and not for personal pleasure.
MW – “Sploof!”?? “That coulda been me!”?? Those definitely suggest an R. Crumb-type joke about Wilbur’s memories of Estelle, but I’m not gonna fill in the details.
SFx: Cassandra keeps a conga drum and a stuffed Bat-Mite doll in her bedroom. How…unusual.
Also, she looks like she’s heading to a job interview at the Salvation Army. She usually tarts it up a little more when Slylock and Officer Duck are on their way over.
@TheDiva: If anything, Wilbur’s more of a Peter Griffin where his selfish and self absorbed behavior is enabled and rewarded. Even Homer Simpson shows remorse for his actions and even considered suicide because he thought he gave his wife a black eye!
9CL double-translation through Lithuanian:
“ok Wish me luck.”
“Break a leg honey.”
“why are you following me”
“To translate your pages.”
“I don’t need a page turner. I play from memory.”
“For once, can’t we pretend?”
MW – Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
Oh crap. Oh crap. Ohcrapohcrapohcrap! SHIT! Wilbur fell from a cruise ship and not only survived, but he still had on his glasses that also came out unscathed. He’s Unbreakable (2000 – directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson). This is going to turn into a superhero comic where Wilbur, who can not be harmed because his body is too self-pitying to let physical trauma get in the way, wanders the city streets accidentally savings lives and stopping crimes. He shall be… POOR ME MAN! The Schlub? Super Incel? Blandman?
MW:
My bet for the Wilbur arc (or at least my hope for it), is that through a series of similar lucky coincidences, Wilbur gains a reputation as some kind of prescient holy man (or super hero) — or something along that line.
That’s my basic prediction.
However — Bonus points if Wilbur atracts the attention of some shady, but well-funded organization who abducts him to their secret and secure facility for research. At first, they keep him in a small, stark cell. However, after experiencing a few of Wilbur’s lucky coincidences, his keepers become convinced that he really is some kind of prescient holy man (or superhero). They then treat him with great respect, housing him a large, comfortable cell, and granting him 24-hour access to the kitchen and its sandwich-making ingredients.
And so Wilbur spends the rest of his happy, bumbling life.
I get all teary thingking about it.
JP: This past week this strip has proved with Pavel and Helena re-emerging that it is like the Hotel California. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
RMMD: Waitaminute! Hold it – this is NOT the storyline we sent them (through an anonymous source)!!! They got it all wrong! ABBEY was supposed to make a heroic exit, like Farley, from the comic as she retired from show biz. Instead they’re gonna do “Death by Chocolate” starring Candy!!
Well, of course everything will turn out okay – when did anything *bad* ever happen to a Rex Morgan character? At least Candy will get some featured scenes as the “drama” unfolds. I just hope she hasn’t been having any problems with management over there – she maybe shoulda signed up with us for professional representation. Can be tricky sometimes workin’ without an agent…
MW: Hey, Wilbur isn’t totally self-centered! He said, “Excuse me…” Is that the act of a complete narcissist? He might have said, “Watch your ass, you little creep, or I’ll shove it under a bus!” like a latter-day Frank Sinatra. But no! By comparison, Wilbur is a regular Mother Teresa, except he has the sheer overwhelming avoirdupois to absorb impact from a running kid without falling over.
AC: Andy hasn’t been a Beatles fan ever since Flo heard “When I’m 64” and commented that she wasn’t sure why she needed or fed him now.
DT: “They had their faces concealed, Detective Tracy. All I can tell you is that the leader was a woman with some kind of weird fade/mullet combo. She was wearing leather and had a pierced navel.”
“Wait, how do you know that?”
“Well, her leather shirt exposed it. You know, like a crop top.”
“Blast, if only he’d seen her face, we might have a lead!”
FC: A joke that wouldn’t have been that funny in any event, ruined by an extraneous panel showing another character’s reaction. What is this, Crankshaft?
