Romantic troubles
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The Phantom, 3/20/25
The Phantom, it is my task to occasionally remind you, is actually a 22-generation long chain of fathers and sons who each take the role of the Ghost Who Walks in turn, who arrived in southern Africa from Europe back in [waves hands vaguely] the pirate era, and who have perpetuated themselves by continually sending away for European or European-descended brides. But one of the very long- and slow-running ongoing storylines in the strip is about how the current Phantom’s son Kit will probably be the first to break this chain of racial purity. He’s not going to marry one of the Bangallans that his family has lived among for centuries — let’s not go nuts — but will probably end up either with the local girl who’s mooning over him as he studies Phantom stuff (?) at a monastery in the Himalayas, or with Kadia Sahara, born the daughter of one of the Phantom’s longtime nemeses but now a foster daughter of the weird Walker clan. Anyway, the thing I like most about today’s strip is that container ship cruising by in the background as Kit’s sister Heloise, a Kadia partisan, boasts to her mother (via some kind of bespoke video messaging app, the screen branded with the Phantom’s famous skull mark) about the beach-based meet-cute she’s just arranged. The huge vessel reminds us that, despite all these superheroic breeding machinations, the quiet miracle of global commerce soldiers on.
Mary Worth, 3/20/25
Check out the contemplative way Dawn is regarding that apple in the second panel. Sure, she missed her musical duets with her dad while he was away; but now that she’s eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she realizes that inflicting Weston karaoke stylings on an innocent and unsuspecting public is wrong, and must be stopped for the good of mankind.
Pluggers, 3/20/25
Hi is experiencing a plugger-like loss of sex drive in middle age, but as his huge grin in panel two makes clear, he’s not mad about it at all! Remember when he was younger and got distracted by erotic feelings all the time? That ate up valuable time in which he could’ve been working on improving his short game! Thank god those days are behind him.
159 replies to “Romantic troubles”
MW-But the neighbors don’t miss the music Dawn and Wilbur make.
RMMD-Tomorrow: “How much money did we agree on?”
MW:
“It’ll be fun to hit the stage together again! — well, to everyone but the patrons, anyway.”
MW: Actually, she’s talking to the worm she’s just bitten in half.
@Liam: urgh, now I have to LIVE with having read that disturbing sentence of yours.
MW:
“We can delight the crowd with covers of the oeuvres of Paper Lace, Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, and Sigue Sigue Sputnik!”
H&L: All Hi ever got from a sex drive was four kids who refuse to grow up and get out, so no big loss as far as he’s concerned.
MW: Dawn is pondering that red thing in her hand. Where did it come from? Who took a bite from it? What’s it called again?
(at least, she’s less likely to drbble it down her shirtfront)
The dialogue in the second Phantom panel could so easily be subbed out with “I am Galactus, Eater Of Worlds!” Try it! And it doesn’t affect the plot any, either!
Phantom: I like how Phantom finds fresh spins on comics tropes. We’re all familiar with the huge video screens of comic book lairs, but only Phantom dares to show how terrifying it would be to have a busty woman in a bikini loom over you, her rack the size of a midsize car hanging above your head.
H&L: In Panel 2, Hi has pulled out his wood and is giving it a good rub. That’s also what Chip’s doing in panel 1.
Phantom: I’m a little concerned about those tiny white people in the water, especially the one furthest out. If they get caught in the undertow, they’ll quickly become “The Ghost Who Walks the Ocean Floor”.
Phantom – …and I don’t have time to explain the whole subcontinent thing, or the age of discovery and East Indians verses West Indians….
MW – Our comedic rendition of Islands in the Stream, Floaters in the Bowl, is legend….
H&L – In this strip, fancy is plain at best….
Adios Amigos l, DJ.
I know the Hi and Lois team does not share my vision of the strip as character-driven (Lois is neurotically compulsive, Hi is crushingly aware of his inadequacies, neither can feel joy), and that’s why they never develop or even name Chip’s girflriends. BUT THEY COULD AT LEAST REMEMBER THAT CHIP HAS BLOND HAIR.
Phantom: Diana’s surprised expression is more from the whorish swimsuit her underage daughter is wearing in public.
H&L: Hi has gone from jizz towel to golf towel and Lois isn’t too happy about it.
FC: I have a friend with a PhD in physics who among his eccentricities is one where he stops wearing his winter coat on a certain date of the calendar not matter the temperature. Just saying Billy might not be as dumb as he looks.
