Hat Ghost: The Ghost Who Wore A Hat
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Blondie, 11/25/24
A common development in all sorts of open-ended narratives (comic strips, TV shows, what have you) is that ancillary characters are introduced to fill a specific purpose, like being the main character’s barber, but then you have a lot of strips/episodes to fill, and sometimes you use them to flesh out the backstories of those ancillary characters, and sometimes that process (when done well) reveals that these characters have full, rich lives beyond the specific purpose they were originally created for, but other times that process (when done poorly) simply tells you that the barber’s off-panel life consists of more barber, endless barber, barber all the way down, barber (as revealed today) that stretches back in time across generations. The one non-barber aspect that peeks through is Italianness, which is why our guy is allowed, as a member of that fiery and emotional race, to shed a single tear in panel two.
Mary Worth, 11/25/24
Haha, yes, it begins, and by “it” I mean Mary’s friends bailing on her now that she’s too sick to put a piping hot turkey dinner in front of their face on Thursday. A normal person would hear “I’m too tired to even make my homemade chicken soup for myself!” and ask “Oh, Mary, what can I do to step up and help,” but instead Toby is all “Don’t worry, I forgive you! You just lie there on the couch in your own sick while I use this adorable tiny easel I bought on Etsy to paint a cat with fetal alcohol syndrome that I hope someone will buy on Etsy ironically.”
Gil Thorp, 11/25/24
Big news! With Gil steadfastly refusing to return to work and the Mudlarks doing even worse than usual in his absence, Coach Hernandez is consulting … a pipe-smoking ghost??? Who doesn’t really seem to have any specific football knowledge? More on this important story as it develops.
180 replies to “Hat Ghost: The Ghost Who Wore A Hat”
Mary Worth Mashups: Which Missing Final Panel is most likely to happen?
MW: “No, Toby, you’re not listening! I said I’m too sick to make meals! That means I have nothing to eat! Bring me food before I die, you vapid gold digger! …Hello? Hello?”
JP: After spending way too long with the Spencer girls, Judge Parker is finally returning to its roots with its titular whiny and self-pitying judges. A full calendar year has not dulled Alan’s pain from the brief return of his prodigal daughter Anndoryl. Having been banned from every diner in walking distance from his house, Alan has been stymied at every effort he’s willing to make to right the wrongs of the past and has taken to brooding in his dimly-lit study filled with unwashed scotch glasses and unsold copies of his vanity press novels, wallowing in his affected grim sorrow like the world’s lamest blood-cursed gothic aristocrat. Fortify your soul for the tragic tale to come, for there will be… ellipses…
SlyF: Really, Slylock? You’re going to convict the man over something you heard on the news? The same news that’s talking about how someone just landed on the sun?
RMMD: If there’s anything we’ve learned from millennia of storytelling, it’s that every good tale needs a miserable nagging bitch wife who exists solely to wag her finger and put a prompt end to any happiness or fun she sees. Rex Morgan refuses to be an exception, as June, Mindy, Yvonne, Kelly, Lauren, Michelle, Tildy, and every other one-off missus aggressively demonstrate every time they appear on page. Having written dozens of viciously unlikable harpies, Terry Beatty approached new arrival Lana Lewton with his long-trusted axiom: if you don’t care if it’s broke and the syndicate pays you no matter what you do, why fix it?
CS: Agatha Crispy. Agatha. Crispy. I cannot stress this enough – Tom Batiuk never has an idea for a comic that he discards as not good enough or that he refines and polishes before publishing.
Gil Thorpe: If you Google the artist’s name, you can see that she is capable of doing some pretty good work. I guess she’s busy doing that work, while allowing her five-year-old nephew to draw Gil Thorpe.
Blondie: The elaborately barber-themed backstory is funny enough, but it doesn’t come close to the ironic barber meta-humor of Peanuts, which established that bald 8-year-old Charlie Brown’s father is a barber.
GT: Luke is visited by the ghost of …Golden Age Mark Trail?
MW: This plot seems like it might be an homage to the classic Christmas movie The Year Without a Santa Claus, and if it is I am here for Wilbur in tights playing Heat Miser.
While Gil’s body is falling apart and betraying him, it’s Luke’s mind that is collapsing and leaving him powerless. This is a zombie strip literally about decline and slow march into death
Blondie: “It all started when Uncle Vito got his head stuck in the turkey carcass. He likes his vino, heh, heh.”
MW: I’m expecting this to continue on Tuesday and Wednesday with more phone calls — maybe even a montage, if such a thing can be pulled off in three panels — where all Mary’s Charterstone friends give Toby-like answers of minimal sympathy and no offer to host Thanksgiving.
Then the punchline will be Thursday, when (not having told one another their plans) they all show up at Mary’s, each with a 20-pound turkey and all the side dishes. Except Wilbur, who has two freshly-microwaved Hungry Guy turkey dinners.
I’m sorry, but if you are going to talk about barber tools cutting edible meat, I am going to demand at least Sweeney Todd
I am sorry, but if you are going to call her “mama” instead of “mamma” and rant about turkey, a tasteless meat with little impact on Italian cuisine, you are just as much Italian as Spaghetti bolognase!
“Ian, Mary is not preparing the Thanksgiving dinner this year!”
“Good, with my colleagues we often discuss how Thanksgiving is an imperialistic celebration of settler colonialism!”
“… you don’t want to prepare the Thanksgiving dinner yourself, do you?”
“Hell no!”