Heath: Many years ago, when Josh was still learning about the madness that is Heathcliff, there was a weekday panel where Heathcliff was playing baseball with a fish as the bat. I know sometimes Gallagher “plays the hits”, but unlike “look, it’s Garbage Ape, but in a funny costume” or whatever, all we’ve got here is “look, it’s baseball-fish, only longer.”
MW: It’s amazing how literally everything Moy does to make Wilbur the “lovable loser” she wants us to see him as makes him more and more of a loser, but less and less lovable. And he wasn’t that lovable when she started.
Pluggers: FWIW, that’s a real picture book Grandma Houndstooth is reading to her half-chicken grandchild. I wonder if the publishers paid for this, or if McKee demanded money not to have the book appear in Pluggers, and they refused to be blackmailed.
PV: I don’t trust Witgar to play fair. I’m betting that he’s given himself the buck and a quarter quarterstaff.
SFx: Good on Cassandra for defying the stereotype about obsessively neat cats, I guess.
Rex Morgan – Now the medical issue involves a dog. The question is whether Rex will perform surgery on Candy or just stick his finger down the dog’s throat to make her barf up that chocolate.
Seriously, why aren’t the kids being supervised? They’re too young to be home on their own. If June is busy at the clinic, they used to have a babysitter. Where is she?
Pickles – Ah, yes. The old “the jerk store called…”
Mutts – Remember last week’s 9CL, with Brooke’s idea of how a dog behaves? Mutts shows a real DOG.
Bizarro – Wow, that’s dark.
Judge Parker Brothers: “Pavel wants my death to be a private affair, I want it to be catered with at least twenty close friends in attendance. I already have my coffin pattern registered.”
@Ukulele Ike: I think that’s a chibi Catwoman, which is even weirder. What does post-Animalpocalypse society make of the Before Times comic books indicating humans used to dress up as them to commit/foil crimes? Does Cass see Selina Kyle as a predecessor of sorts, in both theft and flirting with the crimefighter who’s supposed to be stopping you? Or is the toy just a reminder of a foolish pretender to a role now taken by an actual cat woman?
(I guess the Catwoman version of Bat-Mite would be Cat-Mite, but that leads to tasteless jokes about Robin and/or Max…)
Breaking Cat News – The Woman shops at the same place as Estelle.
Edge City – BREAD PRODUCTS.
Frazz – That’s shopping math, and I understand it and at least somewhat live by it. I guess they’d make fun of me behind my back.
Pluggers – I still can’t decide if she’s reading to one of her grandchildren or one of her pets.
Speed Bump – Squeee! I love those Cats! Great job, Sid.
Was I the only one to at first think (hope?) that was Wilburp going SPLOOF! under the tire?
JP: April, I’m sure, would like to do more things together with her family, but not necessarily things involving cyanide tablets.
MW: Wilbur proves that there’s hope for us all, since you can be someone’s hero just by moping around as your usual self-centered self. That won’t stop them from goofing on your dinky little bag, though.
@I speak Jive: Re: Edge City: IANAJ, but I don’t think it’s a Passover requirement to eat your usual daily bread product weight in matzoh, Abby. Skipping the carbs completely for a week would be good for both your blood sugar and your diet. Also, you DO look like a bit of a doofus with that box on the breakfast table.
@I speak Jive: re RMMD: I seem to remember than Sarah turned 11 a year or so ago, so she’s now supposedly 12 (going on 40). I don’t know what age girls start baby-sitting now, but in the past, they often looked after their younger siblings, or neighborhood kids, at age 12.
As for long-time babysitter Kelly, she graduated from high school last(?) year, and is now having wild adventures away at The University. Unfortunately we’ll never see any of them.
MW – My all-time Peak Wilbur panel will always be the one where he’s sloppy drunk in the Thai restauarant, shoving food in his maw with noodles and sauce all over his shirt, to the horror of his tablemates, including his ex.
