Sunday simmering resentment
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Mary Worth, 3/9/25
“The past only exists by how you remember it,” Mary long ago told an emotionally scarred young woman, haunted by the man who stood her up at the altar. “Keep only good memories from past relationships, and forget the rest!” says Wilbur, urging his daughter to join him in the comfortable and false world he inhabits. Ah, but Stanislaw Jerzy Lec reminds us that “You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memories,” which to me implies that the power of true memory overcomes any attempt we might make at self-delusion. That long trail of romantic failure each of you has behind you will always be there, burned into your memory, and you cannot shake it. Now, the Westons may whine that this is unfair, and ask why this Lec guy thought he was so smart. It turns out he has a pretty incredible biography with a lot of ups and downs, ranging from the time he wrote the first poem in the Polish language praising Stalin to the time he escaped from a Nazi concentration camp by killing a guard with the shovel he was supposed to be digging his own grave with. And what have the two of you ever done? Dropped a bowling ball on a guy’s foot? Had a funeral for a fish? Pathetic. Rethink your lives.
Blondie, 3/9/25
I assume this fantastic (?) joke (???) simply only would’ve worked in the multipanel Sunday format, but it honestly really bothers me that Blondie did an office-based gag on a weekend. After all, if this strip does a joke about National Dentists’ Day, you can be sure it runs on National Dentists’ Day. I refuse to suspend my disbelief and pretend to think we’re seeing action that’s actually happening on a Tuesday, or, worse, that the naturally lazy Dagwood went into work on Sunday when he should napping on the couch with his knees bent up all uncomfortably like God intended.
118 replies to “Sunday simmering resentment”
RMMD-“Now if you’ll excuse me, Summer, there’s a guy I have to pay off in the parking lot.”
MW-Dawn, the past is bad if you only remember it that way.
MW-Belle Batsfrey? Well she would have bats in her belfry if she had a romance with Wilbur.
FC-Uh Dolly isn’t hugging her grandmother. She’s choking her.
MW:
“Of course, you can forget memories, which, in its own way, is every bit as effective as closing your eyes.”
— Stan
RMMD: stalker has been thrown out of a bar, a medical clinic and an art gallery. Where next I like the women’s section of a Walmart. “I have as much right as anyone to try on frillies as anyone.”
MW – Full credit to Moy for goingShakespearean, with Wibur taking the role of Polonius spouting what may seem to be good fatherly advice but is actually just parroted weasel words. I will forgive all if Wilbur ends his days bleeding out behind a tapestry in Mary’s bedroom and Dawn is found face down in Charterstone’s retention pond.
MW: Belle ‘Bats in the belfry’ Batfrey? I think we can see where this is going.
Blondie: It’s fine that Dagwood’s undefined office job involves writing reports and giving presentations, but why is he sometimes writing contracts too? Dagwood is not a lawyer. We don’t need Blondie muscling in on Judge Parker‘s turf, although thinking about it, I’d take sandwich jokes over interminable CIA yelling.
MW: Belle Batsfry is a classic unsubtle Mary Worth punny name, but in this case it’s a bit redundant. We already knew she wasn’t mentally well from the fact she had a wild fling with Wilbur.
MW:
“Danny and the Juniors did a song about how my family and I liked to listen and dance to live performances of mazurkas and polkas. They called it ‘Lecs Go to the Hop.’ “
— Stan
MW: Wilbur’s story has all the hallmarks of a ‘girlfriend in Canada’ story, especially when you consider that her name sounds an awful lot like ‘bats in the belfry’. Maybe Wilbur did indeed have a whirlwind romance with a c-suite beauty from Florida, or maybe he got himself blitzed on the beach and overheard some vacationing senior citizens remarking on his behavior with an outdated idiom for someone who is mentally unstable
Blondie: “Yes, on second thought, we don’t need to take the accounts of male gigolos…”
MW – You can close your eyes to reality, but you still have dog shit on your shoe….