“And you don’t want me to do it?”
“You have neither the ability nor the will”
“Fair enough”
Ghosts, having died decades ago, are not up to date to the latest prohibitions about smoking indoor. Also, they don’t care about second-hand smoke, because they are assholes
Sure, blow dry your Turkey! The problem with turkey is that often it’s not dry enough!
MW: Wow, I’m pretty low on the Nuturing Woman Scale, but even I would’ve managed to scrape together some packaged chicken noodle for the old girl.
RMMD: “I didn’t understand the word ‘walk’ until it was uttered by someone who’s been to med school. Also, he’s a man, and you’re just my silly wife.”
DtM: Lucky for you, Dennis, that you live in a part of the country where they stand “in line” and not “on line,” or you’d be denied that scathing quip.
GT: The last time we saw creative hallucination, it was a heart attack. I’d say Luke’s in trouble.
MW:
“Sounds as if the only dish you’re going to have an encounter with is a Petri dish, Mary!”
MW:
“I’m so exhausted I can’t even reach into the cupboard to get a bowl for my canned broth, and so I’m just going to pour it into a nearby shoe.”
“No. Don’t say it, Mary.”
“Yep. Chicken soup for the sole!”
FC: Jeffy stops his shuffle dance mid step when he hears Dolly’s latest brainless utterance. “And they say I’m the stupid one.” He thinks.
@InvasionOfTheZIM: He is not bald, it’s just Schulz’s minimalistic style — whose father was indeed a barber
@Baja Gaijin:
My brain shut down at Number Three. I am now brain dead.
GT:
“I’d recognize that pipe-smoking, avuncular wraith anywhere! — it’s the ghost of Fred MacMurray!”
MW: Say what you will about Moy’s writing, Brigman really nailed the angry cat as audience proxy.
Blondie: Barbering is, after all, a profession traditionally filled by Italians in the popular culture to which “Blondie” hearkens back. It could be worse, though — at least he didn’t end up as an organ grinder.
Wary Morth:
I have a vision of world peace,
where all the people –
(Russians, Ukrainians, zionists, Palestinians, both factions of Sudanese, etc etc etc)
– are gathered together on a vasty field
as far as the eye can see
chanting in harmony.
Hark what they chant
“Drop dead Mary! Drop dead Mary!”
as they pump their fists in the air!
Does it not make you wish
that you were standing there?
MW: Wait, isn’t Jeff (her perennial beau as Wikipedia calls him) a doctor? Why isn’t she calling him up to ask for really good drugs—at least a chest x-ray? Pneumonia is no laughing matter among the aged, and he could at least get a peak at what’s under her blouse even if it is a black and white study of rib cage and a lung filling with purulent pus. You know, he just may find that a bit, ahem, titillating.
Blondie: Say what you will, Wa-Luigi the Barber is a far more relevant comic strip conceit than Blondie at this point.
Blondie: On the one hand, Dagwood’s barber is clearly certifiably insane, and you have to worry if there’s a Sweeney Todd situation going on with his mother slicing up the “juicy golden bird” in the backroom. On the other hand, there can’t be many barbers willing to style Dagwood’s hair antennas, and beggars can’t be choosers.
Mary Worth: One of the most unsettling things about with a partner for decades is you start to talk and think like each other, like your brain has been a bit taken over by another entity. I can only imagine the horror of having a little fragment of Ian Cameron living in your brain. By the time you’re pompously booming “My friend!” at people you barely tolerate, it’s too late for you. Like a zombie bite victim in a movie, you just have to accept it and succumb to the parasite.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: [Ettore dies of a rage stroke]
Blondie: Oh, you were inspired to be a barber by the way your Mama carved and served turkey? That’s not heartwarming, the result is Dagwood’s haircut. You need therapy.
My request for today: No more homophobic f-words. Please just stick to the regular f-words. Thank you.
DtM: Dennis doesn’t understand the satisfying feeling his dad gets buying his hard liquor in person.
Gil Thorp: Found your problem right here: that’s not a football play on the blackboard, it’s [squints] English-Calculus-Music. Perform an iterative integration after the barred eighth notes, leaving the present participle with the wide receiver, you’ll pick up six yards in the playdowns, guaranteed.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Where are/were you seeing said words?
@BeckoningChasm: Given the economics of the comics industry, I wouldn’t be surprised if she draws each strip in 5 minutes and it still works out as barely minimum wage.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Waluigi is the opposite of Luigi so he is not Italian, he’s… mmmmmh… let’s say Danish
Phantom: Yup, we really are starting a new adventure. Screw that poor whistleblower who only just escaped from We-won’t-say-his-name-but-everyone-knew-who-he-was and his private militia! She’s female and nonwhite, so she’s probably been fridged by this time anyway (if she had anyone at all who would’ve cared about her disappearance, that is).
Luann: Mrs. Horner is about to eat them out of house and home.
RMMD: Boy, Lana Lang really hit the skids after Superboy left Smallville…
Gil Thorp-Finally artwork that matches the writing.
MW-This will end up with everyone going over to Mary’s place and each of them contributing a dish.
@Ettorre: As a half-Dane myself, I say well-played, Sir, well-played.
@Ettorre:
Stuffing. Not that’s it any better
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Yesterday. It was in a quote from a movie, so at least not directly from the poster, but – like the n-word – it would be better to not actually spell it out but use asterisks or something. I’m not looking to make a big deal out of it but would rather not see it.
