C3P0 would be a great press secretary, actually
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Dennis the Menace, 5/28/25
When you have a long-running strip like Dennis the Menace, where one of the main characters is a child who never grows up and another is an old man who never dies, it does force you to contemplate how comic strip time operates for the two of them. Are we meant to understand that they are locked in an eternal, changeless struggle? Or is Dennis just a kid who’s only started wandering over and annoying his neighbor in the past few months? Mr. Wilson’s reaction today points towards the latter: clearly he’s never even thought about the fact that Dennis will have his days free during the summer, much less experienced it. “Ah shit! Ah fuck!” is his immediate, visceral reaction.
Wizard of Id, 5/28/25
The idea of this joke — “two armies must fill out paperwork with the owner of the battlefield before they hack each other to bits” — is solid enough, but I have a quibble with the execution. Specifically, we’re in a faux medieval setting, so you could just put this guy in vaguely medieval peasant garb or something and people would easily follow everything thanks to the dialogue. Instead, the logic seems to be “we’re saying field so it should be a recognizable farmer, let’s put him in overalls and a hat from the early to mid 20th century,” which doesn’t work at all, in my opinion. The fact that the colorist decided to make said overalls the exact same shade of brown as the ground doesn’t help.
Herb and Jamaal, 5/28/25
TIRED: Herb and Jamaal uses weird circumlocutions to avoid proper nouns so as to make the strips “timeless” and reusable in the future
WIRED: Herb and Jamaal takes place in an extremely specific alt-timeline where Star Wars-style droids are real and the subject of political controversy that elected officials need to field questions about at press conferences
170 replies to “C3P0 would be a great press secretary, actually”
Mr. Wilson is actually reacting in horror to the lake of his urine under the chair. And that it is black, as he has been consumed by all that is Menacing.
RMMD:
“Hon — you make me eat these too fast, I’ll be facin’ an eggsistential crisis!”
Wizard of Id:
“Mr. Yasgur? — now, you make sure those hippies sign your waiver, too, before they take over your farm for their festival in 1969!”
DtM What really sells this as menacing is the way that Dennis clambers up the back of the chair like a spider monkey to deliver that line right into Mr Wilson’s ear. Do you think he’s whispering it in a sing-song voice? I’ll bet he is.
Daddy Daze – it is about masturbation, right?
The Herb and Jamaal setup would hit harder if the writers could remember more than one line from Star Wars.
MW: Wilbur’s lone firing synapse gets a clue.
Today’s H&J contains an outrageous bit of fantasy that breaks the suspension of disbelief – imagine if TV channels still showed movie marathons! Imagine if Disney deigned to let a competing provider show the Star Wars movies, thus reducing the value of the Disney+ streaming platform!
MW: Quick, Belle! Show your boobs! It’ll distract him, I promise!
DtM: Mrs Wilson’s smiling face makes the gag work. “Enjoy hell, George.”
(The Star Wars scene has the line “Move along, move along,” but H&J interpolated “Nothing to see here” from The Naked Gun.)
@Schroduck:
I truly do hate being THAT guy, but TBS shows Star Wars. Like, all the time, it’s kinda awesome!
9CL- Have the brilliant Overlook twins considered for even a moment that if Mary had returned Amos’s attention, they would never had been born? The twins should be thanking her, not cursing her. It’s the readers that should be cursing Mary.
H&J: More cutting then I thought on first read when you remember that it was prefaced as ‘working on the weak minded.’
RMMD: And *there* it is! Our beloved up nostril shot, complete with Beatty’s patented ‘I suppose!’ splayed finger hand gesture! I knew we wouldn’t be disappointed!
Luann: Well, there goes my ‘Shannon gets a well-deserved spanking’ idea. Instead we’re in for a glurgy ‘uptight bitch gets her heart melted through the power of imagination!’ storyline.
Blondie wasn’t expecting Dagwood to go on one knee to recreate his proposal and suggest a renewal of vows, was she? I expect she knows him better.
Luann: A billioniare buying a public library out of spite? Something tells me this kid is ready for the future.
CS: Still in bed? What are you talking about, lady? He just drove past me down the road and pulled up in his driveway!
RMMD: I wonder if Wanda is going to include that paper ziggurat thingie she sticks in her beehive hairdo as part of her bridal veil.
W of Id: “Sure pal. Since in the middle-ages neither of us could read or write, who cares?”
RMMD:
“Are you eggin’ me on, Wanda? — ’cause you’re startin’ to eggsasperate me!”
“Nah, but when this story arc ends, it’ll be ‘eggseunt omnes’ !”
@Guillermo el chiclero: In reality, Roger Bollen blew off Tom Batiuk twice before he first met with him “to make sure people are serious.” But Mr. Storyteller skipped this part of the story.
