Sad Sunday
Post Content
The Phantom, 9/8/24
Phantom was growing increasingly vexed
That the proles would identify him as John X.
So by making up missions and playing a role
He set out to bewilder the Jungle Patrol.
Now you may think the Phantom was being a dick,
But protecting The Legend is part of his schtick
And he doesn’t much mind it’s exacting a toll
On his credulous fans at the Jungle Patrol!
So poor Colonel Worubu is having a sad
‘Cause he’s lost the best buddy that he never had.
But his misery’s nothing but damage control
To the Unknown Commander of Jungle Patrol!
Mark Trail, 9/8/24
Mark proposes to save the Catalina Quail by burning down its habitat. It’s possible he doesn’t see that “local shrubbery” and “overgrown uncleared brush” are the same thing. It’s certain he hasn’t thought this all the way through. Either way though, roast quail is delicious.
Family Circus, 9/8/24
What’s more tragic: that Jeffy will grow into a sleep-deprived corporate drone like his Dad, or that Bil will deteriorate into a scatterbrained idiot like his son?
Rex Morgan, M.D. (panels), 9/8/24
Your finger hurts. No one can help you. No one cares. Your career is over and your life is meaningless. Sit, Truck, sit. Sit like you’ve never sat before.
—Uncle Lumpy
162 replies to “Sad Sunday”
RMMD:
“Sure is quiet in the park today. I wonder if that ‘CLOSED FOR RENOVATION’ sign in front of it has anything to do with that!”
FC:
“Mommy? What happened at the end of that story you were reading me last night?”
“Oh, Godot never ends up showing up, honey.”
Phantom:
“Did you see the look on The Colonel’s face?”
“Not completely, because he was wearing sunglasses — you know, like he always does, even when he’s inside!”
MT:
“Now, these unusual birds humiliate schoolchildren by insisting that the word ‘potato’ has an ‘e’ at the end when they ask the kids how to spell it!”
RMMD:
“Dadgum hand still ain’t workin’, though. I tried leafin’ through the sheet music and the lyrics of the band that did the chart hits ‘Oh Yeah,’ ‘The Race’ and ‘I Love You,’ but that hand wouldn’t let my fingers do the walkin’ through the Yello pages!”
FC-The movie ends with a money shot.
RMMD-“I could sit here all day.” And Truck did. Five minutes later he had a heart attack and died.
MT “Brought to the island by indigenous people-12,000 years ago.” So, a non-native invasive species introduced by migratory humans. Gotcha.
I’ll have mine in a white wine reduction with sage and scallions. And yes, sides of asparagus and wild rice would be lovely.
Dang, I get back from a week of work and I missed the Uncle Lumpy time. How unfortunate.
FC: You know it’s a Sunday strip when the humor is even more obscure than usual.
MW: Only in the Worthiverse can dedicating yourself to your job be considered a character flaw. Best to stick with either being a smug tenured professor, a doctor who constantly takes trips overseas for “missionary work,” or a columnist whose job is so unimportant that he can sit in squalor for weeks with no one bothering to check on him.
Curtis – It’s true! Wu-Tang is for the Olds now!
RMMD: Cue Edgar Kennedy in a 1930s policeman’s uniform tapping the bench with his billy club…
JP: ‘I just left one message asking how the boys were holding up since Trey was sent to Sing Sing…’
MW: Eshtelle’s so worried about this ‘dramatic revelation’ she hasn’t realized her nose has fallen clean off her face!
Luann: @#!$%@#^ it, Luann, that’s your tenth spill today and it’s not even 9 a.m. yet! You’re going to give Puddles diabetes!
RMMD: Truck starts to read the graffiti on the bench. “Some come here to sit and think; some come here to…”
So I got notifications that a few of the sentences that Uncle Lumpy wrote, he got his help from AI in writing them. So just to be clear, this writer is even more pathetic than Josh.
Can you say “Meanwhile” if you don’t actually change locations? I call shenanigsns!
JP: Neddy finally gets in touch with Declan’s parents and learns there is no evil brother. Declan suffers from William Wilson syndrome. “Well, that explains the two birthday gifts.” She thinks.
Then he becomes philosophically contemplative:
“‘Je m’assois sur un banc; donc je suis.’ Boy, that Day-Kart feller was one smart cookie!”
RMMD — “On the Bench” — the dream sequence you didn’t know Rex Morgan (the strip) was capable of!
The Ghost Who Protects His Brand — Love the faux-Kipling, Uncle Lumpy. . .
If you can keep aloof when those about you
Seek to connect and try to hang with you.
If you can learn their names and send them packing
And never say a word about your loss
If you can go back into your Skull Cave
And leave them there to do the dirty work,
Then yours is Bangalia and all that is in it.,
And, what’s more, you’ll be the Phantom, my son.
@Bob Tice:
“He keeps being a bug, honey, and then he dies. That’s what happens to little boys who don’t love their parents. Now, eat your cereal.”