MW: OH NO. The look on Toby’s face is very much “Now is my time to SHINE!” It should never be Toby’s time to shine. Never ever. The only person who should be shining less is —
**Wilbur bursts through the wall like Kool-Aid Man**
Edited to ask — Is Toby trying to draw Princess Caroline from BoJack Horseman???
@Pozzo:
If Blondie was more current with its’ stereotyping the barber would be drawn completely different
Wouldn’t it be great if he has a mistress named Lois?
@Joe Momma: I think you meant “peek”—women Mary’s age don’t have “peaks” anymore. Just sagging blobs.
@Bob Tice: Let’s hope her remains the avuncular Fred MacMurray of My Three Sons and The Shaggy Dog and not the amoral, adulterous, murdering salesman of Double Indemnity. But maybe Coach Luke ought to be reading the fine print on the Milford coaching contract regarding employer-purchased insurance just in case!
MW: “Don’t WORRY about it, Mary! I can fend for myself—I have two cases of gin in my pantry!”
Dustin It’s funny because the people in this family brutally insult each other to their face.
The only Gil Thorp ghost I want to see is Clambake.
I wouldn’t let anyone near my hair who doesn’t know how a blow dryer works. I’d be a little pissed if it just left my head all steamy.
***
Half an hour later a can of Campbell’s comes crashing through Mary’s window with the words “STOP BEING SO PRETENTIOUS” scrawled on the label.
Better watch out, Coach. One minute you’re taking creative inspiration from a ghost, the next he’s acting all possessive around you, destroying all your plays because you disobeyed him, and attempting to drag you to your death causing you to crack your skull on the windowsill and leaving you needing a comically stereotyped ethnic woman to save you.
In a rare flash of self-awareness, Toby realizes that even Mary deserves a break from Ian Cameron.
The Gil Thorp colorist seems not to be helping again. Shouldn’t the guy at the blackboard in the first two panels have dark hair?
Mary Worth, 11/25/24: “…in your own sick while use this…” Okay…if your college degree doesn’t include PR00FREADING, GET SOMEONE TO PR00FREAD FOR YOU!
MW: Toby hangs up and goes back to her painting. “The EYES aren’t quite right…!” she says, frowning, and studies Libby’s features more closely. “One of your eyes is supposed to be shut! Maybe if I loosen that electric collar of obedience…!”
@Baja Gaijin: The second panel, which shows how perfectly you’ve completed the Moy Brigman Illustration Academy of Fine Automobile cut & paste.
Phantom- Just how do you get that desk chair to move around on a dirt floor? Lots of schooching I’m thinking.
Gil Thorp‘s Mudlarks need a coach whose magical assistant coach isn’t the ghost of Sir Francis Drake.
The English have disappointed in football every year since 1966.
@Ettorre: I thought it was just a Japanese pun. Luigi = ruiji, warui = bad, Waluigi = waruiji (Bad Luigi).
MW – Mary’s so sick, she’s disposing of her snotty used Kleenex’s in her coffee cup.
GT – If you answer a question with “no?!”, it means you’re not really sure, even with the exclamation point.
Shoe is gone from the Washington Post… But Wumo, which is -much- worse, is still there. How does that work?
MW- Even at death’s door, she can’t help but remind Toby that she makes homade chicken soup.
I’m guessing that during Thanksgiving, that’s how she introduces each dish.
No wonder everyone is thrilled that it’s cancelled.
I’m kind of disappointed that Brigman chose a smock as the visual signifier that Toby is an artiste.
It’s supposed to be a beret! Everybody knows that!
For some reason, your description reminded me of this scene from Harold and Maude.
@But What Do I Know?: Unfortunately, it’s the amoral, adulterous (but still avuncular) Fred MacMurray of ‘The Apartment’, who may not have been murderous but still drove poor Shirley MacLaine to attempt suicide.
MW: Fifteen years in art school and now Toby is able to trace a cat. She’s so proud of herself that she’s going to submit it to Slylock Fox’ “Your Drawing” feature.
CS: He wants to give it to Pam as a Crispus gift.
Frazz: Um, maybe that’s because we don’t live in 19th century London and also we don’t eat goose on Christmas. Did you ever consider that, you smartass little shit? I didn’t think so.
RMMD: “Yeah, Lana — but he’s an expert!”
“Yeah, Merle — but I didn’t charge you a hundred and twenty-five bucks.”
When a Hat Man passes on, he returns as a Hat Ghost. Memento mori, Josh!
MW/ Toby’s latest art involves displaying pages from toddler’s coloring books. She’s hoping for a grant.
JP: I like that Alan Parker has turned into a broken-down, babbling old drunk. I just wish we’d see more of it.
GT: So they can’t see the ghost but they can see and smell the smoke? Hmm, William of Occam might say that maybe a gas leak in the building (1) has caused Luke to hallucinate and (2) has started a fire. Henry of Milford might ask why should this make any more sense than anything else in this stupid strip?
Blondie – This is such a food fetishist comic strip, even a stock barber character has his backstory rewritten to have his trade tied to warm family memories of holiday meals, as bizarre as it is. Cooking using barber tools sounds like an idea from an overpriced 2010s hipster restaurant in Brooklyn or Silver Lake, not a backstory from a long running comic strip’s recurring character.
Mary Worth – Mary has no one to blame but herself! Unmarried and sharing a closed-mouth kiss with Dr. Jeff! All those strips about meddling with unwed mothers is coming back with ironic karma!
