Interpersonal relations and their discontents
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Pardon My Planet, 7/15/25
My least favorite Pardon My Planets (which is really saying something) are the “Ha ha, gender relations, amiright folks?” ones, but I gotta say I kind of enjoy the face on the diamond salesman here. He’s like “Ah shit ah fuck this is going south fast, I gotta … I gotta not be here. How can I get out of here without them noticing. Think, man, think.”
Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/15/25
Oh no! Truck’s maybe-son is, like his maybe-dad, a journeyman session musician who hasn’t even gotten the financial benefits of a viral TikTok hit, so he had to shell out for the discount DNA service where you just get back the raw data and have to do the analysis and comparison yourself. Excited for a week of sweaty Googling and increasingly puzzling interactions with ChatGPT!
Mary Worth, 7/15/25
“Now, I, a sixtysomething man, don’t experience emotions at all, of course. Like remember the time you cruised a guy at his own mother’s funeral and then made up a pretext to temporarily dump me so you could date him? Or all the times you rejected my marriage proposals? Or the time you banished me from your condo by taking in a cat? I didn’t feel anything about any of that stuff when it happened, and I definitely don’t feel anything about it now! Ha ha!”
120 replies to “Interpersonal relations and their discontents”
PMP: Did he have to have his hand in his pocket as he ponders the “hardest thing known to man?” Comics are filth.
“So, is there a 50% match?”
“That’s weird. It says we have a 100% match. So they either analysed a sample two times or I am your clone”
“I am not comfortable with bringing up cloning. In this universe, Buck exists”
I’m adamantly against Pardon My Planet.
Dustin: The last panel was originally going to have Meg say “That’s nice, Dustin, but I’m still not having sex with you.” but the syndicate rejected it.
PMP:
“This diamond was formed under intense heat and pressure — 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, and 825,000 pounds per square inch. It will mirror our perception of the crushing, unbearable, blistering tension that our relationship will have brought to one another!”
“She must a teenager by now?” Guess Dr. Jeff is on “Team Not to Be.”
RMMD:
“It would probably help if I were to push the ‘Ctrl + Alt + Delete’ buttons to actually bring up the screen!”
PMP: The comics have given us a lot of disturbing images over the years, but the Pardon My Planet guy having a massive erection at the mall is a new, horrifying low.
MW: How long has this conversation been going on? A week already? A week of chit chat, and Dr Jeff only just realised that girl he knew a decade ago is probably a teenager now?
MW: I’ve never noticed this before, but Dr. Jeff truly is just Wilbur with a thinner face and different hairline, and without glasses. Is that why Mary’s always defending Wilbur to the death?
I love that something medical is finally happening in Rex Morgan, M.D., and Rex is nowhere in sight. He’s probably pretty happy with that too.
Blondie: Never mind Dagwood not getting free food. How can we DustinDad Boomers ridicule teenagers if they get real tech and marketing jobs rather than flipping burgers?
MW: Why is Mary emphasizing KEPT? Why is Jeff emphasizing EMOTIONS? And while we’re at it, WHAT the HELL are these people EATING?!!
MW:
“And how would you describe the ‘territory,’ Jeff?”
“Perfectly flat and seemingly without boundaries — you know, like the metropolitan Detroit area!”
MW: Oooooo, “emotional hurdles.” That sounds promising. Are we getting some foreshadowing that PImento is going to make Madi and whatever the vegan Hillend girl’s name was look like Pollyannas?
MW: I see Mary has claimed the only chair, leaving Jeff to kneel at the table in her presence.
PMP: And the fact that I have the ring on my middle finger is also a reflection of our relationship.
MW: It never gets old seeing the sight of Dr. Jeff crying at the sight of a pussy(cat).
Anyway, we’re experiencing a similar effect of the past few stories where something exciting should be happening but instead Moy drags out the most excruciating details while skimming through the real action. Next week will be all about packing for the trip as Mary decides just what kind of purple cowl-like sweater she should bring. Then it’s a taxi ride to the airport…and then the flight…don’t expect to see Mary’s teenage dream until mid-August.
@Charterstoned:
Looks like Splak! with hamburger gravy.
PMP: Based on years of experience, the salesman knows that the only way this sale is going through is if the guy is restrained on the floor while his credit card is pried from his wallet.
RMMD: The FBI comes to the door to speak about DNA found at a long dormant rape/homicide investigation.
