RETURN TO COMICS BLOGGING IN THE FAR-OFF FUTURE YEAR 2025: MOSTLY MARY WORTH EDITION
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Hello, faithful readers! Did you have a good Christmahanukkwanzaa? Are you ready for a return to comics blogging form, here on your favorite website, joshreads dot com? Well, good news: I’m back and prepared to read the comics so you don’t have to, once again.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/25/24
So what did you get up to on Christmas? Did you wait around for your doctor to call you up and tell you it was OK to walk on your treadmill, which he’ll only do after sarcastically asking, “I dunno, do you think someone might stab you the minute you leave the safety of your chair”?
Gil Thorp, 12/26/24
Or did you just straight-up go to jail, like Marty Moon?
Gasoline Alley, 12/27/24
Or did you give, or possibly receive, yet another cursèd doll, to go with the one your friend group already has, doubling the number of demonic toys out in the world and ensuring the ultimate destruction of the human race???
Mary Worth, 12/25/24 and 12/28/24
But whatever, I didn’t have time over the holiday week to think about evil dolls because Dawn’s Christmas Day hunk date turned out to be exactly the blockbuster event that I predicted. First up: turns out Dirk is kind of an asshole — ha ha, what are the paces he’s planning on putting her through that he requires her to protienmaxx at dinner? — but also, it turns out that Dawn 100% thinks of being vegan as a “diet” rather than an ethical framework for respecting animal life, so honestly I don’t feel that bad about it.
Mary Worth, 12/29/24
“Ha ha, Mary, I know, young people really do rush into things instead of taking the time to get to know somebody! It sure would be terrible if I got fingerbanged in the front seat of a car by some hunk I met two days ago instead of spending the last 20 years ‘getting to know’ an angry failed academic decades older than me! Ha ha!”
Mary Worth, 12/30/24
Uh oh! Conflict incoming! Will shallow hunk Dirk still accept Dawn if she has to wear glasses, like she used to?
Mary Worth, 12/31/24 and 1/1/25
Obviously he will not accept them, duh. Remember “negging,” the emotional manipulation technique promoted in the late ’00s by pickup artists and others amongst worst people alive? Well, Mary Worth has finally gotten wind of it in the year of our lord 2025, and obviously Dawn Weston is the first victim.
Mary Worth, 1/2/25
And it worked! She’s 100% in love with this guy, already, despite the fact that he has not been particularly nice to her! In 2025, we’re going to discover: is Dawn going to find that the thing she’s been seeking has been inside her all along? Or has the thing she’s seeking only gone inside her fairly recently? (I’m talking about Dirk’s penis, if that’s not clear.)
Curtis, 1/2/25
Oh, also, Curtis did another Kwanzaa storyline, but instead of being about cool shit like giant telepathic otters it’s about how when you die, you’re reborn as a child in an endless white void and are very confused until you eventually run into your mother. A bit theologically confused and zero giant magical animal content. I give it a C+, but I believe that 2025 has the potential to be at least a B-, comics-wise. Stay tuned!
151 replies to “RETURN TO COMICS BLOGGING IN THE FAR-OFF FUTURE YEAR 2025: MOSTLY MARY WORTH EDITION”
MW: I don’t know what’s worst: Dawn’s delusional inner monologue, those upside-down exclamation point and/ or men’s restroom symbol earrings, Mary’s useless platitudinal bullshit, or the physics of how Mary is holding and using her computer. The one thing that is clear is that Moy and Brigman’s NYRs didn’t include improving at their respective crafts.
DT: So much for that all important conversation with the Army officer that absolutely could not have known anything useful about Junior. As always, Costello had no idea what to do with this chat, so instead he tiptoed around it and pretended it was enigmatic and intriguing, and now it’s back to the Totten family office and simultaneously Sam Catchem’s hideous day-mode computer screen for more vague babbling and empty mystery box nonsense. Costello’s been a little better with this stuff in this story than in the past (especially that godawful sexy blackmailer plot), but as the saying goes, a zebra can’t change its terrible writing habits.
JP: It’s going to take a lot of contrivances, character rewrites, and retcons for Marciuliano to solve the problem of Don’s death when and if he finally gets around to it, but that doesn’t mean he’s slacking on those hack tactics in the meantime. So yep, now Ann is concerned about how her behavior affects the people she cares about and is dedicated to proving her innocence, and that’s always been the case. Just ignore everything we’ve seen prior to today, please and thank you.
GT: The past thirty years have given rise to multiple leaps forward in the field of sexual self-discovery, but Gil Thorp remains on the cutting edge with its thoughtful handling of people who have to think about downward-spiraling middle-aged alcoholic men to get in an intimate mood.
CS: I would complain that this joke appears to be missing a panel or two for that punchline to work or even make sense, but then again, less Crankshaft is always a net positive.
On second thought, I take it back. Dawn identifying as a toilet for men is a perfect metaphor.
MW: As Dawn and Dirk share a post-coital snack of raw meat ripped from the haunch of a bawling calf, Dawn reflects on how her attitudes have changed since meeting Dirk. “I’m a changed woman!” she thinks, and sighs in dreamy satisfaction. having removed her thick glasses, she is unaware that Dirk is rifling her bag for drugs, cash, and a stick of chewing gum to freshen his breath.
MW: Wendy responds; “Yes, you’ve probably already taken those pills you’re looking for” in the most convoluted way possible.