“Did you see the look on The Colonel’s face?” ” Yep, new orders, he really hates it when people order the Extra Crispy instead of Original Recipe.”
@richardf8: Wu-Tang: The rap music the astronauts took to the moon.
MW – “He’s driven to provide the best personal care, even at the cost of his personal life. Me? I’m outta here at 5 p.m. I don’t care if your cat is hemorrhaging out both ends. Now, it’s 4:59, so you’re gonna have to do something with those Rottweilers, ‘k?”
The Familiar Mucus: “Mommy, what happened after the 69th shade of grey?”
@richardf8, Curtis: Greg should have invested the $5000 through Wu-Tang Financial.
A few days ago, when Pluggers were depicted using an electric lawn mower, I predicted we would soon see them using an enormous riding mower.
It gives me no joy to be correct.
Sex Organ V.D. : Worst Forrest Gump remake ever!
CS: The puns could have worked better had Lillian taken it up a notch. “Yes, Skip, we bookstores find puns to be very disarming. They’re the chinks in our armor. You have to hand it to us. You left us nothing. Thanks for you good work, I want to give you a hand. You’re all right, Skip. Hey, you’re missing an arm, asshat!”
RMMD: Uh oh. He’s going to defecate on a bench in a public park. Think of the children. Oh, wait, sorry. I read that wrong. “I could sit here all day.” I read “sit” differently. What the h?
The Argyle Sweater: And now for something completely different…
Fire Marshall Mark salutes our fire breathing quail overlords in the final.panel.
@Bob Tice:
“Did you see the look on The Colonel’s face?”
——————————-
The Phantom theme song by Spike Jones.
MT: I’d ask why Mark is saluting with his left hand, but I’m pretty sure I know the answer.
FC: “Everyone died. Now, eat your damn breakfast.”
RMMD: I wonder if the playground is closed for repairs. Sorry, wrong comic strip.
FC: Thel to Jeffy; “Sydney Carton gets beheaded.” To Bil; “Peter Rabbit escapes from Mr. McGregor.”
“Oh, stop blubbering. I’m going back to bed.”
Luann Spanish to English.
Insipid Luann strip.
Sid does it again! Excellent job placing Quagmire Quail! All those other lesser agents said no.one wants to hire a fire breathing quail.
Frazz: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Caulfield is an asshole. We’ve already seen this strip, like 927 times.
Luann: “Where does he empty? In your bed, bitch!”
CS: So, Skip has no information about the fire, and he’s interviewing Loathsome to get her response rather than doing any investigation into the fire. Makes sense.
9CL: I guess if you’re not going to bother updating the comic featuring the eponymous character, her cameo in your other comic also makes sense.
Zits: It won’t be so funny when Connie dies of an aneurysm.
MW: Oh noes! Sheila is making Estelle see the thing she already observed in Ed. Will she survive this revelation?!?
@Liam: …and there.was much rejoicing.
@Sequitur: The. Larch….
@taig: I’d ask why Mark is saluting with his left hand, but I’m pretty sure I know the answer.
He wipes with his right?
MW: We’ve now added another client and a dog to the audience for this highly-charged personal discussion in the main waiting room! Tomorrow the camera zooms out and we see the room is filled with pets and their owners, all watching as the drama unfolds. A round of applause as Sheila concludes her speech praising Dr. Ed and his work ethic. Everyone begins to wonder if their pets shouldn’t be treated by him, instead of Dr. See.
CS: “We don’t know if there’s any connection between the unseen offscreen event and the unseen offscreen protestors, even though I said there was in yesterday’s strip and came to your house late at night to ask you questions based on the presumption that there is.”
CS: We interrupt this week’s sanctimonious saga of brave and noble Les Moore’s lone battle against tyranny and ignorance for more stupid Batty word play. Smirk it up, everybody!
MW: *sob!* “I already know what you mean, Sheila. He’s just too busy to help me pick out animal masks for our zoo-themed major nuptials.”
“Your what, now”
“During the ceremony and reception, I want people to dress up in their finest party attire and wear masks depicting different animals. But he doesn’t seem interested.”
“Holy crap, I’m warning off the wrong person.”
FC: “Beats me, the only time I get any ‘me time’ is after everyone else falls asleep, you think I’m going to waste it doing mental labor for you ungrateful bastards?”
Phantom: Dammit, I thought Lee Falk’s fourth-wall breaking meant that we had finally seen the end of this arc, but no such luck. We get it, the Phantom is so very clever at deceiving his largely non-white and/or non-male underlings, that’s why he must shoulder the burden of being the protector of Bangalla and interfere in the affairs of neighboring regions like Ivory Lana (note: good stripper name), can we PLEASE move on?
RMMD: It was decided that the “Truck has a chronic occupational injury” story was just too breakneck and high-stakes up until now, and the audience would welcome a little breather.
6Chx: I like the way this comic doesn’t bother with lame Blondie- and Beetle Bailey-type jokes and just unpretentiously embraces feather-brained absurdity.
