Ho ho NO
Post Content
Pardon My Planet, 12/22/24
One of my least favorite genres of “Images You Can Buy On A Poster Or T-Shirt” is “Two Dead Celebrities Dressed In Vaguely Rockabilly Outfits And One Is Giving The Other One A Tattoo And The Whole Thing Feels Vaguely And Unpleasantly Sexual.” I’ve seen this with Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn (on a giant poster hanging in the men’s room of a restaurant that seemed otherwise respectable) and Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein (on a t-shirt hanging on rack outside a store in Italy). This comic isn’t quite the same thing but I think we can agree it’s in the same general ballpark, and that ballpark is distasteful.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/22/24
No, I don’t buy this at all. A Christmas Carol is famously one of Dickens’s shortest books and Snuffy is a notoriously stunted and gnome-like man and was presumably even smaller as a child. I’m beginning to suspect he can’t tell different books apart, possibly because he’s illiterate.
Marvin, 12/22/24
Can you imagine feeling like you have to continue to live with Marvin, for you own safety and survival, and the thought of being separated from him sends you into a state of panic? Bleak stuff.
78 replies to “Ho ho NO”
Marvin: Wow, Marvin is ripping off the original Toy Story so hard, I hope that Disney/Pixar sues and ends this pitiful comic. But sadly, no-one cares about newspaper comics so that will never happen.
@Giant Pondering Otter: Also, seeing as they have “Not-Brian from Family Guy” here, which Disney now owning Fox they can maybe sue for a twofer.
Marvin: “He has pissed so much the house is turning into a yellow void.”
Santa knows that Marvin has been really bad this year, but he’s still bringing him a Lego set, hoping he’ll choke on the small parts
Code blue is… bad? Good? Worrying but not panicky? Look, it’s been twenty years since the War on Terror, I don’t remember the chromatic alert scale!
Mary Worth Mashups
Pluggers: Catman there didn’t heed The Plugger Anthem. It’s their anthem for a reason.
BG&SS: Snuffy is talking about his 500 page Norton Critical Edition of A Christmas Carol which includes companion essays by Sartre, Camus, Bertrand Russel, and his personal favorite, Jacques Derrida. Snuffy’s shack is a prime example of architectural deconstructionism.
Snuffy Smith-“Hi, we are lawyers from the Disney Corporation.”
RMMD-“I’m sorry I can’t let you go. There is far too much snow on the ground. You’ll have to go once the snow clears.”
Slylock Fox-Wait a minute. Didn’t someone go into the woods with Shady?
FC-Ah the portion that was cut out of the New Testament without any debate, the Four Melonheads.
FC-Sadly the Three Wiseguys, Frankstein, Goldberg, and Murrey couldn’t make it so they sent their substitutes.
PMP: It’s the Dread Pirate Santa.
BGSS: A Christmas Carol, War and Peace, same difference.
Marvin: Aw, it’s like Toy Story, but with charm replaced by bodily waste.
PmP: That’s right kids, when Santa isn’t bringing you toys and candy, he’s that creepy guy at the campsite who blast Jimmy Buffet all day and keeps asking if you want to try his 5-alarm chili.
BGSS: That night Snuffy was supposed to be visited by three ghosts of literacy appreciation, but they decided to call it off after getting a whiff of the inside of that cabin.
Marvin: Do you think that Santa needs more evidence that Marvin is a rotten kid? And by ‘rotten’, I mean smelling of decay.
Snuffy Smith: An impoverished kid like Jughaid is reading comic books featuring Uncle Scrooge? I guess it’s sort of like if Elmo or some other weakling was reading about Superman — it’s nice to fantasize about someone with everything you don’t have, until the day you finally explode in rage and turn into a supervillain. (Just kidding — if anything that interesting ever happened in one of these strips, the syndicate would immediately pull it and replace it with more Cathy reruns.)
Marvin: An electric robot toy has gone an entire year in Marvin’s room without being shorted out by stray liquids? I think not.
Mary Worth: His name is “Dirk”?! Okay, I’m out.
Luann: They shouldn’t have left Luann in charge of Christmas planning. You’d think they’d learn.
CS: “Ed, I’m a hoarder. It’s a real problem.” {smirk}
9CL: So…based on current continuity, the last thing they did that Edda found exciting was approximately 18 years ago.
FC: Mary *just* gave birth, and she had to bake a cake?!? I thought Job had it bad.
MW: Watch out, Dawn! He’s got serial killer eyes.