Curtis: Sheesh. We’ve watched decades of hospital dramas to know the terminology, no matter how much you want to soften the euphemism. Besides, he’s dead, not transgendered. Speaking of which…
Phantom: Peoples, we present our first transgendered Skull Bearer.
GT: “Because I needed to complete my collection for eBay!”
MW, meta I hope you’re right, because if Mary normalizes negging….
S4th: I know there’s channel creep all over the place, but I don’t think the Hallmark Channel Plus is a Documentary Channel. Maybe it is, considering what A&E and the The History Channel is these days.
yBlondie: So, there were no cell phones in 2024?
GT: “Did you take Marty’s AA chip?”
Beth replies; “Maybe. When i roll a drunk, I don’t hang around going through the change.”
MW – Yegods, Dawn looks weird as hell all of a sudden. OK, OK. Weird-ER. Did she fall asleep in a tanning bed between 12/30 and 12/31? And, in addition to darkening her skin to Medium Latina, it burned off much of what was left of the hair on back of her head?
MW: There is a way this storyline won’t be terrible–namely, all of these interactions turn out to be a prelude to Dirk doing something arrest-worthy, Dawn not understanding how he could do such a thing, Mary walking her through their interactions, and then Dawn having an epiphany about orange and red flags.
Also, “how young people are these days?” This is the exact opposite of what young people are doing these days. They aren’t rushing into sexual intimacy–on the contrary, they’re getting intimate at lower rates than at any generation before them, and not for moral/prudential reasons, but because their social interactions are primarily online or mediated through smartphones.
(Not to say that this sort of thing doesn’t happen–it does, this is a country with 330 million people in it–but a more accurate depiction of the modern dating scene would be Dawn going to a dating app and getting unsolicited pictures of genitalia and creepy messages while not responding to the likes she gets from good dudes because they get lost in the pile of awfulness or they’re bad at selling themselves. Although, given the choice between staying single forever or marrying Dawn, I might flip a coin.)
Welcome back, Josh! I had been hoping that your return would mean the end of a problem that I’ve been having with the site while you were gone, but apparently not. The problem is that whenever I access the site, refresh the content, or post a comment, I get this huge pop-up message from my Norton firewall saying “Threat secured / We prevented your connection to cdn.bidfluence.com because it is a dangerous webpage. Threat category: URL:Blacklist“. It then offers to run my Norton antivirus to scan my whole computer, just in case. Is everyone else who reads and/or posts to this site getting this same pop-up every time that they do so, or is it something that’s unique to my set-up? (I use a Firefox browser.) Will this connection to the “blacklisted” site be a permanent feature of this site from now on, like the pop-up in the corner that alerts me that “This website uses cookies to gather analytics and serve up ads”?
When I started using this “Internet” thing back in the mid-1970s (OK, it was the “ARPANET” back then) I always suspected that it would be too good to last, and apparently I was right. :(
Curtis – “Transition”? Seems kind of cruel to perform sexual reassignment surgery on someone right as they’re dying.
I am not, at least for the commenting part. Jeez, where did I put that funnybone? Ah shit, the dog’s been chewing on it!
@Charterstoned: I think Dawn “had a snack of raw meat” in that backseat-of-the-car panel, if ya get my meaning.
@seismic-2: If you’re using Norton and Firefox, it’s like a condom and a chastity belt. Install something like the Duck Duck Go privacy add-on or uBlock Origin, and it should zap that connection before Norton gets to it. Or, if you’re not a subscriber, throw some coin Josh’s way, and you won’t get hinky ads in the first place.
GASOLINE ALLEY: (Shudder) What a creepy demented figure of pure evil.
The cursed doll is no picnic either.
Gasoline Alley: But which is the cursèd doll and which is the cursèd child, and WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?
Multiple magical beings, the threat of the unstoppable power of sentient computers… did Jonathan Hickman start writing Gasoline Alley?
Curtis: It may not have otters, but this Kwanzaa story is plenty batshit in its own way. I mean, two doctors at bedside pronouncing a death? That’s for the RNs, after the room is cleaned, the lights are turned off, and somebody stops to ask if corpses go in medical waste or recycling.
Not a vegan, but my understanding is that someone who’s been vegan for a while and all at once scarfs a huge chunk of beef is likely going to throw it back up, so I’m disappointed Dawn didn’t do that here mid-makeout. it would have made the date at least a little interesting.
C: “Poor old guy”
“Time of transition…”
“Ouch, sorry, I didn’t want to be insensitive! Poor old lady!”
That throwback Mary Worth strip is interesting. Dawn’s own mother called her ugly? And also called Wilbur, whom she married and had sex with, ugly? Some serious disfunction there. Starting to see why Dawn’s trip to visit Mommy Dearest went awry.
The sad thing that Dirk feels the need to be such a dirkhead to enthral Dawn! No need to do complex negging and gaslighting, she has Wilbur as a father, her expectations about males are already terrible! Just jiggle the keys in front of her! That’s not a sex metaphor, but it could be!
I give a higher grade to Curtis just because they had a complex storyline about death and the afterlife where the punchline is literally “joe momma”
GT: Come on, Marty, you’ve been arrested before, right? Call a damn lawyer. Just not me.
“Young people tend to rush things and not to take precautions. You see Toby, 2024 was the year in which the world fell below the population replacement rate, much sooner than predicted. My husband and I were young and hip in the 1970s, so we bought into the population bomb panic by Paul Ralph Ehrlich and the Club of Rome. Now it is clear that their ideas were at best farcical and at worst destructive. We decided not to have children to save the environment and now I’m old and my suppressed maternal instincts remerge in a twisted and destructive way in the form of meddling. Anyway, we no longer need to promote population control at global level to spare resources, but what if we still promoted some tiny population control to prevent reproduction? Some population control entirely localised in the Weston clan?”