PMP: I do appreciate that instead of making some crack about the cost, this guy is starting to wonder if he even wants to go on. As he ponders this dilemma, a single tear traces a curly path down his cheek.
@Astroboy: Nah, Madi had legit reasons to be moody and ill tempered considering literally everyone downplayed her problems to the level of a dog once being homeless. Sonia is just a twenty year old spoiled brat whose promiscuous mother never told her “no” just like every man she was ever with.
CS: So after two entire meals at Montoni’s, Skip has gotten his interview from “when you went to New York to get a comic book job” to “just after you went to New York to get a comic book job.”
MW: Seriously, what are they eating? Baja, is this meal something you found on the interweb? It’s thick like brownies in that baking dish, suggesting a casserole, and then pools to brown and flat on the plate, but then turns white on the fork…! And so far, Mary is only drinking what looks a little too much like blood from that glass—a glass that has stayed full for lo! these many days. Are we witnessing some sort of ritual sacrifice?
Crankshaft : Wait, why is this interview randomly bouncing around chronologically like this? We went from Bat
iukTON THOMAS being a child, then being rejected by the Big Two of comics, then starting to find success with Three O’clock High, then back to him being a child and thinking a paper mill was a literal comic book factory, then to him meeting the Animal Crackers guy, then to him quitting his teacher job to devote himself to comic strips full time, then back to him immediately after being rejected by the Big Two.Why is this interview still going is also a pertinent question*************
Frazz : Oh, now I get what happened yesterday. Mrs Olsen was saying “OH NO I MADE A MISTAKE” on JEF MALLET’s behalf, and the mistake was “Mrs Olsen agreed with Frazz that exercise is a good thing, and even challenged him to a race”. Can’t have THAT character exhibiting sympathetic traits, she has to IMMEDIATELY walk it all back!
**************
Pardon My Planet : If I wanted a shallow relationship being described with really pretentious vocabulary in the service of a bad sex joke, I’d go to 9 Chickweed Lane.
**************
Rex Morgan M.D. :
a) “It doesn’t. Turns out we’re not related. Can I still get a guitar gig with you? No? Storyline over I guess! *UP NEXT : BUCK GETS PUNCHED UNCONSCIOUS*”
b) oh, so that’s how they’re going to draw this storyline longer; these two idiots are going to be incapable of interpreting the DNA test, and are going to need (long, drawn out) help to do so.
MW: “She must… a teenager by now be.” Dr Jeff lets his Elizabethan accent slip for a moment. Mary gives him a look. “Save it for the bedroom, dear.”
FC: “Featherbedding. Now shut up.”
PearlsBS Well Rat, it’s the kind of LED bulb that says “60 Watt equivalent” right on front of the package and in the mini description that comes up on an internet search – Amazon Basics, Phillips, Great Value… they all lead with that. Goat’s got a point!
MW Is it my imagination or are Dr Jeff’s eyes a bit excited/wide? Mary’s maybe a bit, but not as much as when she was packing. Did Brigman have a bit too much fun drawing crazed-eyes Belle and is having a tough time with normal expressions now?
MW: Dr Jeff looks fairly placated and sedated a lot of the time…
I’m not judging — hell, I GET IT, Doc — it’s merely an observation…
@Charterstoned: Jeff is eating a puddle of gravy.
In the remarkable Depression Comix by Clay, depressed characters are identified to the reader by a wrinkle under one eye. It’s a long shot, but maybe Pardon My Planet is pivoting into grim melodrama with an unexpectedness and unearnedness unseen since Ctrl-Alt-Del did it.
Mary Worth: “She must be a teenager by now. Emotions go with the territory. The walls are khaki, you’re going to see Olive. I eat with my left hand. Mary’s salmon squares are good!”
“Your rehab from the stroke is coming along nicely, dear.”
Bizarro: And what better place to buy a perfect diamond like that than from a direct seller store, in that it seems to be located within a diamond mine.
RMMD: I know that this strip over describes everything it does, but in this case it really makes it sound like an obvious fraud. “Here’s the website…and now I’m putting in the password…and here are the results…wow, it says here that you are super-duper my dad! It’s funny how these new websites looks just like a powerpoint file. It’s not, though.”
MW: “Yeah, it’s a shame that teenagers can’t deal with their emotions the way that adults do. Hold on, I think I can still fit another milliliter of wine in this glass. Garçon? GARÇON??”
