Bleak Sunday
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Shoe, 5/18/25
You know I’m a fan of the depressing Shoe strips where either the Perfesser or Skyler is sitting in the living room chair and the other one has to just stand there awkwardly in order to have a conversation because they don’t have a second living room chair and have no plans to get one. A nice touch about these strips is that often, as in today’s, the person sitting in the chair has to uncomfortably crane their neck around to talk, just to emphasize that the house layout is incredibly hostile to the very idea of the two people living there interacting with one another for more than the briefest stretches of time.
Dick Tracy, 5/18/25
“…111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60603! That’s the Art Institute of Chicago, which bought the painting from Grant Wood directly after it took a bronze medal in a competition there. It was lent to a couple European museums in the mid ’10s but it’s back now. Anyway, not sure why Dick Tracy needs to get this information over the phone from a real cagey guy who probably just murdered someone instead of looking it up online like a normal person, but I don’t tell him how to do his business.”
Panel from The Lockhorns, 5/18/25
This is about … Loretta dying, right? Like definitely Leroy is musing, right in the middle of their therapy session, about how great it would be for him personally if Loretta died?
89 replies to “Bleak Sunday”
Shoe-“Did I ever tell you how I scored four touchdowns in a single game?”
Slylock Fox-They just called Ella fat.
MW-“Over your special guest.” Mary shudders. “Why do I feel so dirty saying that,” Mary thinks to herself.
RMMD-Malpractice suit. Malpractice suit. Malpractice suit.
The Lockhorns’ therapist is so embarrassed of his failure to save their marriage or even to contain their sociopathy that he blurred his name on the diploma
Shoe:
“Did you play football, Uncle Cosmo?”
“Absolutely! — Seattle Seahawks, of course.”
When I saw that blurry Lockhorns montage, Josh, I thought i was stroking out. No fair!
Leibniz: “This is the best of all possible worlds because everything that is real is rational and thus the best!”
Voltaire: “This is the best of all possible worlds, despite everything, because things could be even worse!”
Leroy: “This is not the best of all possible worlds, because Loretta has the potentiality for death but not the actuality!”
“My football career was cut short! I never got the opportunity to mush my brain! Now I have to live with absolute clarity about my horrible existence! No fair!”
DT:
“The address is…well, let’s see. There’s ‘Thing’ in the last panel, so this must be the Addams Family residence — 001 Cemetery Lane!”
Lockhorns: Leroy and Loretta are contemplating the invention of a Super-Viagra so powerful that it even works on him.
This mysterious figure is doing Tracy a favour! Tracy would rather meet suspects in person, since he still cannot shoot people through the phone! He regularly writes to his congressman to request a reform of the NSF grants in that direction, but those eggheads are still busy with cancer!
LH: Isn’t Leroy wishing for all forms of death on his wife considered one of his endearing quirks?
MW: Speaking of “endearing quirks,” Wilbur continues to be oblivious to everything except his own satisfaction. Meanwhile Belle is going to once again waste the perfect opportunity to kill Dawn.
Minus one point because they forgot that birds don’t have Achilles heel, but plus one point because at least panel 2 gives us a bird-eye view
Pretty sure Leroy is musing about dying himself. He’d never be under the delusion that Loretta dying would solve all his problems–he knows he’d still be a Jets fan.
btw Chip Flagston visible eyes alert what is going on
Lockhorns: “Best of all possible worlds,” “Worst-case scenario” Forget it Leroy. Anal ain’t going to happen.
Sunday Mary Worth quotevestigation: I don’t know. It looks like it’s “Every step of life shows how much caution is required” but I can’t find it in Goethe anywhere, only attributed to Goethe in the likes of Dictionary of quotations from ancient and modern English and foreign sources: including phrases, mottoes, maxims, proverbs, definitions, aphorisms, and sayings of wise men, in their bearing on life, literature, speculation, science, art, religion, and morals especially in the modern aspects of them by the Rev. James Wood (1902), who while having made every effort to live a Godly life is at this moment BURNING IN HELL BECAUSE WHAT HE DIDN’T REALIZE IS THAT THE ONLY THING GOD CARES ABOUT IS PROPERLY SOURCING YOUR QUOTATIONS.
DT: The mystery of the three eight-foot corpses comes closer to being solved as “The Procrustean Bed” killer strikes again.