Is there a way to visually signify a medieval/early modern yeoman farmer? Because a serf wouldn’t have any responsibility and a noble would have the responsibility to take part in the battle.
Thel is back in the game. No way is she going to let Belle win the jutting contest.
Pluggers is disgusting on many levels today.
INSPIRED: Herb and Jamaal takes places in an extremely specific alt-timeline where diners still have portable televisions on the countertop
@pugfuggly: Ultra Menace: Mrs. Wilson is lifting Dennis up so he can deliver the line in a sing-song voice.
MW: “Wilbie”? Isn’t this couple disgusting enough already without the cutesy names? Cutesy names that mimic how Wilbur addresses his own daughter? Who Belle is still trying to kill?
Pluggers: Based on he-Plugger’s expression, I think that finger is going in something other than his ear.
Luann: Wesley Crusher, Fred Figglehorn, Steve Urkel, Sam McKinney, Scrappy Doo, Caillou. By which I mean “get the kid off the stage NOW.”
DtM: Mr. Wilson is in Purgatory, because he was always mean to children in his life. He didn’t actively harm them (OK, maybe emotional when he got into one of his yelling rants), so it didn’t warrant eternal punishment. Dennis is the Purgatorial case agent assigned to Mr. Wilson, and he’s certain that one of these days Mr. Wilson will come around so he can finally ascend.
WoI: I know he’s not a medieval peasant because he’s not talking about ladies in lakes distributing swords as a way of determining governance.
Wizard of Id:
Medieval peasants didn’t own the fields. That’s why they were peasants and not farmers. A more realistic strip where Sir Carpwright, the Earl of Pembroke or some-such, rides up with a retinue and demands a fee for fighting on his landholdings and displacing his serfs would probably be about as not funny as the actual strip.
The Wizard of Id: “Put a shirt on!” [Farmer puts shirt on] “Okay, is that better?” [Gets run through by sword]
Okay Wizard of Id, I know you beat Hagar the Horrible to the whole faux-medieval shtick by a decade, but they have the whole battlefield joke beat on lockdown. Your thing is jokes about kings and other powerful figures, and the prisoners they keep locked up, secure in their castles on the core European continent, while they handle the ragtag armies of Scandinavian barbarians come to take your characters’ wealth. Know your strengths and stick to your turf. I helped fend off those 20th century insurgents, the least you could do is return the favor for me.
Luann: Shannon’s not wrong. Bernice’s hair is kinda… ugh.
CS: Actually, he interrupted them having sex. You can tell because she’s wearing a pearl necklace.
9CL: Brooke won’t ever get over that girl who turned him down in high school, will he?
Dustin: So the formula is to present sad unlikable characters, and then have the authorial voice bully and humiliate these dislikable characters on a daily basis? This strip is so darkly psychotic it makes even 9CL seem edifying.
MW: “Cut!! No!! The line is, ‘What a story, Maahrk!'”
FC: “I’m just glad God didn’t smite you dead because I forgot.”
Dustin: “I can tell you where the nearest bridge is, so you can throw yourself off of it.”
DT: Is the returning authour playing at one-upping the guest writer? Oh, anyone can notice custom shoes – let’s go for antique buttons that were only ever made for one tailor! (Although I suspect a deliberate plant by trying-to-be-clever Thief Personality.)
MW: Good lord “Wilbie” the damn goldfish catches on faster than you…
H&J: “We seem to be made to suffer. It’s our lot in life.”
Wizard of Id: I once read a historical novel set in Europe in feudal times and the clashing armies indeed did fight in skirmishes all over the place, including in the fields the peasants were working. They had to get out of the way.
Ziggy: With BritBox, you say “Oi!” It’s BrisBox that makes you say “Oy!”
@Gareth Klieber: I mean, you’re right. Serfs/peasants/farmers had no power. If the king says “We’re using this field for war!” the farmer who owns that field would have to just suck it up.
I do like how Wilbur’s eyes have now gone blank and beady. The infection has spread. Oh, Pod People, you’ve made a horrible selection. This is even worse than when you tried to make a world of Chickenfoot fans
@taig: WoI: Or sending the knight on a random side-quest.
Wrecks Moregone:
Oh, Lorry, wait till she’s in your driver’s seat, strips your gears, and dumps you in the scrapyard.
________________________________
Wary Morth 1:
“Oh, Wilbie Hon, even I know that goldfish, even chameleonic brown goldfish, aren’t sea fish! Do you mean to say that you murdered Stellan by keeping him in salt water ?”
________________________________
Wary Morth 2:
“Maybe Dawn was right about you! Wait, no, that would mean she’s right about something, which would mean she can’t possibly be my daughter!”