Pluggers: Real pluggers pimp their rides by plastering them with decals of shooting flames, STP logos, and confederate flags.
JP: “Look, Ronnie, my little sister just snooped her way into solving a murder case, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna play second fiddle to her.”
MT: The before-times Mark always had that stern look of sincerity and gravitas. The Jules version just looks like some demented halfwit.
RMMD: I’m intrigued by the narration box not showing up until the third panel. Because if the first two are throw-away panels, then some newspaper readers got nothing but that. Talk about mailing it in.
C’shaft: “It’s almost as if we were designed by a lazy hack creator who can’t imagine or develop any personalities or tastes beyond his own. Weird, huh?”
Dustin: Yeah, if only that Broadway play had an entire song about how Hamilton created a sex scandal that wrecked his entire political career and was “never gonna be president now”…
HotC: I admit, I’m not up on middle school fashion (Divaling Two just wants to wear a red fleece hoodie until it falls off of him in tatters). Is the “1970s JC Penny catalog model” look in right now?
JP: “Honestly I didn’t even want advice; I wanted you to support me and tell me I’ve done the right thing. You really dropped the ball on this one, Ronnie.” (Almost typed “Reena” there before remembering that’s Sophie’s token non-white bestie. If we’re not going to get them distinct personalities, can we at least give them names that start with different letters?)
MW: Oh no, Dr. Ed may be a workaholic! Good thing Stell has spent the past several months handling his front desk; she would have to be a complete idiot not to have noticed this al…you know what, Sheila, you might need to repeat this once or twice for it to sink in.
DT: Moon People must be terrible poker players.
Moon Dude: “Ummmmm, raise fifty —— no, wait, five dollars. (Crackle sizzle zap)
Earth Guy #1: “Fold.”
Earth Guy #2: “I fold.”
Earth Guy #3: “Fold.”
FC – Thel holding up that 2% milk carton over two panels is the least subtle product placement I’ve ever seen. But I do like the idea that Thel appears to have given in to the inevitable and is just serving the kid a box of Domino sugar with milk for breakfast.
Meanwhile, in RMMD – I could sit here all day. Thanks to VESIcare!
RMMD: Cindy and her stupid hat sure miss Truck, though why is anyone’s guess. You’d think having some unpleasant and often violently angry and destructive old man show up all day every day to claim an entire booth and demand plate after plate after plate of food for which he never pays or leaves any tips would be something an Earth human being wouldn’t much enjoy. But on Planet Cindy, everything is backwards, not just the headwear.
CS: Remember yesterday when Skip said the protestors were attacking the bookstore? Well, now he wants to make it very clear he’s not trying to draw any kind of connection between the protestors and the bookstore. Why would you even think that? [smirk]
JP: No, you didn’t get to see Neddy actually leave this critically-important-to-the-story message, and no, you don’t get to know what she said or how she worded it. Don’t even bother asking.
MW: Damn it, I wouldn’t have used my limit-one-per-day “haha, these people are aliens” joke if I knew a phrase like “fated mates” was waiting for me. Still, I think Sheila’s overselling these star-ordained pairings a bit. Granted, the word “fated” doesn’t necessarily imply “good,” but it certainly didn’t equate to “lasting” either, seeing as Ed and seemingly Sheila as well are now single after what could have been at most only three decades of destined union. This is the problem you run into with a universe where men and women cannot interact with each other without falling into deepest, twuest, pyuwest wuv; you end up blaming the cold manipulations of the amoral universe for everything instead of appreciating that sometimes shit just happens.
DtM: Dennis reluctantly prays some horrible tragedy doesn’t befall his clueless dad.
“Can you imagine the asshole my dipshit mom would bring home next.” He thinks.
CS – “How nice that we can engage in clever wordplay while discussing arson and censorship!”
@Banana Jr. 6000:
This is kinda starting to convince me that it’s going to turn out the protesters WEREN’T responsible for the fires, because this dialogue is the kind of thing you’d insert during the initial sequence where the red herring suspect is discussed, because you realised afterwards that your “heroes” being certain they’re guilty without any proof, when it’s going to turn out they’re not, is sort of a bad look?
I dunno, it’s just that this feels like the discussion went “The bookstore that burned was targeted by protesters who didn’t like that they sold banned books”, and then this strip is ADR-ing “But we don’t really have any proof the protesters did it, heck, the two events might be unrelated!”.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Was the Tunnel of Love a success, Pamela?”
“No! I threw Don Abundio overboard, just like I planned”
“So what went wrong?”
“He can swim!”
@TheDiva:
how Hamilton created a sex scandal that wrecked his entire political career and was “never gonna be president now”
How quaint.
“Jogger just found him here, dead. Looks like his finger did him in. We found a business card in his pocket – a Rex Morgan, M.D. If only he’d seen a doctor like Morgan in time, he’d be fingering on.”