@LTJpezcore1: Not just that. Lauralot pointed out that Dr. Jeff also has a bit of a resemblance to Wilbur so she’s essentially incapable of not drawing crazy eyes or Wilbur.
Pardon My Planet: “I mean, sure, you could get Wurtzite boron nitride, which is 18% harder than diamonds and unlike diamonds is actually an extremely rare naturally occurring crystal produced in volcanoes, rather than extracted from mines through hellish quasi-slave labor, but you know, it’s kind of pricey on a Game Stop salary.”
MW: Aw, that is so cute, Dr. Jeff’s right hand is holding Mary’s left hand under the table.
RMMD: Ok, so they got a raw data dump. “Hmm, in the Major Histocompatibility Complex your HLA only matches one of mine.”…hmmm
DT: Did the guy shot in the opening sequence die? Or was he just ultra-tased? Why go to DT and not the Mayor? Does the IBEW want to get to an answer but keep it quiet?
JP: Good tradecraft – walk into a known dangerous situation and possible trap, no back up, no baby-sitter, and the plan was just to tip over the table. Cartoonish bad guy meanwhile makes typical cartoonish bad guy error of explaining his scheme when the opposition has time to react. Did no one pay attention to Ozymandias in Watchmen? Was all of his work in vain?
Flash: So if that guy has a portable flying wing, couldn’t he just have glided onto the balcony ?
Is it too much to ask that Olive now uses her elite precognition skills for crime?
Mary: “I’m better now, but how did that mugger know I would walk by at that exact moment?”
Olive: [smiles knowingly]
@Uncle Lumpy: Nah, too busy predicting when the A Train will show up.
A generous reading of Pardon My Planet would be the boyfriend talking about the erection he’s getting thinking about their wedding night when they finally get to have sex. “Come on, Isabelle (or whatever her name is),” he’s thinking to himself, “it’s 2025, we don’t need to wait for marriage!”
***
Mary sure is talking up Olive, but everyone in Worth’s orbit knows the kind of people in her gravitational pull. The girl is going to be any combination of dull, witless, annoying, and arrogant. And those will be her good points.
PMP – Blonde Slacker is wondering if he should try making a barter offer with pot….
RMMD – What will the moving finger write on the wall? Be sure to drink your Ovaltine….
MW – As I understand it, she swallowed a watermelon seed and now has one growing in her belly. Well…that’s the story according to her tummy brain, and it’s sticking to it….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
MW: Rolling her eyes every time “Auntie Mary” wants to zoom isn’t emotions, it’s you. You talk like a couple of chatbots.
@treetown: On JP, I’ll give Ces and Manley this much. I didn’t expect the big action set piece to kick off now. I figured they’d drag out this ‘I’ve got you right where I want you, me proud beauty! Nyah-ah-aaaahh!!’ Snidely Whiplash bit until the Sunday spread.
@treetown: JP – agreed, the only thing that would partially salvage this insanity is if everyone in that cafe other than the barista, Sophie, and Neddy is an ally of April and they are about to all train weapons on the Bad Guy
I’d give a pass on FG not using the glider wing to get in, I assume you’d need to start from higher up and there wouldn’t be good spots to hop down onto the king’s tower anywhere nearby that aren’t hopefully under surveillance.
MW: After reading this strip’s slightly uncanny dialogue for years, I just realized that “Mary Worth” is created using AI. That’s right, this retro comic is at the cutting edge of the coming Machine Age.
Dustin has been so traumatized by his abusive family that he thinks his abusive sister is great.
@nescio:
I hate how everyone is drawn with dopey 90’s hair especially the guys
RMMD-“Boy we sure had fun with this story. If you want to have your DNA tested just submit a sample to 23andMe. What? They went out of business? Do we still get paid?”
Six Chix-Man her humor is so subtle and refine that us mere common folk are unable to get it.
FC-“Say, Thel. Watching these men wack a ball and forth with paddles is giving me an idea,” Daddy says.
@Tabby Lavalamp: Mary sure is talking up Olive, but everyone in Worth’s orbit knows the kind of people in her gravitational pull. The girl is going to be any combination of dull, witless, annoying, and arrogant. And those will be her good points.
If past is prologue, she will be an aspiring though untalented musician, having tried and abandoned such instruments as the guitar, xylophone, accordion, and tambourine before settling on her current endeavor, mastering the pan flute.
“OK, so base pair 3275 for me is ‘ATCGGCTA’ but for you it’s ‘ATCGCGTA’! I ain’t your father, boy!”