If you’re brave enough to approach two armed factions who are about to kill each other and present them with paperwork, you should be crowned the new king. Or given a shirt. I’m good with it either way.
***
Look at Mrs. Wilson’s face. After decades of marriage to a joyless crank she’s deliberately bringing Dennis over hoping to trigger a cardiac event and bring some contentment to her life.
My guess is that the author of “Herb and Jamaal” heard someone at a party saying that Andor had some eerie similarities to our current political climate, but instead of fascism he thought “press conferences about droids”
GT: Poor Inma. Not only is she apparently defending the side of the pitch instead of her goal, she has flippers for hands and–oh the humanity–the field lines pierce her right ankle in a tragic case of erasurish forgetterish!
“Look, Dennis, we’ve gone over this. We just can’t afford to send you to a sleep-away summer camp. But if you could find someone else willing to pay, we’d consider it.”
@Gareth Klieber: #21:
@anon: #36:
@The Rambling Otter: #38:
During William the Conqueror’s funeral the procession decided to take a shortcut through a field. William had gotten obese before he died, it was in the middle of summer, his bloated carcass was getting really rank, so they were in a real hurry to bury him. A peasant farmer, who was apparently a landowning free yeoman berated the nobles for trampling his crops. One of the nobles quickly dismounted, haggled a price for the damaged crops with the farmer, and gave him a sack of coins so the funeral could proceed.
MW panel 3: “…we’d better have a lot of sex today before I ask you to leave.”
MW: Anybody else creeped out by how Wilbur didn’t call his adult daughter by the diminutive “Dawnie” until his lover started doing pet names with him? And how that intersects with his comfort rocking the sheets with someone he’s accepted has to be taught what to do with pet fish like a kid? Just me?
FC: Thel’s face says; “Oh, great. Now I have to sit here twice as long.”
FC: Thel says; “PJ got a splinter yesterday and it really hurt. No thanks to you!“
DtM – If that don’t suit ya, that’s a drag….
WoI – We few – we unindemniifed few….
H&J – That barroom scene shows where uncontrolled immigration leads….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
MW: Notice how Wilbur is referring to Dawn in the past tense. Belle has already killed her, but Wilbur “Lord of the Idiots” Weston just thinks that she’s moved in with Mary. Or Cathy. Or her mother. The important thing is, she’s not here to interrupt his sex life.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: DON’T POINT THAT THING AT ME!
@CanuckDownSouth: It’s creepy that Belle and Wilbur mimic each other with the pet names, and that Wilbur uses them with his adult daughter, and infantile it all is. Though I don’t remember which of them started this practice.
H&J: The line would have worked for political commentary if it had been “these are not the drones you’re looking for.” It’s not accurate to the movie, but neither is “nothing to see here.”
Wizard of Id: A more realistic version would see a defense lawyer presenting the would-be skirmishers with a writ of trespassing on behalf of the rodents living in the field. Medieval animal law is a complex and fascinating topic, but Wizard of Id resolutely pledges to never be distracted by anything complex or fascinating.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Ugh! My apple has a worm! The horror!”
“It’s not enough to wreck my apple, I have to get a Marlon Brando wannabe!”
@Guillermo el chiclero: Awwww, how very kind of him :3
@The Quiet Man:
On Luann : I’m thinking this is going with “Bernice ends up being the first adult to successfully tame Shannon, simply by refusing to play along and ignoring her”, which would be even worse.
I’d prefer “Bernice stakes her credibility as a psychologist that she can get Shannon to behave, Shannon has essentially destroyed the entire house while she wasn’t looking”. With the understanding no consequences would come of it (Shannon remains a Brat, Bernice remains
deluded that she isan authority in psychology/being smart, and the house is completely fine when the DeGroot parents return.MW: Only when it personally affects him does Wilbur start to get second thoughts. What a precocious little scamp, like Les Moore and Shannon from Luann.
@CanuckDownSouth @Banana Jr. 6000: Wilbur has been seeking out younger and younger love interests. Remember how Meagan looked like she could be Dawn’s older sister? Either he’s as much of an ephebophilic as Ian (when did the Camerons last get any non-Wilbur related focus?) or he’s going through a middle age crisis but skipping past the self care because he thinks every woman wants him.
Blondie: Cole Porter fans will get the joke. Everyone else, not so much.
You’re sublime
You’re a turkey dinner
You’re the time of a Derby winner
I’m a toy balloon that’s fated soon to pop
But if, baby, I’m the bottom
You’re the top
@CanuckDownSouth: I’m sorry, I was so busy being creeped out by Wilbur having a lover to begin with, that I didn’t pay attention to the specifics. You were saying?
