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Mary Worth, 11/23/24

Big news everyone. Huge news. Incredible news. Mary is coming down with COVID or the flu or maybe just a bad cold, who’s to say, but the point is that she’s probably going to be too sick to do even the half-assed job of cooking Thanksgiving dinner that she promised to her friends some people she knows from her apartment building. Now, the heartwarming outcome will probably that the gang will come together to do Thanksgiving themselves the best they can and gather ’round her sickbed with their improvised feast, showing Mary how much she’s loved and appreciated, but let’s get real: these are the Westons and the Camerons we’re talking about, and Wilbur and Ian will absolutely be fist-fighting at PriceCo over the last frozen turkey, destroying said turkey and an entire endcap of cans of pumpkin pie filling in the process, while Mary lies on the couch at home, coughing up blood, forgotten and untended.

Hagar the Horrible, 11/23/24

Every time we’re reminded that Hagar’s son is named “Hamlet” I am tickled anew by the thought of Hagar being the analogue of the Ghost in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Still, the plot mechanics don’t really work — Hagar doesn’t have a brother that we know of, and as today’s strip reminds us, the intrafamilial threats he faces lie elsewhere — and frankly neither do the personalities. Hagar is a pretty happy-go-lucky guy, all things considered! Can you imagine him brooding around a castle, hounding his descendents with demands for vengeance? He’d probably just chalk up his death to “one of those things” and move onto Valhalla to see what exactly is going on there.

Flash Gordon, 11/23/24

As much as I love Flash Gordon’s current incarnation, I acknowledge that you’re never going to get a new incarnation of Flash Gordon if the people behind it aren’t a little more fascinated with old timey comics lore than is normal and healthy. This can spin terribly out of hand (see for instance basically every third Dick Tracy strip) but little bits of lore dispensed like easter eggs is all in good fun. For instance, did you know that Flash Gordon, canonically, went to Yale? That’s right. Flash Gordon, two-fisted spaceman, is an Ivy Leaguer — specifically, a Yale man. Depending on your personal prejudices, feel free to imagine that he had an Earthbound life as an irritating comp lit Marxist academic wannabe failson or a coke-addled finance bro failson before he had the good fortune to end up in space!