When to give up and when to persist
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Hagar the Horrible, 7/5/24
I know the joke here is that you think the buffet owner has “won” this coin toss because it means someone will be patronizing his restaurant, but in fact he has “lost” it because that patron is Hagar, whose rapacious appetite will result in an unprofitable transaction. But everyone’s expression in the second panel almost got me to Google “did Vikings ever engage in cannibalism” before I remembered that most webpages about Viking culture are either written by neo-pagans talking about how Vikings were very nice and kind of woke, actually, or by neo-fascists talking about how Vikings were very nice and extremely representative of the superiority of the Nordic bloodline, actually, so I decided to skip it.
Dustin, 7/5/24
Wow. They said it couldn’t be done. They said it was impossible. They said, “There will never be a Dustin strip that Josh laughs at unironically.” But today, they did it. And all it took was having the character I feel the most neutrally about insult the character I hate the most. This should be an inspiration to everyone. Your dreams can come true, if you work hard enough.
135 replies to “When to give up and when to persist”
MW: Let’s pick apart Mary’s words here.
He has a daughter and friends who love him
-A daughter whose existence he often forgets, especially when he showed more favoritism to a young man because there was a chance that he was his son as well as his dead goldfish who he referred to as his son. Considering nobody bothered to check on Wilbur for several weeks, I don’t think Mary and the rest of Charterstone’s insane asylum can be considered his “friends.” And, no, the goldfish don’t count.
A successful career that he enjoys
-Last I heard, his advice column (which he won in a contest) was axed and he was practically begging to stay employed. All we know is that he’s just “a columnist” who is able to work from home.
A willingness to keep trying until he gets it right
-Didn’t he spend several weeks isolating himself from the world because he was such a bad date that the woman went to make out with a waiter?
Mary Worth Mashups: With help from a couple of ‘Mudges.
Also congratulations to Sequitur and his wife on their fiftieth wedding anniversary! (I didn’t read that part of the comments until this morning)
RMMD:
“We can’t find Andrew. Would you have any idea where he might be?”
“He’s in hiding. He started sassing this young lady classmate of his, Sybil, and all sixteen of her personalities started giving it right back to him!”
I read “Did you wear a coonskin cap” and my assumption was that it referenced the Davy Crockett craze of the 1950s that led to big sales for coonskin caps. Still anachronistic (Dustin’s dad is not that old) but more plausible
MW:
“But enough of this repetitive, tiresome blather, Jeff. Let’s head back to Charterstone to indulge in a tray of my freshly-baked dried grape muffins!”
“My goodness, Mary — you shouldn’t have gone through all that trouble, especially what with it being a holiday and all.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s my raisin d’etre!”
RMMD-Andrew is probably in ‘Curtis’ by now showing Derek and Gulp Onion how to be bullies.
MW-A “successful” career that we see Wilbur farm out to Mary.
FC-Okay who blasphemed?
Dustin-Considering that comic strip writers write adults as if they are still living in the 1990s this is rather understandable.
MW: Under the effects of Santa Royale’s eternally-full moon, Dr. Jeff suddenly transmogrifies into Rod Taylor. Mary’s transmogrification into Jessica Tandy is less remarkable, but still it is enough to interest the nearby flocks of gulls and crows gathering near the Bum Boat….
HtH: Pretty sure everyone and their grandmother will be making Anton Chigurh quips about this, so instead I’ll just remark that this joke has a Batiukian ponderous repetition that really rubs me the wrong way. The joke would work pretty decently if that completely and ostentatiously redundant sign wasn’t there, while as it stands the joke trips over its own feet and faceplants through its total lack of confidence in the reader.
JP: Yep, that’s the kitchen of a family wealthy enough to own the entirety of the Hamptons, all right. Meanwhile, Reena is either expressing dismay at some mishap that has befallen Sophie or cheering her on with a rousing chant while she does a backflip off the roof. Assuming the former, it looks like Lucas will have a chance to heroically rescue Sophie from… man-eating sharks? Powerful riptides? Her daiquiri glass being empty? Oh heck, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; go save her from the beach bears, Lucas.
MW: More blatantly reused art. Really curious if June Brigman gets paid for doing this. I wish I could get a full day’s wages for hitting ctrl-C and ctrl-V once.
