This guy’s favorite fast food chain is “Clown Burger,” c’mon
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Blondie, 1/20/25
The joke here really ought to be that we all know that there are plenty of cereal varieties with marshmallows out there sold in boxes with colorful cartoon art on them, but Dagwood simply doesn’t encounter them anymore, because he’s an adult, plus (and this is where Blondie’s carefully neutral “Oh?” comes in) he doesn’t actually do the grocery shopping so he assumes that because he doesn’t see them, they don’t exist. But given Dagwood’s appetites and predilections, I find it very hard to believe that he doesn’t go to the grocery store daily, wandering the aisles in a sort of dazed mania. Anyway, I do like the box of adult cereal here, which features a picture of a boring middle aged guy with a blank facial expression eating cereal on it. You can almost hear him saying the popular catchphrase, “I am eating this cereal for breakfast, as an adult.”
Shoe, 1/20/25
I’m really liking the Perfesser’s goggle eyes of horror here. Sorry, buddy! You are not excused from single combat with Biz in the rough and tumble marketplace of ideas!
Mary Worth, 1/20/25
Wow, Dawn’s already learned about negging from Dirk, and now the lessons have moved on to gaslighting! Truly a wondrous journey of discovery awaits her.
Dennis the Menace, 1/20/25
Well, I mean, he’s celebrating this birthday and the only people at his “party” are his wife and the five-year-old neighbor kid who he fucking hates, so, yeah, I think the thrill of living is gone for Mr. Wilson generally, Dennis.
Family Circus, 1/20/25
OK, Thel, before you answer this, think carefully: has the children’s religious education to date covered Exodus 22:18?
79 replies to “This guy’s favorite fast food chain is “Clown Burger,” c’mon”
Dawn is so stupid and gullible that we should hate her, but I find her much less enraging than her father or Estelle. Maybe at her young age you can still blame her circumstances and poor choices on her upbringing. Remember, of her two parents, Wilbur is the caring and attentive one!
Dirk can’t be gaslighting Dusk. Weelbur would have to be around to provide the necessary gas.
MW: “NOW look what you’re making me do. I’m going to have to start calling you DEAFGIRL.”
“Mommy has to cast protective spells. Once I switch it on, the iron is no longer cold and I am exposed to fae attacks”
MW: “You heard me wrong; and speaking of heard, have you heard of these new whole body deodorants, Stinkgirl!“
MW: Dirk nonwithstanding; if you give Jared a trench coat, a top hat and a bulbhorn, he’s Harpo Marx. I like that.
BLONDIE: “Breakfast of Pluggers.”
MW:
“Babe, why did you call me ‘Nerdgirl’ again?”
“Because the anagram of ‘Nerdgirl Weston’ is ‘Rodent Newsgirl’ !”
“Oh, okay! Thanks!”
MW:
“What does she see in him? — well, you know, despite, I suppose, his light saber.”
The backlash against AI is probably a bit hysterical, but it’s a fact that this very advanced invention doesn’t do things people are actually interested in. As Tel shows, a robot that would wash, dry, fold and iron the laundry without human input would sell like bread
FC: A witch with that ass gets a pass.
The slogan of Dagwood’s adult cereal is “The Breakfast of Also-rans”.
Dennis shouldn’t mock Mr Wilson, they are in the same situation: they’ll both have endless birthdays, but they’ll never get older
FC:
“Because when I do so, Billy — not yet present, as you can see, in today’s panel — emerges from the dank, moldy pile, a favorite haunt for him as he embraces dark existential thoughts and his suppressed antisocial predilections come to a seething boil!”
Blondie: None of this makes any sense, because we all know that Dagwood couldn’t get through the morning fueled by a bowl of cereal. His breakfast would be a cup of coffee and a half rack of ribs.
Mary Worth: “You must have heard me wrong! I called you ‘Thirdgirl’ — because out of all the women I’m abusively dating, you’re really moving up in the rankings!”
Dennis the Menace: You know who else thinks it’s weird that the only guest at Mr. Wilson’s birthday party is their 5-year-old neighbor? Dennis’ parents. But not enough to come over themselves, and join in this extremely sad celebration. Dennis is definitely fine, probably!
Family Circus: Why is Mommy waving her arms and saying “Abracadabra”? Because, once again, the iron has been precariously placed at the side of the ironing board, directly over her kids’ heads. And if it “magically” falls over on its own, no one can blame her, right?
Slylock Fox: “What, are you crazy? I’m a student of the natural world, and dolphins don’t have gills!” Said the six-foot tall, fully clothed talking fox as he walked into a cat’s art studio, accompanied by a skateboarding mouse.
