I should relate to Gertie’s pencil-neck husband, but all I feel for him is endless contempt
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Gearhead Gertie, 10/3/24
Now, I might be an Ivy League-educated coastal elitist, but the Ivy League school I attended was in fact located in the Finger Lakes, and I know that they’ll just let any schmo drive on at least one NASCAR track, so I assume this is probably true elsewhere? Not going to bother researching that, I’m just saying, this panel is predicated on the idea that Gertie is doing something crazy when in fact she’s doing something very normal for a NASCAR obsessive such as herself. I don’t usually take sides in comic strip marital spats but her husband needs to chill out!
Blondie, 10/3/24
Blondie is a strip I very much never think of as “visually interesting,” so I do have to give props to Dagwood’s thought balloon in the first panel, which wraps around the door to match his imagined sausage garland placement. On the other hand, his wink is pure nightmare fuel, and the idea of “pizza-shaped pillows” … that’s just round! That’s not epic at all! Look, Alexander, there’s a pizza-shaped pillow on the couch right next to you!
Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/3/24
You know, if Mud Mountain only pretended to be the first guy in history who ever had his personality genuinely improved after joining an obviously fake scam self-help cult, just so he could lull Truck into complacency and get an invitation to perform together again, at which point he plans to pull off his patented move — pretending to shit his pants on stage — well, I for one will have no choice but to respect it.
66 replies to “I should relate to Gertie’s pencil-neck husband, but all I feel for him is endless contempt”
“The race is over”: TFW you’re a loser racist obsessed with white genocide
RMMD:
“Call him, then. See what he says.”
“I cain’t. Every time I pick up my cell phone to do that, my fingers freeze up, and I end up smashin’ the phone, jes’ like I did to your coffee cup. Been through 15 cell phones already!”
Dagwood read the Book of Exodus and decided that putting pepperoni above his front door was a way to tell the angel of death “Please take my first born, but leave my pizza alone!”
RMMD:
“Okay, a little off-topic, Truck, but has anyone ever told you that your sideburns bear the shape of the country of Italy?”
“Absolutely! The young ‘uns love it — I have ’em affix gummy stars to the spot where places like Rome and Milan are located!”
Blondie: “Pizza-shaped pillows? That sounds moderately zany, but where are they now?”
“Come on, sis, you know we don’t have the art assets to actually show them.”
CS: I admit I already had low expectations, but I still expected better than an unironic use of the “no u bro” counter-argument. Just another reminder that even when you think you’ve found the bottom of Tom Batiuk’s barrel you’d better make sure you’re wearing a parachute.
DT: Boy, I hope they’re going to find that sarcophagus opened from the inside prior to bringing it back to the Antarctic Egyptian pyramids, because otherwise this is the most pointless and empty subplot in storytelling history. Speaking of forgotten story stuff, is anyone ever going to explain how the fake Lunarian bad guys “froze” the night club patron earlier?
JP: Oh God so much nonsense and self-contradiction is happening at once. Everything coming out of the Whelan family’s mouths right now is unmitigated madness and I’m not even going to try to parse it for the time being. Poor Neddy’s even worse off than I am, as she’s so befuddled that she’s lost track of her own gender and is stammering about how she will be a faithful husband to her boyfriend. Ronnie continues to be the smartest person in the room, metaphorically speaking that is, as she has quietly fled the room and is probably already driving back home to her loathsome wife.
MW: Only Wilbur rates house call service. If Estelle wants muffins and love advice, she can SOB! her lazy ass on over to Mary’s apartment herself.
“I was thinking of maybe giving Mud Murphy a call. I think that a couple of weeks about trigger finger should be enough to fill our quota of medical storylines and now we can go back to what really matters, niche musical genres and Buck”
RMMD:
“On second thought —
“Well, there’s sugar on my spoonware
And quickness in the sand
But I’ll never see, for the life of me,
Mud Murphy in my band!”
MW:
“I’ll be fine…once I get over the best Mann I’ve ever known…the educator Horace!”
RMMD: Get over yourself, Truck. Mud’s too busy peddling salvation to be your pickin’ monkey.
BB: Flashing back to the sex worker under the podium in “Police Academy.”
MW: Mary makes a hasty call to Wilbur: “Quick, take a shower and go grab a sack of ribs. You’re up.”