Historically speaking, it would not be uncommon for a landholder to request for prior indemnification from warring armies before permitting a battle on their lands. This was, in fact, a minor clause in the early drafts of the Magna Carta and, of course, a standard way of raising the Danegeld. So, for a change, we should be praising the historicity of The Wizard of Id and . . . no, I can’t go on . . . it’s too silly . . . the Vikings and the Idiots look at each other, kill the farmer, and then kill each other. Bloody peasants.
Wizard of ID-The farmer gets the corpses and any valuables they have on their bodies.
MW-Oh sure. Attempted murder of a fish will convince Wilbur.
Dennis the Menace – When you are out of school for decades and you have no children or grandchildren, the rhythms of the school year get lost. Mr. Wilson will be at the next school board meeting, demanding a form of year-round school.
Wizard of Id – Hagar and the Wizard of Id have never been in the same syndicate, so the chances of a cross over of the strips is unlikely to come to fruition. At this point the decline of newspapers, and their comics, as a cultural force renders this moot.
Herb and Jamaal – Creator Stephen Bentley has vaguely heard that Star Wars has been politicized, and rather than get into the nuances, (or even the broad strokes) of the dynamics that race and gender play into it, he took the few quotes he could remember and made it into weak attempt at a Doonesbury-like strip.
While Herb and Jamaal is far from the consciousness of the reactionary forces driving the culture war debate, if the algorithm puts this on the wrong timelines Bentley could find himself removed from newspapers by a boycott of people who have never subscribed to a newspaper, or indeed read one in print.
MW: Slowly, ever so slowly, the primitive brain inside the pink behemoth begins to stir with a growing sense of threat…the female creature is not what she seems…she is “not-the-mother,” “not-the-mate,” but a COMPETITOR FOR RESOURCES – a leering hostile presence. The behemoth’s piscine companion was snatched from the creature’s maw not a moment too soon, at which point he began to realize his lair is not safe from this monster with spiked hair like a demented, half-rotten kiwi fruit with a flop of wet straw half-covering the creature’s face. And the behemoth realized, groggily at first, that his only offspring was right to avoid this menace with the leering mouth full of teeth and…the eyes…ye gods, those maniacal eyes!
@2+2=7: Yeah, that’s my reaction too. No woman of any age should want this disgusting clown. Estelle was age-appropriate for Wilbur, and we saw how fast Wilbur torpedoed that relationship just by being himself. If anything, the much younger Belle makes more sense for Wilbur, since she’s an obvious trailer park escapee who’d be looking for a comparatively wealthy older man. So everybody gets what they want, I guess?
CS: Too bad Crankshaft isn’t taking a load of kids to an end of the school year pizza party at Montoni’s and runs over Skip and Batton.
BTW: Where is Crankshaft?
@Bob Tice: #19
“Nah, but when this story arc ends, it’ll be ‘eggseunt omnes’ !””
Alluding to the lost/discarded play of Shakespeare, “Omelet,” the “toast of Denmark”…
H&L: In further proof that real life has moved beyond parody, Herb and Jamal is non-ironically doing political commentary on the level of the DJ-3000 from The Simpsons.
WoI: It’s not your field; you’re just a serf who was ordered by his feudal lord to negotiate terms with the armies on his land. You probably don’t even know what that fancy piece of parchment in your hands says.
@Banana Jr. 6000: #66: And to seal the deal, Belle will have a kid by Wilbur before divorcing him, guaranteeing her 18 years of child support payments and his condo.
REX MORGAN M.D.: Hey remember that episode of The Simpsons where Lisa was disappointed with her talking Malibu Stacy doll because it kept saying things that were sexist and demeaning, but Marge didn’t see anything wrong with it and then suggested they “forget our problems with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream”, only for Lisa to pull the doll’s string where it says the exact same thing?
What made me bring that up suddenly, during a strip where Wanda wants her fiance to eat his food rather than discuss the new (and possibly unpleasant) change in their relationship? Oh…no reason….(whistles inconspicuously and then walks away)
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): Wanda: “Come on. Our upcoming marriage is already getting off to a great start with you codifying me as ‘your waitress’ and you being my glorified freeloader.”
The Meaning of Lila: In today’s reprint, the protagonists confirm that they do not care for looking at corpses.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I find it difficult to accept that anyone missed Animal Crackers after Bollen died.
On the plus side, Batuik has achieved a first: I am amused daily by his inclusion of Stereotype 1970s Guy. That hair! The mustache! It’s like Sonny Bono is back from the dead and we can watch him ski into that tree all over again!
C’shaft: Wait, didn’t yesterday’s strip imply that Battom had pissed off Roger on the road while on the way to his house? I suppose it could have been the wife driving the car, but that would give woman an active role in this narrative and when’s the last time Batiuk did that?