CS: Did you check the quality of the staples? This guy has all the talent and passion of a mid-level communist functionary.
“I remember going to see my first movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. What I most remember about the picture is the MPA symbol that came up at the end of the credits and then I knew I was seeing an important film! I subsequently made an appointment with the head usher to show him my scripts and obtain advice on how best to make a movie.”
MW – Wilbur enters a typo for driving directions and they end up at Muay Thai. He is then forced into a battle royale. Prepare yourself for the art of the eight limbs, sandwich boy!
GT: The role of Kurt Angle for today’s episode of Gil Thorp will be played by … uh … Bobby Lashley?
Guess know one in the Thorpverse actually saw a picture of Kurt. Oof.
@Stacker: Yesterday, I speculated that Luann’s new beau Phil might be neurodivergent. I’m 100% certain Batton Thomas is.
To be fair, The Phantom’s nepo failson would be saying “Uh. . . What’s India?” if you distracted him with a paperclip.
MW-Okay how did Mary allow a Thai restaurant into Santa Royale or do Wilbur and Dawn have to drive miles out of town to go to it.
MW: Dawn is going to taunt her father at karaoke by performing “One Less Bell(e) to Answer.”
Hi and Lois-When young males want their balls whacked and when older they want to whack balls.
The Phantom-This isn’t ‘Judge Parker’?
MW: Ooooh, Belle Batsfrey is going to show up at karaoke? Will she confuse Dawn for a romantic rival? Wilbur said he didn’t know anything of her children, which implies she doesn’t know of his either. This could be entertainingly awful!
Luann: This settles yesterday’s argument. Luann and Tiffany are BOTH still in junior high school, but in different ways.
Pluggers: Oh, shut up, Pluggers. This is not a reaction to today’s strip, which I haven’t even read, but I something I feel needs to be said every day. So, shut up, Pluggers.
Chips dyed his blonde hair brown, believing it would get him some girl. I would say that it is a poor calculation, but it worked for his father, so who am I to judge?
Happy first day of spring (it snowed overnight)! Happy return of Juggs Parker (it’s The Phantom)!
Hi and Lois: Chip has a new girlfriend, but he’s already been cucked by the kid with brown hair. Lois is and always has been in a menage à trois with Hi’s golf clubs. Trixie is in love with an inanimate object. Where does the sexual perversity end?
@Pozzo: Wilbur responds by belting out “Ring My Bell” in a high falsetto, thereby providing all the incentive you need to log off the internet today, and possibly forever.
GT: “And now please welcome Slovenian operatic tenor Pavol Breslick, who is here to repair the air-conditioning.”
Phantom: Wheezy’s gotten into the Joker Gas a little early today. And those outlines in panel two! Manley got too excited about BREASTS and really bore down with the pen.
MW – With all of the heavy-handed foreshadowing Moy’s done, I guess Belle is going to turn up at KARAOKE. Will Wilbur croon “I Wanna Kiss You All Over” to her? “Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Belle?” “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
MW: Listen, Moy, you’ve made Wilbur karaoke boring through overexposure. Unless he’s going to get into an alcohol-induced sing-off with his shirt still splattered with purple Scotch and drunken noodles from My Thai, no one cares anymore.
Ph: “Ask him about India now and he’d be…uh, uh? India? Where’s India? I…I can’t remember what that is! Now seriously, help me, I’m starting to forget who I am….!”
MW: Ah, ‘My Thai’, the only Asian restaurant in Santa Royale that makes you fight for your dinner! Clearly Dawn has no intention of getting to Karaoke: she’s betting that a waiter’s sweep kick will knock Wilbur out cold before the main course.
H&L: “I guess that Chip has a new girlfriend. At least I presume so, based on the behavior of his brown-haired doppelganger. Did we ever figure out how where he came from, or how they’re telepathically linked?”
MW: Also, look at Dawn averting her eyes. She’s lying harder than any liar has ever lied before.
RMMD: If this was a slasher flick, Stalky McChinbeard would knock Augie out cold, or worse, then enter the house, where Summer, her back conveniently turned, would assume it’s Augie and say something like “No crazy stalkers out there?” And then the slashing starts.
“Heloise, you’re breaking up a bit. Did you upgrade your Phonetom to PhantOS 8.21? Did you download the new version of Phantell, our video messaging app? Damn it. Maybe she’s outside of the coverage of the PhanSat array. Well, I guess I’ll just have to send her a letter through the United States Phantom Service.”