MW: Oh, it’s on like Donkey Kong. Someone is about to get SUCH a meddling!…
If Truck doesn’t watch it, his sideburns are going to meet under his chin and he’ll turn into Ian Cameron.
Blondie: I’m curious how many wacky pizza day themed ideas Dagwood has had in the 24 years (thank you National Day Archives) it has been a “thing” where “Pizza shaped pillows” came in year 23. And by “curious” I mean “indifferent”.
Phantom: There’s a joke here about the sound “Urissh” coming from robot junk, but I’ll be damned before I make a joke for The Phantom.
MW: Mary: “I’ve made apple muffins…would you like to come over and tell me about it? You can bring Pierre and Libby if you want!”
Stella: *sigh* “Apple…?”
RMMD: It seems the Wheel of Plotlines has landed on the largest wedge of “Mud Murphy”. Did we use our “Free Respin” token already?
GG Ha, Gertie isn’t usy driving on the track, she’s planning on parking there! Then, when the next race starts and the cars round the corner and smash into her RV, she can finally be completely united with her beloved NASCAR, in a twisted pile of flesh and metal, forever.
Blondie: So wait, is Pizza Month October? Seems unlikely that Dag would wait this late to finalize plans. It’s probably next March…
RMMD Hold on there! Don’t you want to discuss calling Truck a few more dozen times before you actually don’t? I can’t take this breakneck pace!
GG: And here I thought, she had hijacked a prisoner transport to break her boyfriend(?) out of a maximum security prison.
Blondie shamelessly caters to its readers’ fantasies: having kids who are impressed by their parents’ bullshit.
GG: Yeah, it’s better to let her get it out of her system on the racetrack rather than among people just trying to go about their normal commutes.
Blondie: Where are the pizza-shaped pillows? Dagwood ate them! It was a remarkable show of restraint on his part not to eat them for an entire month.
RMMD: Charlie Brown, the Plugger years.
JP: This could all be cleared up with a few sentences’ worth of rational discussion, so of course it’s going to devolve into absolute chaos.
Gearhead Gertie: For the record, yes, other tracks do allow civilian cars on them, for some sort of exorbitant fee, naturally. It’s typically a way for rich douchebags to see what their, uh, higher-end models are capable of. Don’t think that RV will be getting up to 200/mph, but this is Gearhead Gertie, anything’s possible.
Rex Morgan, M.D.: Johnny Cash: keeps Carl Perkins on the payroll for years, sustaining him through epic battles with alcoholism. Truck Tyler: Calls up Mud Murphy for a guest spot while Truck recovers from trigger finger. WHO’S YOUR HERO NOW?
Blondie…It’s a valid take because it’s the actual pillow saying it based on the word balloon.
GG: What is Gertie driving? It’s the shape of a UPS package truck, but the wrong color.
Frazz: She doesn’t dare tell Frazz that they passed that coffee place on their way to a less crowded coffee place.
Luann: Kip, you’ve been dating this strawshrew for a long time now. You should know better than to tell her that you look at other girls.
CS: This is it, thinks Batiuk. This is the moment where the Putzlitzer Prize Committee will really take notice.
9CL: Oh, for fuck’s sake! This reads like Brooke suddenly remembered he decided Seth was gay. Hey, how’s Fernanda doing?
CS: Oh God, “you’re burning a book about burning books” is going to be the big reveal, isn’t it?
MW: “Apple muffins? SOB! Those are Ed’s favorite. SOB!”
Zits: It’s difficult to say whose DNA that thing has.
FC: Damn! Change her name to Doxxy.
PLAY MUDDY BOOTS!!!
Blondie: HGTV’s ‘Cheap and Trendy’ decorating style has now reached the Legacy strips. It will be quite amusing to see Dagwood eating one of his famous quadruple-decker sloppy joe sandwiches on a 3 seater sofa in white bouclé.
Gearhead Gertie – This strip is too episodic and infrequently published to do real stories, like Gertie getting into a race with a rival NASCAR fanatic.
Blondie – Dagwood’s wink looks more like a stroke than where an eye would be for a wink. That’s the sort of human anatomy knowledge you lose when you mostly use clipart and other reused assets. Agree though that it’s a small price for seeing original art with some imagination in this strip.
Rex Morgan – Hey! Wait a minute! Stop The Music!”
