Out of the past
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Marvin, 1/15/25
The thing about writing a blog post a day, every day, forever, is that you can definitely find yourself caught in some ruts, which makes me sympathetic to the ruts that comics creators, who have to write a comic a day, every day, forever, find themselves in, even when one of my ruts is making fun of their ruts. I’ve been making fun of poop and piss jokes in Marvin for 18 years now — a lifetime, really — and the last time I brought it up, a faithful commentator gently pointed out that actually Marvin has moved away from that material of late. And they’re right! I should be giving this strip credit for the rich veins of comic possibilities it’s been mining beyond the excretory. Pretty sure no other strip is working in the “what if a dog and a baby who lived together really disliked each other, just honestly hated each other’s guts and were always going out of their way to antagonize one another” space, and honestly I respect it.
Alice, 1/15/25
Speaking of my long blogging career, I’ve been talking about the comic strip Alice on this blog for 10 months now, which is long enough for me to indignantly assume the role of “keeper of the Alice lore.” And as all real Alice-heads know, the Aliceverse already has an alien species that visits our planet in pill-shaped spacecraft. And now you’re trying to tell me that there’s some whole different kind of aliens with more conventional-looking flying saucers? Sorry, I’m not buying it.
70 replies to “Out of the past”
Marvin: What I’m fixated on is that Marvin’s parents consider black throw pillows to be appropriate decor. Do they have a dark side that we’ve never seen? (Wouldn’t you, if you were Marvin’s parents?)
ALICE: It’s a boob light.
Alice. The characters themselves can’t even discern what the art depicts. Sad.
MW: Dawn, you can’t look back, forward or sideways. Put your dang glasses on!
RMMD: Summer is poised to go wild. Maybe a dine-and-dash at the diner?
9CL: I’m reassuring myself that if this slides into an icky group sex scene, all we’re going to see are flailing legs.
Marvin: the last time I brought it up, a faithful commentator gently pointed out that actually Marvin has moved away from that material of late
As that commenter (or at least one of them), I feel obligated to point out that it is possible for the strip to stop being about crap while still being crap.
Alice:
It’s a spheroidically-shaped edition of The Canterbury Tales — it’s a flying Chaucer!
JP: With the foam balls and giant playing card, Alan’s magic themed kitchen grounds him to his carnival sideshow roots.
Alice: Are we meant to fill in the gap in the caption ourselves? My suggestion is “It’s a drone! It’s a UAP! It’s a hat! It’s come to ask what the hell ‘UAP’ stands for! Does Alice mean ‘WAP’? Please don’t say Alice knows what WAP is.”
Marvin: As much as I don’t miss the poop jokes, I still think that Marvin has a ways to go on this new direction, because this? No. It’s more confusing than funny.
Alice: Sometimes this strip feels like I’m watching an improv team trying to get a scene going with one weak link performer. “What’s that over there? Probably a hat. Yeah, not much to say about a hat. I guess we’ll just wait for the bus in silence then, huh?”
Blondie: All the fuss about this Brand New Character for Blondie to shake things up for this musty franchise, and in the end all the writer can think to do with Maya is make her the Gearhead Gertie of baking.
DT: We’ve reached the point where this story has gone from a disastrous mess to being completely incomprehensible. There’s no accounting for what is going on, what year it is, how long people live, which people are mortal and seemingly immortal, who did what, who is who, how anyone knows anything, how people do things, why anyone is doing what they’re doing, or… anything. It’s all madness now.
MW: Sure, Dawn, go ahead and tell your abusive boyfriend that you’ve been with a ton of other men. I don’t see this backfiring in any possible way. Also, is that it for Dirk’s sympathetic tragic past? What did that crap about his divorced pharmacist parents have to do with Dawn’s eyesight?
JP: Not only is Randy sick of Alan working to keep Ann in his claws, he even no longer wants to be called “Randy.” This is it, folks. We’ve finally come full circle.
MT: The term is “chapbook”.
RxMD: So, Summer is going out of the house, meet up with people who will rob and stab her, and when she recovers, she discovers that being alone in the house is best.
Didn’t we just do this?
GA: Not only is his lawyer Good Lawyer, but also Spawn of Legacy Character.
Alice: It’s something ripped off from Bizarro!
Probably all the portraits in Marvin’s house have the subjects holding their noses.
Luann: “…and you’re NerdGirl!”