RMMD: Remember yesterday when we learned that the bully’s name is Randy? Francesco Marciuliano doesn’t! So now he’s named Andr- wait, what comic is this again? Oh, right, it’s a middle-aged phone conversation. My bad, Terry Beatty. Anyway, looks like Papa Huff will be able to sue the snot out of the school for losing his beloved son Randy Andy. Good for him.
Dustin: DustDad never was born a normal child; he simply burst into existence like those creatures from Alien but already balding and myopic.
RMMD: “I have no idea where he is…but then again, I’m sleeping it off on a sofa in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express downtown. They probably want me to put my pants on.”
MW: Stuck in another tedious conversation, Jeff amuses himself by morphing into Karl Malden.
RMMD: ” You want me to come to the SCHOOL? Wearing CLOTHES? Can I bring my BOTTLE?”
DtM: “So what does S-O-C-I-O-P-A-T-H spell?”
DUSTIN: The kid brings to mind that bespectacled peep who gave Foghorn Leghorn so much grief.
@Baja Gaijin: Wilbur hanging himself will always be my favorite.
MW:
“Jeff, dear, would you mind terribly if I gnawed on the wood of this pier for a bit? — today’s malocclusion and the ratlike look on my face pretty much make it a ‘must’ that I do so!”
@Baja Gaijin: I’m still holding out hope for that Simpsons prediction so Wilbur playing on the Wild West swing set is always a good sight.
Dustin-“Did you wear a coonskin cap?” “No. My grandfather only made lampshades of the people he killed never caps.”
Being a warlord in a stateless society is all about flaunting your wealth to attract new warriors. Hagar finds no better way to do this than playing carelessly with a golden Nomisma, probably taken from a raid in the Mediterranean or from service in the Varangian guard
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – In the “It’s not worth giving a shit about” department, wasn’t Flat Top Bully’s name Randy yesterday, and today it’s Andrew?
HtH – Had Josh gone ahead and Googled, he would also have found webpages by Viking Metal fans talking about how Vikings were not very nice but had badass guitar solos.
Hagar: I interpreted the joke as that Hagar prefers Helga’s cooking over restaurants, because he’s a very devoted family man (despite being a murderous Viking) and was saying:
“I’m going home to eat my wife’s cooking, for free! Screw you loser!”
@Bob Tice: Mary Worth as Ratboy would be far more entertaining than what we’ve been given.
@Baja Gaijin:
I am all for Wilbur hanging himself because you just can’t easily cure people of depression with trite gestures like a fish funeral.
RMMD – Those are some late-era-Joe-Giella level weird proportions in P1. Bully Dad’s phone is as big as his head, and that liquor bottle appears to be about 20 inches tall (and that ain’t Grey Goose.)
Dustin: “…and ride a mule to work” The boy is thinking of all the cool things he could be doing, like prospecting, knowing that a kid his age would be gainfully employed way back when.
HtH: The layout of that buffet baffles me. There’s the guy with the chef hat who looks like he’s actively preparing food where people would normally line up to get their food. Also, what kind of buffet has their food facing the window? Is it to entice people into drooling over blobs of potatoes and corn that’s been sitting in water for hours? This is going to bother me for the next, I don’t know, 15 minutes.
Dustin: C’mon, DustinDad! You know it was Meg. Dustin is too stupid and lazy for this level of joke.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
Yep, major continuity error. Unless, his full given name is Randrew?
REX MORGAN M.D.: Principal: “We can’t find him. He keeps changing his name on us and we can’t track him down. Tomorrow he could be ‘Raquel’.”
RMMD: “Don’t be so hard on the kid. He’s had a tough life.” It all started when we named him Randrew.”
RMMD: It’s good to see Lampy is still getting work, although it’s often “character” roles these days. At least they let him maintain his dignity here – no rips, stains, or drunken angles.
Frazz: Mrs. Olsen is going to find out it used to be the preschool Caufield attended until it burnt down in the “mysterious” fire.
Luann: Aw, Brad makes parenting look trivial.
CS: And here I thought it was the collective groaning of all the readers when Batiuk does one of these “Crankshaft be grilling” stories.
RMMD: Do you suppose — maybe Bully Boy is really TWINS? Identical cousins? Randy and Andrew! It’s enough to blow your mind!
I want to hear the rest of this kid’s tight five. How many more questions does he have in that chamber? “Which one was funnier– Lewis or Clark? What was Jamestown really like? Were you a bigger fan of the Angles, Saxons, or Jutes? What are your thoughts on people who sell bad copper?”