Gil Thorp – Is this going to turn out to be a ghost of the coach that preceded Gil Thorp? Or is it Coach Hernandez’s dead relative, who was a great coach at the collegiate or early NFL level, whose reputation the declining Hernandez clan has ridden to keep marginally employed in athletics? In any case, I imagine this character was created when the creative team smoked their own pipes, but not with the coach’s brand of tobacco.
RMMD:
“He told me to get out and walk…but I think he was making a crack about my freakishly long forearms.”
“Why do you think that?”
“He said to wear gloves to protect my knuckles.”
GT: This week’s unlikely celebrity cameo is Miles Standish. Or John Alden. Happy Thanksgiving?
PIBGORN – NEW PIB TO-
Nah, of course there isn’t, it’s the same game of “Got your nose” they have been playing since early August.
9CL – Suddenly, for no raisin, it’s time travel back to catholic school days for a gag about how Amos is/was a hideous dweeb and The Nuns were controlling and intrusive.
MW: Can you believe those dames? First they frickin’ CANCEL my clients! “Due to popular demand”!!… Said they *may* give us a call for guest roles after the fur settles! And now – they do a half-assed parody of Libby, as drawn by that brainless drunk! This is outrageous! They’re gonna have to BEG to ever get us back! Why, we oughta sue their skirts off!!
And the Turkeys!! We’ve spent all month holding auditions and now have a bounty o’ Birds ready to strut their stuff! But where are the Turkey calls? Where are the traditional “Turkey outsmarts the guy with the ax” gigs? Is there no respect for the classics? Is that scene too intense for today’s sensitive audiences? Well, I tell ya, a lot worse will happen to those out-of-work Birds if they sign up with the Butterball Agency, as some are thinkin’ about… We’ve tried to educate them … but you know… Turkeys, am I right?
@Ettorre: There was this horror videogame (talking about the very original, not the shitty reboots/remakes with the same title) Alone in the Dark. One room you enter, has an ashtray which fills the room with smoke more and more until the protagonist chokes to death.
I don’t remember how I got past that obstacle, if it’s not a red herring.
Toby seizes her opportunity to become the new almighty goddess of Charterstone, manipulating the mere mortals in the community for her selfish amusement. Be afraid, Wilbur, be very afraid.
Blondie: Dagwood should be happy that the barber didn’t take any Spanish traditions of barbering.
MW: I like how Toby either ignorantly or purposefully doesn’t even bother to offer to help Mary. Maybe the twist will be that everyone will work together to make Mary the best Thanksgiving dinner ever. Except it can’t possibly be the best, because Mary is not involved in making it.
GT: I always feel like I’m hallucinating when I read an installment of this strip. It’s nice to know the characters are experiencing the same thing.
Zits: Walt is a corpulent middle age man with little to no physical activity, there is no chance he’d be able to just jump into yoga. They just wanted a reason for Jeremy to stare at his ass.
Marvin: These are toddlers who speak in full sentences and are literate and able to participate in aptitude tests but for some reason they still love the idea of wearing and using diapers.
Dustin: Today we find out that Dustin never went through puberty and his body has not developed since he was 10 years old. This explains a lot.
Slylock: WTF is this? He doesn’t believe in coincidences? Also I want to know more about Count Weirdly and his trip to the Sun.
MW – Good job on the tiny art, Toby. By this time next year, you’ll be drawing cats on the head of a pin.
MW: I’m feeling real trepidation at the thought of this year’s traditional Thanksgiving Day “Message of Gratitude” as the residents of Charterstone individually cope with Mary’s illness.
Carlos Alora: Madre de Dios! I sure am grateful for my latex gloves and mask—this makes the third garbage bag of snotty Kleenex since just this morning! Thank God she doesn’t expect me to clean up that vomit…!
Wilbur Weston: I’m really thankful that I have extra jars of mayonnaise on hand! Who needs turkey?
Iris: I’m so happy that we can take the time to hike to Piccadee Falls on Thanksgiving, Zac, instead of sitting around with those people! And dinner will be a breeze—we still have leftover hamburger gravy on rice, with roasted glazed carrots on the side! I’m grateful that you don’t mind finishing it up, instead of having turkey. Third time’s the charm, right?
Estelle: I’m grateful that WE don’t have to cancel our dinner plans at the last minute! I think Ed is hoping to have an emergency at ANIMAL HOSPITAL.
The Maitre d’ at The Bum Boat: Table for one, Dr. Cory? I’m glad to see YOU.
Zits: I did not have “Seeing Walt’s ass” on my daily planner.
FC: Thel realizes she needs about eight fingers’ worth of alcohol to deal with both of them.
Blondie: Yes, if your stuffing isn’t sufficiently “steamy,” a condition caused by the evaporation of water in the food, the thing you want to do is blast it with hot air and dry it out even more.
GT: Coach Luke is actively being haunted by–I dunno, Vince Lombardi or Pop Warner or Winston Churchill, who can tell with this artwork–who is able to manifest on the material plane enough to foul the air with his pipe, and it’s destined to fall down the same rabbit hole as Tobias’ trans-ness, Keri’s abortion, and the prison football gambling ring.
MW: On one hand, Toby isn’t offering to help Mary with Thanksgiving dinner or anything else. On the other hand, Toby is canonically an absurdly inept cook, so maybe not offering to provide food is how she’s helping?
FC: Jeffy shoots Dolly the middle finger. “What!? PJ is one fingers old.”
FC-Let us add five more fingers across the face and you can be ten.