Mary Worth Mashup
@Baja Gaijin: At first, I was like, “This isn’t a Mary Worth mashup.” Then, I was like, “Oh. Oh no.”
@56 taig: Whoops! Force of habit. That should be “Blondie Mashup featuring Mary Worth Mashup.”
RMMD: I’m fearful this will inexorably lead to us looking up Buck Wise’s nose as he talks on the phone.
@55 Baja Gaijin:
Well, at least it wasn’t Wilbur.
I really do adore Uncle Lumpy’s Ballads of the Jungle Patrol.
I imagine them sung in rich, rolling cadence by a male chorus of baritones and basses, with a subtle underlying snare drum keeping the beat.
@Ukulele Ike:
Sort of a Mitch Miller vibe?
The Phantom: Really like the beat panels here. It’s not often that a newspaper comic dares to show the most terrifying thing of all; awkward silences!
Rex Morgan: This comic has officially hit Poe’s Law. If you said that it would take close to a week to depict an old man sitting on a park bench, it’d seem like an absurdist parody of this comic’s pacing, but it’s doing exactly that right now and completely unironically.
DtM: He only makes a show of praying to Yahweh. After the door closes, he invoked the names of his true masters Eris, Loki and Anansi.
Family Circus: “How did the movie we were watching come out? Debbie did Dallas, but you fell asleep before Dallas could do Debbie back, Typical!”
Hi and Lois: Aw, how cute, this tiny baby is already riddled with anxiety about having to wear glasses. Well, don’t worry, Trixie — you’ve been staring at the sun so long, nearsightedness will be the least of your eye problems!
Mark Trail: Unique? In reality, the quail who live on Catalina Island are nearly genetically identical to other California quail. The only difference is the amount of time they spend sitting around listening to Spencer Davis music and drinking White Russians made with buffalo milk.
Rex Morgan, MD: They could spin this off into its own strip: The Idling Truck. In the first story arc, Truck crosses his right leg over his left, with unexpected consequences.
MW: Estelle sure is reacting with horror to this “revelation” that Ed himself made pretty clear in their last conversation.
@Peanut Gallery:
Al parecer una docena de rosas no rinde tanto como antes.
I was struck by the 2% milk/Domino sugar breakfast combo in Family Circus as well. Doesn’t Thel realize the kids need their fats, too?
@Bob Tice: you are mistaken. The colonel is the other guy, not JohnX.
Phantom: Concerned that his true identity as the Unknown Commander is likely to be discovered by his constant presence as “John X” (if it in fact hasn’t already been deduced), Kit sends new orders to the Colonel dispatching John X to Ivory Lana, a mission from which he will never return. I would hate to be the company clerk who has the job of processing the paperwork to file his death certificate, notify his survivors, and pay them their benefits.
MT: So 12,000 years ago a group of indigenous people were responsible for importing a bird species that became the California Catalina Quail, and in the daily strips we see that now a new group of people is responsible for importing a cat species that will become the California Catalina Lion. That’s what I call progress!
RMMD: My favorite part of today’s strip is the panel in which waitress Wanda and waitress Cindy discuss Truck’s behavior when he stormed out of the diner, and Cindy admits “I got nothin’.” It’s good that from time to time Terry Beaty has a character give voice to the strip’s mission statement.
MW: Why the look of shock and horror on Estelle’s face in the final panel? What Sheila is telling her there (“You have to decide for yourself if being his life partner and all it entails is what you really want!) is advice that applies to everyone who gets married to anyone, anywhere, ever.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
I really wish that Lillian gets burned alive by the crowd but alas, it’s the Batiukverse (where terrible people get handsomely rewarded like Dick Facey and Harry L. Dinkle The World’s Biggest Asshole and decent people like Wally Winkerbean, George Keesterman and Ralph Meckler get horribly punished)
MW: Ed’s fictionalized bio could be the equivalent of “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” or “Lust for Life.” We’ll call it, “Drven to Provide Pet Care.”
RMMD: You’re old, Truck. Is this seriously the worst heath crisis you’ve ever had?
MW – “Damn,” thinks Estelle, “Is that all? I was REALLY hoping for ‘werewolf.'”
Zits – Oh, no! Jeremy took the eggs out of the refrigerator!
Mary Worth – It’s not something kinky or disgusting, just that Dr. Ed is a workaholic. What a disappointment. The meddling is going to be half assed and lame.
Frazz – If Caulfield reads at a college level, why is he still in a third grade classroom? Why doesn’t school management put him in advanced placement classes? At the very least, he wouldn’t be disrupting his class, and the rest of the students would have a chance to learn.
But no, apparently his Individual Education Plan is hanging around with a smug janitor and cutting up other people behind their backs.
I’ve come to realize which “new” comics are reprints of originals by Bil and which are new originals by Jeffy. (as rare as they are)
Jeffy’s (not today’s) have this weird roughage to the lining, where Bil’s is completely smooth.