In the world of Hagar the Horrible they have window glass and chef’s costuming (kerchief, spatula, chef’s hat), but nobody can hem a goddamn shirt sleeve.
MW: Yeah, Wilbur was really demonstrating a “willingness to keep trying until he gets it right” by spending several weeks in his own filth.
Zits: Old Gravy must sell shirts pre-gravy-stained. It seems like it would be the perfect place for Pluggers.
FC: “Don’t worry kids. It’s our all-powerful and all-just God smiting one of our enemies. (That’ll teach Karen to complain about me leaving Barfy’s poop on her yard)”
RMMD: Wait… does he have two sons?
And they’re Andy and Randy? The names of Miss Piggy’s nephews from “Muppets Tonight?”
Is this guy Miss Piggy’s brother? (actually probably checks out)
Hagar the Horrible-Hagar gives in to his cannibalistic urges.
@Liam: No.
@Baja Gaijin: Trent Reznor decided to change the line in “Closer” from “fuck like the Camerons” because he thought it was too bleak.
@Arabella:
See need another Sid-like agent, but for recurring lamps and drapes.
@The Rambling Otter:
We*
Dustin – “Who put you up to this? That gold was rightfully MINE, all mine! And anyway, the statute of limitations ran out a long time ago!”
Don Abundio, translated:
“What should I do to stay healthy, doctor?”
“There’s only one way”
“Unrestrained debauchery and riotous living”
“I don’t understand how you get all these rich patients to pay you so much!”
RMMD:
“Principal West, my actually knowing where that kid is at any given moment would be like lightning striking. Hey, wait a minute! — that’s exactly what it just did in the first panel of today’s strip!”
Pluggers try to end their calls before their porridge gets cold.
—And a tip o’ the hat to William J. “Give Peas a Chance” Pease of San Diego, CA
Dustin: “No, no, no. I made my lunch money the way every young lawyer does: by helping rich men avoid accountability.”
DUSTIN: “Did you also have a grumpy unrelated adult you inexplicably hung around, as per comic strip law?
HtH: Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for the buffet to be called a “smorgasbord?” I mean, if you want to be true to their Scandinavian roots…oh, wait, this is “Hagar the Horrible.” Carry on.
@Ettorre: “How dare you conflate my age cohort with the stereotype of another? I’ll have you know I played with Star Wars action figurines. I even had the burned Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru set!”
JP: “Is that your girlfriend being kidnapped by a drug cartel?” “I told you before — she’s not my girlfriend!!”
Blondie: “Maybe we should get a coordinated group of weirdos on the internet decide her name.” “Okay, but let’s limit their choice. We still haven’t gotten over Pastry McPastryface.”
DT: “If not detectives, then…. perhaps this municipality has employed its own Pinkertons.”
I usually like One Big Happy Ending, but today they are ripping off Yogi Berra.
@Baja Gaijin:
Wow, Baja, these are great, and choosing is tough. But by the tiniest of margins, I’ll take the searing truth of #4 by a whisker over the humor of #1 and the beautiful outcome of #3.
Honestly, that spatula-wielding chef hanging around the poorly positioned buffet with no sneeze guards deserves to have Hagar eat him out of business, and Hagar deserves the next few days of his body violently expelling that food out of both ends.
DtM: The Mitchells have moved to plan B after the kid started to pick up on pig latin. “Uckylay ingusday an’tcay ellspay.”
Dustin: I get the feeling that Code Name Kid Next Door is fixing Dustin’s dad’s bike and Ed is eagerly watching the kid like he’s a YouTube tutorial.
Hagär the Horrible: And by “eat dinner at,” Hagar means “raid your monasteries, establish my rule over, intermarry with your women and leave a permanent dent in your language,” right?
RMMD: Is Henry Barajas guest writing this week? Tomorrow the bully boy and his dad’s surname will be Hernandez-Martinez.
I don’t often get impatient with Arlo and Janis, but JUST MOVE ALREADY!
MW: Look, it’s a Jeff-Mary double stink face! (Yeah, that’s what we think of this whole thing too.)
FC: The Lord doesn’t like it when Big Daddy stands in front of the big picture window in his underwear. Put some pants on, perv.
JP: “Sophie! Sophie! You gotta come see this kitchen!”
HtH – It should say, All You Care To Eat…cuz it looks like shit to me….