Blondie – I like Dag’s loyal colleagues! My only conclusion is they, too, have hot wives that Dithers lusts after….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Doing my thing: Today’s brainyquote is Confirmed! Unkempt Thoughts, p. 129 in the St. Martin’s Press edition. Another of his aphorisms is apparently “Those who tried to enlighten were often hanged on lampposts,” which might be a nice epigraph for a future Mary Worth wisdom-dispensing session.
What would really have been funny in today’s Blondie is eight more panels of Dagwood mournfully scooting his chair back to his office under his own power.
Blondie: Since most business contracts are 90% boilerplate, this strip goes a long way towards explaining how Dagwood sleeps most of the day at work and gets away with it.
MW: Woman waking up in Orlando:
“Oh, God, what did I do? OK, damage control; I gave him a ridiculous fake name and fake contact info. All I need to do now is go get two weeks of memory erased.”
RMMD: Classic example of a guy who refuses to remember negative things that happen to him. Wilbur would be proud.
@Everything is Better with Monkeys:
“They really should have listened to me,” Mary says wiping blood off the knife.
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
Blondie-“Wow! He must’ve loved it! You’re still conscious and unbeaten!”
Aunty Acid: Hey! We entered daylight savings time not “make up whatever month you want” time.
Dagwood calls Blondie from work; “The boss says working today is part of setting the clocks forward but I’m not so sure.”
“Don’t worry, Dawn; there’s always ‘Cookie Lov.’ It’s gotten me through more break-ups than I care to remember.”
@Dennis Jimenez: MW – You can close your eyes to reality, but you still have dog shit on your shoe….
Confucius say, “He who smell dog shit, must check own shoe first.”
Wilbur’s tryst was apparently with a lower crook from a Carmen Sandiego game. He’ll certainly find it memorable when he’s questioned by Interpol in connection to Belle Batsfrey’s theft of Mexico’s famous Temple of Kukulcan.
Dawn and Wilbur console themselves over their recently-ended relationships with “Cookie Lov” cookies, specially formulated for those who have failed to find human love and decided to settle for cookie love. (The same company also makes the “Chocolate Consolation” flavor ice cream that Estelle enjoyed when Arther broke her heart.)
FG: I may be a bit slow, but I just realized that Schkade is doing the Canterbury Tales all over again. A bunch of random travelers are stuck in an inn, and each one tells a story. Of course, it’s Flash’s strip, so all the stories are about an encounter with Flash Gordon. It makes a great break from the ongoing story, and I’m enjoying it.
Juggs Parker:
Sam: Sophie’s fucking dead, abbey
Crankshaft
The strip somehow gets less and less snarkable by the day
MW borrows Belle Batsfrey from the neverending list of Slylock Fox miscreants.
(I’m available for every the comic crossover you
alwaysnever wanted.)Pluggers have a bag marked GYM so as to not pick up the other two of the same models for “Tailgating”, and “BBQ”.
CS: Pam is torn between asking Crankshaft when he’s moving to Woodlawn Estates and begging him to keep this personal information personal.
Dustin assumes a teen knows a song that old. This strip is pitched perfectly to the few high schoolers of 1980 who were listening to The Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Gray, and Fats Waller.
H&L: They can’t learn that song in a lower key? Chip’s band is more punk than I gave them credit for.
RMMD: Three places have invited him Goatee to enjoy his day elsewhere, yet not a single punch has been thrown. This is giving me big “When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?” vibes
The only Megacorps in Orlando are Disney and pyramid schemes. Both of which have a tendency to give out absurdly inflated job titles. “Sales director” means she runs the soft pretzel stand in front of It’s A Small World, or she just bought into Amway.
MW:
“Now, did you remember ‘spring back, fall forward,’ Dad? — it’s an hour earlier today, sun time, than it was yesterday!”
WTF has happened to Pluggers? Back in the day, this would have been “A Plugger doesn’t need to go to the gym, he goes to work.”