Also…um…Josh? I know it’s hard to navigate through the thick miasma of Dawn’s toxic relationships sometimes, but Mary Worth introduced “negging” to us 3 or 4 shitty boyfriends ago. (During the “hunky Eurotrash” years, remember? Just before Dawn fell “madly in love” with someone else just by looking to her right.)
The narration boxes strongly imply that at midnight, while the whole world celebrate, Mary is in bed, meddling with strangers through the written form. After all, that’s what she wants to bring in the new year!
@Tom: Dawn’s sudden veganism could have been a good story in the context of trying to reinvent herself away from Wilbur’s bad habits. Didn’t she have a nightmare about turning into him once? Now, she’s going to turn into him even more aggressively, by duplicating his South American romance scam adventure.
@Thrax: Yep, all of 6 hours. (That’s “a while” for Dawn.)
Rex Morgan, MD – Buster doesn’t love the treadmill, so much as he appreciates it meets his basic needs to exercise now that his PTSD from the attack has given him agoraphobia.
Gil Thorp – I’m surprised Marty Moon didn’t call one of the drunk driving attorneys that sponsors his local broadcast of high school sports.
Gasoline Alley – Funny, I got a similar doll myself this Christmas, call Ida Care
Mary Worth – Dawn is so compliant she will do anything this guy says. Most of the time this could be a bad thing, but perhaps this guy is a conman running a particularly gruesome grift, and as soon as he learns Wilbur has a large life insurance policy he will convince Dawn to engage in patricide.
Curtis – Over the last few years the term “unalived” has been used as a euphemism for death, mostly because people are so afraid of the oppressive algorithms that run our lives. That is being driven by social media platforms buying into superstitious idea that any mention of suicide without the ritual copy-pasta of a suicide hotlines number will result in a contagion of self-harm.
Newspaper comics have always been more conservative in their language as a general audience medium,(Despite the rest of the publication leading with violence, murder and other attention grabbing headlines.) “Time of transition” has the feeling of a new version of “passed away” for the “spiritual, not not religious” set that need to feel they are helping the dead by invoking some magic words, without having an actual framework of theology.
It looks like Dirk got a doormat for Christmas. With Orthodox Christmas still to come, here’s hoping Dawn gets that new spine she’s been needing.
@Philip, Curtis: Time to look up the old Monty Python chestnut, “The Unalived Parrot Sketch.”
@Thrax: Time is always something of an amorphous concept in Mary Worth, but Dawn announced she was going vegan not long after her dad left on his job assignment/voyage of self-discovery so she probably hadn’t been at it long enough to completely rearrange her metabolism. But on the other hand, Moy apparently believes veganism is just a trendy thing the kids do like TikTok dances and protesting police brutality, so she doesn’t have the best grasp on the physical effects of it all.
@Philip: It’s been pointed out by many (including myself) that it’s stupid to use a boring Newspeak-ready term like “unalive” when the English language has provided us with so many colorful and evocative euphemisms for death. Mamadou Ndiaye, aka Casual Geographic, is one of my favorite creators for finding fun new ways to get around TikTok’s terms of service, including “divorced from your body,” “canceling your life subscription,” and in the case of drowning, “reverse baptism.”
Curtis: Hmmm. Looking to see if “Time of Transition” is one of those new-fangled euphemisms, I found this:
What does it mean when a dying person is transitioning?
It’s used when a person is “actively dying”, as in hospice (as opposed to Dr. McCoy’s instapronouncements of “He’s dead, Jim.”).
MW: Yeah, that’s nice and all, Mary, but Angry in Denver merely asked Wendy what she should do about her lazy neighbor who never shovels his sidewalk.
CS: You mean knocking on wood didn’t work? Son of a bitch, I thought that *always* worked. Damn, another health care regimen down the tubes.
JP: “So you see, Dad, you don’t have to worry about me anymore because now I’m in prison charged with murder. . . . Oh wait, I guess I didn’t think that all the way through.”
Frazz: Yeah, Big Health Club controls the weather. The bastards.
Love this. Reminds me of Chico’s Bail Bonds sponsoring the Bad News Bears.
@Little Guy: Yep, we use this all the time, or “at journey’s end” or “actively dying” for people at the very last hours of their lives.
RMMD: Um, don’t you mean “holiday vacation”?
H&L: “I finally turned Irma into an alcoholic too! This is going to be GREAT!”
GT: “Why? He’s a paying customer, that’s why. I don’t say No to paying customers.”
Curtis: “Time of transition” sounds like something that would be used by a grim dystopian state as a cover for the wholesale execution of undesirables. Although if that’s the world the protagonist is leaving, it’s not surprising that a blank expanse inhabited only by a weird Asian girl who suddenly becomes your mom would be preferable.
MW: Many times we have wondered how Wilbur Weston maintains a career as an advice columnist despite, you know, being Wilbur Weston. It makes sense when you understand that “Ask Wendy” doesn’t provide advice so much as vague regurgitated platitudes and generic observations that wouldn’t pass muster in a self-help book.
MW: “The answer was inside you all along! Unfortunately, it was the wrong answer”
Metacomix:. I was going to apologize to Josh for all of us for having a mere 514 Comments in his absence rather than the 600+ we originally targeted. But if we include at least 100 comments placed on the COTW thread, we reached the targeted goal! I’m clever with numbers, will do unique take on your taxes for right pay.