@Uncle Lumpy: That video is proof that people knew how to make uncannily creepy images long before AI showed them how.
Truck dying alone on a park bench in a t-pose because T is for Truck? I’m truckin’ here for it. Keep on truckin’.
***
So the quail is an invasive species introduced by humans, and to protect it from the devastating results of human-induced climate change, humans must set its home ablaze? I just realized the billionaires might be right and shooting us all off to Mars to leave this planet to itself might be for the best.
Rex Morgan – There’s so much drama and tragedy that Beatty has to give readers some boring relief.
JP – This is never a good move. If someone wants nothing to do with their family, there’s a good reason for it. Meddling people should stay out of it.
MARY WORTH: Estelle look of horror is because she realizes that her new fiance is destined to repeat the same plotline over and over and over again. (“Oh no! Now, I’m the dweeby nephew!”)
MARY WORTH (2): I also like the implication that the animals do not come first for Dr Shiela, and that she’s not as dedicated to taking care of them so it’s some real fine decision-making on the part of Ed’s clinic to transfer pets to her. (I know. I being slanderous, when here Dr. Sheila is, standing around her busy office gossiping about boys. How can I possibly question such dedication?)
@Baja Gaijin: Mashup – Keith definitely has a type.
@CsRoberto2854: It looks like Loathsome Lillian will be a hero in this Pulitzer bait story. Tom Batiuk was interviewed in the Daily Cartoonist a couple of weeks ago about the story, and he said that he discovered “strength and courage” in her.
I guess she was strong and brave when she ruined her sister’s life.
@I speak Jive:
“Utter blasphemy!” –Mary Worth.
RMMD: Truck is making the sign of the cross because he is the true messiah.
RMMD: Local artist goes to the park to paint. “I call it ‘Old Cowboy Sleeping in Pool of Own Urine.’ I figure I can probably get six bucks for it.”
Curtis: I am prepared to bet Greg his entire $5,000 that he has precisely zero idea if the neighbours are bothered by Curtis’s music or not. Greg is, so the neighbours damn well should be!
DT: So Mysta bursts in snarling at Ro-Zan, antennae ablaze, and Diet Smith is just “Welp, I don’t know what that’s about, but clearly it’s no reason not to continue taking Ro-Zan at face value and offering him every courtesy!”
HtH: Normally I snark at Hägar strips that fail to realise Vikings traditionally did their raiding somewhere else, not in their own communities. But faced with the concept that a “new Earl” has just randomly moved into the local castle, I have to admit that’s the least of the problems with this strip’s understanding of how feudal Norway worked.
MW: Oh, good lord, I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming. Of course Ed’s dark secret is that he just cares too much about his veterinary practice; something Estelle already fricking knew. Every time I think I’ve got a handle on how nothing this story is, Moy raises the bar!
Peanuts: All to often, pop quizzes in comic strips seem to consist of entirely random questions, so I like that this one is recognisably about early Middle Eastern civilisations. I’m also impressed that Peppermint Patty knows about Hammurabi!
Peanuts Begins: It’s fun seeing the things we associate with Peanuts characters today get introduced for the first time. I’m really surprised that this one came before “Snoopy pretends to be things”, “Charlie Brown is bad at baseball”, or “Lucy and Linus even exist”.
@Chance:
Thank you.
MW: Wasn’t this the exact conflict of the last Ed/Estelle plot? Didn’t they fix his work-life balance by Estelle volunteering and Ed hiring a replacement for his nephew?
@TheDiva: Phantom: This is precisely why I prefer the strips about Lee Falk – the emotions and interactions make sense to me.
Ultimately, this is a problem with most superhero comics. They’re living a double life and deceiving their friends. The MCU made a smart decision, dramatically, to have Tony Stark come out as Iron Man immediately and avoid all the weird side-storying about a secret identity.
@Peanut Gallery: You want uncanny? You want creepy?
Mitch Miller is pure wholesomeness compared with Czechoslovakian Mackie Messer’s Moritat with Twelve Masked Tap-Dancing Satanic Blondes.
RMMD: Truck finally gets up and has strips of wet paint on the back of his clothes.
@Guillermo el chiclero: I’m looking forward to tomorrow when Truck tries to smile it off while opening a roll of Mentos, only to collapse to the ground with renewed crippling hand pain.
@I speak Jive:
If I were Batiuk, I would’ve had Lillian run over by a bus in 2007, and nobody would mourn her
CS: Pulitzer? Why stop there? Batiuk will have a combat veteran hand Les his Medal of Honor during the award ceremony saying; “You deserve this more than me.”
Laughed out loud at today’s RMMD. This is brilliant!
Now I’ve learned from some of you that there was some regrettable drama in this story — something about Truck accidentally breaking something and storming out — but I’ve only been following it on this site, and I really appreciate Josh’s and Lumpy’s discretion in showing us the highlights.
From “Truck’s finger kind of hurts” to “Truck decides to sit on a bench” to “Truck decides to sit on a bench some more and meanwhile Truck sits on a park bench some more”… this is absolutely exemplary Rex Morgan and I am here for it, I tell you.