Dustin – Tell me about the time you got your tongue stuck to the flagpole again….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
JP:
“Sophie!”
“Listen, bro, before we head off into the riptide to try to save her, let me do a little parodic riffing, using a Kansas megahit, about how everyone in this strip always has a frowny face and is constantly p.o.d and yelling at everyone else for some reason!
“I close my eyes
Only for a foment, then the foment’s drawn
All my screams
Pass before my eyes, in animosity
“Thrust in chagrin
All we are is thrust in chagri-in
“Same old wrongs
Just a crop of hauteur in an endless spree
All we spew
Stumbles to a frown though we refuse to see
“Thrust in chagrin
All we are is thrust in chagri-in
[bridge]
“Now, don’t clang on
Nothing lasts forever but the worsened cry
It drips away-ay
And all your funnies won’t another minute vie-ie
“Thrust in chagrin
All we are is thrust in chagrin (all we are is thrust in chagrin)
Thrust in chagrin (everything is thrust in chagrin)
Everything is thrust in chagrin”
[outro]
I’m starting to realize. With how Archie comics has evolved over the years, art-wise and character-wise.
I mean, Archie originally had giant buckteeth and a bowtie, Mr. Weatherbee and Miss Grundy looked outright decrepit in their original designs, especially both having one single snaggletooth.
But now the characters look so much more professional, hell, Miss Grundy in the later (original) comics looks even pretty for her age.
So, why can’t other comics jump into that direction too? Keeping the “humour” (or lack thereof) but updating the art style instead of being trapped in 50’s stasis?
RMMD: “Sorry, principal, but you’re gonna have to come here. My license has been suspended. But first, I gotta figure out where the hell I am.”
H&L: The skull and crossbones perfectly captures the Flagston family zeitgeist.
Pluggers: You’re a bigger plugger if you refuse to make long-distance calls.
GT: It appears that the B League is actually three-on-one MMA in basketball uniforms.
Hagar the Horrible – Hagar’s daughter’s fiancé Lute is general depicted as an incompetent bard, but maybe in this case he wrote about Hagar’s ravenous appetite bringing ruin to this restaurant, only couching it in the metaphor of some mythical sea beast (for artistic and not-pissing-off-your-future-father-in-law reasons).
In a time and place where few people were literate, and there were no universities in Scandinavia to study this, the song simply got shared among bards, it’s origins and context largely lost, and many scholars and more casual neo-pagans and neo-fascists would see it as simply a badass story of mythology by an unknown poet, and not a warning that Red Lobster could have taken.
Dustin – Perhaps the creators of Dustin realized their self-insert character DustinDad was wrong all along, and they are finally over it and willing to make him the punching bag of jokes. Perhaps the Dustin family will now be like the Lockhorns as a nuclear family, and everyone they interact with will just be putting them down.
###
Also, I notice we are less than one week away from the 20th anniversary of the first post in the blog.
Shave that massive shag of red hair and beard, and Hagar is Homer Simpson, who once nearly bankrupted The Frying Dutchman.
@astroboy: Also, they’ve never won a Super Bowl. Not one.
Hey, I just dated when Hagar takes place! Well, narrowed it down, anyway. Since this restaurant is clearly French, buffet being a French word and the chef wearing a toque and everything, Hagar must be in Paris following either the successful Viking siege of the city in 845 AD or the second one in 885-886. No wonder the chef is so upset to see a tongue-lolling Viking outside his window–it means the city walls have been breached!
MW: Wilbur has a successful career that he enjoys? After spending several weeks living in the couch in his own filth while (probably) nearly drinking himself to death?
I’d love to get in on that type of career, you know, if anyone has any leads…
@LTJpezcore1:
He’s a personal advice columnist writing under a female pseudonym, basically continuing the column from someone more qualified for the job that just retired
@The Rambling Otter: I thought he was holding the coin toss right outside the buffet and eating at home won. The fact that the first two panels take place in a void with only a colored blob in the background doesn’t help.
WtB: I definitely want to work “It’s like tryin’ to catch a buttered-up seal” into a conversation today.
@Philip: Totally know that…but I figured you still needed to have a shred of sanity to do that job. We eclipsed that point probably 4 weeks of strips ago
When I came into your life your life was over. It had a first panel, a middle, and a last. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That they could have been some other way, that you should have show up in more panels, gotten context, depth, character. You’re asking that I second say the writer, the artist, the joke. – No Country for Well-Drawn Men
@jroggs: Yeah, I couldn’t resist with today’s Hagar via Cormac McCarthy.