DtM: Dennis has positioned himself within kicking range of Wilson’s nuts. Now he has to talk him into a false sense of security so he uncrosses his legs.
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women: “Nepo Failson” sounds like the protagonist of a UPN show, or a Turbo-Grafx 16 game. “Coming soon! The Adventures of Nepo Failson.” Emphasis goes on the first syllable, like “Jackson.”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Wilbur and Belle’s break up song will “Hell’s Bells” by AC/DC.
Or should I call them “Wilbelle?” If Luann thinks portmanteau couple names are still a thing, I can too.
@Liam: Mary doesn’t mind the Thai restaurant in Santa Royale, because the Asian immigrants who operate it can’t afford local rents and need to drive a 75-mile commute from outside the “restricted” area.
MaryWorth: WTF Wilbur?? Who gets up in the morning and starts thinking about supper?
Look at Hi there, rubbing one out. That means to stroke the shaft and head, right? To get the golf club clean?
MW: Dawn going to eat red alert! DAWN GOING TO EAT RED ALERT!!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!
Phantom: The container ship may be a reminder that the age of pirates has not ended, as off the shores of Somalia they continue to prey upon shipping….and maybe a harbinger of the coming plot.
BTW, Heloise is not “underage”; she and Kit are twins, both in their college-years.
@Tabby Lavalamp:
A lot of golfers dream of going pro. The entire industry is pretty much Masters bait.
The Phantom’s project is based on racist eugenics, keeping the race of the Phantom white — usually Northern European White. Heloise will not stand for this, she’s a modern girl. Much better to mix the Phantom genes with the best available gene pool regardless of race! The Sahara bloodline is much more valuable than some white trash! Heloise knows that the future of eugenics is non-racial!
@Ettorre: Non-racial eugenics is also the unofficial name of “Crusader Kings”
Lois, Hi clearly enjoys polishing his own staff alone more than doing it with you, leave him alone!
The Ghost Who Encrypts — Remember, unless you’re using the SkullMark videoconferencing suite running on a Bandar operating system, your communications aren’t really secure!
Hi thinks “You’ve all heard about seasonal depression, but what about seasonal horniness?”
MW — Later, Dawn wondered if all that time in front of the bathroom mirror practicing her lies was well=spent
Come on, Lois, if you had studied Tennyson, you’d recognize this as a line from Locksley Hall and have the killer response:
As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
H&L: The change of position between panels one and two indicate Hi took his arm away from his wife’s shoulder, turned away from the bittersweet display of his oldest son blooming into manhood, and went to polish his golf clubs while looking at Lois with a smile that says, “Boy, remember when we were young and filled with passion for one another? Boy, am I sure glad those days are over!”
MW: …she said, with the expression of someone who would rather have root canal than listen to Wilbur Weston whine out “Alone Again, Naturally” for the fiftieth time.
Phantom: I seem to recall a time when Heloise had ambitions of being the next Ghost Who Walks herself, despite being told repeatedly that nobody would believe in an immortal spandex-clad vigilante with breasts. It appears the message has finally sunk in and her real job is to make sure future Walkers are born–or possibly she realized that taking on the skull ring would mean she would be responsible for bearing those future generations, and the Bandar have a crappy maternity leave plan.
JP: In a holding pattern for what to snark next, but really do appreciate the art’s attention to detail on the Mille Bornes cards
Phantom: I still wonder what fraction of this is “I miss my twin and want him nearby” and how much is “sabotage Kit’s advanced training so I have a shot at being the next Phantom” (for the glory? to smugly be the first female full-time one? or just because all the “extra” kids just … disappear?). We all know it’s 0% “Kadia’s a great bestie and Kit’s my fab brother and I *know* they’re *perfect* for each other”
@TheDiva: Wheezey’s new plan is to wave goodbye to Kit and Kadia, lift a few of the smaller items from the Skull Cave Trophy Room, sell them to dodgy international art dealers and retire peacefully to a duplex apartment in Montparnasse.
Phantom: Skullpe?
MW: Ah, My Thai restaurant, Santa Royale’s only vegan Thai restaurant. Uh-huh.
RMMD: Uh-oh, Summer just went all Emasculating Mommy on Augie. “If you see him, scurry back inside the house in fear. I don’t want you to get hurt, dear. Let me handle it and I’ll call some real men to deal with him.
C’shaft: Battom being inspired by a rigid censorship board which prevented anything daring, provocative, or complicated from being published explains a great deal.