FC-And Daddy is three sheets to the wind.
Blondie: I definitely get the impression that Dagwood is the sort who prefers his barbers to not dump their tragic life stories on him as they cut his hair, but hey, what’s he gonna do? Wait for the writer to actually invent a new character for him to get haircuts from instead of reusing the same clip-art of this asshole for cheap? Fat chance.
Mary Worth: Toby hangs up and wonders why Mary said the word “sob” out loud instead of actually crying.
Gil Thorp: Oh, so I guess Hernandez is a spirit medium now. Maybe he’ll use that talent to finally get to the bottom of why Gil turns into a vampire every October.
Luann: Mrs. Horner then takes a bite out of Puddles, vaguely horrifying the DeGroots.
CS: Loathsome Lil then takes a copy of And Then There Were None, rolls it in flour, and sets it on a pan for 30 seconds, vaguely delighting Crankshaft.
9CL: Considering they talk like that all the time, I don’t think it was just for you, Sister.
Blondie-At least he wasn’t inspired to become a serial killer.
“The Ghost Who Wore a Hat” pshh, his NAME is John X.
GT – “Kim played me like a fiddle. It was a nightmare! I wanted Itzhak Perlman, and she made me sound like freakin’ Charlie Daniels!”
Don Abundio, translated:
“What’s the rush, Pierre?”
“Don Abundio’s throwing a big party and I have a lot to do”
“Another weird themed party?”
“The weirdest ever! It’s a cannibal theme!”
“I just hope we can turn the pool heater up high enough to cook everyone”
Family Circus: I honestly had no idea Jeffy was supposed to be a 3 year old but I do think that absolves him of a lot of the issues he has. Most 3 year olds aren’t even fully toilet trained. His short attention span and difficulty with basic life skills is very appropriate for his age.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Definitely. I’m all in favor of profanity, but slurs are best avoided.
C’shaft: Crankshaft remembers during the tie-in boom of the 80s and 90s, there was a line of products that catered to classic mystery aficionados: Agatha Crispies, Doyle-e-oos, Choc-o-Chandler…
Dustin: I’ll say this for Dustin, it keeps finding new ways for its characters to be absolutely horrible to others.
JP: Greeting the grandkid with open arms while all but ignoring her own offspring? Sounds about right.
MT: So, that was the Washington, DC trip, huh? Yelled about the importance of NOAA for a couple weeks, then went home. I mean, Mark didn’t even get to punch a congressman…
Phantom: I hope “The Skull and Jaw” is a pub where Diana meets a rough but sensitive Mancunian for a torrid love affair.
Pluggers keep finding new ways to justify their laziness.
RMMD: I sincerely doubt we’re going to get a story where the doctor dismisses symptoms of a severe chronic condition by telling the patient they just need to make some basic lifestyle changes. This is Rex Morgan, after all, and not hard-hitting gritty realism like The Golden Girls.
MW: Toby is so self-centered and self-absorbed she doesn’t even offer to bring Mary a pot of hot chicken soup. All she needs to do is open a can of Progresso (TM), heat it on the stove for a few minutes, pour it into a thermos (the one not filled with gin) and walk it over to her ailing friend. Sheesh.
GT – Smoke-filled room, drawing psychedelic patterns, seeing ghosts…Luke’s smoking the ganja, isn’t he?
MW – Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2020 were, for the Old School household, delightful. Because of Covid, we didn’t have to go anywhere! We mail-ordered deep dish pizza from Giordano’s for Thanksgiving, and had a Scottish inspired meal of meat pies and such for Christmas. Hell, Christmas Eve we made hot wings in the air fryer. There is something really freeing about not having to do a holiday the way you always have.
GT: So there’s a new character with no football knowledge? Didn’t this strip have enough already?
Instead of trying to do three timelines at once, 9CL should trifurcate the Catholic School era and the Next Generation into separate strips. The downside, of course, is that it would be even more obvious that Brooke has only one story to tell at this point – a man being totally infatuated with a woman, where even the slightest suggestion of sex turns him into a puddle of lustful goo.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: tack så mycket
@The Rambling Otter: “I spent my childhood playing Alone in the Dark!”
“Great videogame!”
“What videogame?”
Blondie – If only that turkey could give head!
MW – Zounds! The art world is about to be rocked back on it’s heels!
GT – Didn’t Cub Koda write a song about this?
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Daisy: No, Toby would heat up a can of Campbell’s Chicken-less Noodle, now with extra sodium. Ian insists on Scots brands, none of that Eye-talian stuff.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: #32
Bravissimo!!!!
@LIam: #37
ah – “Stone Soup”! (or “Nail Soup,” in other iterations.)
Troubling that the artist who draws Mary Worth would have such a tenuous grasp on what the process of being an artist looks like.
@Ken, MW:
Tuesday, Wednesday – Montage of phone calls
Thanksgiving – Group of Mary’s friends arrive, confused with the additional group from Westview counterprotesting book burnings.
“Hmm… smoke everywhere… I’ve got it! If we set our end zone on fire, none of our opponents are gonna want to run in there! We could go to State!”
“State prison, Coach…”
“But State!”
Marvin Spanish to English.
@Myrtle: #101
Good point!!
Blondie: When the clipart in panel 2 was originally used, Dagwood’s shocked expression made more sense because the barber was talking about taking showers in prison.
MW: As Mary always says, if you’re in your own kitchen when you make chicken soup by adding water to Priceco condensed chicken soup, then technically it’s homemade chicken soup.