Mary Worth: Belle Batsfrey is obviously a Dick Tracy villain. I’m looking forward to the crossover strips, in which her Orlando business turns out to be a training center for a nationwide network of bad guys — who then run their crime syndicate out of Megacorp big-box electronics stores in every small city in the US. (How else would these stores stay in business? In this economy? C’mon!) Anyway, Dick and his detectives, along with Belle and her henchmen, all end up converging in Megacorp’s Santa Royale store, and get into a huge firefight… just as Mary Worth walks through the sliding doors, in search of a new Firestick streaming dongle so she can watch the new Meghan Markle cooking show on Netflix. She talks them all down, of course, but not before we see several large explosions and Wilbur getting shot in the backside. It’ll all be quite exciting, and will actually renew the public’s interest in newspaper comic strips for years to come! (Just kidding! We all know the only reason they named her “Belle Batsfrey” is because anyone who dated Wilbur would have to be nuts.)
RMMD: What kind of museum keeps two burly security guards on hand to remove any troublemakers? Maybe I’m naive, but the place depicted is hardly the Louvre.
The role of Joy from Inside Out will be played by Wilbur Weston.
@BigTed: I think Belle Batsfrey is obviously a Funky Winkerbean character. She fits in perfectly with Les Moore, Jack Stropp, Harry Dinkle, Marianne Winters, Mason Jarre, and Amicus Brief. They all sound like punny names an average 8-year-old would write.
Belle Batsfrey? Who works for Megacorp? Okay Wilbur, I get why you don’t want to tell Dawn you spent your trip in a tequila fueled blackout, shacked up with a hooker from Tijuana, but even Jeffy could come up with a better cover story.
MW: “Dawn, keep only good memories from past relationships, and forget the rest!”
“Who are you?”
MW: “Actually, ‘Belle’ is her middle name. Her first name is ‘Liberty’, and she’s sort of cracked.”
MW. Careful, Wilbur. Dawn might remember that “Belle Batsfrey” was also the name of that “Canadian girlfriend” you had back in high school.
MW: At least now we know why the Westons constantly end up in bad relationships: their adamant refusal to learn from their mistakes.
Blondie: This Sunday comic could have been an e-mail…
MW: Much as I would like to see Belle Batsfrey (if only because her name suggests the Westons getting terrorized Fatal Attaction-style), I can’t shake the feeling that Wilbur’s “I don’t believe in long-distance relationships” is just sour grapes to deal with Belle letting him down gently after the one-night-stand that resulted when she did too many tequila shots at the Megacorp training retreat.
“What’s her name again dad? I’m just asking to check whether it is the same name you said twenty minutes ago and you’re not making it up”
Mary Worth gets political! Normally, Wilbur would have a “girlfriend from Canada”, but now circulation across borders is slowed down due to tariffs, so he had to switch to a more expensive and lower quality model from Florida
@BigTed: that was my first thought—Moy and Brigman have outsourced this year’s plot (or at least 1/3 of the year) to Dick Tracey’s writers.
Actually, that would be better than the dreck M&B pump out. We might even get to see Wilbur devoured by rats!
@Ettorre: Pysch! Florida is filled with Canadian transplants, though Orlando is more Brazilians, tbh.
You know how you could avoid being late, Dagwood? You could have sent the PDF of the contract by email yesterday! You clearly did not need to make any changes, since you arrive in the office with the contract ready and printed. Hell, why print it at home at your expenses? If Dithers doesn’t like reading documents on screen, he can print it himself. I would say that a good joke was ruined by the progress of technology, but this is not true
Mary Worth: I would read the hell out of a daily comic strip based on the life of Stanislaw Jerzy Lec. Or on the collected works of Stanislaw Lem. Oh heck, just mainline the Polish writers straight into my veins, you can even keep the pastel color scheme!