Anyway, welcome back, Josh. Uncle Lumpy too deserves our good thoughts today.
“This is a cursed doll like Ida Noe! Her name is Ida Clare!”
“What’s with the punny names?”
“The have been cursed by the Family Circus children”
“They are not dead!”
“Their souls certainly are!”
“Season’s greetings from the Morgans and all their
friendscostumers and unwanted acquaintances”MW/GT: Jeez, I thought Dirk and Dawn’s kiss was awkward-looking, but then I saw Beth and Gil swapping tongue. Yeet!
@TheDiva:
Interesting. I will have to check him out.
George Carlin in his prime would feast on all the euphemisms and hypocrisies present with social media. Creators are liberated from the FCC language rules, but now a handful of companies are controlling what can be said by demonetizing and suppressing a few words based on the latest mental health hysteria.
Dustin: “The therapist also explained that the other person should be prepared to pay heavily in the upcoming divorce settlements.”
HotC: Shenanigans! There is no way a hardcore teen musical geek like Heart has not already waded knee-deep into the Glinda/Elphaba tag on Ao3.
MT: You don’t need all these precautions. It’s a manatee, not a mob witness.
Phantom: I see transphobic rhetoric has escalated from “trans women are sexual perverts who want to creep on you in the bathroom” to “trans women are wanted Asian crime lords disguising themselves to snag a drink at an English pub for former victims of vigilante violence.”
MW — God knows I’m no fashion plate, but accessorizing with strips of blue tape on your ears might be why the other kids made some snarky comics. . . Oh, am I the bully?
MW: “You know how young people are these days!” Listen, there is literally no-one who reads Mary Worth who knows anything about how the young people are these days.
MW: Why are the speech bubbles so insistent about the exact formatting of ‘”NERDGIRL“‘? Does Dirk follow up each mention like “My beautiful “NERDGIRL“… (all capitals, boldface, with no space between the words and double quotation marks around)”?
MW: Mary shows what a savvy pro she is by using the rarely seen long dash-ellipsis combination for that dramatic pause. Not everybody can pull that off.
RMMD – Woof* *This is some meaningful existence even for a dog….
GT – The Psychic Friends Network – Call me now!
MW – The follies of men’s youth are in retrospect glorious compared to the follies of old age.
G K Chesterton
Curtis – The best is yet to come – next is the magical part where he conceives the style invocation of wearing a baseball cap askew….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
RMMD: That dog is clearly saying “Snausages!”
GT: “Jerk. How dare you act like anyone of the Millennial generation or younger and not answer your phone!”
GA: The next doll will surely be called Imin Helle.
MW: If the Mary Worth creative team had any guts (heh), they’d retell the story from Raw.
Curtis: Joe has been unalived.
GT – Of course I took his AA Token. His virginity wasn’t worth having!
FC: Holy crap! Thel is awfully casual about Jeffy freezing to death on his tricycle!
Dustin: I’m perfectly OK with this therapeutic technique that dehumanizes Ed Kudlick.
Luann: I’m not sure Greg really needed to call attention to the fact he writes his characters the same way he always has but in a setting wholly incongruous with the way he still writes them.
CS: So, Batiuk has just given up at this point, right?
9CL: Oh, phew! The other twin got paired up. I was worried.
Curtis – No way in heck a doctor is going to use euphemisms for death. Not in the operating room, for sure.
Regardless, I’m not a huge fan of “transitioning” – I prefer the good old southernism, “fixin’ to”.
As in, “Hurry on over to the hospice, Memaw is fixin’ to meet her maker.”
JP: Hey, my eyes are up here, ‘Dad’!
@Tom: You’ll have to forgive me, but your discourse on the modern dating scene touched a nerve. I’ve held forth about my situation here before, so I pray for the indulgence of those here again.
I grapple with the fact that I am no longer young (pushing 40) but my dating life has been basically nonexistent since puberty, so in that regard I feel like I’m still in high school trying to figure out how to speak to these attractive, mysterious, unapproachable individuals known as women about anything but the most surface-level things (Did you have a nice weekend, fellow co-worker? Gee, that’s a nice Mickey Mouse shirt you have on. Well, have a nice day.).
Your description of dating apps is precisely why I’ve never used one, despite my desperately lonely existence outside of work and a few hobbies that, while they are benign, aren’t traditionally ones that aid in ‘selling oneself’ to women. If I did go on one, I would be too afraid to even try ‘swiping’ or ‘matching’ or whatever the hell they call it because I know the odds are I’d be rejected because I don’t know how to ‘sell’ myself in the first place, let alone make that transition from ‘so, how’s the weather?’ to ‘would you like to meet and get to know each other better?’. So I’d be waiting (most likely forever) for someone to show interest, while fending off constant entreaties to pay more for the ‘privilege’ of seeing more profiles of people who I wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting near.
Perhaps at one point there might have been a nice woman on these apps willing to take a chance on me, but they’ve been driven into their own permanent protective crouch by exactly what you describe (unsolicited pictures of genitalia and creepy messages in a pile of general awfulness).
@Ettorre: Did it really fall below replacement rate, or were you being facetious? Honestly, if this world falls below the replacement rate that enabled a world population of 8 billion people, and keeps falling, I’m not shedding any tears. Maybe we’ll actually avoid a ‘time of transition’, but I doubt that too.