Dustin: Apparently it’s not just the Kudliks–their entire world is comprised of bitter, joyless people who can’t conceive of any emotion more uplifting than denigrating everyone and everything around them.
Luann: Leave it to Luann to make “friends with benefits” as boring as possible.
@Cleveland Mocks: The name “My Thai” suggests a combination restaurant and tiki bar, which sounds like exactly the sort of tacky place the Westons would consider fine dining.
Today’s Hi & Lois doesn’t tickle my fancy.
MW: “Just make sure you wear your zebra-print thong. That’ll drive the audience wild.” I refuse to attribute this to Dawn or Wilbur.
HnL: It’s only a matter of time before the writer discovers pickleball. Then, we’ll see fewer golf references.
Lois Flagston I am begging you to LEAVE THIS MAN
@MKay:
H&L: All Hi ever got from a sex drive was four kids…
Do we have a Chuck Cunningham situation here or am I just not in the know?
I guess Chip also has a new colorist.
why did Chip dye his hair brown tho
@Nobody:
Disregard…my apologies. I forgot about the dirty baby
H&L – I prefer not to have to think about Hi or Chip’s fancy.
“I guess chip has a new girlfriend”
“Yeah, but first we should meet Dot’s new brown-haired boyfriend, she grew up so fast…”
Chip doesn’t have a new girlfriend he’s got another girlfriend and he thinks the wig will be his disguise from girl # 1 when in public
FC: Thel should know better than to let Billy listen to “Chips and Bongo in the Morning.”
Dustin: It turns out “Liz” is Ed Kudlick barely attempting to conceal his voice.
@TheDiva: There was a joke in Cheers (Pulls a tie out of the juicer/blender whatever) “Who wants a My Tie!?”
That single joke has had more effort put into it than most of the comics featured on this blog combined.
Zits: Walt is supposed to be in his early to mid 40s and if his body is already so decrepit that he is having trouble standing up without being in physical pain than maybe he should buy a furry costume and declare himself a Plugger.
Baby Blues: There’s been a trend in recent horror movies where a you
Baby Blues: There’s been a trend in recent horror movies where a young kid wakes up their parent and tells them there is something in their closet. The parent is dismissive but when they go to open the closet to prove there’s nothing inside they are killed. If “Art the Clown” kills the entire family it’s because the parents are idiots.
@Voshkod: [Slow clap] Well-quoted, sir!
Mary Worth: I’m not saying Disney controls the newspapers, but when even Mary Worth is including subtle promotions for the new Snow White movie, you have to wonder. (Still, if Dawn falls asleep after eating that apple and they move on to a blessedly non-Weston-based storyline for a while, no one will complain.)
Hi and Lois: “In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of a girl who looks so much like his mom that it’s actually kind of creepy.” In other words, “Oedipus, schmoedipus, so long as he loves his mother!”
Look, it’s morning, lady, I’m gonna need you to turn down your excitement from a 12 to about a 2… you’re way too excited about getting your brother laid.
Speaking of the grand Phantom plan, what would they do if Kit Jr. announced he’s gay and moving to Portland to open a cat cafe?
“It was a long four hundred years, but what finally killed the Phantom was The Purrfect Bite cafe.”
MW panel 3:
Wilbur: “An apple for breakfast?”
Dawn: “Eggs are expensive and I can’t look at pastry after Mary stuffing muffins down my throat for weeks.”
Luann: “Let’s go somewhere discreet, like behind one of the trees at the park.”
CS: Heh heh heh. He said “butt.”
9CL: I’m going to guess Edda makes these “wardrobe changes” right there on stage.
@Don: Hey now! I’m meeting a friend for supper tonight and I’m looking forward to it!
But do I think about food too much anyway? Probably.
H&L: Hi: I could have stuck with sex, if you hadn’t learned about it out of The Naked Ape.
MW: “It’ll be fun to hit the stage together again! Of course, we’ll have to get drunk first.”
GT: When the sparse crowd boos its displeasure, the announcer pleads, “Hey, he was a wrestler, not a singer, okay? So back off!”
CS: As Batton drones on, Skip glazes over and thinks, “My God, this is what my life has become? I thought losing an arm sucked, but this is right up there with it.”
JP: “Knowing what I want to do — and knowing how to do it — doesn’t seem enough anymore. Because all that leads to is becoming a Parker-Spencer-Driver clone. Help me please, I don’t want to be a P-D-S clone! I don’t, I don’t.”