If Dr. Ed being too dedicated to his job is the biggest flaw Moy can come up with to the point where she makes a borderline self insert, she’s trying way too hard to push unnecessary drama in what should be a straightforward story. Stop trying to deny us shenanigans with Wilbur and Crazy Cousin Pam, Moy!
While we patiently wait for the squirrels to take Truck away in Boredom Park, may I suggest a brief visit to beautiful downtown “Vixen Park”?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DY1EnxzsJ3A
Seven episodes, no waiting!
Please note I have no financial nor creative connections to ” Vixen Park” or the original comic PATIGF,(except one suggested storyline) just a fan wanting to let people know that its a thing that exists.
Luann: Luann is too incompetent to pour a bowl of cereal.
@Lauralot: THANK YOU!!!
@95 JamesBont: You’re a plugger if you’re too incompetent to pour a bowl of cereal. You’re a plugger if you have to call in your pet/grandchild to clean up your kitchen messes. You’re a plugger if interactions from all the meds you take to address your many illnesses prevents you from fixing a bowl of cereal without making a big sticky mess. You’re a plugger if you’re too incompetent to pour a bowl of cereal and too poverty-stricken to hire someone to pour you a bowl of cereal without making a mess.
JUDGE PARKER: Boy Neddy is really angling for a spot that Yenta-in-Training internship Mary Worth is putting together, ain’t she?
@Sequitur: Or his quadruplets.
MT: I checked online, and sure enough, the Catalina quail really likes open chaparral brush and open oak woodlands, and both evolved with and need fire. (Disney people got fire wrong in BAMBI.) Prescribed fires are now essential for many natural landscapes because of human fire suppression. Mark didn’t explain that well, but it’s true.
However, mule deer, invasive on Catalina Island, are a huge threat to the quail and other rare species. The Catalina Island Conservancy essentially says that unless the deer are adequately dealt with, habitat restoration cannot work. Okay, done. *skips away*
Phantom: Worubu’s heart is broken.
@TheDiva: HotC you can’t dress Charlotte in anything that doesn’t include that “is it a skull or is it Cthulu” thing on it. It’s just wrong!
PHANTOM: If anything could rekindle my former like affair with the purple tights dude, Uncle Lumpy’s rollicking verse would do the trick. But no. I do appreciate the memories and the verse is great.
@I speak Jive: Yeah. And if Neddy’s story turns out to bizarrely contradict that time-honored rule, complaints will follow. Don’t make me complain, JP! You won’t like me when I complain!
@Poteet:
BANG!
@Poteet: Not only the Disney Bambi people, but Smokey the Bear.
@Uncle Lumpy: Mule deer: mighty fine eatin.’ The Catalina B&Bs should put poached quail eggs over venison hash on their brunch menus.
Rex Morgan: Truck is making the sign of the cross since he is the true messiah.
CRANKSHAFT: This is awful.
GA: So is this.
MW: This is…wait, this seems actually potentially helpful to Estelle, who is now being portrayed as not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Watch out, Sheila! Mary does not like people who supply advice that is more specific and useful than Mary’s own stale generalized platitudes. Disappearance or death, Sheila, those are probably your choices now.
@Poteet: #100: About an hour west of Houston there’s an Atwater’s prairie chicken wildlife preserve to protect the endangered bird. They have to do frequent controlled burns or else woods and brush would take over the natural grasslands the birds require.
Rw/O:. Shopping at Ikea, a mouse maze no longer
6CHX:. Is quiet clogging “clogging”?
@Needless Exposition: shenanigans with Wilbur and Crazy Cousin Pam
___________________________
Isnt she the one who gets naked and rubs frying pans on her hinder to see if they stick?
RMMD: Soon vultures descend upon Truck and strip him down to a skeleton.
RMMD: No patrons will be seated during the pulse-pounding Truck crosses his legs scene.
What has Mark Trail Mix done to save the Texas Prairie Chicken? (Asking for Mike Nesmith.)
@GarrisonSkunk: If she is, then she’s way too good to settle with Wilbur.
@Guillermo el chiclero: RMMD: Soon vultures descend upon Truck and strip him down to a skeleton.
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How much do the chop shops make for a stripped down low mileage Truck these days?
@106 Ukulele Ike:
Hey, Ike! Why didn’t Smokey Bear have any kids?
Because he’d always beat off his wife with his shovel.
She was hot!
@Poteet: I have a real problem with misguided people who think that families should put any bad relationships aside and be a nice, happy family. There’s a reason that they’re estranged. I’ve seen this story play out in real life, and it isn’t pretty.
I assume that Neddy has good intentions, but she’s disregarding the boyfriend’s feelings and history. If there is a reconciliation, it might seem to work out, but the boyfriend will always know that she doesn’t really give a crap about his feelings and history.