Dustin: At least he made an effort, Santa. That’s more than you can say about the rest of this strip’s cast.
FC: Jeffy looks forward to eating baby cheeses.
@Baja Gaijin: The first one seems most apropos.
BG&SS: When Miz Prunelly assigns War and Peace, famine will reign.
MW: Dawn is one breath away from telling Dirk all her passwords.
@Hibbleton: And here I am with a novel of The Big Lebowski in a “what if it was written by William Shakespeare”?
“The Two Gentlemen of Lebowski”
BG&SS:
Can’t Rex Harrison’s Professor Henry Higgins make a cameo appearance here one day and teach all these people the rudiments of proper diction?
Marvin: Not too surprising that Marvin’s toys don’t know what a Code Blue entails. They’ve only ever had to deal with Code Browns.
JP: What did Alan even say on the phone? Was he just bragging about being mentioned on TV?
MW: “Let me enter my number myself. Seriously, I don’t know what it is with people in this town and smartphones. Nobody here even seems to know how to hold them properly.”
MW: Karen Moy is never inefficient; Dirk has only had one day of speaking lines and I already wish him dead. But hey, we have to prop up Jared as a great guy somehow (apparently), and it’s not like Moy knows how to do that by making him likable, so instead everyone else has to be that much worse.
PMP – So…what does this say about the Santas’ lifestyle? Do they live in a $7K trailer house, with a $25K Harley parked in front….
BG&SS – Literacy Shiteracy….
Marvin – Oh come now – they’d have been exiled to the island of broken toys before the New Year…
Adios Amigos, DJ.
MW: Dirk has second thoughts when he realizes Dawn has handed him a Pop-tart.
BG&SS – I wonder if Jughaid’s been catching up on the Fantagraphics Carl Barks volumes.
MW:
Dawn: “Hey.”
Dirk Diggler: “I’m Dirk. What’s your name? Do you live around here? Do you want to go out some time? Can I teach you how to bowl? Can you loan me twenty dollars? Do you know the way to San Jose? Is a tomato a vegetable or a fruit? Why does the sun rise in the east and set in the west? Can you tell me which came first, the chicken or the egg? Do you want to go dancing in the dark? Can I put a baby in you?”
Dawn: (edging away) “Damn, that escalated quickly…”
PmP: I can’t imagine Santa smoking with tattoos, but I DO imagine him possibly having diabetes. I mean eating 200 million cookies a night will do that.
Marvin: I think the writer is a little unclear on throwaway panels. Or lazy.
PMP: Are these supposed to be a biker couple who play the Clauses at a rundown mall in order to get some extra cash, or are they the real Clauses, who dress down in the off-season? If the latter, Santa married him a hottie!
Luann Spanish to English.
I just hope Brad doesn’t return to Mary Worth. I don’t want a redo of Luann‘s Brad vs. Dirk story.
Who *is* Mrs Claus (? Maybe Biker Mama Claus?) reminding me of? Her face in Panel One seems incredibly familiar from some other comic. Anyone?
BG&SS: Of course, Snuffy’s parents are canonically short, so they probably couldn’t put the cookies out of reach for anyone above Munchkin level.
Curtis:
Is the bottom left one wearing a UFO on her head? A Roomba? A mouldy cheese?
**************************************
Luann:
Oh hey, Dirk just turned up in Mary Worth! Hope he finds his beanie, sunglasses, and roid rage, then we’re all set! Looking forward to him punching Jared in the gut.
**************************************
Bitten Badly:
Well, Killer *is* an improvement on Archie.
**************************************
Andy Capp:
Oh what fun it is to ride, Santa Claus and me
Drop Andy into jug and throw away the key.
**************************************
Popeye:
But the battle suit was rusty, and Santa was too fat
So the children were put away
They’d keep for another day
And the witch fed Santa to the cat.
@Baja Gaijin:
(Sigh) I wish you’d put Dirk from Luann in one of the mashes.
PMP:
Apparently this couple isn’t Eastern Orthodox.
@Bob Tice:
Yes, Snegurochka is Ded Moroz’ granddaughter, not his wife. Ew.
MW:
“Now, a word of warning to you, ‘Dawn,’ at the outset here: I suffer from Dirkheimian anomie!”
B. Bailey: Killer’s phone sex operator girlfriend’s talents are wasted on Sarge. He would have been better off pulling an ice cold six-pack out of his mop bucket.
Dustin-“Sorry to disappoint you kid but Dustin’s sister doesn’t wear underwear.”