Don’t really have much to say about the strips today but I just realized that if Hagar existed in real space he would look like Gritty.
@74 matt w: Wilbur Weston is gritty. Not the mascot, the state of being filthy.
@matt w: As someone who has no Philadelphia affiliation but much love for a big orange goofball, I’m very much in favor of this comparison.
Dustin: “Who put you up to this? Was it Uncle Snuffy? Sheriff Tait? A Barlow? I swore I’d never go back to the Holler, and if I have to kill again to make that happen, by God I will!”
@The Rambling Otter: Archie, to be fair, has had a “house style” for a long, long time. The “new look” stuff didn’t really come until the 2010’s. It also has more media and distribution formats than the average strip (note that none of these “changes” affected the newspaper version). This increased distribution also means that they can probably invest a little more in their talent than the scale wages one probably gets for copying and pasting the Beetle Bailey clip art or whatever.
@Voshkod: I’m not too proud to admit I was dead wrong with that one. But I appreciate you stepping up to get at least one in so I don’t look completely crazy, friendo.
MW: You know that icky feeling you get when the guy in the car ahead of you at the red light opens his car door and spits out a huge mass of phlegm and then the light turns green and you realize you just drove your brand new tires right over that gelatinous vile glob of spit and it’s all over your tire now and you can’t do a thing about it and you just want to scream…that’s the feeling I get with this strip.
@Bob Tice: #6
AIYEEEEEE!!!!! =:0
JP – Sophie thought that last kidnapping was traumatic, but now she’s going to be kidnapped by a shark.
Mary Worth – “But enough about Wilbur. Let’s talk about me. I did a terrific job on arranging the goldfish funeral, and thanks to my efforts Wilbur immediately snapped out of his severe depression. I don’t know how the people around here could function without me. You’d think they would thank me profusely once in a while, since I do such a wonderful job of meddling in other people’s lives. What do you think?”
Rex Morgan – This has been mentioned, but the most interesting thing about this is that Randy is a nickname for Andrew. I’ve heard Andy and Drew as nicknames, but never Randy. Is Beatty really sure that his name isn’t Randall or Randolph?
Also, Beatty remembered to include Haw Haw Paw’s jeroboam of liquor.
9CL – Brooke: “I’ll show those beefwits. They’ll be begging for the pond and Edda’s meticulously drawn legs.”
@Baja Gaijin: Mashups – I like #4 and #5, although I’m not sure that Mary is self aware enough to realize #4.
@Arabella: They’re two of a kind!
@The Rambling Otter: Never drink anything bigger than your head.
@matt w: I love Gritty!
@I speak Jive: Mary strikes me as the kind of person who wants a prize for basic decency…and so does Wilbur for that matter. Hell, except for probably Estelle, the superior pets, and the personality lacking Eve, Charterstone is mostly full of attention seeking assholes who want to be rewarded because they decided to wake up and not kick a puppy today.
@I speak Jive: Maybe his birth certificate was misspelled and his name is actually Randrew. Fun fact: my brother’s first and middle name were misspelled on his birth certificate so he and my oldest nephew have misspelled middle names.
JP: “SOPHIE! You lost your top!”
Luann: All this is doing is showing how badly Brad and Toni have failed to connect with Shannon in real life.
MARY WORTH: Wilbur: “I’ll have you know that my career as ‘Obnoxious-Next-Door-Neighbor-Whose-Offscreen-Popularity-The-Greedy-Studio-Execs-Vastly-Overestimate’* is in full swing and very lucractive!
*Otherwise known as “Urkelization.”
@2+2=7: Bruh, Urkel looks like The Fonz next to Wilbur.
Hagar The Horrible: Hagar is actually going to eat the building itself and everything inside with it, revealing his true demonic form and swallowing them into his eldritch gullet, probably followed by making a lame pun about his wife’s cooking or Eddie’s fish-fucking.
Dustin: “Who put you up to this?” asks Dustin’s Dad, glancing about to make sure he isn’t watched as he kills this child for stumbling too close to the truth of his immortality.
@Needless Exposition: A prize our gal usually gets too: a henpecked sugar daddy who spoils her with all the undercooked carp and size-changing boat rides she can
take for grantedhandle!RMMD:
“You should show Wilbur Weston how to comb his hair strands, Principal West. You’re a true role model!”