Daggy — Judging from the graphics on the box, the ancient Sumerians loved them!
DtM — I know that usual thought would be that Dennis’ reminders of Mr. Wilson’s impending demise would be menacing, but given that the incidents of his celebration are more appropriate to a child (chocolate birthday cake and a present rather than a fancy dinner and that thing that Martha does once a year) I’d say that the Wilsons are messing with Dennis here–George’s last “birthday party” was in July and Dennis’s conception of time will be warped forever. Reverse menace–Just for Kicks.
MW: There’s no chair or place setting for Martha so I assume she’ll be leaving Wilson alone with Dennis in a ‘No Exit’ situation where Wilson has to listen to moronic questions from a six year old until crack of doom.
Bah, that should be DtM
Blondie: I’m used to this strip playing fast and loose with new slang, but I feel like they’re really stretching the definition of ‘midlife crisis’.
Shoe: My favorite part of this strip is how Biz’s comment has drained the color right out of the scene. I wish I could pass comments so acerbic that the people around me would start seeing in sepia tones.
MW: I know it’s not fun to make light of any kind of abusive situation but no matter how I say it ‘nerdgirl’ just doesn’t come off as that harsh? I mean, we’re living in the golden age of geekdom, there must be millions of people who use some variation of that name as a chosen internet handle.
DtM: “Do you ever think about death, Mr Wilson? Birthdays are a continual reminder of our mortality. Do you appreciate birthdays?”
MW: Is it me, or is Jess’s neck roughly the same size as her torso? Is Santa Royale having a mumps outbreak?
MW: Dirk is obviously abusive and needs to go, but we also know that Jared, despite being portrayed as the virtuous one, is a clingy niceguy creep. What this storyline needs is for them to accidently touch each other and their toxic Alpha/Antialpha masculine energies to react like a Star Trek warp core breach.
Not trying to one-up any of Jeff’s quips – just wanted to say I actually laughed out loud a his take on Mr. Wilson’s birthday!
FC: Why in the helll is pre-literate Jeffy holding a book approximately the size of “Ulysses?” His only possible use for it is to stand on it to sock Dolly on the chin for daring to question their Sainted Mother.
FC: Why in the hell is pre-literate Jeffy holding a book approximately the size of “Ulysses?” His only possible use for it is to stand on it to sock Dolly on the chin for daring to question their Sainted Mother.
@BigTed: I always assumed Dennis’s parents were screwing any time Dennis was over at the Wilsons’, but then I remembered that for Henry and Alice, sex always carries the threat of the unimaginable: the creation of another Dennis. Sure, there’s protection, vasectomies, sodomy, Plan B, etc. But the risk may just be too high.
FC: If Thel is like the majority of claimants I’m aware of, they have never even read the story let alone the book.
Blondie – Naturally when a long running strip like Blondie mentions cereal, you have to wonder if they didn’t have their own in the heady post-War days. While there was never a Blondie cereal, Blondie and Dagwood were part of a pin giveaway for Pep Cereal that featured all the popular comic characters of the 1940s.
Pep was a competitor to Wheaties, and one of the first “fortified” cereals, so from the beginning the Bumsteads were associated with a health cereal. Perhaps Dagwood is whining because under some licensing agreement Kellogg’s still have the cereal merchandising rights and they only have to release a small run of some cereal in an obscure market like Peoria, and only through a dollar store, to retain the rights.
Dagwood is mad, because his idea of a Dagwood cereal, with all the marshmallow shapes of ingredients for a Dagwood sandwich, has been rejected for decades.
Shoe – Not too get to into the current political situation, especially on this Inauguration Day, but Perfesser suffers from the same outdated idea many of the geriatric politicians and political journalists have that there is still a Cold War era consensus. Honestly, if the strip went into reruns I wouldn’t be able to tell if Perfesser was referencing Tip O’Neil because it was written in the early 1980s, or because he got dementia and thinks O’Neil is still the House Speaker and brokering bipartisan legislation.
Mary Worth – Unlike other soap opera strips, Mary Worth isn’t afraid to up the stakes. Perhaps Jared and Dirk will graduate from the climbing gym to the parkour gym, then take their feud over Dirk’s treatment of Dawn into the streets, where a race across the rooftops of downtown Santa Royale takes a perilous turn when Dirk shoves Jared off a building. He will survive due to plot armor, but Dawn will quit school to care for her problematic savior.
Dennis the Menace – That look from Dennis is a little too smug. Mr. Wilson is going to open Dennis’ gift, and it will be a promotional DVD for a euthanasia service available in Switzerland.