Luann-My Christmas fantasy is these people roasting on an open fire.
Over “winter break”? Hootin’ Holler was the last place I expected meek surrender in the War on Christmas.
@Avoiding the Madding Crowd: Dawn needs a shortstop, really *really* bad.
MW: Sigh, no catfight on the lanes, but hope springs eternal. Maybe Dirk is about to say ‘SUCKER!!!’ and bolt for the door with Dawn’s phone.
JP: ‘…and we here at CAV4 Eyewitness News won’t rest until every member of the Parker-Driver-Spencer Crime Family is behind BARS!!!’ [hears frantic whispers from off camera] ‘I mean… everyone’s innocent until proven guilty here in America, God bless it!’
RMMD: [Looks at that ‘come hither’ expression in the final panel] Uh, Merle? Is there something you’re not getting at home that you’d like to tell us about?
Meanwhile, at the Winter Solstice Festival…
Wait, what
MW: “Um, Cathy, see you later. Much later. Much much later.”
MW: As Dirk McStudly gets ready to cut another notch in his belt, he muses happily, “Wow, easiest one ever!”
RMMD: “No driving for you for a while, Merle. You’re going to be so hopped up on pain pills your wife might even find you tolerable again.”
JP: “Hey, Alan, Sam here. Ha haaa, I see you’re up to your ass in alligators again. I told you so, pal. Oh well, maybe you’ll get to reunite with your old cellmate Bubba. Merry Christmas!”
@Ettorre: Code blue is or was a hospital emergency, as when a patient flatlines. I think the toys are actually thinking of a blue-light special, which was a Kmart emergency with random discounts, as when parents rushed to buy cheap toys and bulk diapers for their sole and least-favorite child.
@Baja Gaijin:
#3 does it for me, Baja! Ted nailed it.
CS: So VCRs are too modern now?
Marvin doesn’t need a Code Blue. Marvin needs a Code Red.
MW: Oh come on, Dawn, this guy couldn’t be any more obvious. The hunky scammer always picks the lamest girl in the crowd.
In the Moyverse, not being wealthy equals evil, wealthy people don’t bowl, and shallow Dawn just gave her bank account and [insert fruit other than apple] pay accounts. Oh that Dawn!
@6 Baja Gaijin:
I guess #3.
Bob Tice will get this.
MW: Hacking Dawn’s Apple Pay? You’re pumping a dry well, my friend.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Also not to be confused with Code Red, which is the cherry-flavored Mt. Dew Snuffy Smith mixes with cough syrup and meth to create laffs like today’s.
SS: Stoking the flames of the Media is deleting the Christ in Christmas folks.
@Bob Tice: Mayohepin by Proxy….
New Mara Llave: Keeper of Time! It’s a Festivus miracle!
@taig: re MW: “serial killer eyes” Yes, this guy’s a serial killer, all right! How soon we forget handsome, charming Ted Bundy. This is his long-lost son.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: You’re damn right I did!
@Nobody: kay…
Marvin: Why is Christmas ‘Code Blue?’ And if the other toys don’t know what ‘Code Blue’ means, why scream it at the top of your lungs?
This makes me wonder what other seasonal codes Nameless Blue Robot yells out in the night.
Code Pink: Marvin’s been eating Valentine’s Chocolate. We have to figure out how to make him wash his hands!
Code Red, White, and Blue: Someone’s taking a ride on a bottle rocket if we don’t do something!
Code Yellow: …it’s Marvin. Let’s not talk about Code Yellow.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Code Red…A Few Good Men. Jack Nicholson
BGSS – What I don’t buy is that a contemporary child is reading an Uncle Scrooge comic book. I was at Disney World about ten years ago and couldn’t find a single piece of Uncle Scrooge merchandise, try as I might. Maybe he made Michael Eisner uncomfortable. Then again, I also couldn’t find a single pissed off/ranting Donald Duck either, so I guess Disney has just abandoned everything it was built on.
Pardon My Planet: I discovered by accident several years ago that there is very much a Santa Claus and Mrs Claus sexual fetish some people have and the internet has connected those people. Also I’m not believing that this couple has no visible tattoos or piercings.
Marvin: A lot of people are claiming this is just plagiarizing the 1995 Toy Story movie but the concept of Toys actually being alive and afraid of abandonment was not even a new thing when The Velveteen Rabbit was written in 1922. (Disney steals most of their ideas from public domain properties).