(But seriously, I have to think Parker’s interaction with Truck on the bench means he’s on course to become a ramblin’ roots country musician taking inspiration from Truck and Mud, and leaving his nerdy friend behind to a life of day jobs and seedy comedy bars.)
Wilbur Weston makes a guest appearance in Hagar the Horrible as Helga demonstrates her swallowing technique.
CS- What ” wrong lessons” is Fahrenheit 451 teaching exactly? I read (and did a report on) that book back in school, and there is nothing in that book that “teaches the wrong lessons” to students. I question if Batiuk has even ever read the book.
FC: “I know my phone number and my house number…my name, not so much.”
I think the strip will become Truck & Mud, driving Rex into being a very occasional side character like Barney Google after Snuffy ousted him. In a hundred years, people will barely remember the once massively popular (okay, the quick glance over strip with that first glass of Metamucil) Rex…
Gertie is driving recklessly enough down a racetrack in a vehicle with a high center of gravity that the whole thing is bouncing, and she’s not wearing a seat belt. I believe one should just let people enjoy what they enjoy, don’t yuck someone else’s yum and all that, but I’m still struggling to type all of this out with my fingers crossed in the hope that tomorrow’s comic isn’t the RV (?) being nothing but a pile of twisted metal while she lies dozens of metres away after going through the window.
Blondie: So Dagwood is pulling a Willy Wonka and plans to create lickable wallpaper. I really do hope he invites guests over to lick the anchovies. The sausage tastes like sausage, the pepperoni tastes like pepperoni, but the food at the mental hospital tastes like paste, as Dagwood will soon discover.
MW: “You can bring Pierre and Libby if you want.”
“[SOB] But what about [SOB] what about [SOB] Jeff’s allergies?”
“Ah screw Jeff.”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: It looks like Helga is sticking the knife in her mouth. This could get ugly.
GG – When Josh first started featuring this strip, I wondered how many different jokes you could make about a NASCAR-obsessed woman. It turns out that that you can make a lot of them as long as they don’t need to be funny.
Gearhead: I used to live in Watkins Glen (the location of the track near Josh’s college) and I can say with complete authority that the people paying to drive on that track are absolutely Ivy League coastal elitists. It isn’t middle class grandmas driving those Porsches and Lotuses up there.
CS: The mob is putty in Lillian’s hands. She forthrightly but succinctly and gently shows the protestors that what they’re doing is un-American.
Stunned by this realization, they silently drop their heads in shame. Then one of them says, “You know, that Les Moore is really a hero.”
This is greeted with a rousing cheer, and the group marches to Les’ house to carry him on their shoulders in an impromptu parade.
Les beams with joy. After a trip around the block, his fans return him to his front porch and ask him to speak.
One minute into Les’ self-congratulatory speech, the onlookers grow restless. “Christ, what an asshole,” shouts one of them. “What the hell were we thinking?” bellows another. Just then, a Molotov cocktail crashes through the front window. The rest is history.
Blondie: Cookie should be ashamed of herself using her arm to showcase her bust for her brother.
FC: No, moron, what you need is to BUTTON your coat.
Frazz: TAKE THAT, all you scumbags who use drive-through.
RMMD: When Truck asks Mud to be his sideman, Mud says, “Why? What the hell do I need YOU for?”
Blondie: Dagwood is shamelessly ignoring Halloween, the celebration of which goes on all month in every other comic strip. Then again, pepperoni over the door would terrify even the most hard-core trick or treaters. “He’s putting MEAT out! God knows what the candy is made of!”
GG – “Relax! The race is over. We’re old now. We’re through with striving to get ahead in our careers, raising children, racking up accomplishments. At this point it doesn’t matter what we do. Now let’s see if we can flip this crate upside down!”
Blondie – The real problem with Dagwood’s thought-balloon pepperoni over the door is that it looks too much like his large intestine.
@Cleve Barrister: You could make an argument it teaches ‘disrespect for proper authority’ or some such, but I’m quite sure that’s never going to get a proper explanation. Tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday will be taken up by Lil pontificating at this faceless blob, and as the designated heroine everyone will automatically recognize she is right and they are wrong. Come Monday all will be resolved, the students will get their (still banned) books, everyone will praise Lil n’ Les and there will be much punning and smirking.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Your secretary is being very secretive”
“Yes! She’s typing a highly confidential document”
“At least I hope that’s what she’s doing!”