But “Wilbur knocks a kid on his ass with a meaty forearm and barely notices” is definitely a runner-up.
9CL: A compromising position Amos could have avoided by wearing a tie clip or going without a tie since he wasn’t even supposed to be onstage? Or just another humiliation fantasy fulfilled.
BB: Miss Buxley is the one suffering and her boyfriend—big shock here—did nothing to help.
C-Shaft: A recently vacated retail space would be more expected to be converted to a Starbucks or a Nextel store. Even worse, it could just sit vacant for months if not years because fledgling businesses can’t afford the rent and the property owners won’t budge. Silly as it might sound, Cupcakes for Cats—aside from being one word off from a great Squeeze album—means Centerville is lucking out here.
DtM: Between the mustache, tie, and general mien I guess Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy is what does it for Martha Wilson.
DT: “Empty all your drawers into our bags! Wait, what are you…Good God, man! Pull your pants back up!”
Dustin: Wise move, actually. Going to an ice cream parlor with a young boy he’s not related to looks at least a little less suspicious if he gets something for himself.
Luann: Cary Grant died in 1986 and was close to a recluse for the last twenty years of his life, so probably to at least the “making up” part.
RMMD: The next arc is going to be a doggy-in-danger-from-eating-chocolate thing? Never thought I’d say this, but could we go back to the Count and his boot?
WtB: The history teacher is named “Cromwell” and the other teachers don’t make an English Civil War joke? This country seriously needs to raise its standards.
I miss obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin (sob).
MW: Is it just me or are the colors on the Comics Kingdom website way more vibrant in the Sunday Mary Worths? Honestly I kinda dig it. It’s pretty pop art-y.
JP- Looks like April’s mom is going to channel Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight. “We aren’t going to die, sweetheart. They are.”
@Bob Tice:
****
Wait a minute. That kid thinks that he could have been the car that destroyed his ball? — how could that possibly come to be? That would have to be, like, a reverse anthropomorphization, right?
_____________________________
“Turbo Teen: Origins” with Special Guest Villain Wilburp Weston as the Inedible Bulk and Mary Worth as Meddle girl.
MW: The Dumbass Kid was in no danger in the first place, based on the geometry of what is shown to us. Had The Dumbass Kid been in the path of the car, which was in the street like normal instead of being driven on the sidewalk by some addled grandfather, Wilbur himself would have been struck after hip-checking The Dumbass Kid to his left. But no, Wilbur just schlumps down the middle of the sidewalk, as before.
I feel confident no one has pointed this out, so I am leaving my wisdom here for your collective benefit.
@cheech wizard:
Underappreciated gems, both Davis and the movie.
MARY WORTH: I’ve seen this one before. The doughy balding schlub says, “I think I ‘pulled a homer'”, freeze frame on self-satisfied smile and then the Danny Elfman closing theme plays.
MARY WORTH (2): Incidentally that ball caused the vehicle to careen wildly and caused a 12-car pile-up. “That could have been me”, the little boy said as he watched emergency rescue workers try to extracted tangled bodies from twisted metal.
MW – “Why, mom? Why won’t Pavel leave us alone?”
“Because the numbers are in and readers overwhelmingly want to see you hunt down bad guys in your underwear again. Here, let me get you a hanger for that dress.”
Oops, I think everyone knows that was supposed to be JP.
I see Six Chex In Search Of A Punchline is typically late to the party– Years ago, Josh noted the trend of “Kids today buy pants pre-ripped” jokes, and today we get ‘Chix today buy pants with lines already on them’.
@91 cheech wizard: What, you don’t want to see Ian Cameron hunt down bad guys in his underwear? Maybe he can borrow that Speedo from Wilbur…
I can’t help but notice the general level of seriousness with which today’s Mary Worth has been taken on here is far too high. Guys, it’s a gag. I know it’s hard to tell, because it’s not funny at all, but this isn’t an attempt to set Wilbur up as some big hero. It’s just a little bit of irony meant to elicit some chuckles that won’t be mentioned again.