CS: “I’m all out of Agatha Christie, but I’m having a fire sale on a Ray Bradbury book she might like.”
6Cx: Hallelujah! While I was consulting with our lawyers, my Intern made a Turkey talent placement in Six Chix! On a good day with recognizable characters! Nice set-up – a hint of darkness with a whimsical yoga twist! Yoga – always good for a laugh!
Maybe things are lookin’ up as far as business goes… also got a Dog ensemble gig in Rhymes with Orange! We offered ’em some bonus Turkeys at a discount…
Mary Worth – That thunder clap was God fainting when Mary had to open – gasp! – a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. She must be really sick if she has to pass up a chance to be smug about making homemade soup.
Actually, Lipton’s soup made from a packet is best for when someone is sick. And ginger ale.
Lockhorns – I should wear those glasses when I read Mary Worth.
Rex Morgan – Ye gods, Beatty’s homunculus children are bad enough, but he can’t draw old people, either. That old bat is as ugly as Aunt Tildy with none of Tildy’s charm.
Crankshaft – This is so stupid. This is so smug. Stupid! Smug!
No, it’s both! It’s two – TWO – comic strips in one!
JP – Katharine has really let her looks go. I don’t know if it’s because of all the drinking or from being around Alan all day.
Pluggers – The latest thing is businesses who put Christmas lights up for you. I’ve seen signs and a billboard advertising the service, and we got a postcard from one.
Pluggers aren’t going to spend money for that when they can get out their rickety step ladder and risk a spinal or head injury.
@Baja Gaijin: Mashups – The first one is the most likely to happen.
I needed brain bleach for the last one.
@Charterstoned: Phyllis Diller used to say that her bra size was a 38 long.
@Ken:
“Then the punchline will be Thursday, when (not having told one another their plans) they all show up at Mary’s, each with a 20-pound turkey and all the side dishes. Except Wilbur, who has two freshly-microwaved Hungry Guy turkey dinners.”
And Wilbur put the cans in the microwave, causing a fire that burns down Charterstone, causing everyone to flee in the cold, cold/warm balmy air outside, leaving Mary stranded in her sickbed.
@I speak Jive:
Pluggers aren’t going to spend money for (a business that puts your Christmas lights up for you) when they can get out their rickety step ladder and risk a spinal or head injury.
Pluggers never took down their Christmas lights from last year.
GT; If my house/apartment/gym started to fill with smoke, I’d think, “FIRE!” And run towards the nearest exit.
Plus, are those football plays or math equations that he’s writing on the chalkboard? Hard to tell…
@BeckoningChasm: It is a mystery. She’s actually quite talented overall. But this GT….
PHANTOM:. Hard to believe that genius Ian Mollusk would let his new empire fail due to batteries. But maybe it was to be sun powered. Honest question: there is a “dark side” of the moon that we never see, is it also dark to the sun? If so, solar power on the light side would be inexhaustible.
The author has an almost complete reprise on his blog today, Tony DePaul dot net. Be sure to also read the comments. Note he doesn’t want his blog overrun by Phans.
Phantom: So they’re just going to let that rocket and rover just sit there in the jungle, leaking radiation and who knows what other toxins. Enjoy your future adventure when you have to battle the giant, mutant spiders Stripey.
Slylock: Count Weirdly landed at night, in case you were worried.
50 years ago newspaper readers learned that prosecutors rested their case in the Watergate conspiracy case and Snuffy and Tater took a nap.
Gil Twerp: ” Kim played me like a fiddle, it was so humiliating! Then Dinkle walks up to us and says,”What?!?,are,are, are you FIDDLING?!? There’s no fiddling in football halftime shows! Gotta admit, Kim did get a pretty good tone out of my G-string, made it echo in my cup and everything.”
GT: Were I a ghost being punished for awful earthly sins, I would beg to be allowed to join Jacob Marley and drag heavy chains around, rather than have to take a gig in a GIL THORP story. But who knows, maybe Smokey The Ghost has deeply longed to visit GIL THORP and is being rewarded by getting a vacation from heaven.
@119 Dr. Larry Erhardt:
*snerk*
@I speak Jive: #111: re- MW: When I was sick as a kid my mom always made me the Lipton chicken soup in a packet, never canned. She also believed that ginger ale had medicinal properties. Of course, a lot of our popular soft drinks were created by druggists as tonics or patent medicines. Pepsi got its name because it was advertised as a treatment for dyspepsia.
LUANN: I have a relative who is on dialysis, and his diet is restricted to try to spare his kidneys from further damage. Thirty seconds on Google confirmed that this is the usual situation for dialysis patients. Their diets are typically restricted to limit sodium, potassium, phosphorus, and fluids.
Dialysis is serious. Is Mrs. Horner just going to chow down on a typical DeGroot Thanksgiving dinner?
Snuffy! It’s downright rude to not invite your dancing kangaroo to the table for Thanksgiving!
@The Quiet Man: #63: I was hoping it was the cowardly blowhard sea lawyer Fred MacMurray from “The Caine Mutiny” who was all talk and no action.
Crank: The thing is, I would absolutely believe that there is a mystery writer in the Funkyverse called Agatha Crispy, creator of Miss Marbles and Pericle Herot. Not for the first time, Batty’s hackery is getting in its own way.
DT: The story continues to be stupid, but I do like Totten Jr’s look of “Wait, Dad, have you forgotten about all the crime stuff we’re keeping in the clocktower?”