“Dr. Morgan, is that how DNA works?”
“What? Uh, sure, if you sign a DNA that means we don’t, uh, keep you alive after an accident. Or is that a DNR? Hey, you know what they call the guy who graduates with the lowest grades in med school? ‘Doctor!'”
MW: We have to endure two dinner dates in a row with these two knuckleheads?
RMMD: The suspense is inconveniencing me.
PMP – “Don’t you mean ‘it’s the perfect REFRACTION of our relationship’? Ha ha!… You know, cuz a diamond is a prism…it refracts light…forget it. Let’s just go to Cinnabon.”
MW:Honestly, what do Mary and Jeff talk about besides Wilbur and the menu at the Bum Boat? Two strangers in an elevator know more about each other.
@Little Blue Bicycle: Honestly, what do Mary and Jeff talk about besides Wilbur and the menu at the Bum Boat? Two strangers in an elevator know more about each other.
I find that distributing name tags to elevator companions speeds up the process of becoming more than just chance-met strangers. On a long ride, say 20 stories, you can step in a strangers and step out as much, much more.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – This kid looks so much like Rex that, if we find out he really is Truck’s son (which I’m sure we won’t), does that mean that Truck is related to Rex?
It is my sincere hope that when Mary Worth arrives in New York City, Olive enlists her help in getting drugs, alcohol, an abortion, a tattoo, or any combination of the above without the consent of her parents.
Teenagers! Amirite?
RMMD – Hmm. According to these results, Truck, you’re 75% chimpanzee. Thought it would be higher, honestly.
MW – “Olive and I have kept in touch over the years. I never mentioned it until now because, well, you know… Wilbur Wilbur Wilbur!” And then they both laughed and laughed.
MW – “Yes, she must a teenager,” Mary replied thoughtfully. “And I… I must a teenager too!”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Hello? Acme Pet Supply? I want to turn my home into an aquarium!”
“That’s pretty ambitious, Don Abundio”
“How many fish tanks were you thinking of?”
“I’ll just fill the house with water!”
“That would never work”
“Oh no?”
“Maybe I should have called you sooner!”
JP: Trained operative April knows just the right moment to push the table into Ømulf’s coffee filled bladder.
“I hope you’re wearing Depends, Chump!!“
“This diamond, perfect in its cut and clarity, is just what we need for the tectonic doomsday device, our ultimate weapon! With it, we will make the Earth literally tremble! Uh . . . I mean, our relationship, lasting, yeah.”
“Look, Dr. Earthquake, I’m getting really tired of killed jewelry store clerks. Can you just shut up for a few minutes about the fucking tectonic doomsday device until we’ve made our demands to the United Nations?”
Pardon Our Planet: That’s a lot of karats for a dude who shops at the “Hipster” section of JC Penney to give to his girlfriend, who still fits in the outfits she bought at Hot Topic and Urban Outfitters before her local mall closed down. Meanwhile, the sales guy can’t believe he’s about to make his first big commission in weeks, and can have hot dogs in his Top Ramen tonight.
PMP: “Should I call 911 now or wait a few seconds?”
Either that or the ring salesman is like, “Damn, look at you, you sassy bitch!”
RMMD: “G… A… T… C… A… G… no, wait, I think I’m off by one. Guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to continue this. {Wink}”
MW: Here’s the most important question: does her Gran like colors?
Pardon My Planet – The diamond salesman thought being background in a syndicated newspaper comic would provide a nice boos to sales and ensure he got a nice quarterly bonus. He is ruing his lack of vetting what this strip’s whole vibe is.
Rex Morgan – I wonder if there are some outdated syndicate rules from a prior era that, in order to keep strips from encroaching on each other turf, (and confusing readers, and annoying newspaper editors), medical dramas needed to maintain a certain percentage of medically related content.
These rules probably went out of force for new comic strips around the 1970s, but the old guard were so used to them as norms that the contracts were never updated to remove them. The new generations that took over never had the clout to get rid of them, but found creative workarounds.
Sure, Rex is one of the few qualified medical people in the strip, but nothing in the rules say you can’t make your struggling musician characters try to understand DNA for a week to meet a quota, before making the story about your favorite subgenre of music again.