Old Marvin would have just dropped trou and given that poster an epic diarrhea blast. Old Marvin had some balls (covered in crap, but still).
MW: This story about Dirk and Dawn is such a non-starter. Who cares? I’m much more interested in the three people entering the diner. Why is that guy with the tonsure hairstyle wearing a backpack from the 50’s? Is he an undercover monk? Are his robes and knotted rope belt stashed in his rucksack? But if he’s undercover, doesn’t the tonsure kind of give him away? And if he’s a monk, why is he hanging out with two women? Is that part of his disguise? My guess is, he’s a tortured young man facing a crisis. Should he leave the monastery? Is he more attracted to the idea of hanging out with women than the thought of living a cloistered life? Will he interact with Dawn and suddenly find his answer? I. Am. On. The. Edge. Of. My. Seat!
MW: I’d make some comment about being trauma bonded to people but I don’t really have any clue what we’re doing here anymore so it seems somewhat futile…Though I do appreciate Dawn going with the sympathetic “I used to be a huge slut because my parents divorced!” trope…
MW: “That’s it??? Your parents got divorced and that justifies you heaping abuse on me. Fuck you, asshole!”
Marvin: You’re worried about the relationship between Bitsy and Marvin. Me? I’m worried about how the dog eats with those enormous molars. How does he even close his mouth?
Alice: Take me to your Alice, cha-cha-cha
MW – Waitaminute. That’s it??? Dirkhead goes from a furious rage fit backlit by actual hellfire on Sunday to a brief whinefest about how being a child of divorce turned him into an abusive asshole on Monday and…that’s it? And now Dawn’s going to bond with him because her parents are divorced and she used to be bullied so she identifies with Dirkhead, who is a bully…this is sick. Just f’in SICK. Moy has outdone herself this time. I thought calling stalking an “endearing quirk” was bad but this is next-level. No wonder almost every character in this strip is in need of therapy. Their creator is certifiably nuts.
MW: “Excuse me? Dawn? I was in the middle of relating my tragic backstory and you have the nerve to butt in to tell me about your OWN insignificant life problems, which mean nothing, NOTHING, to me! I will let it pass this time, but please, don’t let this happen again, Nerdgirl. Now as I was saying…”
Marvin: I was going to ask what Jeff and Jenny would say about this poster, would they question where the heck it came from? Or would they know that Bitsy put it there? Seeing as Bitsy is speaking with a literal speech balloon and not thought bubble, is he able to talk to his owners? Does he just casually drink coffee with them like he was Brian from Family Guy?
I’m going down the rabbit hole here and I don’t like it.
Marvin – That posters is of Bitsy laughing at another, actually funny comic.
Alice – Word got out in the Galactic Federation about the weird freaks with the large heads that exist on Alice’s planet, so the gawkers are here on safari.
@astroboy: Even Alice, as surreal as it is, is harmless.
Mary Worth however is outright toxic to levels that not even a Hazmat suit would fix.
Chix (sic): Good one today.
MW: There was an anime short, I believe it was called Stink Bomb. Where a guy ingests an experimental formula that makes him smell so bad, literally EVERYTHING around him just dies or breaks down, the government is trying to kill this guy (who is oblivious to everything going on around him) by shooting missiles at him (which dissolves in the air before it reaches him) among other things.
Just saying, that this short has a LONG way to go to get to the level of toxicity that Mary Worth has achieved.
Luann is a genius because she can talk to these kids on a third grade level? The Evansi haven’t really thought this through.
Alice-It’s a bad joke!
Blondie-“All I’m getting is guys who can toss salads.”
RMMD-So I am going to assume that a threesome is out of the question.
MW-“Like my cult leader says the past is only bad if I view it that way.”
FC-Welcome to the wonderful world of womanhood.
MW: “Excuse me, Nerdgirl, but we were talking about ME, remember? And now I don’t know where I was when you interrupted me, so I have to start over. My parents were successful pharmacists . . .”
FC: The dreaded back zipper. Dolly learns a cruel fact of life.
JP: “Why am I doing this? Well, son, I’m doing it because I want Ann back in my life. Randy, I never liked you. You’re an irritating, whiny pain in the ass. And despite everything that’s going on with Ann, I like her a lot. I need a decent relationship with at least one of my kids, so cut me some slack.”
CS: “I’ll pay you an extra dollar if you can give me a boner.”
I honestly wish that this Mary Worth arc would blow up in the media, so the entire world can see what a sick depraved writer Moy is and have her replaced.