DT: I wish this was leading to a time-traveling art thief, but we all know that concept is way too interesting for Dick Tracy. Someone should pitch the idea to Christopher Nolan, though; I bet he could make something of it.
Dustin: In fairness, even if Dustin had health insurance it probably wouldn’t cover hypnotherapy, so this is the best he can do.
JP: And now it comes out: Abby doesn’t want Sophie stressing about her impending international move because she needs her to stress about whatever is important to Abby right now.
MW: Wilbur is trying to outdo Belle’s crazy eyes. Being Wilbur, he fails miserably at it.
There was an episode of Clone Wars where C3PO actually got to fulfill his primary function of protocol master for a banquet given by Senator Amidala. Now I kinda want to see him at a press conference.
FG: ”Soft hands?” After all this time on Mongo, battling hairy renegade Brother Leaders and getting kidnapped, you’d suspect Dale would have developed some calluses. Meanwhile, Flash is thinking “So, you’re ME, but 50 years older?….I think I got this.”
DT: “Off to steal the most famous American painting of the twentieth century! What to wear, what to wear…Ah! My hand-stitched 1915 smoking jacket! Perfect!”
Mary Worth – Well, that took long enough.
Bliss – He forgot the #&@¢%# rabbits. Oh, wait – they’re all in my yard, eating all the flowers.
Frazz – Yes, if anyone is an expert on empathy, it’s Frazz and Caulfield.
JP – I need you to hack into another drone.
Last Kiss – When holier than thou Grandma met Thel for the first time.
@Poteet, yLuann: Which leads to…. “Who did he fuck that his sperm was able to fertilize?”
@TheDiva:
Wow! How does it keep up with the news like that?
@Ukulele Ike: #72: Actually, back then Batiuk looked like a stereotypical 70s guy.
Pluggers – Well, there went my appetite.
FC – Good grief, don’t tell holier than thou Grandma about this. She’ll go on and on about it forever and never let Jeffy forget it.
Fifteen years from now:
Jeffy: What a bummer. I didn’t get accepted at my first choice college.
HTT Grandma: Aren’t you sorry you forgot to say your prayers that night?
Looks Good On Paper – And let me introduce Michael Rockefeller.
Too soon?
FC/MW: Thel Keane to Belle Batsfrey, “Fuck you, bitch! Get a load of these puppies!”
@Banana Jr. 6000: I keep wondering how Wilbur seems to have so much money between having to pay for Dawn sleeping her way through college (she doesn’t exactly seem to be raking in the scholarships, especially since she’s seemingly stopped working and took a leave of absence to go to Connecticut), a condo in Southern California, and multiple vacations on his salary as an advice columnist/extorter of others’ survival stories. I think you suggested that his ex-wife pays him alimony purely so that he stays away from her but it does have a limit on how much he gets from it and it would end if he got remarried since alimony is mostly used as a means to keep someone in a certain lifestyle for a certain period of time. Either Wilbur is living beyond his means or Moy doesn’t know how money works.
@TheDiva: Re Crankshaft and when was the last time Batiuk gave a woman an active role in his strips: Would that be when the female cartoonist whose name I don’t remember received a prestigious award, and the ceremony was hijacked by the male cartoonist whose name I don’t remember announcing that he had faked his own death?
@Banana Jr. 6000: Was Estelle “age-appropriate” though? I’d always assumed that Estelle was a bit older than Wilbur (Wilbur was just on the SilverDater site because he’d figures “Those old broads would be desperate”. And judging by Estelle’s storyline, he was right!) I would also point of that the woman that June Brigman is obviously photo-referencing (er…I mean “the woman Belle just coincidentally happens to look like”, of course) is actually in her fifties (and even in-universe, she doesn’t really look that young. Them crazy-eyes ages you something fierce!) But I don’t think there is anything age inappropriate about this relationship. I guess we’ll have to focus on the 20,000 other reasons why this couple is a match made in Hell.
@jnoble:
Do not. Praise. The machine.
Dennis the Menace-“We’ll be together forever and ever and ever.”
@2+2=7: Belle doesn’t seem to be more than five years younger by looks alone, maybe ten years younger if she’s in her mid-forties since Wilbur’s pretty set in his fifties with his college age daughter and his balding. That Meagan girl from earlier looked like she could almost be his daughter or niece since she looked like a slightly older version of Dawn with better hair.
Dustin-Dustin, if you want to improve your confidence maybe you should get away from all the toxic influences that surround you on a daily basis.
Does this land-owning farmer in the age of feudalism really think that he can compel warring armies to take legal responsibility for the damage they are about to cause? They’re just going to kill him! Excellent jape, Wizard of Id
@2+2=7: I think Estelle is easily within “half the older person’s age age plus seven”, which is a standard rule. To be fair, Belle could be too, since I put Belle at no older than 33 (because the 1991 Beauty And The Beast movie made the name popular) and Wilbur could be younger than he looks.