See, the Wilbur arcs over the past few years have been Karen Moy’s attempt at making little sitcom plots. They’re never funny, I know, and the attempts at portraying Wilbur as a lovable loser have failed miserably, but they are meant to be funny, so I can say with pretty high confidence that today’s strip is meant to be just a little joke.
@Uncle Lumpy: My favorite Chosen People in the funny papers were Nina Paley’s The Hots, about a young double-income-no-kids couple on Manhattan’s upper west side. While Max was a beardless Len Ardin clone, Hannah was MUCH CUTER than Abby. Paley quit after a couple of years after she realized that creating a daily comic strip was not the gold mine she had anticipated.
Also very fond of George Geezil, the shoe gobbler in the old Thimble Theater strips. (He WAS supposed to be Jewish, right?)
@92 Garrison Skunk: Speaking of late to the party, that’s Saturday’s strip. Today’s strip has some woman in non-ripped pants slowly putting a coffee cup and two plates into a dishwasher. Trust me, I’m not exaggerating the excitement.
MW – Today’s sound effect contains a secret palindrome message for Wilbur: “FOOL! (P.S.: Sploof.)”
@Ukulele Ike:
Agreed. Hannah was also not nuts.
MW – “You can have an impact anywhere you are.” Like, for example, look how that car impacted that ball! SPLOOF, mofos!
JP: Perhaps, after killing off all the characters in this incoherent spy plot, JP will pivot back to the aspiring-Hollywood adventures of Neddy’s former roommate. Or else Sophie quits college and becomes a supervillain to seek revenge for the murder of her family.
Judge Parker: Of all the strips to end in a violent shootout that leaves everyone in the strip dead for good, I’d have pegged Dick Tracy. Or The Lockhorns.
@43 Peanut Gallery:
Wah!
@Baja Gaijin:
Baja, can you redo MW so Wilbur pushes the kid into traffic? Because that’s just as likely…
@Sequitur: Yeah. I went back and looked at older ones too, and it doesn’t go back any further than the stories we’ve already seen.
@104 Peanut Gallery:
I started posting them when they were in 1934, the year the strip started.
Today’s was from 1941. The strip ran until 1954.
MW: So, has Dawn’s mother kicked her out of the house yet? (Or perhaps more likely, again?)
@Peanut Gallery: @Sequitur: The strip SHOULD’VE ended with Jim marrying both girls and moving to Utah.
And if it went to 1954, Kolu could have moved to New York and joined the Brooklyn Dodgers.
MW: Some are born to greatness…others have greatness thrust upon them. Then there’s Wilbur.
MW: “Oh, well. If I can’t be a hero, at least I can eat a hero. Now, the big question: meatball or chicken parm?”
Sploof.
Mary Worth: Hats off to Wilbur: it’s not every day that you find someone is a schlemiel, a schlimazel and a schmendrik all at the same time.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Okay, I know “drops the soup” and “has the soup dropped on him,” but where does “schmendrik” enter the equation?
@112 Ukulele Ike:
That’s pretty easy since a schmendrik is a stupid, clueless person.
@Ukulele Ike: @Sequitur: Yep, what Sequitur says. Like a kid who never grows up.
@Sequitur: @I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: So he is the one amused when the soup is dropped?
@Ukulele Ike: Holy Schlamoley, just realized that Nina Paley is the same person responsible for the genius animated film Sita Sings the Blues, with the Hindu goddess performing the Annette Hanshaw (the Taylor Swift of the 1920s) songbook! Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet.
CRANKSHAFT: What is “The ‘Shaft” so worried about anyway? We all know what happens to failing business in the Funkyverse Just wait two years when Cupcakes for Cats goes out of business because somehow, it’s hard to sell kitty cupcakes at a place with hammers and hacksaws on pegboards ($3 says the imprint for “Hardware” remains on the window). Then Centerville Hardware will be back up in running in time to not visit there before you know it.