Family Circus – Thel’s belief in folk magic isn’t so unfamiliar, even in highly religious areas (probably more common). But it hard for me to see how she keeps faith when the same magic failed to serve as birth control to keep her from bringing more melonheaded children into the world.
MW: If Zak had bullied and berated his girlfriend like that when they were dating, she would not have tolerated it one bit. In fact, she would have punched him right in the face.
That’s right, we would have seen the blackeye vs. the fighting Iris.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
MW: “I didn’t call you ‘Nerdgirl’, Dawn. I quite distinctly said ‘T’, not ‘N'”.
MW: Dirk’s little matchstick legs! There’s a man who has skipped leg day every day of his adult life. If only Dawn would look down and realise one little “noodle-leg” insult could reduce that man to dust.
MW: Dirk isn’t afraid to verbally abuse his girlfriend of like 10 days, but he’s apparently afraid of leg day…
Why does Jared look like this? Why…your face…is melty? I can’t…derp…
JP: I see Randy has joined Ann as a prisoner in the state penitentiary. It’s about time.
MARY WORTH (Classic?): Because if we are going to be blar=tant enough to recycle plotlines, we mights as well go all the way to the point of audacity and reuse the dialogue directly as well. From when we did Dawn’s Obtuse Love Triangle the first time around….* https://joshreads.com/2017/08/some-soapy-updates/
Wait why does Thel wave her arms and say Abracadabra before she starts ironing? Is Family Circus making a cultural allusion I don’t get? Because then it’s all up with me.
Blondie: Looking closely, the guy on the box, kind of looks like…. Popeye? Yeah Dag, if you’re going to buy “Spinach Poofs” cereal you deserve to be boring.
Phantom: Did this dumbfuck really wear the skull ring to a bar full of skull-punched criminals gathered to watch a program about getting punched with a skull ring? He did, yes. It’s right there on his finger.
Crankshaft: So it WAS an essay contest, with a cash prize for best essay, and the newspaper just named one of their employees as the winner. Seems legit! I hope Lefty here gets his slice off the top.
DT: ”Trip to Stockholm to see a friend he met online, yes — was this about xylophones, or just the normal sex stuff?”
Blondie-Obviously Dagwood has been banned from setting foot into grocery stores.
Blondie: I don’t know what the hell
Dagwoodthe venting writer is talking about, it wasn’t until after I got diabetes that they started releasing all of the GOOD deeply sugary cereals. Cereals are sugarier than they ever were.MW – Starting to think Dirkhead has some kind of multiple personalities thing going on. One’s an asshole, the others are even bigger assholes.
GT: Ha haaaa, another idiotic art screw-up. What’s-her-name’s right earring is drawn backward. We’ll just overlook the ridiculous size of those things.
SFx: Yeah, what a masterpiece. That thing must be worth millions.
JP: Kathleen should realize that Alan knows exactly how he’s going to get through this. With his ol’ buddy Johnny Walker.
MW: In panel 1, Dawn appears to be talking to the wall. In panel 2, she’s talking to Dirk. Same thing.
CS: OMIGOD, THE TWINS PULLED A SWITCHEROO! WHAT AN AMAZING PLOT DEVICE!!!
MW: Are we going to have a climbing competition between the guys now? Is clumsy Jared in fact a skilled mountain goat on the “rock” wall who will embarrass Dirk – who never learned to climb because his parents were divorced?
I appreciate that there is a cupboard or drawer holding a pack of party hats and once a year Mr. Wilson takes one out for his birthday where he’s the only person allowed to wear a paper cone of celebration. It would be even better if at some point Dennis asked for one and the old curmudgeon shouted, “WELL IT’S NOT YOUR BIRTHDAY, IS IT?”
FC – While trying to work up a Steve Miller Band joke (I failed) I realized that “Abracadabra – I wanna reach out and grab ya” is one of the lamest-ass lyrics ever.
FC: Disney is getting desperate with a MCU Reboot. They’ve cast Thel as the new Sorcerer Supreme.
FAMILY CIRCUS: Um…Dolly? Thel is actually using mystic incantation to make you melonheads disappear.
FAMILy CIRCUS (2): Poor Thel. After all, when you have an able-bodied husband (the majority of whose clothes seem to be his), you clearly have no other solution than to
get your husband to come and wash and iron his own stank drawersinvoke the Dark Arts. (Of course even the mightiest spells by the most powerful djinns and sorcerers can’t penetrate the stone wall of retrograde gender roles in the comics page.)@Little Guy: Theleficent?
RMMD – Summer signed up for a dating service! Wacky hijinx ahoy! But is it possible to top Estelle’s date with an actual hobo?