If it was a political news conference… why are our representatives in Congress spending taxpayers’ money to hire spokesmen doing spot-on Alec Guinness impressions?
Medieval history is such that “you need the written authorisation of the field’s owner to battle there” is either “not at all how feudalism worked” or “exactly how feudalism worked”, no in between!
@Needless Exposition: I lived in greater Miami most of my life. Incompetent, lazy, middle-aged manchildren with six-figure revenue streams are a dime a dozen.
@Comrade Gordon: Anthony Daniels is still alive, right? I want to hire him just to re-enact presidential press conferences in character as C3P0.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Either I’m very lucky or deprived that I never met those kinds of people in reality.
WofI: Alternate theory: The battle has wandered across Id’s borders and is now being fought in an adjacent nation, one that has accepted 21st-century land-ownership principles. Let’s say…Manitoba?
@Ettorre: Better question: Why aren’t they? Because that would be hilarious!
@taig: 9CL: Ms. Rosenzweig (unpack the significance of that name, why don’t we?) was in fact originally Amos’s crush in middle school, if I’m not mistaken. So Edda’s family has sworn vendetta, and Edda is cheerfully oblivious to the fact that her daughters are psychopaths. I can’t even enjoy this strip as a hate read anymore.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Pluggers don’t have sex, and they want you to think very hard about how they’re not having sex.
@Needless Exposition: You’re lucky. Such men and their wives tend to be Karens as well.
Apple Annie – You’ll notice that Belle didn’t say no.
DT: A clue or a planted clue designed to frame someone – someone who knew enough to call DT and mention the smudge and button.
JP: Abby wants one more thing hacked before Norway.
GT: I know that Picasso and other great artists would deliberately draw and paint in a manner that was not anatomically correct or photorealistic. Those were conscious artistic decisions. But that last frame with the misshaped limbs and out of proportions makes me wonder who is actually doing the art. It looks the rough layout pencils were just colored without bothering to actually fix them up.
MW: Wilbur finally caught Belle in a compromising position, and his brain dulled by food and the recent surge of post-coital hormones is making a bold suggestion. What if Dawnie was correct? What if Belle is actually bad? What if mayonaisse isn’t that great a condiment? His world view is teetering.
RMMD: So why Wanda is talking with Truck – her orders are stacking up and getting cold. Not that different than what happened the RM Clinic!
@Banana Jr. 6000: Wilbie or not Wilbie – that is the question….
H&J: Neither of those lines were delivered by droids.
I RUIN JOKES
@Treadwell: I guess you haven’t seen the most recent cut of the movie, where it’s revealed all of the characters – except R2 and 3PO – are droids. Lucas just can’t stop meddling.
@Voshkod:
Also, the lightsabers? Walkie talkies
PHANTOM: Tomorrow we learn if yesterday’s whistle was a signal from lovelorn Manju or a lure from Rex ordering breakfast, “two large humans, over easy.”
MW: No, Belle won’t feature Willa as the *entrée for her seafood feast. She will instead prowl the koi ponds around Charterstone for her “Fish Florentine.”
*Willa will be on the hors d’oeuvre platter.
WoI: The farmer’s overalls are “the exact same shade of brown as the ground”? Sorry, Josh, I gotta call you on that. My enhanced color perception says his overalls are a puky green-tan, while the ground is a mildewy brown-beige.
@I speak Jive: That was awful.
@Tom T.: I only started reading 9CL after it got bad. Every time I see Mary in the strip, though, the level of hatred dumped on her is pretty strong. The previous time I remember her appearing, Amos, Edda, Seth, and Fernanda were all mocking her for not having a date.
R w/ O: grossest 6Chx I’ve seen in months.
S4th: Warning: do NOT compliment Ted.
ZITS: start practicing as a teen, because where you’re a supervisor you’ll need to change perspective each time you talk with an employee.
GA: Speaking of perspective, when working in the diner Clovia looks like a middle-aged chubby matron. This past week driving with Slim, she’s hot. Is it just in comparison to her husband?
DtM: That very well could be a toothache pose Mr Wilson has
H&J: Many Bothans died to give us this punchline.
Alas, it was all in vain.
Stop it. You know who you are. Just stop it
@The Quiet Man: Luann: Well, there goes my ‘Shannon gets a well-deserved spanking’ idea. Instead we’re in for a glurgy ‘uptight bitch gets her heart melted through the power of imagination!’ storyline.
Don’t worry, her heart will ice back up again before her next appearance. Bernice has never learned a lesson she didn’t immediately forget as soon as the arc was over.