@Old Man Shadow: “It’s OK, son, we’ll just put pointy ears and whiskers on the skull, you can still punch stuff. What? You don’t want to punch stuff? I HAVE NO SON!”
@But What Do I Know?: Thank you. Locksley Hall also contains a few lines that probably reflect the Phantom’s views on eugenics, but I’ll leave those alone.
Phantom: Is that a teabag I see dangling out of Diana’s cup? Obviously Manley is not familiar with British culture (And I assume that because Bangalla is most likely a former British colony). It’s loose tea steeped in a brown Betty or nothing, Yank girl!
Pluggers: Pluggers are old (and demented) # 7,492.
@Voshkod: Some views on women that probably wouldn’t float even in the most traditionalist legacy strips, too.
@Anonymous: That is a horror trope that goes back to 1932 at least, and David H. Keller’s classic short story “The Thing in the Cellar.”
(The link takes you to a facsimile copy from the March 1932 issue of Weird Tales magazine, the pulp that introduced H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Henry S. Whitehead, and so many others to the U.S. reading public.)
9CL: Brahms, not Liszt? Liszt was the late 19th century composer with the fetish for ladies’ underpants. Also, Frankie* was a famous virtuoso, whereas Brahms was only at the level of “composer pianist.”
It’s like McEldowney knows absolutely nothing about music. Maybe he should change all his characters from performers into world-class foosball players.
(*Franz is the German version of Frank, isn’t it? “Franzie” looked stupid and “Fritzie” could be seen as an ethnic slur, like Brooke does)
@Rube: Well, yeah, but you can debate whether those views are the narrators or Tennyson who, for his time, was somewhat enlightened on woman’s issues. His views on everyone east of Calais, however, seem pretty clear.
MW – During Wilbur’s prolonged absence, Dawn did the grocery shopping and discovered that there are other varieties of apples than the ones Wilbur always brings home. Thus the side-eye. “Alas, poor Red Delicious. I knew him, Wilbur; an apple of infinite blandness, though most excellent shelf life: I hath borne him on my tongue a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my sophistication it is! My gorge rises at it. We got any Orange Pippins left?”
Judge Phantom – Terrifying facial expressions like that are just one of the reasons video conversations should never be displayed on a wall-sized screen. Dial it back, Sophie, or whoever you are!
Don Abundio, translated:
“I’m speaking at my club tonight”
“Giving them the benefit of your wisdom and experience?”
“It will be edifying and uplifting”
“I’ll just liven it up with a little tasteful humor!”
[Sign: JOKES BY SUBJECT]
[Labels: POLACKS, CANNIBALS, WOMAN DRIVERS, FARMERS’ DAUGHTERS, GOLF]
Phantom: This could be the whole comics page. Just replace the speech bubbles and have Heloise describe what’s going on in Mary Worth, what’s going on in Blondie, etc.
Chip has dark hair, are they dialing back the Thursty-is-obviously-the-father-of-Hi’s-kids storyline?
@Schroduck:
H&L: In Panel 2, Hi has pulled out his wood and is giving it a good rub. That’s also what Chip’s doing in panel 1.
It would have been more accurate, hence funnier, if you had written, “Hi has pulled out his putter [or his iron] and is giving it a good rub, while Chip’s doing the same to his wood.”
@Ukulele Ike: #86: There’s a Robert E. Howard pulp magazine story titled “The Purple Heart of Erlick” that contains my favorite example of bad, over the top writing. “Against his thickly muscled arms her struggles were but in vain.”
Ike, ever have to restrain a woman with your thickly muscled arms?
BTW: If you ever pass through Cross Plains, Texas (Howard’s home town) be sure to check out the life-size statue of Conan the Barbarian (actually Shwarzeneggar as Conan).
MW: I love how despite Dawn suggesting to go out with her dad, she looks like she’s regretting it instantly. That’s what happens when you enable Wilbur to spend weeks talking about all the sex he had and you didn’t.
@Cleveland Mocks: Realistically there’s a pretty good amount of vegan options available for Thai cuisine but Dawn’s just going to eat the same slop as Wilbur because she’s incapable of independent thought, especially when men are involved.
@Ukulele Ike: There’s no way Franz Liszt isn’t Brooke McEldowney’s favorite classical composer. Virtuoso pianist with absurd ability to turn the opposite sex into a quivering puddle of lust? Check. Internal struggle between raging nymphomania and deep-seated Catholic guilt? Check. Family connection with Nazis (okay, with Richard Wagner, but come on, the only reason he wasn’t a Nazi was Nazis hadn’t been invented yet)? Check, and mate. Honestly, it’s a miracle Edda hasn’t been revealed as Liszt’s great-great-great granddaughter by now.