GT: I’d never realised it before, but turns out I’ve been waiting for the soap strips to go back to the well of “random advice-giving ghosts that might be hallucinations” ever since Apt 3-G‘s LuAnn got high on paint fumes! This is the most I’ve been invested in Gil Thorp for months!
Heath: Heathcliff isn’t just running sentient vegetables to their deaths on horseback, he’s also pissing on his nation’s history by tying a vegetable associated with Thanksgiving dinner to a cruel British tradition that literally involves wearing a red coat. He’s an asshole on multiple levels!
Phantom: DePaul has learned the addresses of UN agencies Diana might be involved with, and by thunder, we’re going to learn them too! It’s a bit weird though, because so far as I can tell, the Chancery Exchange offices are specifically for dealing with refugee issues in the UK; the actual High Commissioner is in Geneva, where she specificially isn’t. I daresay it will all make sense as things progress, unless, of course, it doesn’t.
MW: I’m going to take a wildly improbable guess and pre
@Baja Gaijin:
Bring on the Fuckapalooza! Moy. Bring. It. On
And predict Mary’s friends will come together and provide a Thanksgiving meal at Mary’s place.
MW: “I’m too tired to make homemade chicken soup!” Mary’s identity is so tied up in being an incomparable cook that she refuses to keep ANY convenience foods in the house. No canned soup, no frozen meals, not even a box of cereal! Fortunately she won’t starve, since she has twelve dozen leftover muffins in her freezer.
@Baja Gaijin: Excuse you, Toby Cameron, but St Andrew’s Day is just two days after Thanksgiving, so don’t diss haggis, okay?
Seriously, these are all brilliant.
@Poteet: Smokey The Ghost
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MW: Best outcome? Her friends get together to cook up a traditional Thanksgiving meal and discover that it’s much better than the garbage that Mary has served up year after year. Now that would be something to be thankful for.
@Maude R. Fawker: Bring on the Fuckapalooza!
I’m late to the game, but we just started watching Succession (no spoilers, except – on the episodes with “warnings” for Brief Nudity, is there really any?). I looked forward to the second episode when I saw the title was “Shit Show at the Fuck Factory,” but with that kind of buildup, I guess I was destined to be disappointed. So far we are about 5 shows in. In each one, I figured they made a one-hour episode that could have been 45 minutes. But we’ll keep watching. Others have said good things about it. (Does Shiv ever show any skin?)
MW: I would have liked to see Mary test for covid and use the test results in her thinking. But I’d also like to see Toby drawing a cat that doesn’t look like it has serious mental problems. Life is brutal.
@jroggs: CS: Agatha Crispy. Agatha. Crispy.
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Agatha Crispy picks up the rice in the church where the Dinkle has played/ no one was laid. Look at her working,typing the tale of the hero who killed Les Moore/how will it score? All the lonely writers where do they all come from,all the lonely writers where do they all belong? Tommy B, writing the words of the tale that he hopes will win him the prize/won’t he be surprised?
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: @Maude R. Fawker: Bring on the Fuckapalooza!
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Has it REALLY been a whole year since the last 9 Weirdchick Lame convention already?
DT: For such a huge behemoth Totten Jr. sure has tiny hands.
@Horace Broon: creator of Miss Marbles and Pericle Herot.
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“Got reference, honorable Broon person.”—- Sidney Wang, (adapted)
Dustin-“I’m not a nerd. Nerds are smart.”
Lalo Y Lola Spanish to English.
Well, Thanksgiving is fucked. And a death-warmed-over Mary missed Stir-Up Sunday which means the Christmas pudding is botched.
Happy Holidays, Santa (irony) Royale.
Way to infuse the house with seasonal magic, Hi.
I bet the kids can’t wait to get the expense sheets that will be waiting for them under the plastic schefflera on Christmas morning.
Interesting idea to crossover “Gil Thorp ” and “The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan”, if they had asked me to pick an obscure H-B character to use as the Ghost of Football Past, I would have picked the Walter Matthau-ish Huddles from ” Where’s Huddles?” But maybe that’s just me. In any case, I hope the Paul Lynde impersonator ends up voicing Marty Moon who starts referring to the Mudlacks as “savages”.
My 10-year-old son just went into therapy after being compared to Dustin.
@Christ!: Well, Thanksgiving is fucked.
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Who let Amos and Edda get near the turkey?!?, I don’t want to know what she’s doing with that drumstick!And cranberries aren’t made for lube!
@Christ!: Happy Holidays, Santa (irony) Royale.
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The Great Quincy Magoo will rise above Mary’s patch, consider her’s the most sincere and fix everything!
@Ettorre: ei saa peittää (the only Norse I know)
@Sequitur:
“Is that a French bread, or have you brought another box boy home?”
Slylick Fox And Komix For Kinx: “But, Isnt that circumstantial evidence, Sly?” “Max! I’m shocked! I don’t ask evidence it’s race or creed! ANY evidence can speak in a Forrestville court of law! For shame, Max!”
I didn’t think this would keep coming up, but: the art in Gil Thorp looks like how I imagine a stroke feels.
I hope Mary Worth verbalized “sob” in an attempt to express the human emotions she doesn’t really have.
@1 Baja Gaijin:
That’s quite a story there Baja. Toby eats some bad-ass haggis, decides to commit suicide and screws that up so as a consolation prize has to make love to Ian and the cycle continues.