MW:
Today’s quotation makes me wonder whether the next new comic strip in Comics Kingdom will be Gearhead Goethe, wherein the eponymous tragic lead sells her soul, in a Faustian pact, in exchange for her favorite drivers winning NASCAR races.
Right after Wilbur tells Mary that he deserves happiness, he proceeds to eat one of her muffins without even remembering to remove the paper wrapper. Mary: “Wilbur dear, happiness is not a gift the universe has given to you, and never will be.”
Lockhorns – “Sounds like a Candide infection.”
Turns out Dick Tracy likes big butts and was actually looking for a painting called “Americans Go Thicc!”
Slylock standing under one of the ladders with a crushed hat and buried in sand up to his neck would be a better optic.
MW: The usual phrase is “a perfectly lovely woman,” but Wilbur says Belle is “a perfectly loving woman.” He even stresses the word, to make sure Mary knows what he’s talking about. Given that two panels ago he was demonstrating his oral skills with a muffin, she probably does.
Anyone got a line on the throwaway panels of today’s Doonesbury? Gocomics and Seattle PI have both let me down.
Curse you for that fuzzy Lockhorns panel, Josh, I thought I was having a stroke.
DT: Clearly the caller is…Lee Falk.
I’m surprised that Mary is not only allowing Wilbur to continue saying this sort of filth in her home but allowing Belle to stay. The most lenient thing this woman has allowed is to let the women of Charterstone wear pants.
DT: This Dick Tracy was a journey for me. I grew up in the Chicago area, and visiting the Art Institute was one of the Big Cultural Things we did every few years in school, so I am very familiar with the stuff on display there, including American Gothic, Nighthawks, the Blue Guitarist, Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte, etc. Then one day I saw Ryan North (admitted Canadian) refer to American Gothic as “the painting with the dour couple holding the pitchfork” (https://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1344) and I thought, huh, maybe all those supposedly famous artworks in Chicago are…not as famous as I think they are? Do Canadian artists really not know the title of American Gothic?
But to find that Dick Tracy doesn’t even know where American Gothic is is really something else–he lives right there in town! Didn’t his school ever take him on a field trip when he was a kid? But checking the dates, it turns out American Gothic was painted in 1930, and Dick Tracy’s eponymous comic strip launched in 1931, so even if Dick Tracy was taken out to the Art Institute as a kid, the painting wasn’t there yet. Anyway, the next time Dick’s grandchildren go out on a field trip, he really ought to sit down with them afterward and talk about what they saw, what made an impression, etc–it could be a learning experience for both of them. He might even learn some things he wants to know, like where American Gothic is.
Josh, there are AI programs that can fix blurry graphics.
SlyF – An Island Prison. A sewer outlet. A jailbreak that may have involved toilet removal. And the signs of someone who obviously left their footprints in the butter. There’s more current events than I can handle in today’s Slylock.
JP: Penultimate panel inner thoughts:
Sam: Hmm… that looks like fun. Maybe I can try that some day….
Abbey: What… What are they doing? Is he trying to eat her head? Is she trying to eat HIS head?? I can’t handle this!!!
Luann: Mommy gave me her credit card, so I can buy whatever I want and not feel bad about it!
SF: It’s a process server with eviction papers because the Forths are months delinquent on their rent because Ted hasn’t been paying because he got fired from his job because he’s severely mentally disabled and should have been institutionalized (alongside his wife and daughter who happens to be suffering her umpteenth mental breakdown) years ago.
RMMD: I know we say this alot around here, but if that’s an invitation to Summer N’ Augie’s wedding, then we really can say ‘Welp, that WAS fast!’
MW:
W: I have my home UNDER CONTROL!
M: So you finally cleaned up the piles of your own filth that should have seen you evicted at the time Stellan died?
W: Don’t be silly! I shoved all that crap in the closet so Belle and I would have more places to do sexytimes! Belle thought it was so endearingly quirky when Dawnie opened the door and everything fell on her! She even said ‘Too bad she wasn’t crushed to death! Heh-heh!’ She’s so funny!
@Bob Tice: This may not be eligible for CoTW, as it doesn’t touch on anything Josh covered today, but I’m pretty sure you just won the internet.
DT: “Wish to remain anonymous” and “meet in person” don’t tend to play well together. Looks like finishing the Piltdown arc didn’t end the idiotic bumbling plots
MW: Mary has just told you that given Dawn’s issues you *don’t* have your home “under control”. Idiot.
Before reading Mary Worth get this.