Gertie’s husband isn’t worried about them doing something they’re not supposed to or even the dangers of driving down the track during a live race. He’s been tilted to the side the whole time Gertie’s been doing this and is worried he’s going to throw up by the end of it.
RMMD: As a patent attorney, I usually find the use of the phrase “patented move” to be quaint, at best. However, I must say that I find the step of “pretending to shit your pants onstage” to be both novel and unobvious.
Blondie – “What about using fresh pineapples as a centerpiece for the dining room table?” “NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O!!
FC: Congratulations, Dolly. You’re way ahead of Ed Crankshaft at that age. In another year you should be able to recognize your name on a pitching rotation.
MW – “Oh, don’t worry about me – SOB! No, I’m just fine SOB. No, really, I just lost the best man I’ve ever known but don’t you worry about me, not one bit, I’m totes OK SOB!”
“Ummm, these muffins don’t cure passive-aggressiveness. Sorry, meeting’s cancelled.
Two things:
1. Is Gertie’s pencilneck husband a plugger? Is Gertie a plugger? Nascar is a plugger-coded sport.
2. The Luann controversy over which woman the unlikeable Les has a crush on… why has nobody in-comic thought of Les being gay and having a crush on some other guy? I have no idea who supposedly works at this “restaurant”, so I have no candidates.
CS – One of those protesters is not there because it’s a banned book. He’s there because he thinks the Fahrenheit scale is outdated and wants the title changed to Celsius 232.78.
Blondie: I think that pillow in the third panel and Alexander’s comment are a way to reference that it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month. That pillow looks like a boob and Alexander is horny.
RMMD – Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat. Mud might be onto something, that’s all I’m sayin’.
Phantom: Dying with his arm torn off, Grendel runs back to his mother, who immediately swears vengeance on whoever did this.
European racing fans and drivers scattered as Gearhead Gertie drove the VBIED on to the track at Le Mans. “Racin’ is rubbin’, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!” she screeched as camper full of AMFO and ball bearings slammed into the grandstand.
@Cleve Barrister: I’m glad I read your comment before I got all redundant and repetitive.
GG – I would find a turn-left oval packed with Winnebagos way more interesting than the standard NASCAR event….
Blondie – Listen to the pillow, Cookie. Somebody’s gotta talks sense in this strip….
RMMD – Muddy Gloves Therapy – racing up the charts….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
MW: Oooo…can we come too, Mary, and listen in as you console/”counsel”/nag Estelle into (a) reconciling with Dr Ed or (b) running back to Wilbur? Is there room in your apartment for all us Mudges? I know there are plenty of muffins for all of us…
If not, maybe Sid can sneak in a fly with a tiny transmitter to sit on the wall and let us listen in to the melodramatics! SOB!!
P.S. If Estelle *is* nagged into going back to Wilbur, she’ll have to rehome her pets. I bet Dr Ed and Odin would love to take them in.
Gearhead Gertie: I have to note my appreciation for the comic convention of showing a vehicle raised up off the road to indicate its speed. Although during an actual auto race, it’s almost surely an indication that a fiery crash is about to happen, in which case Gertie’s husband’s misgivings are entirely justified.
love is... making a weird sex toy list.
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
@Cleve Barrister: It’s wrong about the ignition temperature of paper, I believe. When Les burns something, he wants to make sure it burns.
Gearhead Gertie-And thus ‘Gearhead Gertie’ comes to an end with the ‘Thelma and Louise’ ending.
FC-“Now the authorities will know where to return me.”
FC-That’s better than kids who are older than Dolly that don’t know their own address.
MW-“The best man I’ve ever known.” Wilbur?
RMMD-I knew it.
Crankshaft-“That book has nothing to do about Les’ suffering while his wife was dying of cancer.”
Gertie borrowing today from a 1996 Target commercial featuring the two drivers (Jimmy Vasser and Alex Zanardi) they then sponsored in Indycar attempting to one-up each other in gradually ridiculous ways, ending with the two racing RVs on a banked oval.
Or perhaps the strip is borrowing from the sad tale of Stephen White, who broke into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway a few days after the 1991 Indianapolis 500 to drive his pickup truck around the track at high speed. White was killed when he rammed his truck at high speed into a speedway maintenance vehicle that had been parked on the track in an attempt to get him to stop.