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: She cannot Skype because Microsoft is closing down Skype earlier in Florida
Also Mary Worth:
Wilbur is still hurt by the fact that year ago Dawn did not believe he could have a bastard son he did not know about, so he is now trying to convince her that he too can get floozies willing to forgo protection!
MW: You just know that Wilbur is congratulating himself for successfully fooling his daughter into thinking that they’re both still creatures worthy of love when in reality they’re both so repulsive that they make blobfish cuddly.
@Ettorre: Belle: “I’m a teams player!” Wilbur, chuckling: “I’m more of a Zoom man myself.” [Belle nervously pushes multiple football, baseball and hockey-themed jock straps under the bed] “Uh, yeah, technology, what’re you going to do?”
MW: “That’s Batsfrey crazy dad.”
C’shaft: Please, this is Ed Crankshaft. He thinks “Big Yellow Taxi” is uplifting.
Dustin: “Brace yourself,” Meg warns her family. “He’s been working on this one since we pulled out of the driveway. Let him have his laugh at my expense; it’s the only joy he has in his miserable life.”
Luann: This is childish, even for Luann.
Phantom: “Thank you, Disposable Non-White Character. Your sacrifice will be honored, but not by bringing your body back to your loved ones or giving you a decent burial so you’re not eaten by scavengers or anything. I’ll just say a quick prayer over your body before moving on–no, a Christian prayer, I’m not an ignorant savage.”
RMMD: Where will Goatee McStalker turn up to mildly bother our heroes next? The gym? The grocery store? A cute little shop in the downtown area that sells handmade soaps and bath bombs? The possibilities are endless, so long as they don’t involve any drama or plot development.
@csroberto2854: Who the fuck is Dead Abbey? Weird name, that….
H&L- No we’re just here to ogle the chicks (Hey, look second front the left, could that skirt be any shorter? Maybe those aren’t tights, what if she just colors her legs?? Humada hummada!!)
Don Abundio, translated:
“I’m selling a new diet plan and I need a picture for the ad. Will you take it?”
“I’d be glad to! Where do you want to pose?”
“Here!”
[Sign: FUNHOUSE]
So Wilbur’s going to have a stalker now, is where this storyline is headed. Wow.
MW: Ha ha, Wilbur got punked. Ghosted. Given a false name by a woman he met randomly so that he’ll never be able to track her down. Her fake name sound a lot like Bats in the Belfrey.
MARY WORTH: I see some of you are hearing that very cartoony name and suspecting g our boy Wilbur of making this woman up. Oh ye of little faith. I’ll have you know it just as easily could be part of the fake contact info this woman left so that desperate creepy guy would stop hitting on her!
MARY WORTH (2): And y’all wonder why Mary is so enamored of Wilbur. Here he is, establishing himself as a starch disciple of his guru’s philosophy. Of course such devout adherence to Her fundamental principles and doctrine will be seen as Worth-y of her blessed favor.
MW:. So THAT’S why Wilbur is so intolerable. Instead of learning life’s lessons as taught by experience, he just chooses not to remember them.
PV:. I used to wish that little girl got some good discipline, but following the vicious murder of a guardian uncle when the North Korean leader got power, I understand why parents and grands are hands off.
CROSS COMIX:.
– Memories:. BETTY and FRAZZ
– Table Talk:. CURTIS and FBoFW
@TheDiva: re: Phantom: “He will be eaten by lions.” — Henri Rousseau, noted lion scientist
Mara Llave, Keeper of Daylight Savings Time: “Every time Mara leaps through time she creates a paradox, destroying all record of the existence that had occurred. That’s why they can’t show us anything ever happening. It’s very cerebral.” — gleeb, Comics Kingdom commenter
We’ve got to step up our game around here. The CK people are getting funnier.
GA: Whine, whine, whine. If you have that many clocks in your house….you have too many clocks in your house. Wyatt in Easy Rider had the right idea.