Mary Worth – Mary and Dr Jeff would be on the border of Boomer/Gen X age wise, but looking at the brimming full wine glass of Mary’s, and the Depression-Era grey steak Jeff is eating, they are still culturally Silent Generation in their diet. The only things missing is a pack of Lucky’s for Jeff and Virginia Slims for Mary
“She must a teenager by now.”
“Cut!”
“Goddamn it, we’re supposed to be off book by now, Greg. How the hell can you play Dr. Jeff if you can’t remember your lines!”
“Look, George, you expect us to remember this crap? Oh, she’s a teenager, emotions go with the territory? Who writes this shit?”
“Listen, you all figure this out, I’ll be in my trailer practicing my lines for tomorrow, because I’m a fucking professional, Greg!”
“No, everyone back to their marks and we’re doing this again. Mary Worth, July 15, Panel two, Take 18, and action!”
Desperately curious about how time works in Mary Worth… does anyone but Olive age? Is it an East-Coast/West-Coast thing, in which case did Wilbur age when he was in Florida? Did Dawn age while she was in Connecticut? Does Santa Royale have one of those “Cocoon” pools? Did some worldwide event freeze all adults at their current age while allowing children to age normally? Does aging just slow down dramatically sometime in the late teens/early 20s?
MW:
Jeff groaned inwardly. He could tell it was going to be another one of Mary’s…uncomfortable…dinners. It had started out as all her dinners did. Jeff knelt at his usual spot at the table, at Mary’s left. He had dutifully served their plates as Mary instructed, and he tried to keep up with her conversation concerning people she inexplicably cared about, but in whom he had no real interest. Every once in a while, he emphasized a word or two in his response, to make it seem like he was engaged in what she was blathering on about. That was all to be expected when Mary entertained. But tonight he was confused and troubled, much more so than usual. What WAS this dish? It wasn’t her usual offering of salmon squares: of that much he was certain. The one utensil Mary had allowed him was his long-handled cocktail fork, and he had used this unobtrusively to flatten the brown block of foodstuff that he had doled out from the baking dish. The brown substance, whatever it was, seemed malleable enough, and reminded him of many things—none of them good—but it had no detectable odor, and that fact alone ruled out many of his speculations but also made him even more wary of his meal. He waited, hoping Mary’s reaction to the whatever it was would offer clues as to its palatability, but she was still only drinking her wine. He idly wondered if she’d been spending too much time with Toby again. There was something else on his plate that also defied identification. Could it be tofu? It held together like tofu (something Mary knew he hated), but even so, tofu seemed an unlikely side dish for whatever the hell the brown stuff was. He hoped Mary wouldn’t notice that he had been holding his fork with the firm white blob impaled on it, poised mid-air as if he were about to eat whatever was on it without actually putting it in his mouth. He thought vaguely of his childhood, and times at the family dinner table when he had been forced to stay until he had finished all of his tofu. Back then, he’d figured out how to tuck it in between his back teeth and his cheek, until he could spit it into his napkin. But Mary had not provided a napkin. There was nothing to wash it down with, either, as Mary kept the wine all to herself. Jeff knew he would have to do SOMETHING with the tofu-like thing on his fork, but the very idea of having to resort to his old methods, tucking it into his cheek, made him gag involuntarily. Mary looked at him quizzically, over the rim of her wine glass as she sipped. She raised her eyebrows, and looked at his fork, expectantly. Then she looked at Jeff, unsmiling. He held the fork, his grip firm to master the tremble in his hand, and watched as the white thing came inexorably toward his opening mouth.
CS: “I found out that tree got tree cancer and died, which inspired me to write, uh, Lucy’s Story. But that’s a tale for another time.”
Luann: Most cartoonists choose a well-regarded story from the archives to rerun, but here it seems that Greg Evans just randomly clicked on the calendar and shrugged. I could be wildly misunderstanding the importance of or level of affection for these strips, though.
9CL: Is Alistair buying a car from his future son? I guess Brooke couldn’t be bothered to come up with an original look for this throwaway character.
FC: Exactly what kind of lifeguards do they have at Jeffy’s community pool?!?
Dustin: Meg can’t let Dustin think he’s anything but last in the family pecking order, but she exerted considerable willpower by not taking the obvious opportunity to make fun of Dustin in the last panel.
Pardon My Planet: Sir, please, this is not the time or place to be joking about how your girlfriend gives you a raging boner.
Mary Worth: I’m starting to think that Dr. Jeff and Mary’s relationship is built on some kind of weird pseudo-BDSM thing where Jeff gets off on being exploited, neglected, and emotionally abused by Mary. Its the only real explanation I can think of for why he hasn’t dumped her ass.