Mother Goose: Let’s hope that young kids aren’t reading newspaper comics anymore because this cartoon about a possibly dead homeless Santa is extremely morbid. (Again I feel the need to point out that Mike Peters has a Pulitzer Prize)
Curtis: Is that last woman Curtis is riffing on supposed to be a prostitute? Are ALL these women supposed to be prostitutes?
prostitutes?
BGSS: Scrooge McDuck did play the Dickens’ Scrooge in the Disney version of the story, so maybe Jughaid is reading the comic adaptation of that?
In any case, the King Features lawyers might want to rein things in a bit. “Steamboat Willie” era Mickey Mouse might be in the public domain now, but the rest of the Disney stable is still under copyright and they won’t hesitate to sue your little hillbilly comic into oblivion.
Marvin: Before Toy Story there was a Jim Henson television special called The Christmas Toy, which also focused on sentient playthings’ anxiety about being supplanted by exciting new presents. It generated a bit of nightmare fuel in my young brain, thanks to a plot point where if any of the toys were found having moved from the place where the humans had last seen them they would be “frozen forever,” and the fact that a little bit of love magic undid the freezing at the end didn’t stop me from interpreting the situation as some kind of horrific living death. And yet, it would still be preferable to being a toy owned by Marvin.
PMP: Is Mrs. Claus wearing an Iron Cross? Oh God, even the North Pole has gone far right!
FC: So many things wrong here – Mary baking a cake right after giving birth, putting one candle on it when he’s only 0 years old, Joseph managing to keep ice cream frozen. I do like the lamb wearing a party hat – that made me smile.
@Pozzo: PMP: Are these supposed to be a biker couple who play the Clauses at a rundown mall in order to get some extra cash, or are they the real Clauses, who dress down in the off-season? If the latter, Santa married him a hottie!
Have you seen the 70s stop motion “Santa Claus is coming to town” cartoon? Young Mrs. Claus (Jessica) looked like Mad Men era Christina Hendicks. Ten year old me had half a candy cane in my pants watching that special and it wasn’t because of the Winter Warlock’s magic feed corn.
Marvin – Marvin’s “toys” are a robot, a polar bear, and a penguin? I never suspected that Marvin was a baby evil tech billionaire with plans to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but in retrospect it makes so much sense.
JumpStart: The “Viewmaster” toy is still widely available for sale. There are even new variations of it.
Garfield: That open flame candle sitting unattended by the window might look cute but it’s absolutely a fire hazard waiting to happen.
Hi and Lois: HaHa, many of the shopping malls in the US are closing because they can’t compete with online retailers and mega corporations like Walmart and Target.
Adam@Home: This girl is clearly having an epileptic seizure, call an ambulance!!!
@Giant Pondering Otter: Wow, hating on the subtle thievery in Marvin, but completely sliding right past the blatant copyright and trademark violations by Snuffy Smith? He should be very concerned, the House of Mouse’s lawyers are likely to take him for every dollar … er, penny … Holy crap, I just finally reached an understanding of the phrase ‘judgement proof’.
Don Abundio, translated:
“A manly man’s game is strip poker with a hot babe, Polonio”
“Does that really work?”
“Strip chess”
C’shaft: To everyone who thought that Crankshaft had an old family film of Ralph’s digitally transferred as a Christmas present, the joke’s on you! You neglected to take into account that a) this is the Funkyverse, where any technology developed after 1985 is Wrong and Evil, and b) Crankshaft couldn’t even be arsed to vote for his nominal best friend in a mayoral election, so he sure as Hell isn’t putting a whole lot of effort into his Christmas present.
Dustin: “Sorry kid, if Santa gets caught using his phone during work hours the mall will dock his pay.”
JP: Great, first Randy yelled at Judge Parker for harboring a criminal, and now Sam’s going to yell at him for letting her go and prompting an investigation into her whereabouts prior to her arrest. Dude just can’t win with his family!
MT: And not one word about violations of the Migratory Bird Act.
MW: Looks like Dawn’s getting a body bag and a shallow grave for Christmas.
RMMD: Only one patient? Lot of shitty home lives in Morganville.
Mary Worth – A “good hair day?” Moy is just trolling us now.
Snuffy Smif – He was thinking of War and Peace instead of A Christmas Carol. It’s easy to confuse them.
JP – Shouldn’t the police be concentrating on making sure they have sufficient evidence on the homicide to go to trial, let alone get a conviction? But nooooo, Alan has to be in danger of going to the slammer again. If he thought he had it bad when he was caught for helping April’s father fake his death, wait til they go after him for harboring a fugitive.