Dennis the Menace Spanish to English.
Marvin Spanish to English.
@Voshkod: It’s a great poem, but some of it hasn’t aged well–as is only to be expected. “Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” comes to mind. . .
H&L: Chip (brown hair notwithstanding) needs to find a front porch with a glider swing, at night.
Hi and Lois need to learn how to turn off the downstairs lights.
Chip has been a teen for two thirds of a century, and whatever the hell this family’s doing ain’t getting him any closer to getting laid, nor H&L any closer to being grandparents.
The Phantom has always had a retro, 1960s vibe to it, so it’s not surprising they would use a crudely painted swimsuit to obscure the fact Heloise is on a nude beach.
AAGGGHHHH Spanish to English.
Hagar the Horrible Spanish to English.
@TheDiva: Do you think Brooke also pretends he’s Roger Daltrey dancing with a gigantic phallus (“Liztomania”)?
Blondie-Lou is going to serve Dagwood more Health Inspector.
@Don:
Pluggers do.
MW: How much ya wanna bet Wilbur and Dawn have dueted on Meat Loaf’s “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”?
Luann-“Well a blowjob would be nice.”
Phantom: how Sophie Driver is wearing a bikini on a Phantom beach?
@But What Do I Know?: Well, that’s an eternal problem of how we read Shakespeare, Tennyson, Kipling, or (shudder) Ezra Pound. As men of their time, as jackasses, or as fascist lackeys pretending to be crazy (looking at you, Ezra).
Blondie – Of course Lou doesn’t have to say who “he” is. Dagwood is the only customer they ever get. The two burgers on the griddle are for Lou and the cook.
So Wilber is basicly dating his daughter? Mary Worth turned into 9 Weirdchick Lame so slowly I never even noticed!
@Voshkod: Always found it interesting how Pound’s famous friends were able to get him into a hospital for the exact same thing that got Lord Haw Haw into a noose.
MW: Inspired by her father’s round moon face and the apple in her hand, Dawn performs a soulful rendition of the Judy Collins folk song “The Silver Apples of the Moon, the Golden Apples of the Sun,” at the Karaoke Bar. Wilbur bursts into blubbery tears when he recognizes himself as the “wandering Aengus” of the song, forever in search of his true love. Meanwhile, Willa swims in ever-diminishing circles in her tank, as she languishes without food or attention for the sixth straight day…
@Rube: Yeah, The Pisan Cantos were not worth sparing him, and Eliot and Auden should have known better.
@GarrisonSkunk: The relationship between Dawn and Wilbur smacks of emotional incest. If Dawn were five years younger, CPS would be all over it but apparently they don’t care about it if both parties are legal adults.
Hi and Lois: Did anyone notice that Chip has brown hair today?
@Guillermo el chiclero: I’ve never been really crazy about Robert E. Howard’s work, but maybe if he had lived longer (Two-Gun Bob ate his six-shooter at age 30) he’d have tightened up his style.
Must give him credit for “Pigeons from Hell,” one of the best horror stories of the past century. Adapted for television in 1961 for Boris Karloff’s Thriller, a top episode from one of the top weird/horror anthology programs. Available free on YouTube. (The short story is free, too)
Mary Worth Spanish to English.
@119 The SURREAL Everybody Posts, Nobody Reads:
It’s those damn porn filters.
A Toda Velocidad Spanish to English.
Rex Morgan M.D. Spanish to English.
I gotta find something to do.
@Rube: Pound was a genius, and the various propagandists who collectively were Lord Haw Haw were just a buncha assholes. Genius poets, it’s okay to keep in an open-air cage and then in the looney bin on the off-chance they might write some more genius poems. IMHO.
@Voshkod: Oh, well, T.S. Eliot probably was in full agreement with Ez’s estimation of our Israelite friends.
I know nothing of Mr. Auden’s personal bigotries. For all I know he conducted Seders for his close buddies every spring, and braised the dinner brisket personally.
Do we really know all the previous Phantoms have been white folk? Note that the standard costume, which must be intensely uncomfortable and odorous in the jungle, covers not only the eyes but every inch of skin except the mouth and chin, easily painted with makeup. Sure, the current Kit Walker displays a lot of European flesh, when bunking with Diana in the Skull Cave or playing an imaginary Jungle Patrol agent, but his genetic profile a few generations back might in fact be wildly diverse, with ancestors maintaining visual continuity with greasepaint.