@Old School Allie Cat: Madame Ovary and I were getting an assessment from our financial planners, who used the term “End of the plan.” It was always, “And when you reach the end of the plan . . . ”
That’s the only euphemism I’ll use for biting the big one. Usually I just say “died.” I hate “passed away.”
Mary Worth: Speaking of muscular, potentially violent men in relationships with sweet, not-too-sharp women, Popeye just entered the public domain.
Happy 2nd of January to Josh and all the ‘Mudges from one of the few countries where it’s a bank holiday! (I don’t know why. I’ve always been told that it’s because we need two days to recover from Hogmanay, but that can’t be the official government reason, surely?)
Curtis: To paraphrase Monster of the Week: The Complete Cartoon X-Files‘ take on the pilot episode “Nobody could have predicted this twist! Mostly because it doesn’t make any sense!”
DT: No patrons will be seated during the “opening a PDF file” scene!
JP: “Luckily, the way the law works in this town, I’m pretty sure that once I’ve proved I’m not guilty of murder, that means all the crimes I’ve actually committed don’t count!” And she’s probably right.
Pluggers: Pluggers reserve their words for complaining that the random person they’ve been connected to because they refuse to say why they’re calling isn’t magically the person that can help them, and what kind of incompetent call centre doesn’t hire psychics?
S4th: Nope. I keep getting intrigued by this “What if this Hallmark-movie town has a dark secret?” bit, and it keeps not going anywhere. I’m not biting this time.
Aubee “That one kid down the street has Chucky, my other neighbour has Slappy, and my cousin has Annabelle… I want an evil demonic doll, I WANT IT!! I WANT IT!! I WANT IT!!”
Santa: Here children, evil demonic dolls for everyone!
Kids of the world: Yaaay!!!
(Fads are weird)
MW: You have to admire Moy and Brigman’s economy of storytelling. Some writers would give the strip a few days before revealing that Dirk’s a controlling jerk, but they jump right to it in the first panel. Sadly I suspect they won’t keep up the pace and we’ll have to suffer through a month of strips before Dawn realizes he’s not perfect and turns to Mary for advice.
By the way, apropos of nothing, “Dirk Tandy” is an anagram for “Dinky Dart”.
@Ken: I was going to ask “How many weeks before Dawn realizes ‘hey this guy is a jerk!'” but months sounds much more fitting here.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Juan, here come some children who watched your movie”
“They’re my fans! Just look at those smiles!”
“They must have enjoyed the film!”
“I can’t wait to see the reviews of this turkey!”
“Pauline Kael’s gonna rip that lead actor to shreds!”
@lark: There hasn’t been a complicated chart yet.
(One of my favourite comic book podcasts once said that if you drew a graph of all Jonathan Hickman’s comics, you would have the first page of a Jonathan Hickman comic.)
So there whole “Aubee needs your help, there is not much time left!” letter to Santa was to give Aubee a demonic doll of her own?
Did she misspell Satan?
Dawn is the only woman (real or fictional) stupid enough to fall for Pickup Artist/Alpha Male tactics. Congratulations to Karen Moy for another incredible achievement in character writing!
GA – This doll is the season’s hottest toy with all the little kids who love to play Customs Agent.
So… do these kids live with Walt and Gertie now or what…?
GT: I don’t get this. Is there an AA rule that a barkeep who serves booze to a recovering alcoholic has to take away their sobriety chip? Or did Beth just rifle through Marty’s pockets after he passed out and fell onto the floor?
I see the beauty mark/enormous pimple/pearl cheek stud/syphilitic facial chancre is still in place. Perhaps a vigorous program of letter-writing to Barajas would convince him to take it away? It bugs me.
@Cleveland Mocks: Re: CS: That only works for Amii Stewart.
RMMD: Thanks to Josh for featuring Buster in what may be his last appearance. Yeah, our Hero Dog has decided to take up their offer and become a permanent in-house cast member in Rex Morgan. After workin’ the one-panels all those years he feels this offers security and a comfortable retirement. And he was encouraged that Abbey and.. the other one got an appearance on New Year’s Eve – so maybe this is not a one-way ticket to oblivion. They do have a comfortable set-up where he’ll live… got a gym and everything.
And I’d like you folks to know that we’re contributing all left-over profits from the Free Buster fund ($18.34) to the Glenwood Animal Shelter to assist with pet adoptions for other Rex Morgan characters. We’re in negotiation with Mr. B. to add more Animal Talent to the mix here, after the rousing success of Buster’s starring role! Ah, Buster, we hardly knew ye…
MW 12/30: “But you know how young people are these days”? The topper quote needs to have been Aristotle complaining about teens two dozen centuries ago. It’d be quintessentially unaware Moy and Brigman.
MW 12/31: Dawn somehow avoided Wilbur’s genetic self-immiseration and accepts a genuinely-given compliment about the glasses she previously didn’t like. When does the paternity test come back negaitve?
GT: Nothing says “romance is alive” more than interrupting the midnight New Year’s kiss to bring up Marty Moon falling off the wagon.
@Ukulele Ike: I think Barajas was watching a police procedural and hit the “do-it-his-own-way cop turns his badge over to his captain” scene.
Given that her dad is Wilbur, it makes sense that she’d be attracted to weird awkward jerks. Not in a good way, but it does make sense.
MW: why would Dawn, who wants to be different from Wilbur, where the same glasses as Wilbur? And is it absolutely necessary for KM to make it instantly obvious that Dirk is an asshole? I still think he’ll show himself to be sinister and possibly left handed.