@Jeffmcm: On GT: That’s how the writing always made me feel. Now that the art’s like this, I can’t imagine how many decent Pluggers try reading this in their dead-tree, finally give up and say “Damn, can’t even understand the funny papers anymore. The kids are right, time to start looking into care homes”.
@Hibbleton: Not bad, but Finnish is Nordic not Norse
The barber is shedding a tear because he wanted to be a lumberjack.
Hey, BAJA! Think fast!
@Chromium: At some point someone decided that what Hi n Lois needed was a good dose of heavy-lidded despair.
@Gladly, the cross-eyed bear:
You, Good Sir/Madam/Neither/Both/Unsure/Other, have expressed what I have long felt in a concise and pithy manner. Well done.
@Ettorre:
This is a zombie strip literally about decline and slow march into death
With the demise of Funky Winkerbean someone has to step up to the plate.
Breaking Commudgeon News! — Mary Worth too tired to choke Snuffy Smith’s chicken for soup! Reporter Libby is on the scene and reports sighting of a packet of Liptons Noodle-O™ soup mix with Expiration date 3/16/2005; that week Mary was trying to teach Toby to cook for herself. Libby will stay on scene and let us know if Mary intends on using it on herself.
@Ettorre: @Hibbleton: Not bad, but Finnish is Nordic not Norse
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A Norse is a Norse, of course, of course…..
@20 Ukranazi Stepan: Would it have been less traumatic had I used the term “boinkfest” instead? And I doubt you’re now brain dead: you’re still smarter than Jeffy, Dolly, and Luann deGroot. Combined.
@53 ValdVin: I figure if it’s good enough for a professional artist, it’s good enough for me.
@98 Ettorre: “Yorn desh born, der ritt de gitt der gue, orn desh, dee born desh, de umn bork! bork! bork!”
@104 BananaSam: Troubling or unsurprising? The latter for me.
@107 Sequitur: I couldn’t resist.
@112 I speak Jive: I tried thinking of something more grody than a Mary Worth meal while Wilbur’s wearing a thong bikini. It sounds like I was successful.
@114 Banana Jr. 6000: “Pluggers never took down their Christmas lights from
last yearthe first Eisenhower administration.” Fixed that for ya.@117 Activist: Yes, part of the “dark side of the moon” faces the sun. More information on “lunar eclipses” can be found on the Internet.
@123 Sequitur: Agreed.
@125 Poteet: Mrs. Horner’s committing suicide by hypersalted Stove Top Stuffing to get out of any more inane discussions with Luann.
@130 Maude R. Fawker: That panel is as close to a fuck-a-palooza as you’re gonna see, at least from my mashups.
@133 Horace Broon: When I was in Edinburgh, I enjoyed haggis. Ian, on the other hand, isn’t popping open a can of Grant’s premium haggis. He’s using a sachet of Barmy Bob’s own brand dehydrated vegetarian haggis.
@137 Poteet: Does the cat drawing in the mashups look mental too?
@144 Christ!: Don’t worry–Mary’ll drown a big carbuncle muffin in brandy right before serving. No one’ll know the difference between it and a proper Crimbo pud.
@154 Sequitur: SNERK!
@158 Sequitur: I think I can do something with that.
@Inspector Gotcha: You, Good Sir/Madam/Neither/Both/Unsure/Other,
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Maybe try “Visually Impaired Ursine”?
@Baja Gaijin: He’s using a sachet of Barmy Bob’s own brand dehydrated vegetarian haggis.
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Still, its gotta be better than the Sea Hag haggis that Wimpy scarfed down in last week’s “Popeye & Olive & Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice the Goon”
@taig: I love it! It’s like the “Charlie Brown’s team only wins a game when he’s home sick” sort of joke.
@Garrison Skunk: I haven’t seen that comic, but I call suspension of disbelief.
Wimpy ONLY eats hamburgers (on Kaiser buns with mustard to be exact)
I picture this hypothetical conversation:
“Try this food”
Wimpy: Is it a hamburger?
“Nope, it’s Sea Hag Haggis”
Wimpy: Can you make it a hamburger instead?
“No, it’s Sea Hag Haggis!”
Wimpy: Can you put it between a bun?
“Okay it’s a hamburger…”
GT
Wait, so Gil Thorpe is recycling an old Apartment 3G plot, with Coach Hernandez as Lu Ann hallucinating in her studio, which makes Gil Margo, and I guess Marty Moon Tommie?
MW: I think Mary is ordering Toby to sob.
@Baja Gaijin: Sorry, I am totally distracted by the Fuckapalooza panel.
@But What Do I Know?:
MacMurray was one of those actors who successfully transitioned from being a film bad guy to a film good/funny guy. Leslie Nielsen is another example — he wasn’t really “comedic” until he took his turn in Airplane.
You laugh now, but when the ghost of Chuck Mangione gets the team to adopt the long-eschewed Maryland I formation, our guys are winning State. Chuck is probably somewhat shocked to learn he’s a pipe-smoking football consultant who is dead.
Blondie – “as a member of that fiery and emotional race”? I can’t remember the last time I saw Italians (or Greeks/Germans/Russians/what have you) as a separate “race.” And I’m not sure how to feel about seeing it now…
Fifty years ago during a time of rising inflation, you could still get these great clothes for cheap at Woolco and wear them to the “They’ll Do It Every Time” Thanksgiving where your surgeon uncle botches the turkey-carving.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=fqofAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ltYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2144%2C5876594&img=1&hl=en&h=379