Mary Worth: There is something so incredibly skeevy and unsettling about how this comic is equating Wilbur getting laid with a hot Central American lady to Dawn barely escaping an abusive relationship before it was too late. But then, I don’t know what else I should’ve expected from Mary Worth.
@Everybody Posts, Nobody Reads: You skipped “She must have bats in her belfrey if she had an affair with Wilbur.” You have ONE JOB, mister.
@TheDiva:
#51. PHANTOM:. Spot on. And he closes the eyes on a friend’s body and they stayed closed? Thought we needed coins to weigh them down. Anyone here a mortician?
REX MORGAN M.D.: Not to worry, Summer. I think it’s more this guy just has a fetish for being tossed out of places.
Summer: “Oh phew! Now I can worry about more important things, like whether roots country singers are playing their novelty hits.”
Dagwood “naps” with his face buried in the couch. Where people place their asses. Where people fart, mostly when others aren’t around. Couches are saturated with farts.
Dagwood is not napping. He’s sniffing farts.
Wilbur: Keep only good memories from past relationships, and forget the rest!
Dawn: And you are …
@Anonymous: Karen Moy is going through a now twenty year obsession of a bald middle aged man-baby and his toxic love life. I would say I’m surprised that no one has dragged her out of the writing room but I don’t think anyone else wants the job of writing Mary Worth unless she goes back to Hell and takes her deformed servant Wilbur with her.
Jerzy Lec sounds like a knockoff sandwich shop in eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, a con artist who targets lonely men on cruises tells her accomplice about how she, on a whim, pulled out the `Belle Batsfrey` alias that they were sure no one would fall for. She got his credit card numbers and his bank login by the second night. They won’t be much, but probably enough to buy another cruise ticket and a new Pierre Cardin to reel in a bigger fish.
MW: NOT TO PILE ON BUT….Belle Batsfrey? Really? REALLY?
Mary Worth – After seeing Karen Moy’s version of abusive relationships, I can’t wait to see what she does with batshit crazy.
Crankshaft – An asshole who burns down the neighborhood with his grill and damages everything when he “gardens” or repairs the house is upset that trees were cut down. Yeah, totally believable.
JP – God, I loathe everyone in this strip. I wasn’t aware that Ann existed until a few months ago, and now I despise her with the heat of a thousand suns. However, that’s not as much as I loathe the rest of the Parker Spencer Driver families.
@Francisco Arrowroot: are you suggesting that Belle could be Entertainer Esme? I’d forgive Karen Moy a lots of past sins if she pulled that off.
@Anonymous: Wilbur has the listening ability of a rock, except the rock is smarter and less lascivious.
JP: “Nice going, Sam. I send you to get Ann out of prison and you stand around with your thumb up your ass while she gets hauled off to Illinois. You’re just as worthless as Randy. I need a drink.”
CS: Just be glad they’re not calling it Toxic Waste Dump Park.
RMMD: The security guards turn him over to Dick Tracy for a proper beating.
MW: “Belle Batsfrey? That’s the name she gave you, Dad? Belle frickin’ Batsfrey??? Heh heh heh. Ha ha ha ha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You ain’t ever hearing from her again. Belle Batsfrey. That is so awesome!”
Slylock – But what if the twin who swam in the pool sweats a whole lot? Never mind, this is all just an excuse for Slylock to get kinky.
DT: Oh wow, the ONE BUSINESS CARD that Auntie and Uncle wanted fell right out of the card file while the nephews were picking up the big MAD magazine reference. Jeez, what are the odds?
SlyF – Weirdly sister cheesecake is not the fan service I needed with my morning coffee!
***Reads Solution***
Eww! He tasted water that dripped off of a Weirdly Sister body! Eww!
Dawn’s mother deserves more mockery. What worse being pathetic like Wilbur and stupid like Dawn? Or being the one who chose Wilbur and raised Dawn?!
Crank: I hate to sympathise with Ed about something, but these things keep springing up round our way as well (to be fair, mostly in scrubland – you can’t go around clear-cutting Scotland any more; those pines are valuable). My favourite was one called something like Ocean View that almost immediately had another estate built in front of it.