JP: Helena, stop chewing the scenery and go join the Red Hat Society. “Unique international playgroup” sounds like it was meant for you.
@Anonymous: Baja, can you redo MW so Wilbur pushes the kid into traffic?
Can Baja redo MW so the kid pushes Wilbur into traffic?
CRANKSHAFT: I am, by certain objective measures, a crazy cat lady, and even I think that cupcake store sounds stupid.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I second that emotion.
LUANN: I know extremely little about young celebrities, so I don’t sneer at young people who know very little about old/dead celebrities. I save my sneering for people who can’t name any of the branches of government or any of their elected officials.
MW/JP: We need a King Features Cinematic Universe crossover event, where everyone in the CIA and in Pavel’s organization drives Wilbur over a cliff.
@Liam: I am 65 and just retired. Cary Grant, James Stewart and Katherine Hepburn have been “old Hollywood” stars my entire life. I always suspected Luann was aimed at octogenarians, and this seems to confirm it.
“EVERYBODY knows Cary Grant.” — Mel Brooks as the Two-Hour Old Baby
Nancy De Groot must have visited the set of The Philadelphia Story, during a previous life.
@103 Anonymous: Um, yeah. About that. I’m going to Hell for making this mashup.
@117 Banana Jr. 6000: Ugh.
@seismic-2: Dawn probably fell in a hormonal lust with the co-pilot and has been stalking him ever since. She’s guaranteed to not graduate college until she’s as old as Mary Worth.
@Baja Gaijin: Now that feels more in character for Wilbur than the “accidental hero” angle that Moy’s trying to sell us on.
@Baja Gaijin: “I’m going to Hell for making this mashup.”
Worth it. That’s great.
@Baja Gaijin: There’s a SPLOOF worth waiting for.
JP: Mom’s eyes are pointed in different directions.
@119 Poteet: If I had suitable Wilbur Legs, I would but alas, I don’t.
@126 Needless Exposition: True that.
@127 jroggs: Thanks.
@128 Ukulele Ike: I don’t think I’ve heard “SPLOOF” as a sound effect regarding human death before. It sorta works.
@Baja Gaijin: Thank you for going to Hell to bring us that. Now I feel better about the Family Circus mash-up that I have been imagining, which goes “Sploof! Sploof! Sploof! Sploof!”
@Baja Gaijin: I’m going to the same place for laughing at it.
MW: Isn’t this strip set in a gated condo complex in Southern California? The kind where kids (if allowed) don’t play outside for fear of the HoA or the cops being called? Yet the spherical bastard is walking down some East Coast city with brownstones and stoops where the young ‘uns get street smarts?
Far Side: A classic panel taped to many university walls.
@Baja Gaijin: SPLOOF would be an excellent sound effect for the death of Wilbur.
@124 Baja Gaijin:
Better you than me.
Here is something that was going on under your mashup.
What a Frazz Hole: “Mrs. Olsen, you didn’t need a new reason for feeling foolish, Caufield is staying up nights coming up with them for you.”
CS: Has the door frame gotten higher or has Ed shrunk a few inches between middle and old age?
JJ: Jim looks quite fetching in that skort he must have borrowed from one of the girls.
@Baja Gaijin: I’m going to Hell for laughing at it.
@131 seismic-2: Hm. That’s intriguing.
@134 Ukulele Ike: Yeah, “SPLOOF!” does sorta sound like mayonnaise glopping off a spoon.
@Ukulele Ike: #95: I’ve always assumed he was Jewish. He always came off as a vaudeville stereotype comic Jew of that era. In fact, the actor who played him in the Popeye movie starring Robin Williams delivered his lines in a Jackie Mason accent.
@Rube: The octogenarians over at the comics page seem to agree. One of them has something to say about Ariana Grande, though, and is wagging their finger at what those former child stars have become. I guess they don’t realize that growing up in that system seriously f-ed up most of those kids, a lot because there was some seriously f-ed up stuff going on there, especially Nickelodeon.