@Rita Lake: I think that Dromiceiomimus (sp?) is calling it that to make fun of T. Rex for being a poser, but my real contribution is that apparently the woman model hated it when people assumed they were a couple–it was her and her dad!
MW: This conversation has devolved to the point where’s it’s “Did NOT,” “Did TOO,” “Did NOT,” “Did SO,” “Nuh-UH,” “Uh-HUH” . . .
RMMD: The mail? Seriously, they’re excited that the mail arrived? Why aren’t these boys outside playing baseball or kicking a can or vandalizing a playground or something?
JP: “Son, maybe you want to stand a little closer to that razor in the morning because you look ridiculous.”
H&L: The silhouette panel makes it look like they were bombarded in a massive bird-crap attack.
CS: Good one, Batty! I’ll be no one saw that coming!
@Rita Lake: Ah Dinosaur Comics. Where the K-Car never gets crushed.
@Bob Tice:
“Did you play football, Uncle Cosmo?” “Absolutely! — Seattle Seahawks, of course.”
That’s after he was cut by the Eagles.
DT – Moving day is very stressful. It would drive anyone to murder.
LOCKHORNS: Will we ever know Loretta’s worst case scenario? Surely, it can’t be Leroy walking out the door?
Schlockhorns – ” If AI thinks it’s learning from me, it has another thing coming.”
I hate this and other cliches, but what the fluck does “another thing coming” mean? Wouldn’t it be “another think coming”? Considering how stupid Leroy is, I could understand him frucking it up, but I have heard others say this, too.
I don’t know that it makes sense either way, but “think” rather than “thing” seems to be less senseless.
Anyone got a thought or thinght on this one?
Dick Tracy: Well, of course its at the Art Institute of Chicago, known worldwide by its less formal name, “A Button and a Scuff Mark”!
So fast that Augie hasn’t even banged her yet.
@Ettorre: The therapist’s professional goal is to get the Lockhorns to give him up as a counselor before either of them says “I want a divorce”.
That way it doesn’t count against his average.
(H/T My MSW wife’s gallows humor.)
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
I was already an adult before I learned that it’s supposed to be “think” instead of “thing.” I suppose think is technically correct, but thing sounds more natural because thing is a noun and think isn’t. But I never say either anyway.
Shoe – A great loss for the Toon Town Shitbirds….
DT – Crime Stoppers – As the old saying goes – For a real detective, a button and a scuff ought to be enough….
Shlockhorns – What’s ya gonna do with that Jung blood….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
It’s pretty obvious that this storyline isn’t going to end with Belle being able to off Dawn or even Wilbur but it’s going to be nauseating if Dawn still has a high opinion of her father after this. He’s been gaslighting her ever since she told him about what happened with Dirk, regaling her with graphic details of his and Belle’s time together during the cruise, and ignored her when she expressed any concerns by saying that she should just let him be happy. If Dawn still wants to be a daddy’s girl after this, then she needs some serious therapy.
RMMD: June, your neck needs shaving. In fact, it would be an improvement if you shaved your entire head. Those who are triggered by June’s hair are advised to skip today’s episode.
Will the boys now put the mail BACK into the mailbox?
Don Abundio, translated:
“The boss wants to be a rodeo cowboy”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Is he going to try to rope and hog-tie a calf?”
“Something like that”
@Cleveland Mocks: Yeah, it’s pretty stupid thing to say.
Ripley: Evil Egyptian Priest: “And now I give Kharis the fluid of NINE tana leaves, to give him movement and tremendous strength…so he can STRANGLE YOU!”
Hapless Victim: “Mmmmmmmm…smells just like ‘Old Spice!’”
— Any 1940s Universal Mummy movie
DT: Tomorrow: The Return of Flattop’s Nephew’s Fiancée! Oh, well, at least Costello is nowhere in evidence.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: This is just another example of Leroy Lockhorn being wrong about everything. But paradoxically, it makes him right that AI is not going to learn anything valid from him!
@Cleveland Mocks:
And the Cardinals, ironically, thought he was too big, and would prey on younger teammates.
@Arabella: #46: Can we warn Poteet? June’s really rocking her Bill Haley/Steve McGarrett look today.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
The Thing refers to the situation or comeuppance and is properly called a thing.
Similar to its use in “The thing is I’m tied up on that date…”
MW – “I’ve heard enough, Mary! I’m leaving! …can I get some muffins to go?”