As for Heloise, yesterday she cheerfully announces she’s underage after energetically flaunting her body before a couple of adult strangers (and aging comic strip readers). That’s just creepy, even if it retroactively sanitizes her roomie’s comment about hanging out with high school boys. Beyond that, it really forces the issue of the twins’ age. If she’s seventeen now, and has been sharing a flat with her school chum for at least a year, how old was she when living in New York and sharing cabs with strangers like Mary Worth? And how old was her twin Kit Jr. when he was sent backpacking to Tibet? Yes, comic strip time and all that, but you can only put so much canonical history on a kid.
@Needless Exposition:
The relationship between Dawn and Wilbur smacks of emotional incest.
So why don’t you have Moy arrested for pandering obscenity or something?
Man, get a grip.
Mary Worth – I apologize for complaining about Mary pontificating for days while she worked on Ask Wendy. I certainly didn’t mean that Moy should segue to Weston karaoke.
JP – Poor widdle Sophie. The entitled brat’s emotional upset goes right into my “I couldn’t possibly care less” file.
Crankshaft – Batton has been droning on for so long that the wall behind him is covered in cobwebs.
Skip is imagining himself accepting the Pulitzer Prize while he scribbles his notes.
9CL – Keep in mind that Edda was a ballerina until just a few years ago, and now she’s a world class professional musician who headlines while her Juilliard trained husband turns pages for her.
FC – Today Billy looks even more than he usually does like a Mr. Potato Head put together by a child who got into Mommy’s liquor stash.
@BigTed: Re Mary Worth – I think you’re right. However, the movie cut out all scenes with the eighth dwarf she lives with, Quirky.
MW: Are you UP for it, Dad? And by that, I mean, cue the Bow Chick A Wow Wow background music.
@Really, Dude?:
Really, Dude? You’re at a snark site. Get a grip.
@Ukulele Ike: Manley got too excited about BREASTS and really bore down with the pen.
I think that heavy outline comes from scaling up a preexisting drawing. The line gets blown up along with everything else, like boobs. He must have redrawn the details, though.
@Ukulele Ike: I wouldn’t be surprised if Eliot and Auden had a sadly typical view for the day (‘good enough to bank with, but don’t let them in the gentleman’s club’), but they can’t be compared with Ezra’s radio broadcasts, which I will not repeat here. But anyway, that’s veering too close to the dark sun of politics we try to avoid here.
MW- hopefully Dawn will have some Pad Thai on her face and Dirk will run over from another date and scream at her. That would just about liven up this storyline.
PHANTOM:. excellent summary by Josh, but he’s forgetting the true suspense in this scene. His sweet Himilayan barista misses her first love and is now looking for him. Probably with gun for protection as she has never traveled outside Mountain City before. And when she sees Kit on the beach with the half-naked Kadia, who will survive?
BETTY:. Tried for over seven hours to load most Seattle Times comics, but today’s BETTY was worth it. While some folks do drugs or TV to space out, he’s got his phone and watching Disney. As is Mom. Different generations, but the same language.
BB:. Ahhh, how sweet. Sarge lets out his inner child. Twice.
JP:. Your goals need to be higher than you can reach, Soph– cure cancer, make the world just, empower the poor to feed themselves. Begin by setting your cards in the right order.
Oh heck, you know what you want to do– just go ahead and tell the guy. See if he wants to come with you.
6CX:. The time may come when we need to be parent to our parent, but ask permission first. Parents deserve that respect. Perhaps she’s going to audition for clown college
H&L: Hi sees his teenage son cozying up to a girl and immediately starts polishing his club. If you’re not happy about that innuendo imagine how the club feels.
MW: Dawn’s healthy snack is giving her knowledge of good and evil, so she has an inkling that she’s lying when she says she missed karaoke nights.
Phantom: “Because Kit is hopelessly bad at geography. And kind of stupid in general. Seriously, dad has the whole family legacy riding on him?”
If, like me, you’re finding the Seattle Time comics inaccessible, The Denver Post in TheDiva’s neck of the woods is a mostly functional substitute. Just a few 404 errors. Now, onto the rest of the comics.
C-Shaft: Either Young Baton and Mother Thomas were albinos way back when or the colorist found something better to do with his time than figure out the flashback tones. The list of better things is, indeed, a long one.
DtM: This is not the first time that Dennis has sounded like the therapist for a very uncommunicative George Wilson but it might be the most blatant.