@Horace Broon: Re Pluggers: So the twist in the book is that the dog is actually a cat. And Pluggers has gone them one better with the twist that the kid is actually a dog.
McKee is just toying with us now.
@cheech wizard: That movie is a favorite for my wife and me.
@142 Peanut Gallery:
And McKee is a cartoonist who let’s others write his strips.
@seismic-2: Nooope. We already had Austin Powers (and two sequels, somehow).
@2+2=7: Not until after it becomes a strip club for some reason.
@Peanut Gallery: What you said.
@144 Sequitur:
Lets. Stupid autocorrect.
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
I see my prediction of Mary Worth’s new plotline being “4-6 months of WIlbur hanging out by himself” is now being superseded by “4-6 months of Wilbur being hailed as a hero, mistakenly, but he’ll accept it and be more insufferable than ever.”
@Lord Flatulence: JP: Mom’s eyes are pointed in different directions.
That’s a secret skill they teach in Spy School, so you can watch two different things at once.
@Consul, the Almost Human: Exactly. The fact that this comic actually has children without “tummy brains” existing is one thing (Toby realistically would be with her mental peer group by teaching a kindergarten art class instead of college students) but Moy seems to think Southern California is indistinguishable from New England which ironically would better fit her WASPy cast.
@Uncle Lumpy: Yeah, it was brain candy, but it’s pretty good brain candy.
@Poteet:
#120, LUANN. Here, here!
Late Thread Cuisine: It looks like mayonnaise should be involved. It isn’t. Really.
@Poteet: #120: Whenever I’m stuck in a waiting room and there’s a stack of People magazines I’ll start leafing through them. I won’t know who half those people are or why they’re famous.
@Baja Gaijin: Why on Earth would someone present food like this? It’s horrifying.
@156 Baja Gaijin: I do not want to eat moldy shrimp and salmon in the shape of eels engaged in mating.
@158 taig: Why would anyone present food like this? This is a Weight Watchers Recipe. Need I say more?
@159 seismic-2: Those are actually fish molds, not that it make it any better.
@Baja Gaijin: Seems an odd approach to get people to eat less food.
@161 taig: Killing their appetites without taking multi-thousand dollar injections sounds like a great way to get people to eat less food.
@Baja Gaijin: That’s like seeing a marathon of Cronenberg films to avoid taking expensive anti-anxiety medication.
@161 taig: Remember the banquet scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where Kate Capshaw was served one horrible-looking dish after another? She wound up eating an apple.
MW: I assume this point is this kid is destined to be a genocidal dictator, right? I mean, it makes sense that if Wilbur is going to have an impact, it should be by making things worse. That said, while I know it isn’t realistic to give a child a toothbrush mustache, some kind of signifier like that would make the whole thing a lot more obvious.
@seismic-2: I’d end up going to Taco Bell. :-)
unless it’s just another of their many ‘temporary glitches’ in the wake of their latest update .. it seems that user comments for both modern & vintage strips on Comics Kingdom have gone away. -_-
@Baja Gaijin: Gaah! What did they use for eyes – are they pimento? The eyes make them look like fish demons out of hell. Olive eyes would be a big improvement.
What size are the molds? There are two on the plate, and they look small next to the knife and fork. Unless that’s a giant knife and fork.
Fish spectacular indeed.
@Ukulele Ike:
@Baja Gaijin: There’s a SPLOOF worth waiting for.
____________________________
A sploof spoof?
@taig:
@seismic-2: I’d end up going to Taco Bell. :-)
____________________
I understand Dr. Ed supplies their meat.
@Sequitur:
“Dress me like a plugger and I’ll come with you.”
_________________________
Didn’t Bacall say that to Bogart in an old movie?
JP: April’s mom convinces the family to commit suicide rather than face Pavel’s wrath. Afterwards, she and Pavel are married in a grand wedding and town wide reception.