Shoe: Has their carpet’s theme always been Junji Ito’s “Uzumaki?”
PV: By the looks of that woman what makes her an expert on Italy is she knows the best restaurants and pizza parlors.
RMMD: June has her hair done at Luigi’s Barber Emporium, where the old magazines include “Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang” and Luigi strums a mandolin between clients. “Give me the 1957 Greaser, short back and sides, and make it snappy.”
MW: While Mary has been sipping thoughtfully from her teacup,Wilbur has managed to wolf down all but two of that batch of muffins. I have to assume that the batch originally consisted of a full dozen of those things, and that Wilbur’s digestive system is now wrestling with how it should handle the sudden, overwhelming onslaught of garlic and cheddar. “Should I back him up, give him a bloated belly full of gas, or just get rid of this shit as fast as ever I can, in one explosive burst?” Wilbur’s gut muses.
Lockhorns: Loretta is not picking up what Leroy is putting down.
Phantom: Near repeat from last Sunday. That plane has been circling for a FULL WEEK with its engine on fire!?!
Apparently, Mara Llave has stopped keeping time.
Also want to put in the good word for Macanudo, Zippy, and Zits. Consistently good, they have nice ones today.
“You’re not good at your job, Dr. Pillman, are you? Look, we’ll be straight with you. Marital conflict and a deep loathing for each other is our bread and butter. If you fix what’s wrong with us, we’ll just be a single panel Hi and Lois and it’s over. Do you know what happens to characters when a syndicate lets a comic actually end? The only new art will be images of Leroy pissing on vehicle logos, and nobody wants that! Do YOU want that, Dr. Pillman? So please, PLEASE tell us you suck at your job!”
***
Between what we see here in Shoe and the Bumsteads’ chairs are set up over in Blondie, I’m starting to suspect comic artists have never been in a house.
***
I can’t believe Josh just up and doxxed the Art Institute of Chicago like that.
@Weaselboy:
MW – “I’ve heard enough, Mary! I’m leaving! …can I get some muffins to go?”
” . . . you know, just in case Dawn is right and Belle wants to poison me too.”
Pluggers: Andy Bear has a real dog for a pet, but Earl Houndstooth doesn’t have a pet bear–that’d be way more dangerous than a anthro bear driving a pickup truck.
FC and H&L: In FC when Dot talks about dandelions on the lawn I can see them. Over at H&L Chip might as well be pushing around a Fisher Price Bubble Mower.
Blondie: Dagwood, for once, doesn’t screw up the Big Account. Good gag.
Beetle Bailey: When Sarge wants “some donuts” Beetle brings back a box of a dozen. It takes a special couple to know each other so well.
Arlo and Janis: Don’t you mean “My folks used to watch the lamplighter do this?”
Gasoline Alley breaks the rule of putting someone else’s genuinely funny bits in their unfunny comic.
Luann made me chuckle at the countdown clock of fashion.
Shoe: “Why did you say ‘sigh’ instead of actually sighing?”
Dick Tracy: Framing Dick Tracy for a murder would actually be a pretty good idea; dude kills God knows how many criminals with impunity on a regular basis, who’s to say that he’d even remember whether or not he did this one? “I dunno, Sam. Musta been in one of my fugue states for this kill. Case closed.”
Shoe: I’d like to think that Skyler spent a half hour or so huddled in the corner, thinking up some bland question he could possibly ask his obviously-depressed uncle to start a nice, neutral conversation. He considered “So what do you think of soup?” and “Fashions these days, am I right?” before settling on the football inquiry.
DT: You know what I appreciate about the bad guys in Dick Tracy? They still wear suits — like, nice suits. And they comb their hair, too. Not like the lazy, sloppy criminals you mostly see these days who look like they just rolled out of bed.
‘horns: The marriage counselor can’t help the Lockhorns. He has problems of his own. For instance, his desk drawers have no knobs or handles. HOW IS HE SUPPOSED TO OPEN THEM, GLADYS? TELL ME THAT!
@Phantom Phan: Now, now. The Mara Llave boys worked damned hard, producing TWO COMPLETE SUNDAY STRIPS between January and late-May. If they need a little break, I think we should support them.