@2+2=7: Mary has the personality of a dead rat that keeps inserting itself into everyone’s houses and making them realize that they live in a hovel so any improvement that they make, she takes all the credit for.
Beetle Bailey: “Cafe Tres Cher” means “Very Expensive Coffee.”
Dennis the Menace: Something’s up ’cause Mom’s been casting spells around me all day.
Family Circus: Nice short shorts Bil.
RMMD:. So Andrew got beat up by Randy too and then ran away? Or is Andrew Parker’s enforcer who beat Randy after Randy beat Parker? Bullying is confusing enough without disappearing kids.
JP: Read that four people got bit by sharks yesterday, July 4.
@Needless Exposition: Mary is an enabler, all things considered. All the things Wilbur has done and Wilbur is ties to an individual who really needs actual help and not encouragement to continue this self-destructive behavior. But as the series as a whole discourages actual help (i.e., psychiatry) in favor of quack treatments and self-help gurus, it’s not a shocker.
@Needless Exposition: That…kinda just reinforces the point (although I do look foward to the inevitable spin-off “Nobody Loves Wilbur*”)
*Which, to be fair, would still be more watchable than Joanie Loves Chachi
Also to be, fair Josh, the Neo-fascist aren’t saying that the Vikings are “nice.” To put it in Mary Worth parlance, they see the brutal pillaging and raping as “endearing quirks.”
@John the Dateless Wonder: Reading Mary Worth for psychological advice is worse than reading Rex Morgan for medical advice.
@2+2=7: It was so bad that Scott Baio did not get laid in a decade where literally everyone got laid.
Dustin: Obviously someone put Hayden up to this. Nobody would actually think Ed had an interesting past.
RMMD: News flash! Joe Biden has withdrawn from the presidential race to take a job as the principal at Glenwood Middle School.
9CL: Port (noun): A sweet wine aged in barrels, much like the barrel whose bottom we are currently scraping.
Blondie: Would have loved to be a fly on the wall when Blondie and Tootsie decided, “You know what would really make our catering service stand out? A flesh-colored van!”
C-Shaft: Crankshaft is silent, trapped in a wartime flashback of his own making.
MT: Okay, the guy holding a big hammer in panel 1 swings an aluminum bat at Mark in panel 2, and Mark repels the attack through the power of sound effects, as Crow T. Robot mutters “Jules just didn’t care” at the bottom of the screen.
MW: Notice that Mary bolds “keep trying” but not “gets it right.” If she’s attributing misguided persistence to him Iris and Stella can certainly back her up.
Phantom: There’s nothing the man with a cave full of jewels and priceless artifacts despises more than avarice, except for maybe irony.
RMMD: It turns out the Haw Haw Bully Boy really does have hidden depths. For instance, his full name is “Andrew” but he goes by “Randy” instead of “Andy.” Imagine!
MW: Nothing Mary said today is true especially that Wilbur is willing to try. If the world does not treat him exactly the way he wants he throws a fit most recently because a date rejected him for very good reasons during that fit his fish died and he demanded the world feel sorry for him
Man belongs in a straight jacket
One Big Happy: Would it have killed Detorie to name the kids on either side of Evans “Tinker” and “Chance”?
FC: Looks like Big Daddy Bil took a direct hit to the jimmies. It’s God’s way of sparing the world of more melonheads.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Why are the sirens going off?
@103 Artist formerly known as Ben: I am disappoint. Mark punched a guy with facial hair. He didn’t punch off the facial hair. I hate saying this but Jules sucks on continuity.
@Professor Fate: It’s a shame that Charterstone is the type of insane asylum that has an open door policy so that deranged individuals like Mary and Wilbur are free to roam around and harass the public.
Crank: “He’s a danger to himself and everyone around him! Nobody knows why he’s still allowed to do this!”
FC: And that’s the story of how Daddy Keane’s junk was gifted with the power of Shazam.
JP: Is Sophie being attacked by a shark? Only if Ces has found a way to give a shark an overly-complicated backstory that grinds the comic to a halt for weeks and sucks any drama out of the situation.
Phantom: I mean, it’s kind of funny that Mollusk has given his lunar lander a name that Scrooge McDuck would find a bit on-the-nose, but if he’s meant to be a parody of Musk and not just a generic rich guy, it’s a bit niggling that Musk doesn’t name things like this, instead varying between dull but functional, dull but baffling, and pop-culture (or pop-Culture) references.