DT: Either that’s a long lost member of Dick’s family or right angle chins are just endemic to Neo-Chicago.
GT: Why is Luke asking Inma about it? She wasn’t there. Unlike him, she wasn’t even born.
JP: Well that sure is long and vague and platitudinous. I think we just got a glimpse at what Mary Worth was like in her early twenties.
Luann: Good thinking, Tiff. There’s no better way to kill off the overdone couple portmanteau name thing than to attach it to Luann and Phil.
@Really, Dude? @Abomynous: Going on a site dedicated to snarking the comics and expecting something non-satirical is like complaining that Christian films don’t have a mosque.
DT: And thus Dick learns about “Sarge”, aka the actual identity of John Doe, whose body Piltdown used to fake his death for reasons that remain obscure but which seemingly don’t necessarily require the body to actually be identified as his, as long as it isn’t identified as anyone else, because the guy who stole the wallet Piltdown had carefully set up to identify the body as him dumped it in the poorbox of the very church that Sarge was a soup kitchen patron of! And, of course, if the wallet hadn’t been stolen, then the body would likely have been identified as Piltdown without Dick getting involved at all!
Given that Costello has a tendency to write the NCPD as functionally omniscient, it’s astonishing how much effort the universe has to go to to feed Dick the information he needs to solve a case.
HtH: All those doctors are dead now.
OBH: Today’s fun etymology fact: “Gorm” or “gaum” is 19th century Yorkshire dialect for intellect. “Gormless”, of course, is the opposite. It’s still around today, far beyond Yorkshire, because it appears in Wuthering Heights. “Gorm” itself doesn’t, so it never got the same reach.
RMMD: Welcome to Rex Morgan MD, where “Netflix and chill” isn’t a euphemism for anything whatsoever.
@Needless Exposition:
But snark is supposed to be funny. Or at least funnyish. Not stupid.
MW: I’m guessing they won’t be cueing up the karaoke for their special rendition of the duet from “The Pearl Fishers”.
Gil Thorp-“We have to say who our special guest star is because we can’t be drawn like regular people.”
@Horace Broon: If anyone’s wondering, re: Wuthering Heights, the full quote is as follows:
“I’ve tied his tongue,” observed Heathcliff. “He’ll not venture a single syllable all the time! Nelly, you recollect me at his age—nay, some years younger. Did I ever look so stupid: so ‘gaumless,’ as Joseph calls it?”
“Worse,” I replied, “because more sullen with it.”
On hearing this, Heathcliff donned a protective helmet with the word GAUMLESS emblazoned upon it and, by exhaling into a pink bubble, flew off across the moors.
(I just realised I’d referenced Wuthering Heights in a comics blog and not made a Heathcliff joke, and this obviously had to be rectified.)
@Horace Broon: Gorm. Gooorm. Such a nice, woody-sounding word, wouldn’t you say?
LUANN: With the way they’re talking about kissing as if it’s the end-all-be-all for physical intimacy, I think it’s safe to say Luann won’t ever be going past First Base with Phil here.
Does anyone think people here use a different screen name to call out other posters to protect their main account from scrutiny?
MW: stalker Douchebag from RMMD will be at the karaoke bar. J
@The Witch:
it’s probably a coloring editor
@The SURREAL Everybody Posts, Nobody Reads:
Just so we don’t have to see and think about his one brown eye.
@Nobody: Does anyone think people here use a different screen name to call out other posters to protect their main account from scrutiny?
I welcome your scrutiny! Scrutinize all you like!
@Nobody: Does anyone think people here use a different screen name to call out other posters to protect their main account from scrutiny?
Of course not!
@White Rabbit: OK . . . Wait a minute. I thought you said Scrotumize. Never mind.
@Nobody: Does anyone think people here use a different screen name to call out other posters to protect their main account from scrutiny?
You fathead!
Phantom: Diana is thinking, “Girl, I have underwear that shows less than what you have on.”
@Guillermo el chiclero:
Phantom: Diana is thinking, “Girl, I have underwear that shows less than what you have on.”
And cue Needless Exposition’s disgust at this gratuitous display of nubile pulchritude in three . . . two . . .
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: OK . . . Wait a minute. I thought you said Scrotumize. Never mind.
I meant to say I welcome your simony! Simonize all you like!
@Guillermo el chiclero: Diana bought this large screen TV for soccer and Brosnan-era Bond movies, NOT to see her speed freak daughter shaking her tits.