But sadly she seems to get away with this for years since Wilbur started his “endearing quirks” because no-one really cares about Newspaper comics outside of our “very small” snark community, especially not about Mary Worth.
It’s good to have some perspective when it comes to Marvin, because looking at how that picture is pinned to that angled wall but somehow still facing us directly, the artist certainly doesn’t.
@Schroduck: It stands for “Unexplained Aerial Phenomena” and it’s seeing increasing usage because UFO has become associated with, well… *waves hand in general direction of the UFO true believers*
Marvin: “Here’s Exhibit A in my IP lawsuit against Hanna-Barbera, who owe me millions for Muttley.”
RMMD: “Summer, we’ve got two tickets to a comedy club that we can’t use. Why don’t you take them and find a friend somewhere, and the two of you can go together. I know you’ll have a great time. The headliners are a team called ‘Shorty and Beanpole.’ I hear they’re really funny.”
GT: Um, Henry, it’s 2025. Try to keep up.
Alice – She says it’s a hat, it’s a hat. She hangs out with aliens, so I trust her authority in these matters.
@Schroduck:
Alice: Are we meant to fill in the gap in the caption ourselves? My suggestion is “It’s a drone! It’s a UAP! It’s a hat! It’s come to ask what the hell ‘UAP’ stands for! Does Alice mean ‘WAP’? Please don’t say Alice knows what WAP is.”
UAP stands for “unidentified aerial phenomenon,” which is the new designation. Apparently the meaning of “unidentified flying object” was deemed entirely too clear for the language of the bureaucracy, so they thought they’d better muddy it up a little.
Alice: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, updated from Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) — formerly known as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).
Those Alice dudes are with it.
Alice: that is neither a hat nor a flying saucer, but rather a shuttlecock.
JP: they’re doing the parable of the prodigal son, aren’t they?
MW: did I oversleep the day the connection between Dirk’s parents getting divorced and his becoming abusive was explained?
@Cleveland Mocks:
Oops, my bad, it’s “unexplained,” not “unidentified.” Tabby got it right.
@Cleveland Mocks:
Oops, my bad again. I guess it is “unidentified.”
I’m going back to bed.
Marvin casts a shadow but Bitsy doesn’t. Unless Marvin’s “shadow” is actually a piss stain on the wall.
Sorry Josh and Tom Armstrong, but we’re in too deep and in turn will keep making these jokes forever.
@astroboy: I thought calling stalking an “endearing quirk” was bad …
It wasn’t just stalking. It was alcohol abuse, animal abuse and emotional manipulation.
Moy is just one seriously effed up individual.
It’s a hat, it’s a cloud, why is Alice repeatedly telling people to deny the evidence of their eyes when it comes to aliens? How deep does this rabbit hole go?
Alice succeeded on at least one level: It got me to google “UAP.”
@Cleveland Mocks: Not to worry. USP will revert to UFO, just as Cape Kennedy went back to being Cape Canaveral. Sounds more cool.
Marvin: Surely, Marvin has access to darts or throwing axes. (Sorry for calling you “Surely”)
Alice: It’s the weirdest damn pasty I’ve ever seen. Admittedly, I haven’t seen very many pasties, but I figure it’s still a weird one.
@Charterstoned: UAP
FC: Why doesn’t Dolly modify a back-scratcher so it would pick up her back zipper? Then she could attempt to escape the Keane Kompound. PS: The Keane Kompound doesn’t like people who come up with new ideas, sad to say.
GT: Man, talk about “losing the plot”.
Nothing about ‘Peanut’s’ mysterious gooey hands.
Nothing about poor Marty’s relapse.
Not even anything about the threats to Marty’s replacement.
Just ol’ Gil and a couple of his unidentifiable athletes talking to a reporter with the worst cliches outside of “Bull Durham” (which was intentional satire) and now a roster photo of, I’m guessing, of the Mudlarks who are suddenly being replaced with ALL NEW! 2025 Mudlarks so Gil and Henry can right the ship with a big run to the playdowns.
(Hmmmmm. A storyline with an abrupt opening of the transfer portal created with money generated by the betting on Coach Kaz’s juvenile detention center sports ball and human cockfight games? Lemme work it up and get back to you)
Marvin: Why is a picture of the dog laughing at him supposed to cheer him up? Who knows? Marvin is an infant-toddler-preschooler with adult reasoning and he can communicate with animals; it’s nice that the utter senselessness of his existence has finally been embraced.