Ces thinks; Wait. Who are the bad guys again?
@seismic-2:
What, you don’t want to see Ian Cameron hunt down bad guys in his underwear?
_______________________
“How the bad guys got in my underwear, I’ll never know.”
@167 droosan: The comments are working OK for me. However, it appears that several of the vintage strips have jumped backwards several years from the last episodes that were posted.
@168 I speak Jive: The eyes’ ingredient is not specified in the recipe. They could be small hunks of jellied cranberry sauce. As to the size of the molds, they’re small. I’m inferring this from the volume of the recipe’s ingredients. Still far too much, in my opinion.
@169 Garrison Skunk: I apparently did a sploof spoof.
@seismic-2: weird. I’ll have to try disabling some Firefox extensions or something .. because I don’t currently see a link to the comments sections, anywhere on the CK site.
and yeah; the vintage comics features especially have been jumping around in time for awhile; The Heart of Juliet Jones dailies went backward 12 years .. so did Mandrake the Magician vintage dailies.
At least the CK archives have been opened up going both forward and backward, for most vintage strips. That’s among the very few of the recent changes that I actually enjoy. It’s still almost impossible to properly ‘search’ those archives, though.
MW & DT: Woo Sploof! The Dick Tracy / Mary Worth crossover you didn’t want!
@Baja Gaijin:
No, no, you’re a comics parody saint. Bravo!
9CL-For being such a great wordsmith you would think Brooke would know how to spell mammary.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: I wouldn’t exactly say Cary Grant was a recluse for the last 20 years of his life. He had a one-man show/lecture tour called “A Conversation with Cary Grant”; that’s why he happened to die in Davenport, Iowa, because he was on tour to do his show there.
@seismic-2: .. turns out it was ‘AdBlock Plus’ on Firefox which had hidden CK’s comments links from view. But that behavior had only started for me on Saturday .. so, who knows whether it’s CK or ABP to blame for that.
But I am glad to know that CK comments sections still exist. ^_^;
@Guillermo el chiclero: As people age, they tend to lose some height. On average, individuals lose half an inch of height for every passing decade after the age of 40. Those who live beyond the age of 80 may lose an additional inch of height each year. Considering that Ed Crankshaft is most likely around 110 years old, it’s safe to say that he has probably lost a significant amount of height over the years.
@Baja Gaijin: I like shrimp./ Salmon too./ That dish makes me/ Want to spew. Baja Shave.
@183 Poteet.:
Baja Shave is a combination of aspic, mayonnaise, tongue, shrimp, black olives and God knows what else.
@Joshua K.: #180: Plus, I remember him being at the Oscar ceremonies just a couple of years before he died, either getting an award or presenting one, and he looked pretty hale for an octogenarian.
@183 Poteet: You’re a poet and may not know it.
@184 Sequitur: You forgot the lemon Jell-O, anchovies, and sliced green olive eyes. I’m sure others’ll jump in with missing ingredients.
@186 Baja Gaijin:
They’re covered in “God knows what else”.
@Joshua K.: @Guillermo el chiclero: Was making the point that he wouldn’t be a go-to celebrity for non-elderly parents to mention. May have overstated things a tad.
@Anonymous: (Taking a second crack at this one.)
MW: Then Wilbur went home, ate a meatball hero, and thought, “Close enough.”
@189 Anonymous:
As Wilbur ate his sandwich he mused, “This is no hero, it’s a sub. Just like me. Sub.”
Mary Worth – Wilbur is like Jack Nicholson’s character Warren Schmidt in About Schmidt, if Schmidt were Jack Nicholson’s unlikable and unredeemed character Melvin Udall in the beginning of As Good as It Gets and never let any any of consequences that happen as a result of his choices lead to any character growth.
Judge Parker couldn’t possibly wind down and end any worse than Apartment 3-G did. What an embarrassment that was.