PmP: Hardest thing known to man? He’s talking about his penis, isn’t he.
GT: Whip out the waterguns? She’s talking about penises, isn’t she.
CS: So, he took a soggy maple leaf and put it in with his artwork — likely ruining it — as a promise to himself. Sure, Batty. At least he’s not talking about his penis.
@mskyle: I think it’s Soap Opera Aging – babies/ little kids and near-adult/adults have soapy roles (culmination of or impediment to romantic drama, and then their own romantic shenanigans). In between, they’re hard to fit so the kiddie character goes offscreen for a bit and then returns (recast) as a teen or young adult, then becomes set as an adult. Same idea – Olive ages because that takes her to the next level of stories, Dawn is frozen as they need a dependent young adult adjacent to Wilbur
Gasoline Alley: Wait, Slim isn’t at least a retired mechanic? This worries me, on behalf of all the people who drive away in cars he’s worked on.
GT: Please just watch a sixty second TikTok of characters in Ghibli animes hugging, I beg of you. These things can be drawn.
Zits: Admit it, we were all thinking “It’s my parents, copulating”.
Beetle Bailey: A cranky old white guy, with a drinking problem, in a failing marriage, trying to hold desperately onto power and his sense of self-worth, with all that war materiel in his home?
Signs approaching of ” ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” headline again.
FC: The lifeguard is there to provide medical aid to those middle-agers who start playing pickleball after a quarter century of only exercising the TV remote.
JP: That poor little old lady we saw sitting behind Bad Guy in yesterday’s strip is going to get coffee and mug shards all over her dowdy Kelly-green overcoat.
Crank: We New Yorkers don’t care for tourists who come to our town and pull the leaves off the street trees, Batuik. You’re lucky you didn’t go home with a fat lip and a boot in the ass.
The dialogue in Mary Worth frequently has bolded words, but their use here seems strange. Are they meant to indicate that those words are being emphasized? They seem so random. Are Mary and Dr. Jeff trying to send each other confusing romantic signals?
“KEPT TOUCH” … “DOING” … “SENSATIVE” … ” TEENAGER EMOTIONS“
MW/RMMD: I’m curious to see which of these two strips can go longer without actually getting to the point. I’m guessing Rex Morgan is going to fold first, as now that Truck and maybe-Truck Jr. have opened the DNA results nothing short of a power outage resulting in massive data loss can keep them from discovering the results, whereas Mary can drag out talking up her relationship with Olive indefinitely.
MW: After all this build up, I think the comic should skip to the day after Mary returns home, and then no one mentions the trip ever again.
Pardon My Planet-“By the way I’m impotent.”
Crankshaft-“After trying to break into Marvel I was on the run from the law I need a quiet place where no one would go to hide out.”
@Anonymous: Best. Idea. EVER.
It’s well accepted that comic strips will typically be stuck in whatever time period they started in to some degree or another, and Pardon My Planet really hits that home for me, having launched in 1996, the same year the movie Swingers came out in. The main male “characters” (and I use that term loosely as they have no distinguishing personality traits) have floppy hair and unflattering goatees that would fit in perfectly as background behind Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, and the humor is trapped in that same time like a sweaty 90s “women, am I right?” stand-up. Honestly, it makes me long for the quaint anachronisms of Andy Capp.
@Old School Allie Cat: Olive is Gil Thorp’s daughter?
C’shaft; Oh shut up, BatTom. Skip is not Francois Truffaut, and you sure as Hell aren’t Alfred Hitchcock.
Dustin: “Okay, I was trying to be nice, but since you put it that way: you’re a petty, mean-spirited brat who never has anything nice to say and yet insists on saying it anyway. You act like you’re superior to me, but what the Hell are you doing with your life? I may be chronically unemployed and get shot down by every woman who comes within five feet of me, but at least I get out of the house once in a while! You, on the other hand, would die if you lost cell phone reception for more than five minutes. I say ‘I love you’ because the happenstance of our being related makes me feel beholden to you, but the truth is if you were just a random acquaintance and you were on fire I wouldn’t piss on you to douse the flames.”
GT: Dude, I live in Colorado, “This summer is going to be fire” is not a cheerful image.
Pluggers: You’re a Plugger if you even have something you consider your “good plastic tableware.”