DT: Oh, no, the idiot nephews have dropped a dental appointment card. Now, when Dick searches the office for no real reason, he’ll know Uncle Horace goes to the dentist! He will therefore realise that the dentist must be part of Horace’s still-unexplained plot, because why would a character in a Costello story drop something that isn’t a vital clue?
FG: I’ve just realised that, while Schkade normally has character narration in the Sunday recaps, he’s been going third-person while the main stories are being narrated by the characters. Nice touch.
HtH: Hmm. My research suggests that only about 20% of Vikings were literate, so that’s technically true, but Vikings weren’t particularly illiterate; 20% was about average for Europe at the time! (Also, if anyone’s wondering, Helga being literate isn’t implausible, one of the uses the Vikings had for writing was women keeping household accounts.) I think my real issue with this strip is that I’m not sure it makes sense in a culture with a rich oral tradition. Or maybe the local skald got as fed up of Hägar’s interruptions as Helga.
JP:I love how everyone is talking like they couldn’t have possibly seen this coming. All these people knew Ann was a con artist and some of them are supposed to have law degrees!
MW: My “favourite” part of this is when Dawn tries to bring up the Saga of Dirkhead, and Wilbur doesn’t ask for details and just tells her to forget the bad parts. I’m often critical of Mary’s advice, but she really is the best option these people have, isn’t she?
Pluggers: It messes up my narrative of always-broke Carl Rhinowski if he can afford a gym membership! So instead, let’s say he works there as a “greeter” in exchange for a few minutes a day using the equipment. He also enforces the “wipe off machines with a towel” rule.
CS: The Centerville Sentinel missed this whole thing. The development plans, the zoning meetings, the NIMBY tie-in. Not really helping the small newspaper cause.
Wilbur’s gonna lose the girl within a few weeks i hope
Is Blondie telling workers to rise up and seize the means of production instead of working themselves to an early grave at the whims of a mercurial boss? Unexpected, but I’m willing to see where they go with this.
***
Poor Wilbur, people around here acting like schlub fetishes aren’t a real thing…
Luann – Dreams of being eaten.
@Horace Broon: Mary hand selected every resident of Charterstone to have the intelligence of a stick of butter so they can be easily manipulated for her own personal use. Though she could have done better than an ephebophilic professor, his drunken child bride, a former crooked cop, a misanthropic gnome, an agoraphobic doormat, a loathsome advice columnist, and a codependent co-ed who would rather roll in strange men’s beds than get her degree in useless.
Slylock: “Maybe he’ll (the anteater) let us go if we give him ants?”
Yeah… that sounds like generalizing animal stereotypes, like bears and honey, monkeys and bananas…
Slylock: Well, we’re gradually learning more about Weirdly’s sisters, one is named Veronica.
Yet after the 20+ years of this comic running, we still don’t know what Count Weirdly’s first name is.
Priorities.
@Tabby Lavalamp: I mean, George Constanza had at least 40 different girlfriends over the course of Seinfeld, including Marissa Tomei (as herself) so someone must find something attractive towards these types of people.
@Ukulele Ike: You skipped “She must have bats in her belfrey if she had an affair with Wilbur.” You have ONE JOB, mister.
I take solace in knowing that satire is at least recognized and possibly appreciated here. I will strive to improve my contributions going forward.
RMMD: Glenwood needs to bring in some smarter stalkers.
@The Rambling Otter: The Kavorka Man trope is what you’re looking for…except George is actually able to pretend that he has a soul while Wilbur introduces himself by shoving his foot in his mouth.
@richardf8: SlyF – Weirdly sister cheesecake is not the fan service I needed
The Weirdly Sisters have weird, ugly feet. No fan service as far as I’m concerned.
@Everybody Posts, Nobody Reads: I pleasurably anticipate your posts every day one of the comics people lobs a fat meatball directly over the plate, and everybody here scrambles to whack it a good one.