Rex Morgan: Hahaha, this old asshole learned nothing from his experiences and is just going to leave this expensive piece of equipment that his wife spent her savings on to gather dust! What a lovable scamp!
Gasoline Alley: Ida Noe failed to be a smash-hit breakout character that put Gasoline Alley back on the map, so the writer acts quickly by introducing a slight variation of the exact same character. Surely, Ida Clare will make this comic a worldwide phenomenon.
Mary Worth: A few weeks ago, I made that huge comment picking apart why Mary Worth is a genuinely disgusting comic and deconstructing it’s hideous pseudo-50s puritan worldview. And just after I did that, the comic immediately jumps headfirst into a story about Dawn being emotionally manipulated into acting like a “proper woman” by a masculine authority figure, and I genuinely can’t tell if the comic is depicting this as a good thing or a bad thing. That is fucking horrifying.
Curtis: I gotta be honest, guys, I’m starting to think that the writer of Curtis doesn’t actually know what Kwanzaa is beyond vague memories of hearing about it in school as a kid as being some kind of “Christmas for black folks”.
Dustin (12/31/24):
“But I’m not a fan of Cardi O”
— an actual line someone got paid to write
Before long, Dirk will have Dawn eating human flesh!
@Professor Well Actually: Can we ever be certain that a character is Left Handed, as opposed to merely having been flipped on paste?
MW: “We hope for things outside ourselves–…when what we seek is inside us all along…” is a blatant reference to Dawn’s insatiable sexual appetite. But it also sounds like a lead-in to that oft-repeated warning, “Seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting longer than four hours.”
Gasoline Alley-I prefer Ida Clare’s sister Idna Clare.
MW-Let’s add using a laptop in bed to be another thing the artist doesn’t know how to draw.
Curtis-“Momma! Have you got those cigarettes you went out for?”
If only Dawn had been vegan for long enough that having meat would make her very sick. That’d teach Dirk he’s not the boss of what his date eats! (Dawn is a completely acceptable loss in this scenario.)
@Tom: It’s probably too much to hope for, but maybe Moy might channel her old partner Joe Giella and send Dirk flying off Aldo’s curve after he gets busted for trafficking Dawn.
Beaten Daily:
You’re an eyeless man with a WWII rifle in combat in 2025. You won’t even see the FPV drone coming to get you. In other words, you’re toast.
Poppedeye:
That isn’t a cow, that’s an alien pretending to be a cow. Her front legs are bending the wrong way. Wimpy is about to be Close Encounter Of The Third Kinded, anal probed, and dumped on a deserted highway once the aliens realise he’s not stud material for their captive human breeding programme (where Burnice from Luann is the other participant).
@jroggs: #2
OH SNAP!! U BE TALKIN’ SMACK ‘BOUT OUR FAVORITE GIRLCHILD WHO NEVER GREW UP and I’m here for it!
I probably shouldn’t even be thinking this, but Sarah Morgan in about 5 years will be better looking that Dawn Weston is right now (with or without glasses).
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
That’s the only euphemism I’ll use for biting the big one. Usually I just say “died.” I hate “passed away.”
I’m partial to “went screaming into eternal Hell.”
Zits Spanish to English.
Rex Morgan – One would think that forty somethings know when school starts after a holiday break.
That’s just the first panel. In the second panel, blond twin looks like he’s leaving for the malt shop to listen to Elvis the Pelvis on the jukebox.
Frazz – The start of the new year is one of Frazz’s favorite times, as he can feel smug and superior to all those fat, lazy slugs who join gyms after sitting on their butts all year.
JP – I recall that Ann originally dropped in on the family after being absent for decades so that she could grift money off of them. So, yeah, sure, she suddenly loves them and feels bad about hurting them.
Shouldn’t the JUDGE point out that it’s up to the prosecution to prove that she’s guilty, not for her to prove her innocence?
9CL – Just a reminder: this guy first appeared on Christmas day. It’s been more than a week, Polly has been all over him, and we still don’t know his name.
@JamesBont: Cardi B is the second-tier heart doctor DustDad had to go to after his first one quit in disgust.
@TheDiva: #33: How about assumed room temperature?
MW: What Dawn seeks actually IS inside her-she accidentally swallowed her contact lenses.
MW: “Dear Wendy, I met a wonderful man at a bowling alley just before Christmas, and we have been dating for a week now. I am deeply, deeply in love with him, so is it OK if I loan him the $50K that he needs to get out of a financial dilemma in which he finds himself, or should I wait until we know each other better, say sometime next week? He says that the loan sharks are getting impatient and are threatening to use his bowling ball in ways that sound rather painful, so I need advice fast. Signed, Nerdgirl”
Phantom: Got to give Manley this one. Asian men do make the hottest looking shemales.
I figured Gil already splotched in his pants a while ago.
@seismic-2: I have been getting that pop up, too. With my Kindle, I first got a message and I mistakenly hit “allow.” Now it will suddenly pop up and do what looks like a scan, then say that my anti-virus program is out of date. I have been able to get out of it, but I’m afraid that some time I won’t be.
So far it has been blocked on my phone. I’ve been using my phone most of the time here.
I am not tech savvy in the least, but I think I use Chrome on my phone and Silk for my Kindle.
SlyF: Two gorillas riding a rhino. Now there’s something I haven’t seen in a long time.
JP: Ann hasn’t stood trial yet. I realize she is a flight risk and wouldn’t be granted bail, but it looks like she has already been placed in the state pen.
Josh returns from his prolonged hiatus. Can a new installment of Pibgorn be far behind, this new year?