PMP: This brings up memories of my own engagement umpteen years ago, when I was treated to lunch by my friends at work. As we sat around the table, they asked me to hold up my ring (a *very* simple stone set in a plain gold band). As they admired it, a perceptive friend said, “…Ah…there it is…the embodiment of your hopes and fears!” At that instant, I honestly had a spurt of anxiety that she was absolutely correct about the “fears.” There were some serious misunderstandings and miscommunications between me and my fiancé later, to the point where we almost called it off. But we persevered and have been (mostly) happily married for 23 years now. :-)
MW: Reading through Josh’s links to Jeff and Mary’s prior history, I wish with all my heart that Jeff would let Mary go and find a woman who would really care about *him.* Mary is a narcissist, and truly cold-hearted to the core. Jeff deserves better. But then…maybe Jeff is content being subservient to her…who knows.
@TheDiva: #83: re-GT: My wife and I were at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park just two weeks ago. The park is currently closed due to wildfires that have already ravaged over 3,000 acres. I know what you’re talking about. I wish I could send you some of the torrential rain we’ve been getting in Texas.
Listen guy, don’t fear commitment! You are clearly made for each other, in the sense that you are literary snobs who would rather harp on pretentious metaphors rather than be clear about your feelings!
Pluggers: Today’s strip covers three Plugger tropes.
Pluggers are fat.
Pluggers are cheap.
Pluggers are poor.
@Charterstoned: #24
It looks to me like Mary just scooped up a couple of mud pies from the garden outside and opened a can of pale white lima beans.
@Lauralot: No, because we know full well (via those links that Josh has helpfully provided of numerous forms of cuckolding) that Mary would never “defend” Dr. Jeff.
I don’t think he needs to make such a scene. Whatever we think about ethical consumption under capitalism and the effectiveness of boycotts, we can all agree that purchasing diamonds from De Beers is one of the most immoral and stupid things you could ever make
“Hold on Mary, as a doctor I am a mandated reporter and I have to ask you to rewind this conversation. Did you just say you touch children?!?!”
@CanuckDownSouth: #28
re MW: I would love to see Olive with those manic eyes and dilated pupils as she comes charging toward Mary, shrieking “TUMMY BRAIN!!! TUUUUMMMMYYY BRAAAIN!!!!! MEEE EATS BRAINS!!!!!!” as she sinks her fangs into Mary’s arm.
“Emotions go along with the territory, she might me difficult to deal with. Mary, I am a surgeon, so I am not qualified to provide any professional therapeutical aid. On the other hand, neither do you. On the third hand, I can easily find you some drugs”
@Schroduck: One has to wonder…
FC – Taking a three year old to a tennis match makes as much sense as dragging all four melonheads through an art museum. Where are the other three? My guess is that holier than thou Grandma is babysitting. “I’ll watch Billy, Dolly, and PJ, but you’ll have to take Jeffy along with you. I don’t want him in my house – he’s possessed by Satan.”
Crankshaft – I thought that Funky’s AA monologues were the ultimate in rambling nonsense, but these interviews are much worse. If Skip transcribes those tapes, it will still take months to put it into a coherent story.
Pickles – Ugh. That’s disgusting.
Pluggers – You’re a plugger if your tableware includes a shovel.
Mary Worth – Obviously, Olive will have some problem that will require meddling by Mary. Surely there’s a neighborhood dog she can point to as having worse problems.
@pugfuggly:
BIZARRO
Someone is confused
@taig: Re 9CL – I thought that the person asking Alistair’s opinion was Amos. I have no idea where the car came from or why Amos is involved.
9cl — somebody’s going to screw in the back seat. Brings new meaning to “test drive”.
@I speak Jive: Or why an urbane Manhattanite even needs a car…
@Voshkod: #66
Hilarious!!! And for some reason I’m imaging Frances Bavier playing Mary…
@Charterstoned: #68
ROFLOL… :-)
@CanuckDownSouth: It’s kind of an inversion of Soap Opera Aging, though. In soap operas, children are aged rapidly so they can become involved in romantic storylines. In MW, Olive aged at a close-to-normal rate, while nobody else aged at all.
@Blinky the Wonder Wombat: To drive to New Hampshire to screw in a lake?
Truck must have been assuming this would be like an episode of Maury, where the DNA test would just shout out the identity of the father without needing any interpretation. Which, now that I think about it, would be a much funnier way for 23AndMe to work. “Travis, you are…NOT 1/16th Cherokee!”