@pugfuggly: MW – Indeed! That he can hurl it as an insult, and that she can be insulted by it, suggests that they share a common set of values that will ensure a lifetime of resentful dependence on others to configure their electronics.
MW. So, to recap: Dawn was bullied as a kid for being a nerd, but cheated on Jared because he was a nerd. Jared hates emotionally manipulative men but dumped Dawn for one of his patients, while that patient was emotionally vulnerable from a brutal beating. I’m starting to think Dirk is less the bad guy and more some sort of “Twilight Zone”-style divine justice.
@matt w: Presumably she wants to make the ironing disappear, but speaking of cultural references lost to the past, what the hell is she ironing? Who irons anymore?
@Ukulele Ike: You are wondering about Phantom’s ring (it might be his Good Mark ring, you know) and I am wondering if at some point in time he punched out those women sitting on the right.
Blondie – The cereal box design is obviously based on Wheaties. And Dagwood’s complaint is not that there aren’t any marshmallows, just that there aren’t as many marshmallows as there used to be. My point is, somehow Marshmallow Wheaties never quite found its market niche.
FC – Thel’s just being ironic.
Don Abundio, translated:
“How’s my hedge fund doing today?”
“Doesn’t look good, boss. Here’s the latest optimistic report from the fund manager”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Look where it was sent from!”
“The federal penitentiary!”
@Peanut Gallery:
#51. BLONDIE:. Read a click-bait article this weekend that All Bran is the worst tasting cereal. Rembering it from my childhood, I don’t think an entire cup of marshmallows would help.
HAPPY DR. KING DAY
SlyF – Koppy Kat is preparing his portfolio for when a job opens up on the Gil Thorp creative team. Or he just enjoys creating these subtly surrealistic tributes to the classic art of the post-animapocalypse society.
LUANN: It looks like they found Luann’s stash of videos (which is the only thing that makes sense because what 2020’s-era kid would be interested in Barney?)
LUANN (2): Unnamed Piro Sibling: “I wonder if mom kicked the bucket, yet. Oh well, who cares!? Ooh, Barney! (tee hee!)”
Mary Worth Dirk: I didn’t call you “Nerdgirl,” Jared did.
Dawn: Oh? Then maybe I should be calling Jared “Babe.”
Dirk: You do and I’ll pound you!
Dawn: There it is.
@astroboy: And probably how Bil won Thel’s affection.
RMMD: What th—? A DATING SERVICE? I thought we had an understanding with management about the Pet deal! I’m tellin’ ya, this is a pretty convoluted way of gettin’ to a meet-cute with Summer’s new Animal Companion! Intern, you’d better bring those Cats and Dogs back inside – we already had some ideal choices loaded up to go over there. And they even cut Michelle’s cute Cat story!
So they think they’re gonna hold the audience with some wacky blind dates – that’s takin’ a risk. The concept can backfire, and today’s jaded consumers of comics have already seen that plot dozens of times. Why not go with the tried-and-true heart-warming appeal of a loyal Pet? I guess they gotta find out for themselves…
@astroboy: Why are you so down on the hobo? He was up front about what Artheur was cagey about, and keeping him in blue plate specials would have been way cheaper than that turned out, and he was far more polite than Wilbur. I’ll bet he’d have cleaned up real nice too! It could have been like a role reversed “My Fair Lady!”
Low bar, I know, but for now Alan is my favorite all-time Luann character. Of course, if they keep him around long enough, he’ll become as unlikable as the others.
MW – Babe, eh? Does she think of Dirk in terms of Babe Ruth or Babe the pig? If Doormat Dawn should ever come to her senses (hey, there’s a chance of that) and break it off with Dirk, I take it he’ll stalk her to the point she’ll have to get a restraining order. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s Karen Moy’s plan for this one. But I hope it doesn’t end with him going off Kelrast Curve. That’s become kind of a cliche.
MW: To paraphrase an Internet witticism: Dirk isn’t gaslighting Dawn, he’s lying to her. “Gaslighting” implies a level of effort that is simply not required to deceive her.
That “babe” shite was annoying AF with Tommy and Brandi, and here we go again. It’s cute how Moy thinks the Kids Today call each other “babe.” She could at least update her Kids Today lingo to 10 years ago and have them use “boo.”
GT: Is this woman supposed to be the daughter or the girlfriend? In either case, why does she look like the Bride of Frankenstein?
She’s cutting up hot dogs to grind them and make them into new hot dogs. This is the latest “ironic” culinary fad for either Goth teens or lady bartenders, depending on who this is.
MW – How long until Jared can no longer tamp it down and is overcome by WhiteKnight Hulk? And what does Jess think of all this?