Come to think of it, while it’s the wrong kind of vehicle, I’d actually be kind of impressed if the conversation had gone:
“It was a science mission. A lunar lander called The Expectation of Your Partner’s Return.”
“That’s a terrible name. Did Ian Mollusk not see that?”
“It’s based on a spaceship name in The Community, a series of science fiction novels by a writer named Elon Bannock, who would have hated Mollusk and everything he stands for.”
RMMD: Okay, maybe Beatty was doing a bit where he never mentioned the bully’s name, and the punchline is giving the bully all the names?
SH: Hey, remember when this film about mermaid/human relations couldn’t be a romance, because it would look like it was about Remora and Thomas and look like a rip-off of The Little Mermaid? I think it was two days ago? Well, not only is it a romance, it’s a romance which originally ended with the mermaid sacrificing herself, but they’ve changed the ending so she and her human partner live happily ever after, just like Disney did!
Hagar the Horrible, 7/5/24: “But everyone’s expression in the second panel…” Um, the second panel is of a coin being tossed with no sign of any people present! DOH DIDDLY OH DOE DOE!
MW; what are the odds Jeff packs a tube of lube when on his bimonthly date with Mary?
@112 Professor Well Actually: 100% if the tube of lube has “Eucerin Advanced Repair Hand Cream” on the label.
@Sequitur: You’re in the 6 Percent Club: Only six percent of marriages in the US make it to the 50 year mark.
@Baja Gaijin:
#114. Hurrah, Mr and Mrs. Sequitur. You’ve accomplished much in your fifty years, and we expect more good things to come. Congratulations.
Frank and Ernest – “My name’s Noah. Welcome to the Ark of Minimum Genetic Diversity.”
Dustin-“To earn money for college I did do some coal mining if you know what I mean.”
@117 Liam: I don’t understand: was DustDad into butt stuff?
@Baja Gaijin: Maybe Mark’s stubble is making his superpowers fuzzy as well as his face.
@119 Artist formerly known as Ben: I prefer to believe authorial incompetence.
You’re a Plugger if you call Central on your Stromberg-Carlson to connect you to your party at the rate of $1.99 per minute.
You’re a woke gender-neutral commie if you can call Montreal from Phoenix on a smartphone and have it included in your plan.
Just a quick drop in thanking those of you who mentioned the 50th wedding anniversary of my wife and myself.
And here is something Baja may be able to use.
LUANN: Having seen, decades ago, a nightmarish episode of what I think was NIGHT GALLERY in which a Nazi war criminal tries to escape into a painting of a lovely idyllic landscape and winds up, karma being what it is, in a horrific painting in which he’ll be tormented forever, I have occasionally considered which comic strip it would be the very worst to accidentally enter. Results vary. But for the past three weeks, LUANN has definitely won. Ugh, make it stop.
@Sequitur: And me too. Congrats.
@Sequitur: Happy Golden Anniversary!
Late Thread Cuisine: In honor of Sequitur’s anniversary.
@Baja Gaijin: Those look good.
@127 taig: They’re very tasty when fresh.
@126 Baja Gaijin:
Hey, sweet! I need to have 50th wedding anniversaries more often if it helps you post good stuff. Thanks!
@Baja Gaijin: Those look very good, and they’re nicely decorated. Great choice.
@I speak Jive: In Bavaria, on both sides of the border with Austria, gingerbread hearts are decorated with love-related phrases. They’re sold at festivals, often on lanyards so they can be worn. I don’t think they’re quite as edible as the recipe’s output. And far more edible than Mary Worth’s carrot muffins.
@Baja Gaijin: I thank Baja, I thank Sequitur, I thank Mrs. Sequitur, and I thank the ancient Egyptians. They were the first to make gingerbread, believe it or not, according to The Spruce. Probably without frosting, however.
@Poteet: #123: I remember that episode. Anthony Quinn played the ex-Nazi. The museum moved the paintings and he ended up as a crucified Christ.
Congrats to the Sequiturs!
@Poteet: The first week, the self-flattering fantasy about how much better Shannon would be if only she had been raised by B & T was bad enough. This nauseatingly sweet multiple child fantasy is worse. They’re married, and theoretically capable of producing multiple children. What’s stopping them other than a disinclination to engage in icky sex?