@I speak Jive: I thought it was Amos, too, but it didn’t make sense at all, and they were talking about buying a car in the previous strip, so I thought Brooke was continuing that thread, even though that made no sense, and AAARRRRGGGHHHHHH!!!
Also, the face is all wrong for Amos. I don’t want to know this much about 9 Chickweed Lane!
Crank: Once again, this is a lot more telling than I think Batty realises. I break promises to myself all the time because it’s only me, but I keep promises to other people because that affects, you know, other people. But Meta-Batty can’t fathom that maybe it’s possible to rate letting down someone else as worse than letting down yourself.
That aside, this is basically “What made me go back was … I’d decided to go back.” The only way it’s even approaching anything interesting, or even coherent, is if Meta-Batty really does mean that’s the only reason he went back. “I didn’t want to. It was pretty clear I’d burnt all my bridges and was wasting my time. But I’d promised myself, even if I couldn’t remember why, and doing anything else would be betraying the Sacred Me!”
FG: This is really nitpicky, but shouldn’t the attack pheremones only affect Mongovians, since they evolved in concert with the hunt-hounds? But I guess if you start pulling on the thread of Mongovian evolution, and especially its convergences with Earth evolution, you’d never stop.
SH: Just to recap, not only has Gill’s basketball experience all been a) underwater and b) involved a self-powered ball, but he doesn’t even know what “running” means because he’s never had legs before! I’m really excited for all of that to not matter in the slightest! Henry Bajaras is reading this and thinking “Wow, some people should really think things through and do some research before they start writing about sport.”
Zits: Of all the possibilities of “gross” things Jeremy might see while looking into an upper-storey window in his own house, I am so glad it’s that one.
Today’s Dustin might be one of the most genuinely depressing things I have ever read.
Not sure anyone else did it but I followed those MW links which brought me to the “dramatic pool rescue” of Olive in a Sunday strip. Holy moly I went full circle.
@Voshkod: THIS is how I imagine all strips are.
@Horace Broon: #108: re-FG: The hell with worrying about pheromones. That giant hunt-hound should’ve already been on red alert and ready to attack before the assassin even got through the window. No Earth watchdog would’ve been caught with his pants down like that.
I would like to see a breakdown on the economics of the melodrama strips. Today’s Rex Morgan and Mary Worth are both examples of pure filler to spread out the current storylines for as long as they can get away with, but it seems like designing and drawing the art would be more time-consuming than writing the stories, so it can’t be _that_ much of a cost-cutter to do things this way.
(I also assume the people behind both strips are lazy.)
@Don: #110: I kind of laid off following Josh’s rabbit hole links because one time the strip below the one I was linking was the infamous Wilbur in a Speed-O.
@JamesBont: You’d think Dustin would realize he needs help–but that would rob this strip of its only premise.
Pardon my Planet: Ha, he’s so shocked his monocle popped out, but left the string! Also on the blond guy. That seems harder to explain, but I don’t know what else that line on his cheek could be, so I’m going with it.
Homework, it’s not just for kids anymore.
– ZITS: Looking from the outside clarifies teen vision
– BLONDIE: It used to take a four-year degree to crunch numbers
-BB: “nobody complains when those KIDS try it. :-/
@Daisy: Personally I always thought that Jeff was incredibly closeted because of the way he regarded his college roommate whose son married Jeff’s daughter. The majority of the time, Mary just wants to exploit Jeff’s many connections from money to social clout and the way they kiss each other is stiff and uncomfortable at best. As to why they’re together, it’s likely that Mary is blackmailing Jeff due to his sexuality because she believes that everyone else is as homophobic as she is.
Case in point: when Mary mentioned that she was going on a trip, Jeff looked ecstatic compared to how he looked like he was having a root canal without anesthesia when he was talking about how much Mary meant to him.
CS: Batton Thomas promises to go back to New York after he didn’t get that comic book job. But we already know he doesn’t get it later either. So what’s the point of talking about it?
JP: nice move, April. By creating a disturbance you’re ensuring witnesses will remember you both and perhaps even call police. Bad for a secret agent but smart for a civilian
MANDRAKE: Good thing Mandrake violated their express wishes and put a GPS tracker on the plane. That’s because men are smarter, you know. /s
Rw/O: Saddest strip today
6Cx: ignore the bricks, ignore the cliffs– full speed ahead! Words of a winner or of a fool?
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