@Tabby Lavalamp: Heh-heh. Comics Curmudgeons will be flooding into the Chicago Art Institute now, gaping at all the sexy Balthuses and making an unruly crowd in front of “Bedroom at Arles.” Sadly, Moreau’s “Hercules and the Hydra” and Rosetti’s “Beata Beatrix” are not currently on display, but don’t forget to see Lorado Taft’s groovy “Fountain of the Great Lakes” in the little garden south of the main entrance. Nobody ever goes in there and the fountain’s running for the summer season!
@ValdVin: Yeah, like ANY of the Luann characters follow fashion trends. L&B are in the dumpy tops and shapeless slacks they sport every day. You know how Karen hates to show skin with any of her 20-year-old SoCal college kids.
@Rita Lake: To be fair, I’m sure if you asked the average American to identify American Gothic there’s a fifty-fifty chance they’d respond with the actual title vs. “that painting of the old couple with the pitchfork,” a twenty-five percent chance of them naming the artist, and only a five percent chance of them correctly identifying the woman in the painting as the man’s daughter, not his wife. Hell, Dick probably thinks “American Gothic” is some kind of new code name for moonshine.
DT: Looks like the writers got around to seeing Glass Onion, in which a ridiculously wealthy tech bro gets the Louve to rent the Mona Lisa to him while everything is shut down from the pandemic. American Gothic is a poor substitute for the Mona Lisa, but then Dick Tracy is a poor substitute for Benoit Blanc.
@Ettorre: I suspect that we’ll find out that Belle had Dawnie cornered with a knife even as Wilbur infuriates Mary.
Lockhorns. The joke here is that Leroy and Loretta saw the shrink’s name was “Dr. Pillman” and assumed this was an easy way to score some painkillers.
@Hibbleton: Nice true classical reference – the shorter of the nephews was stretched along with the aunt while the taller nephew was cut down to size.
DT: What they left out was the Itemizer quietly resigns and he picked up the password from Uncle’s effects for the off shore San Theodoros account and is now there living a life where he no longers has to watch every penny. The whole itemized list schtick was him writing a letter to resign and submitting his final expeense report – like the novel Pleading Guilty by Scott Turow where spolier —– the investigating lawyer decides NOT to turn in the missing millions of dollars in misappropriated money.
MW: The audience is waiting for the next scene and so the creators are setting the tension. We are shown how much Wilbur likes stuffing his mouth in lieu of steam sex scenes. Maybe we can get a solution like in RMMD. One of the prior victims of Bats will conveniently appear and dispose of Bats, and both Dawnie and WIlbur never actually know how close they had come. But we the audience knows.
RMMD: “now boys, you know we buy the TV guide when we go shopping” and “we don’t get phone books any more”
SLYLOCK: If the weight of an elephant can drop the pipe level – that whole embankment is about to give way.
@Little Blue Bicycle: If this were a darker strip aka MW Dark – we’d find Dawnie in the next scene fighting with Bats and fatally injurying her – and the police charge her with murder.
“Understanding Comics” makes Shoe somehow more depressing:
Panel 1: seated bird has nothing in right appendage and is forced to converse with a living being.
Panel 2: seated bird has picked up remote between panels.
Panel 3: seated bird is clearly focused entirely on aiming remote at television to do … anything but acknowledge the existence of others.
Lockhorns: surely Loretta wins lottery and then dies, but yes.
MW: I bet they are so proud of themselves to make a muffin the star of the strip for an entire week, They have taken the forbidden fruit/savory muffin/belle analogy and beaten it to death. Congrats.
C’shaft: My grandmother passed away last December, and my parents and uncles have been elbow-deep in going through the combination hoarder’s nest, yard sale, and antique shop that is her home. The biggest adventure so far has been the garage and garden shed, the latter of which had not been opened since at least the passing of my grandfather (an avid gardener) fifteen years prior. Thankfully there were no animals to be dealt with, but that’s probably because of the large amounts of corrosive and probably now-illegal chemicals stored there. There were enough carcinogens in that shed to give Tom Batiuk Pulitzer-bait fodder for years. I’m just saying, if Pam thinks this is a problem now wait until her father finally kicks the bucket and she’s left dealing with all his industrial-level gardening crap.
Dustin: No, that would be your awful personalities and your conviction of your entitlement to female attention. The fact that you waste your time and limited brainpower pontificating on the nature of a cardboard box is why you don’t have jobs.