@Philip: That is being driven by social media platforms buying into superstitious idea that any mention of suicide without the ritual copy-pasta of a suicide hotlines number will result in a contagion of self-harm. Well, as a person who struggled with thoughts of suicide as a youth, I certainly understand and appreciate the well-meaning thoughts behind it, even if it does seem formulaic.
Curtis: So I was right. This was about drugs. End of life palliative care. I don’t mind the use of the word “transitioned” here. I think it has long been used to describe the process of dying, especially in the religious and spiritual community. I’m not sure exactly when the word came into common use to refer to gender change.
Curtis-“Masky McDeathdeath! It’s been thirty years!”
Gil Thorp – I don’t see this unless it’s featured here. That artwork is appalling. It looks like it was inked before the sketches were finished.
Gasoline Alley – This is another one I don’t follow, for two reasons: the artwork and the aw shucks vibe. That artwork is worse than appalling – both the child and the doll are horrifying.
I haven’t looked at Mark Trail for ages, but I intensely dislike Rivera’s artwork. I dislike even more what she did with the characters. There was an earnestness to the old Mark Trail, and she turned him into a hip, self aware doofus. Cherry was also needlessly updated. I gave it a chance, but I won’t be reading MT again any time soon. I don’t bother even with the Sunday strips.
MW – So how is it Dirk is able to go out on New Year’s Eve without his wife anyway? Probably because she’s otherwise engaged, being in labor and all.
MW- DIRK: A long bladed thrusting dagger……
@106 Left Nut:
And as a verb it means to stab someone with a dirk.
Tomorrow in Rex Morgan, M.D. Sarah reads “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and the two boys are idiots.
@I speak Jive: #104
Re. GA… “You know the thing about a shark…he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye”
Aubee and her doll are about to devour Gertie after circling her a few times, aren’t they…
Curtis-And now they are a rich young lady.
Curtis-And thus “Curtis” ends not with a bang but a whimper.
@Left Nut: Are we sure we’re not talking about 9CL?
@I speak Jive: #104
Re the other strips – I could not agree more. I may be a middle-aged fuddy duddy, but I really loved the old style artwork and sincere narratives of Gil and Mark. The new “modern, hip” stylistic elements are just so incoherent. I don’t read any of the three you mentioned (GT, GA, MT) at all any more. The only re-invented strip I actually love is Flash Gordon. I think that one is superb in every way.
MW: I once made the mistake of doing an image web search for “nerdy” and I discovered that most of the Internet uses the word to mean wearing glasses during pornographic situations. Between that and the negging and his grasp of nutrition fads, I’m definitely thinking of Dirk as a particular online type.
Fifty years ago, newspaper readers learned of the convictions of Nixon aides Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman arising from the original Watergate break-in. Ehrlichman mused on the Today Show that maybe it would have been a good idea to burn all those tapes!
North Vietnam began a series of offensives that would soon lead to the fall of the South Vietnamese government.
Meanwhile, Mary Worth called the police to investigate a suspected intruder to the police and told them to make it snappy. In Kerry Drake, notorious criminal “Zipper” feared identification by a tough-looking moll.
In military news, Sarge was worried about Otto’s night out with Lt. Flap.
MW: I like that Dirk thinks that Dawn is vegan because she can’t afford meat. After all, how many vegan women is he likely to have met while dating in Southern California?
9CL: Polly and her fiance (the guy she met last week) are having sex standing up, right?
@I speak Jive:
Yes, I agree 100% on the (de)evolution of MT. I miss the old dorky hopelessly square MT characters/dialog/artwork compared to what it is now. When I first discovered this blog, goofing on OG MT was one of the first things I enjoyed most.
@Philip: That’s a good one!
@cheech wizard:
This storyline is absolutely going to lead to her discovering Dirk The Jerk has other women on the side and she’s going to get heartbroken and go crying to Mary about what a fool she was leading to muffins and meddling and learning Important Life Lessons. As it always does.
@Jnoble: #118:
“Important Life Lessons”
But of course she won’t learn and the next Dawn-centered story will be about another disastrous love life.
This was the perfect opportunity for Dawn’s unforgettable clubbing outfit to make a comeback, and the “Mary Worth” creative team botched it! That was Dan, right? The outfit wasn’t unforgettable enough to make me keep bland “Mary Worth” characters straight.
@Daisy: Re GA – I don’t which is worse – the black button eyes of the doll or the child’s realistic eyes. They’re both horrifying.
The only stories from GA that I remember following are the bear with the scrapbook, which is one of the most idiotic things I have ever read, and the kids time traveling to meet Abe Lincoln.
@Jnoble: That is exactly how I feel about Mark Trail. When Jack Elrod was the writer, my go-to comment was “Can this possibly get any more stupid?” And then James Allen had Mark lost in a cave for six months… Even the cave story was better than the hip, self-aware Mark. I miss that sincerity and earnestness.
@I speak Jive: re MT — I miss the punching. Mark used to deck baddies more often than The Phantom.
@Daisy: Agree totally with you about the great older MT, a strip now wrecked beyond recall and the truly excellent revamped Flash Gordon.
So when you die, your mother will greet you, but disguise herself as a kid, of differing race.
Mom: Ha gotcha! I actually was your mother all along!
Kid: Oh, you got me!
Hahaha Heaven and their pranks, right…?
@I speak Jive: The James Allen MT era was the best in my humble opinion, still makes me laugh thinking about some of the situations.And he was a master of pop culture references (plus drawing wildlife).