Arlo & Janis – This is Mr. Jive and me watching Outlander, except that neither of us can understand the Scottish accents. No offense intended to Horace Broon.
Ripley’s – How long did it take for Walt to send that gas mask company a cease and desist letter?
Pardon My Planet: Santa and Mrs. Claus celebrate the end of Christmas by becoming butch lesbians.
Snuffy Smith: Wow, the artist just drew legit Scrooge McDuck in that second panel with no attempt at copyright-concealing antics. I would guess they’re counting on the comics pages being so obscure and unread that nobody even notices what they did and Disney thus won’t sue them into a crater, which is actually a pretty reasonable assumption, sadly.
@Peanut Gallery: (Wait, penguins in the Arctic!? I must have been thinking of Arctic Circle.)
@Baja Gaijin: Mashups – The third one.
@Liam: Re FC – The Four Moron Melonheads.
@taig: @Arabella: Re FC. – How did a woman who is the mother of a newborn manage to bake and decorate a cake? was my first thought.
Also, vanilla ice cream? What about the guests who prefer chocolate?
JP: Why is the newsie adding “the honorable” to Alan’s name rather than just saying local retired judge Alan Parker? Is he a former bailiff who can’t get it out of his system?
PV: Called it last week. Cue magical Aleta and her witchy, witchy wonders!
BG&SS: The artwork looks a little off today, more of a “Priscilla’s Pop” vibe. Substitute artist maybe?
MT: Hey, Mark, why don’t you just give us the tally of what the “Twelve Days of Christmas” would cost if one were to actually purchase those things? We can’t get through Christmas without at least one local newsie using it as filler material.
I was going over the points that the courts will consider in “fair use” situations and I’m pretty sure the Scrooge McDuck mention in Barney Google and Snuffy Smith is covered under “fair use” and not subject to a lawsuit.
BG&SS: Disney may have lost their joint trademark with WB on “superhero”, but their back-up plan is that if they publish a comic book called Comic Book, maybe they can trademark that.
Crank: The next week’s worth of comics will be Ed and Ralph unspooling the videotape, trying to thread it onto the projector, and being confused when this doesn’t work.
DT: Hey, remember November 10th, when the Major Crimes Unit discussed how the cameras in the detention centre weren’t working? Well, Chief Patton has finally heard about this, and he’s going to yell at someone about it! Remember, if we weren’t spending a whole Sunday on this we’d be progressing the story, and Costello gets paid by the strip (I assume)!
FC: But … but you don’t have a birthday party on the actual day you’re born. That’s not how it works!
Heath: Heathcliff is on the naughty list for repeatedly appearing in Sunday strips that consist of five to six silent panels of “and then this continued to happen” and a punchline.
MW: Okay, that’s the most “Does Moy even read these things before pasting them from BrainyQuote?” quotation box we’ve had in a while. Although it does go on “From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy,” and the idea that Good is passive fits rather well with Mary Worth, although not the idea that it’s based on reason.
PV: Yay, the cat’s back!
Also, I’ve been complaining since Baedwulf was introduced that there was never a significant Saxon presence in Ireland, but if they’re in Dyfflin, then I guess Schultz is using “Saxon” loosely to mean all Germanic tribes since the Norse aren’t actually mentioned in the Arthurian tradition?
RMMD: Day five of “Everything’s been sorted out and there is no drama left whatsoever.”
SFx: This is one of those cultural difference things, isn’t it? In my part of the world, forests are either protected conservation areas, timber plantations on private land, or some questionable combination of the two, and some random citizen cutting a tree down without asking anyone would be at least as big a deal as trying to walk out of a Christmas tree farm with one.
MW: Don’t worry, we won’t be seeing Dirk again. He’s entering the phone number of the city dump.
MARY WORTH: Wow, that bowler guy is really good at picking up the spare. (wink, wink.)
Pickles: Ohhh… “Up on the housetop reindeer pause…” Now I get it! That makes way more sense.
Slylock: Just let it go, Dave Dog. It’s December 22nd and you have a ton of trees left.
FC: It figures Bil Keane would draw Joseph holding vanilla ice cream.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Re JP – I’ve seen The Honorable used to refer to judges, and a Google search landed me at the Protocol School of Washington. According to them, it’s a courtesy title used for high ranking current and retired elected officials, including judges. So it’s a valid honorific to use for Alan.
It is definitely not accurate to use as an adjective to describe Alan’s character.