Crank: Tom Batiuk, the man who can regurgitate a dull event from his own life into a comic strip and somehow include a continuity error! Remember, folks, it’s called writing!
DT: So I did a search for “Ernest Bembergan” to find out if this is a reference to something (because this is Dick Tracy and it’s always a reference to something). If it is, it’s not a direct one, but it must be, because Grandpa Google doesn’t even recognise “Bembergan” as being a surname, or a word. I can’t see a pun, so I started looking at anagrams, and I’m not having a lot of luck there either (there are several, but none of them seem to mean anything relevant. Although a few include the word “beer”, sometimes twice, which I might interprete as a message about the correct response to thinking about this too much, if I drank beer.)
FC: A.A. Milne did it better.
JP: You’d think that the fact everyone in this family is awful would be less annoying because they’re mostly awful to other awful people, i.e. each other, but it’s not!
OTF: In a move that shocks nobody, Comics’ Worst Creator’s Pet (yes, even more so than Wilbur Weston or half the Funkyverse) adds child labour to her list of crimes.
@Dennis Jimenez: Que será será…
Pluggers: It would make more *sense* for her to be checking him for ear mites
and then pecking them out.@NotThatStan: Yes, more green in the overalls
@Daisy:
“The whey’s the thing.”
I just got an automatic response which said “You’re typing too fast. Slow down” (but the comment posted anyway.) I type 140 words a minute. Is this new? — I haven’t seen it before. Does this mean I have to slow down?
Non-Sequitur is actually funny today.
And Steenz gives a shout-out to the original creator of Heart of the City.
@Banana Jr. 6000: May 28th, 2025 at 5:18 am Reply
MW: “Wilbie”?
_____________
Wilbies wobble but they don’t fall down.
@Comrade Gordon: C3PO would be nicer to the White House press corps than the current Harridan.
R2D2 would be easier for an earthling reporter to understand.
@matt w: OH LORD! That’s one disturbing panel.
Thanks for directing my attention to it.
Thanks a lot.
I might not be able to sleep tonight.
@Hibbleton: Good stuff. Now I’m off to Hi and Lois to find out if even the janitor’s wife has a perfectly good love life.
Blondie – That’s a perfectly terrible pairing of metaphors. For a moment there, I was sure Dagwood was saying he likes hot fudge sauce on his hoagies.
DtM: Damn but is it ever easy to bully George out of his chair. No wonder the Wilsons don’t have any pets.
H&J: Okay, I’ll bite. When do politicians talk about droids? Now if Herb said he was watching a docuseries about a Motorola distributor…
@Bob Tice: I get that occasionally. I think the spambot assumes that if you hit post too quickly, you’re a bot.
C-Shaft: Yeah, uh, Batton? You already passed him on the road. Think about this for a second. The fact that his wife is telling you blatant lies is not a good sign.
DT: “Okay, let’s go arrest this Bembergan guy. If we make him sweat for a few hours he might tell us something.”
Dustin: I look forward to Hayden’s career as a fraudulent faith healer, however long it lasts. Dustin should get in on this. It could net him enough money to get him some action before it all comes crashing down.
GT: It looks like the horse girl that Keri’s not supposed to be friends with is on the field, and she vaguely knows soccer has something to do with feet.
JP: As long as Sophie doesn’t have to decrypt anything or help anyone, go ahead and ask.
Luann: Bernice should get in the habit of wearing a wig for that inevitable moment when Shannon wants to “fix” her hair.
MW: Well yeah, if she’s acting like Wilbur’s jokes are funny then that’s one more red flag.
Pluggers: Obviously—and to no one’s surprise—this is a joke about the sex lives of married Pluggers being nonexistent. But really, one less couple referring to it as “playing doctor” is a relief, regardless of whether they’re Pluggers or not.
A&J; Oh, that is COLD, Gene.
@UncleJeff: Yeah, he could have thought about it and not said it. His old man isn’t the type to take offence, though.
@Dr. Pill: Huh, I had missed the “Tatulli” thing in HotC but it’s kinda cool. For some reason Tatulli himself had never given Dean a surname.
@Voshkod: yea, I get that if I accidentally double-click the “post” button.
Phantom: “Dad, I’m going to be the first gay phantom!”
@Lord Flatulence: Ooooooooo! I can’t WAIT to watch him showering with his husband!
There was this cute little game I once played “Of Mice and Sands” where you guide a bunch of mice on a desert alien planet (which is obviously supposed to be a pastiche of Tatooine)
One event you might encounter is that your mice might run into C3PO and R2-D2 or at least droids that look a lot like them (because lawyers) you can either sell them or scrap them for parts.
@pugfuggly: If I’ve learned one thing in my parenting career, it’s that you never known when a loaded kid might go off.