@Ukulele Ike: It’s the daughter. Those are carrots. She is presenting the obsessive food rituals associated with Anorexia Nervosa, which is her Thing now. She will probably eat one in ten of the carrot pieces. The important thing to understand is that it’s fine if she wants to starve herself to death, but her food weirdness had better not hold anyone up.
C’shaft: Ah, I see the twins are pulling an elaborate Prestige-style ruse where they both share the same identity. I can’t wait until one of them gets married and they end up driving the spouse to madness and suicide.
DT: White supremacy is mainly a problem in those weird European countries, not the good ol’ U. S. of A.
GT: Keri has an eating disorder. Their friends, coaches, and family all know, or at least strongly suspect, that they have an eating disorder. And so far all anyone has done about it is say, “Um, maybe you should eat some more? Maybe?” Like, I know from personal experience how hard it is to get a teenager to do anything they don’t want to do, but I think this situation requires just a bit more of a concentrated effort, you know?
JP: And then Randy shivs her.
@Where’s Rocky?: Yeah, I’m more concerned for Jess than anyone else. As you said, she’s a beating victim who entered into an unhealthy-looking relationship with her health care provider. And now Jared sees an opening to win Dawn back. When he does, he’s going to drop poor Jess like she’s radioactive. Let’s just hope the abuser Dirk isn’t around to scoop her up when it happens.
FC – Thel must have been sloshed when the dryer was finished. If she folded the clothes right away instead of dumping them in a hamper, she could get by without ironing them. Just saying.
She better hope that holier than thou Grandma doesn’t hear that incantation. Grandma will make the melonheads watch while she burns Thel at the stake.
Frazz – Caulfield blathers inane comments, then puts down Mrs. Olsen while Frazz smiles approvingly. It’s the Mallett version of Groundhog Day.
9CL – *Head desk* *Head desk*
Fifty years ago today, Dear Abbey agreed with “Better For It In Massapequa,” who wrote that the five most important words in English are “You did a good job,” and comic page psychologist John Conwell opined that most top executives are compassionate. Congress weighed investigating the FBI and Dick Tracy battled winter weather in what appeared to be a flying coffin.
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: Sid, great job today with Bizarro and Rhymes With Orange! That Frog has real talent.
@Charterstoned: If she’s blind and deaf, he can call her Helen Keller.
@richardf8: @TheDiva: Ah, thank you, yes, I vaguely remember allusions to an eating disorder. A light “dessert” to follow the quickie abortion storyline. But now I’m worried about YOU TWO, who seem to be paying far too close attention to Gil Thorp.
@I speak Jive: Re: 9CL: “I make it ‘worthwhile’ to him. I lure young men home for him to sodomize, like Kate Hepburn and Liz Taylor did in Suddenly, Last Summer. He gets what he wants and no one lays a hand on me, so it works out all round.”
@astroboy: RMMD SHOULD bring back the dating app Hobo.
That’ll make Summer think about her options (and head out of the strip back to the videos and Haagan Daz.
GT – Narration Box Rule #1: You cannot end a sentence with an exclamation point if it begins with the word “meanwhile.”
CS: If you’re impersonating your own identical twin, and someone you hands you a check that’s intended for your twin, the correct response is “thank you very much!”
Family Circus: Look how ridiculously huge that laundry cart is. Also who owns that style of laundry cart in their home? That would be something more appropriate for a prison laundry room. Also I don’t believe that any kid today would be interested in that ugly and pretty creepy doll that looks like it was made long before modern toy mass production. I do enjoy that 3 year old Jeffy is carrying around a huge book in an attempt to not look stupid and I like that the dog is in the background for no reason looking absolutely stunned by all this nonsense.
Blondie – Now me, I’d have a hard time taking my eyes off Blondie’s boobs – they’re magically delicious….
Shoe – Why not – you make comics without comedy….
MW – Dawn is acquiring the ability to read thoughts – now this storyline is going somewhere….
DtM – You’re closer to the truth than you think, Den – he prays for the sweet relief of death more often than you’d think….
FC – I wanna reach out and grab ya – and it may sound impossible but I’d use the iron to render you even less dimensional than you already are…um, maybe I’m taking all that Wicked stuff a little too seriously….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@lynn: I guess Bil needs that pink floral muumuu to have a natty crease for his job as a cartoonist.
Dennis the Menace: “Do you ever get tired of having birthdays”? Is either a veiled threat or an offer for a mercy killing. “I can do it quick when you least expect it” Dennis tells him. He knows that even if he is caught he is too young to be held legally responsible for his actions. No district attorney is going to bring murder charges against a 5 year old and no jury would ever convict a 5 year old. He can literally get away with murder.