@jroggs:
What? No! He can’t do that! Now who’ll we get to “work ’em like a claw”?
MW: I look forward to the sputtering wrath from Dirk after Dawn interrupted his story with her BS.
FC: It’s a valid question. Dolly does have stubby arms. Still, she could ask someone to zip up her dress and combine it with a darnedest thing to make it extra awkward.
Dustin: Later, Dustin throws the plugged-in toaster into Meg’s bath. “That’s how, beeyotch.”
Marvin – Is the dog sitting on a turd? I hope so – otherwise I got nuttin’….
Alice – No need for Project Blue Book, flying saucers or die glock…they are inside-out sailor hats. Peter, Paul and Mary knew – the answer is blowing in the wind….
Adios Amigos, DJ
Marvin-And right where Marvin uses the bathroom too.
@taig:
Dustin-There’s no topping that.
Archie-The girls are stunned because usually when Archie squirts something with them it ends up on their faces.
@Giant Pondering Otter: re MW: I’m afraid you are right, dear Otter. Nobody cares about Mary Worth except our small group here, and I’ve concluded that I don’t need to follow comics that only infuriate, annoy, bore, or don’t provide any entertainment for me, even as snark material. So I’ll start skipping over Mary as I do 9CL, Luann, Crankshaft, Dustin, Marvin, and Alice, as well as the comments on them. I’ll probably drop more, since there are very few comics I actually look forward to reading each day. I could be using my time more wisely.
Gil Thorp-The final picture of the team taken before that tragic tragic event.
Luann: Yep, Luann and Alan are going to start dating.
CS: I’m literally going to the doctor tomorrow for my back pain, and I have zero empathy for Crankshaft.
9CL: P/Lolly knows they have hereditary syphilis.
C’shaft: “Okay, done. That’ll be $120.”
DT: So, now a legacy villain is involved in some sort of sabotage/terrorist attack perpetrated by the Internet-radicalized son of a former/current Nazi who also killed a guy with a fake ID in a subway station and this is all because…uh….look, I got nothing here and so do the writers.
Dustin: Huh. I would have gone with pointing out that so far, failure has not taught him the relatively simple lesson of “check the setting on the toaster and adjust it if necessary,” but sure, Meg, go with your PhD line.
JP: “Wait, is this that new ‘compassion’ thing I’ve been hearing about? If so, I don’t like it.”
Luann: Her “special power” is being able to connect with small children because she has the mentality of one.
MT: Damn, Cherry’s family has all the conspiracy theory bases covered!
MW: How did living with Wilbur make kids less likely to bully her? Pity? The realization that no childish taunts could be more painful than having Wilbur for a dad?
Pluggers really shouldn’t be out unsupervised.
9CL – 1977 Farrah Fawcett called. She wants her hairstyle back.
This feature went from “long form plotlines that always fall apart because the author refuses to write the plots more than a day in advance” to “Fetish-a-Day Calendar” so quickly that they forgot to discard plot elements such as: “They are all classical pianists specializing in music written for the pianists to play simultaneously”, “Alistair takes his piano everywhere he goes, even to the beach”, and “A lifeguard fell instantly and permanently in love with one of the twins, but a week later she had sucked him dry until only a husk remained”. Oh, and also Alistair was planning his wedding so that he could make the secs within the bounds of holy wedlock – a requirement for all 9CL characters.
MW-“Mother would encourage kids to bully me. I’ve slept around with dozens of men in search of the physical love Father is incapable of giving me.”
Luann-“I’m Alan.” “No you’re not. You’re name is Toby.”
Luann-“Did Piro leave?” Piro went out for cigarettes.
FC: Duh…Dolly…just turn the dress around so you can zip it in the front, then walk backwards so people will see the front of your dress.
@astroboy, MW: Dirkhead goes from a furious rage fit backlit by actual hellfire on Sunday…
I’m convinced that was from Dawn’s projecting viewpoint, like “I’ll report you, Missy” in a previous storyline. Wasn’t that Dawn as well?
@Liam, Luann: I understood that reference, Kunta Kinte!
@Bob Tice: #6
GAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!
@Bob Tice: #6
Darn it…that was good!!!!!
@Liam: I like to inject a little levity into Dustin when I can. ;-)
@Charterstoned: #15
That guy also looks kinda like Wilbur…hmmmm…..