Luann: Clan Evans kind of painted themselves into a corner with this joke. Regardless of her opinions on fast fashion, Luann doesn’t have enough disposable income to constantly be purchasing new outfits. The only character who does is Tiffany, but despite the ceding the “shallow trampslutwhore” title to Stef is still to image-conscious to declare rebellion against trend-chasing. Maybe the lesson here is to not use your nineteen-year-old characters to express your sixty-something-year-old opinions.
MW: Mary has resorted to straight-up lying to get Wilbur to listen to her. “No, really, Wilbur, Dawn wants you to have a love life! She’s not disturbed by the sounds of your weird guttural moans and the gross rhythmic slapping of your ample flesh night after night at all!”
Pluggers’ dog-slaves get to have ice cream, at least.
RMMD: Bad news, blond kid: you’re in the Morganverse; it’s all boring parts. The only kind of cake they serve is white, with no frosting.
Lockhorns – The obligatory baguette and celery are peeking from Loretta’s grocery bag. No. Just no.
Mary Worth – Everyone is forgetting that Dawn showed what an astute judge of character she was when she excused every abusive thing Dirk did.
Moy is out doing herself in making Wilbur an oblivious, self absorbed jerk.
Rex Morgan – I barely noticed June’s horrendous hair because I couldn’t get past the forty year old twins. They won’t be in the wedding party because they look too old to be ring bearers. Heck, they look too old to be ushers.
Frazz – Frazz didn’t donate any of his books about running, because he uses them to jerk off to.
Sherman’s Lagoon – I always like the artwork in this strip, and I especially like today’s strip. I love the poker table with the chips and bowl of potato chips, and how the characters are holding their cards. All this is under water!
Breaking Cat News – Another shout out for the artwork – I like the pit crew and their tools.
Arlo & Janis – My grandmother used to look out the front window to see if the houses in the neighborhood had turned their lights off. “The Smiths went to bed.”
@Bob Tice: I suspect that Gertie has already done that.
@some guy: Recently The Daily Cartoonist website reported that GoComics dropped the throwaway panels from a number of strips. I don’t remember if Doonesbury was one, but the article mentioned Arlo & Janis. I noticed that the Seattle Times website no longer has these panels either.
My local dead tree paper carries Doonesbury, and today’s strip was the same as what’s on GoComics.
I don’t know where to find those panels.
9cl: Not gonna lie, this is actually funny — a little dated, since you can take the photo at home now — but funny.
@I speak Jive: Moy really wants to outshine Tom Batiuk by taking the double dog dare in making a character even more loathsome and self absorbed than Les Moore.
Dustin: Got to admit, for all his other faults Fitch does keep a rather tidy apartment. Lots of women would look upon that positively. Most bachelor crash pads would reek of rotting takeout food and dirty underwear.
Luann: Hey, Miss Independent, shouldn’t you be saving up for your apartment deposit and not blowing it on clothes?
Pluggers – Pluggers don’t go to Starbucks.
Of course they “craine” their necks, they’re birds! Whatta ya know, there’s carpet or mattress springs under all usual the newspaper and old pizza boxes!
@TheDiva: ” She’s not disturbed by the sounds of your weird guttural moans and the gross rhythmic slapping of your ample flesh night after night at all!””
H.P. Lovecraft is taking over authorship of Mary Worth?
I’m not sure I approve, but I am at least intrigued.
Shoe: The Achilles tendon, a fibrous cord that connects the calf muscles to the heel bone, is what people sometimes tear while playing sports. The Achilles heel, on the other hand, was, according to myth, the only part of Achilles’ body that wasn’t exposed to the protective powers of the River Styx; metaphorically, it’s any weakness that makes you vulnerable. So the right joke here would be, “My career as a soldier in the Trojan War was cut short — I was struck by a poison arrow in my heel during the coin toss.”
DT: Curtis is back! New story! Why Piltdown wanted to steal the body, or why all his previous employers let him go for reasons they refuse to discuss and also one of them was the insurance company he tried to defraud, or why someone stole his wallet from the corpse and then just put it straight in a church poor box are all mysteries for another day, if by “another day” you mean “never”!
MW: The best part of writing the same argument going round and round all week is how easy it makes the Sunday synopsis — you only need to include one of them! In fact, the hard part is padding it out, which is why Mary opens by insisting that Dawn’s distrust of Bats isn’t due to jealousy, a claim that Wilbur never actually made.
RMMD: Beatty is now just outright telling us things are going to be boring. And we don’t even get any cake!
@BigTed: Bravo!
MW: Wilbur is entirely self absorbed which amounts to an endearing quirk.