@Needless Exposition: True,true
@Baja Gaijin: “Luann is a Plugger” makes sense to me.
@Sequitur: Hey, Ike! Why didn’t Smokey Bear have any kids?
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Because Mrs. Bear kept putting out his fire too soon.
@Sequitur: @GarrisonSkunk: “Crush your butts!” — Smokey
@Guillermo el chiclero: Isn’t roast prairie chicken one of the dozens of unique dishes Mark Twain wanted piping hot and waiting for him when he stepped off the Europe boat, as written in The Innocents Abroad?
Somebody wrote an entire book about that list a few years back, with long essays about each bird and meat that no longer exist, or are extremely rare today. I think one of them was about heartland farmers who were trying to save the prairie chicken.
And this is that Book.
Today’s Six Chix Question Of the Day: Why are they wearing elbow macaroni? Are they dancing the Macarena?
@Ukulele Ike: That’s almost like a parody, and yet I don’t doubt they were serious.
@Ukulele Ike:
Mitch Miller is pure wholesomeness compared with Czechoslovakian Mackie Messer’s Moritat with Twelve Masked Tap-Dancing Satanic Blondes.
Terrific, and following the Threepenny Opera theme, Youtube led on to a clip of Lotte Lenya, who’d been married to Kurt Weill (twice!) singing Pirate Jenny. I then, for the first time ever in my life, made the connection that she is the Lotte Lenya who played Rosa Klebb in the second James Bond film From Russia with love.
Seriously, thank you so much for that. It’s been worth reading all these cartoons to find that out.
Family Circus – Among the unpaid labor the trad-wives is keeper of the lore, the weight of culture saved in memory and oral tradition, due to men being too tired from their work, and little boys successfully being lulled to sleep by stories.
@I speak Jive: @I speak Jive: I have to disagree with the word “never.” There are many good reasons why people become estranged, but also plenty of bad ones, and there’s also the matter of who is in the wrong. And while for most people it would be sound advice to just stay out of it, when you’re getting ready to marry someone and start a family with them, I think it’s more than reasonable to want to understand (if not necessarily aggressively meddle or outright fix) their estrangement from their own family and/or former loved ones, for your own wellbeing and that of your potential future children at least.
That said, it doesn’t really matter much here. Marciuliano doesn’t know how to write characters as human beings or develop conflicts. This is just going to be dumb.
@jroggs:
I’m kinda hoping that Declan’s family is reasonable, sweet, and puzzled at the rift, and that Declan’s a psychopathic asshole who actually did the crime he’s accused of, and whom Neddy marries anyway.
@128 Uncle Lumpy:
Oh, great. Then in a year or two we’ll have to trudge through Neddy’s divorce.
@Peanut Gallery: The bowler-hatted singer — Milos Kopeckny — also starred in the 1964 Czech comedy Western parody Lemonade Joe as the gunslinging villain (Horace Badman!). Available with subtitles free all over the internet, and a complete hoot.
@Mr Cultural: I try to do my best at spreading the Weird. And with Lotte, Robert Shaw, and the marvelous Vladek Sheybal, that movie had one of the best casts of heavies in the entire Bond franchise.
Luann: Why is Luann sitting in for Shannon today? I can accept a five year old not being able to fill a bowl of cereal, but a juco student? Man, Greg and Karen shipped Shannon off a couple of days early for this gag to be even remotely believable.
REX MORGAN M D.: From Uncle Lumpy’s wrap-up:
No one. Not Wanda, not whoever’s blowing Truck in the above panels, no one! (Ok I’m sorry, but just look those panels. LOOK AT THEM! My God!)
MT: Now that Mark has worn that prop fireman’s helmet in his BikBok video or whatever can he declare it as a business expense?
Phantom: One reason why the Phantom has done a highly scripted gaslight on his Jungle Patrol second-in-command is that, as you can see, he’s not much for improv.
RMMD: Today does reveal that Truck prefers to nap “crucifixion style” and yeah, I’ll buy that.
@Ukulele Ike:
Limonade Joe just has to be found and watched, and agree with you about excellence of second Bond movie, all villains and few gadgets!
9CL: You went full Pibgorn, man. Never go full Pibgorn.
C-Shaft: Hi! Do you like puns? Look at the sign on Lillian’s store! In case you missed it in the first panel! It’s a pun! Or something!
DT: You know, I don’t see an alien megalomaniac getting too far in his “conquer the Earth” scheme if it’s so easy for just a regular—if obscenely wealthy—cigar chomping human can put him under so easily with the “you are getting sleepy” bit.
Dustin: Oh, Fitch used to be smart as a monkey. Then his mind started gettin’ lazy, and now he’s dumb as a chimp.
GA: Raise your hand if your surprised that Slim is about as good at writing checks as Curtis Wilkins is at reading them.
Luann: You know what? I’d have a lot less problem with today’s visual gag revolving around white fluid going astray if we hadn’t just cut from Bwad and Toni starting to try for a baby.