Blondie: “I CAN’T BE LATE THIS MORNING!!” And yet, somehow, he is. Paging Slylock Fox: explain this paradox if you can.
@Pervy McKinkerson: You’d expect a total stud like the Count to have better-looking sisters, wouldn’t you? At least Slylock doesn’t attempt to lick the water off their bodies.
CS: Hate to admit it but I’ve got to agree with Ed on this one. I think these developers keep someone on payroll to think up fancy, schmancy names for the streets of these new housing developments, like Whispering Pines Meadows. The ones are find most laughable are the ones that have hill in the name. The only hills in the Houston area are the landfills.
JP: What about this husband that married Ann while she was on the lam? What happened to him?
FC: HTT Grandma’s old, calcium-depleted bones crack under the strain of Dolly’s ape-like embrace.
RMMD: Say, Sherlock, the first thing I’d do is have the police check Summer’s car for a tracking device. That’s probably how Goatee McStalkerson always knows of her whereabouts.
MW: Belle Batsfrey – this is more obvious than Aldo Kelrast; remember like in the cold-war espionage game of LeCarre, there are no coincidences. This should be good!
DT: the Nepo Nephew Nuisances have set up a nice twist on a classic clue. Usually dental records are used to identify an badly decomposed or unrecognizable corpse. Here, it will be dental appointment records that will be key clue. These two and the guy who works at the morgue make up 3 nitwit nephews correct?
Appeal to the readership here: I’m still trying to figure out some details with the last adventure: the architecture bomb one.
1. Did the baddie screw up and basically not wire the bomb up to explode? So his dead man switch did work but it just wasn’t connected?
2. How did the people :”sweeping” the area missed the bomb?
3. If the bomb was left over from a WW2 era saboteur, why is shaped like a WW2 era aerial bomb – like the type dropped from a four engine bomber?
4. What was the guy who was killed in police custody trying to say? I’ve been back and forth and trying to figure this out. Was it the baddie’s name? Was he trying to tell someone about a bomb? Was he speaking German?
@Guillermo el chiclero: On JP: He was the guy Ann was accused of murdering in the woods until some anonymous drone with a camera was miraculously discovered containing footage of the incident which Sophie was goaded into manipulating into depicting him ‘accidentally shooting’ himself.
MW: Day 6 of the Willa standoff! Yes, six days since Wilbur has been home, sweet, home at the condo and no view or even mention of Willa! The Ladies are playin’ hardball – threatening to eliminate Willa from the cast and act like she never existed – if we don’t sign an unsatisfactory contract! Listen, gals, two (or four) can play that game! It’s not like we don’t know Willa’s value in the show biz marketplace… she’s got plenty of other options, she doesn’t need this crapola…
Forget all this nonsense about Wilbur’s cockamamie “romance” …. here’s where the real drama is!!!
Belle Batfrey? That’s a bit on the nose. How much you guys want to bet that this lady’s going to hire some thugs to come kidnap Wilbur in some unjustified sense of affection over him?
@Arabella:
#79 CS:. Your narrative remains intact, Arabella. Most of us on Medicare get a free Silver Sneakers program in our membership, so only reasons not to go are time and incentive. And ESPN.
@Tabby Lavalamp: Many schlubs can get women, because they have other attractive qualities. They’re kind, or charming, or funny, or stable, or loyal, or intelligent, or nurturing. or supportive, or, let’s face it, well-off.
Wilbur is none of this, except somehow being wealthy enough to live in Charterstone. And you don’t have to dig too far into his writing career to see how phony that is. And he goes out of his way to be as much of a hateful, selfish, needy little prick as possible. There is no way in hell any woman would find him attractive.
@The Quiet Man: #97: Correct me if I’m wrong, Mudges, but as I recall the dead guy in the woods was merely a former partner in crime. She married some other sucker while on the lam for the dead guy’s murder.