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol:
re MT — I miss the punching. Mark used to deck baddies more often than The Phantom.
Ah yes, the Fists O’ Justice. Man, I miss those too.
James Allen’s insane cave story was…insane! (and we never did find out how the old airplane fit into that acid trip of a story!)
Though Dirk is probably not related to Keith Hillend (our carnivore from last New Year), they share in the overly-staunch, overly-vocal support of the meat lifestyle. Also, it’s Santa Royal folks, so they are surely dining at “ALL BEEF.” What did Dawn think they were going to order other than their signature “Platter of Meat.”
welcome back, Josh!
Today’s Crankshaft
ughhhhhhhhhhh there’s almost nothing to snark upon in this strip, the only times it’s snarkable is when Dinkle or Dick Facey show up in it
Beetle Juice Daily: Hey, at least he knows the difference between ‘lie’ and ‘lay.’
MW: Next Dirk takes her to San Francisco. They have dinner at The House of Prime Rib, where they wheel the giant flying Zeppelin of beef to your table, open it up, and slice the beef before your astonished eyes!
MW: Now I know why Dawn’s mother kicked her out. She got tired of Dawn bringing home every loser-user man like they were stray puppy dogs.
MW: Alternate Beauty and the Beast where Belle thinks Gaston is just awesome. Somewhere in his castle the Beast muses on the bullet he just dodged.
So:
Everyone in Gil Thorp is an asshole.
Everyone in Gasoline Alley is completely deranged.
“Dirk Tandy” is clearly Wilbur Weston’s reverse in every way except that they’re both clearly absolutely terrible people. Also, when was the last time Dawn was in a relationship, it’s been several years, right?
Curtis is insane, also I strongly doubt that actual doctors use “transition” when they mean “they died”, or at least I extremely hope they don’t use that kind of new-agey nonsense-speak.
9CL/Looks Good on Paper: Apparently GoComics lets you use the word “erection.” God help us all if Brooke finds out.
Crock: I see Grossie is attempting to bolster the family income by going into the madam business.
DT: Fred Totten flashes an evil grin at the prospect of dealing with folderol, because if there’s one thing he lives for it’s countering all manner of balderdash, hogwash, and gobbledygook. But if all this codswallop threatens to overexcite you, please cool down to this screenshot.
Dustin: Dustmom has an advice radio show. Honestly if she hasn’t said something over the air that’s made him defensive it’s not going to happen.
GT: Hey, some people collect stamps, some people collect other things.
H&L: Perhaps the most “feel-good” moment in today’s comics is the revelation that Thirsty and Irma can put aside their mutual loathing to enjoy heated cabins and spiked cocoa together.
JP: “And on that note, do you know any good lawyers? Yes, I know who Sam is. I said ‘good’ lawyers, remember.”
Phantom: Ten Tigers Gang Chief: I’m a hunted man.
Joe E. Brown: Nobody’s perfect.
@TheDiva: Re Phantom: Thus far it looks like the felon in question may be less “trans” than “left-field on the question of how to best evade Interpol.”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I’m sorry, but sometimes the plan ends before your life does and you’re old, sick, and broke.
@57 Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
How about…
@seismic-2: “. It then offers to run my Norton antivirus to scan my whole computer, just in case. Is everyone else who reads and/or posts to this site getting this same pop-up every time that they do so, or is it something that’s unique to my set-up? (I use a Firefox browser.)
___________________________________
I’ve been getting a pop-up selling some new variety of Pepto Bismol
SlylickFox and Comix For Kinx: And now, for something completely different…. Harry Ape humping a rhino.
DT: Does Fascism skip generations? Poppa seems like the sort of Good German who wants nothing but the city administration to leave him alone to his polkaing, beer drinking, skat playing, and mooning over Heine’s love poems, while Junior looks like he enjoys gooshing people’s eyeballs out with his thumbs.
@Giant Pondering Otter:
#124 CURTIS:. But we always knew Mom liked Barry better. What did she do to have to spend eternity with a… Curtis?
RMMD:. How does a dog get off a treadmill?
@142 Activist:
Doggy style!
Sex Organ,V.D.: “Jane! Stop this crazy thing!”
@Daisy: I don’t mind GT. Barajas is sincere, if ADHD-addled. Jules ruined MT. The writing is insufferabley “edgelord”.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I also prefer “died.” And while I don’t care for “passed away,” I don’t care for “passed” even more. It makes me think of the old term for what some of us do after we eat cabbage.
@Cleveland Mocks: That does has a certain welcome frankness. But I’ll bet some newspapers would not accept it in reader-written obits no matter how much the readers paid for publication.
@146 Poteet:
You fart? I’m agassed.
.
And now for the lesson.
Just in case Josh ever reads this, welcome back! Hope you enjoyed your holiday adventures! And thank you for skewering Dirk by pointing out the negging done by pickup artists, which I have read about, so I am feeling really with-it now, yay.
Also I see that Dawn is not severely near-sighted like some of us, because her glasses do not make her eyes look three sizes smaller. Relax, Dawn, your glasses make your eyes look bigger, which must be nice.
@Sequitur: Thank you! Great lesson!
And by coincidence, I read a story just this week about how atmospheric sulfur is no longer deposited on farmland soil in the amounts that used to be deposited when there was much more sulfur-containing air pollution. So now some corn farmers need to think about making sure their soil has enough sulfur, and supplying it turns out to be complicated. Standing outside after eating cabbage is apparently not that helpful.
@150 Poteet:
There’s always the Wilbur solution.