@Bob Tice: Reverend Jim to Bobby: “What does a yellow light mean?”
@Lord Flatulence: Just don’t go gaying up the uniform….
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: SLOW DOWN!
@It’s not a coincidence: I don’t know who I am.
@Astroboy: I was gonna give him two synapses, but your idea came first and best.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Are most of them married?
WIZARD OF ID — Is that bare soil? Maybe rethink your land management, farmer.
@The Rambling Otter: I actually got jumpscared by them. My cute little mice are driving a large vehicle across the desert, and then suddenly C3PO and R2D2 appear on the screen taller than the vehicle… I called it a jumpscare because for a split second I didn’t know what I was looking at… and was completely taken by surprise.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I was reminded of a Winnie The Pooh cartoon back in the 90’s. The characters were acting out a Spaghetti Western scenario. Tigger and Pooh were outlaws.
Tigger: I am the Tigger with no name…
Pooh: I am the Pooh Bear with a name, now if only I could remember what it was…
Winnie the Pooh fans/purists have have pointed out, the name in question is “Edward Bear”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: That is not a coincidence.
@Daisy: I don’t know, Daisy; koi ponds sound too “exotic” for Frau Worth to approve of.
@Dennis Jimenez: Rainbow shorts!
@Lord Flatulence: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
A&J: Dark but probably true, barring really major unpleasantness. There’s a great conservation nonprofit that knows the same thing about me. Har.
@TheDiva: Thank you. Very much.
GA: As I pointed out yesterday, GA, you have made it clear that you neither know nor understand what chicken tractors really are and do, so the time has come to shut up about them. Please.
LUANN: If living chez DeGroot means having to look after Shannon on demand, Bernice, I’d try hard to find another residence.
@Poteet: #155
Okay – you made me look, mostly because I guffawed at the phrase “chicken tractors,” and expected to see a chicken driving a tractor, which would be par for the course with GA. And then I remembered that I first heard about this when I read Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the chapter about Joel Salatin and Polyface Farm and his method of carting his chickens around new areas of free-range foraging and that really intrigued me. I guess what I’m trying to say is that GA is not my go-to source for agriculture best practices.
@Daisy: I prefer NASCAR chicken tractors.
@Needless Exposition: #150
You may be right…it’s conceivable, however, that Bats-in-the-belfry might sneak into the Santa Royale Municipal Aquarium in the middle of the night and return with a mouthful of cephalopods and crustaceans for her “seafood” feast. Won’t that be a tasty treat for Wilbie!
@82 Needless Exposition: How does Wilbur afford his extravagant lifestyle? Payments from his Connecticut-based ex-wife to stay away from New England and those from the Women’s League of Southern California for Wilbur to stay out of Los Angeles and Orange counties. Easiest fundraising ever for the latter–they just showed a picture of Wilbur frolicking in his Speedo and the money tsunami flowed.
@102 Treetown: on Mary Worth: I just realized that two words I don’t like to appear in a sentence are “Wilbur” and “post-coital.” Hell, add anything “-coital” to that realization.
@108 Daisy: “Willa will be on the hors d’oeuvre platter.” A flaming pu-pu platter, perchance?
@131 Artist formerly known as Ben: on Gil Thorp: Do human arms contort into those positions in the second panel? I’ve never seen it in my reality, at least for arms attached to living bodies.
@141 Dennis Jimenez: How much more gay could the uniform get? Change the stripey drawers to a rainbow print? A bright pink codpiece?
@151 Lord Flatulence: Ninja’d!
@Rube: Okay.
Whaaat…..doessss…..a…….yehhh-loooow…..liiiiiiiight……meeeeeean?
@159 Daisy: Bats-in-the-belfry might sneak into
the Santa Royale Municipal AquariumMary Worth’s deep freeze in the middle of the night and return with a mouthful ofcephalopods and crustaceansassorted cephalopod and crustacean floor sweepings for her “seafood” feast.@Poteet: Well, they often have women of some sort. Women much like Belle, now that I think of it.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Bwahahaha!
@Voshkod:
You must be right. It’s interesting, though, that the comment went through, as opposed to being held for moderation.
WoI: Late I know, but it came to me that this hayseed looking character may not even be a farmer at all, he’s just literally a guy who owns a field.
@The Rambling Otter: At least in Garfield, Jon’s Dad always carried a pitchfork around him to hammer in the point (in his official profile art, and in one gag where Jon and Garfield go into a spooky old house after their car breaks down while driving to his parents home. In the house it gets creepier and creepier then a door starts knocking, they open it and a shadowy figure with a pitchfork emerges and… it’s Jon’s Dad who came looking for them.)
@Baja Gaijin: #164
GAAAA!!! Well, we knew Mary’s infamous “salmon squares” would end up on the menu somewhere…