MW: Thank you to all of you who riffed on “Belle Batsfrey.” When I first saw that second panel, my outrage made that panel seem like a deliberate effort by MW to force my brain to explode.
But thanks to you, I’ve calmed down and can now envision having a fridge magnet made from that second panel. Wilbur looks like he is having a very happy memory about not only Belle’s name, but her enticing perfume, which was probably called “Nuit des Chauves-Souris.”
@Banana Jr. 6000: Wilbur’s college nickname was “Donkey Dick” Weston.
@Horace Broon: Re CRANKSHAFT, I hear you. Here, the trick is often to “tuck houses into” an oak woodland, which means dozing out all the wildflowers and plunking “executive homes” right between old oaks, which often means the oaks will die within a few years because their roots have been compromised, and then naming the subdivision something like “Oak Haven.” I’d like to see a more honest pretentious name like “Formere Oakes.”
Blondie: Cora left the TV on after watching her shows, and Julius couldn’t help but notice an old movie that was showing. The next day he decided to try out a new management style.
“Hey Bumstead, what’s happening?” [Intake of breath.] “I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in Saturday. So if you could be here around 9 that would be great, m’kay? Oh, and I almost forgot, uh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, m’kay?”
@Ukulele Ike: And Wilbur’s college roommate still suffers from PTSD.
@Ukulele Ike: That’s another possible explanation. But i suspect the college nickname “donkey dick” was about Wilbur’s personality, not his crotch.
Mary Worth – The lawyers for Shoe are preparing a lawsuit for copyright infringement! “Belle Batsfrey” is a clear riff on their long-established Tip O’Neil sendup Senator Batson D. Belfry.
The best legal defense is to differentiate Belle Batsfrey enough. Make her a crazed stalker that hunts down Wilbur and tries to sell his organs on the black market! (They won’t sell due to his poor diet and alcoholism.)
Blondie – I feel like this was the cartoonists doing a joke about Daylight Savings Time where Dagwood would rush and end up an hour early, but then realized “Spring Forward” meant he would be late, so they did what they could to salvage the work they already did. Cartoonists don’t have office hours, so the only times that matter are tee times at the golf course, and happy hour at the local fern bar.
@Poteet: Wilbur looks like he is having a very happy memory about not only Belle’s name, but her enticing perfume, which was probably called “Nuit des Chauves-Souris.”
We asked ChatGPT, “what is the French word for ‘mayonnaise,’ and were very disappointed with the response, so we shall not be replying to your post after all.
@Pervy McKinkerson: Sorry man, but you’re not really living up to your name if you can resist that necrotic green skin!
@Ukulele Ike: The one in the one-piece, she’s the one that had to be sewn back together after being sawn in half by a stage magician. She daren’t wear anything midriff bearing because if Weirdly could sew a straight line he wouldn’t have used steri-strips on his flesh golem a few days back.
MW: Gongrats to Wilbur on expanding his dating universe to include drag queens. Belle Batsfrey may be a high powered CEO, but that’s just their day job.
@Ukulele Ike: Wilbur’s college nickname was “Donkey Dick” Weston.
Then Wilbur ought to have chosen a better college.
Fox detective: It moved.
Very much thank you to everyone who links the comic they’re posting about. Especially the ones that aren’t posted by the owner of this blog.
@Sex-Negative Nellie: Wilbur: “I’ll thank you not to refer to Princeton that way!”
@richardf8: Sorry man, but you’re not really living up to your name if you can resist that necrotic green skin!
‘Slong as you don’t shame my kinks, I won’t shame yours.
@richardf8:Slylock: He could’ve licked each body to find the culprit. Unless the green skin has its own flavor.
Meanwhile, the legal departments of Pixar and Disney will soon come pounding on the door of Sawyer, age 11, for copyright infringement.
Leave it to Brewster Rockit to show why connecting daylight savings to the Doomsday Clock isn’t a good idea.