MW: None of this is remotely new information, but leave it to Estelle to give her goggle eyes a workout.
@jroggs: You are right. I made some bad generalizations – I think because I was thinking of the really bad situations and didn’t think of the questionable ones. For example, they’re estranged because they wore the same dress to a wedding, or Susie gave her baby the name that her sister-in-law planned for years to give her own baby. In those cases, maybe they should try to reconcile.
However, there are valid reasons for estrangement, and a third party should not blithely take it upon themselves to get everyone back together.
Sometimes the third party pushes for a reconciliation because they think that parents and children should always get along. The third party doesn’t try to understand how their spouse feels about it and doesn’t consider the reasons for estrangement. This is how I see Neddy’s handling of her situation, and it’s what I saw happen in real life.
This story really hits a nerve with me.
Gasoline Alley: I can’t believe the comments have gone more than 12 hours without anyone commenting on the small potted plants and marijuana pre-rolls on Baleen’s tray in the throwaway panel.
Tomorrow’s Archie is now up at creators.com. Just in time for Baja‘s approval.
@138 Sequitur: You don’t need to be Nostradamus to guess what my opinion on this travesty to all that’s good and holy is.
For those who were wondering where the Judge Parker characters were hiking, according to Mike Manley on Facebook, it’s the Eaton Canyon Nature Center,
PHANTOM:. My Uncle’s poetry skills are as remarkable as his observation we’ve called Kit a Richard. I say we nominate him for next week’s Bob Rice award.
@139 Baja Gaijin:
Nice.
@KMD: Lillian should have sent Skip the first card on the right. http://Www.housepetscomic.com…or the last card if applicable.
@GarrisonSkunk: @KMD: Lillian should have sent Skip the first card on the right. http://Www.housepetscomic.com or the last card if applicable. Sorry for the oversnark
@Mr Cultural: #134: The second Bond movie was actually the first to introduce gadgets, but fortunately didn’t go heavy on them.
@Sequitur: Tomorrow’s Archie is now up at creators.com
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Who knew G. Gordon Liddy was manager of a Clowney McClown’s?
@Uncle Lumpy: I’m kinda hoping that Declan’s family is reasonable, sweet, and puzzled at the rift,
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Still hoping for a crossover and the Declans are actually Kevin and Kell Dewclaw.
@Mr Cultural: #134: The thing I remember most about that movie was Bond ordering breakfast at the hotel in Istanbul.
“Yogurt, green figs, coffee, very black”
Now say it in your best Sean Connery accent.
MW: It’s almost as if the nitwit who writes the Sunday dialogue scarcely bothers to even scan any of the weekday nitwit’s dialogue.
Did anyone warn Baja about today’s Slylick Fox And Comix For Kinky Kidz?
@150 GarrisonSkunk: NO!
Did anybody see the shoutout to the great Julie Klausner and her cat Jimmy Jazz on Heathcliff today? Pretty cool.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: “Gee, Ro-Zan….what are we going to do tonight?”
@I speak Jive: Because in public schools the general rule with gifted kids is to leave them alone, because their test scores and grades are just fine, and to concentrate most of their effort on trying to bring below-average kids up, due to a combination of perverse egalitarianism and the fact that helping below-average kids will raise the school’s average test score more than helping thr gifted kids reach their full potential.
@GarrisonSkunk: He does this stunt where he holds his hand over the hot griddle. It’s supposed to impress the new hires, but everyone just thinks it’s stupid and he’s a psycho.
@seismic-2: #69
Re MW: it’s virtually the same expression she had when Mary and Toby showed her that her faux beau “Arther’s” online dating profile impersonated a handsome Australian model; sure, she was shocked, but plowed straight ahead in denial. Will Estelle be mature enough to recognize that marriage involves tolerance and often requires compromise and sacrifice? Or will she just mope around until she realizes that Wilbur worships her and that’s what she wants deep inside? Yeah, can’t wait to see how this unravels.
RMMD: Looks like Truck has decided to commit suicide by crucifying himself on that park bench. He then fails at that too, finally realizing that you can never hammer in that last nail.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Exactly!!!
There once was a kind of prairie chicken that lived along much of the East Coast, called the Heath Hen. It was very common in colonial times. It eventually declined (overhunting and habitat loss) to a very small population on Martha’s Vineyard, and went extinct around 1932, in spite of efforts to save it. Ironically, fire suppression was a big reason it died out. Prescribed burning was what it needed.
@Professor Well Actually: Oh come now, you KNOW it will. They managed to do it in the last storyline, and didn’t even have Buck talking on the phone!
@Mikey: Sounds like there could be a song in that. Maybe MudFergus can write it.
RMMD: Monday, Ian Anderson joins Truck, pulls out his flute, and begins playing “Sitting on a Park Bench” to the dismay of all grandmothers escorting young girls in the park. (Mothers would be too young to understand)
Gosh, Frazz is just so superior. Those kids are sure lucky they get to hang out with him.