Spiral into madness
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Family Circus, 7/22/25
I frankly am not a fan of the smug looks on Jeffy and Big Daddy Keane’s faces here. Oh, you think it’s funny to contemplate how terrifying it might be to be trapped on a boat with your primary prey animals, and if you fail to keep clear of them you risk not just your death but the complete extermination of your species? I bet Noah’s family had some pretty comical encounters with wolves and grizzly bears and such, but I don’t see you laffing it up about those.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 7/22/25
There’s a debate to be had over whether it’s acceptable to use a joke you saw in an email forward or Facebook meme in the nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip you’re being paid to create, and whether the fact that the joke is bird-related is significant in a strip where many of the characters are themselves birds. However, we already had that debate four months ago, when Mother Goose and Grimm ran this exact same punchline. They redrew the art, which is … something, I guess?
Beetle Bailey, 7/22/25
Don’t worry, folks. If America is invaded, we’ll be quickly defended by our crack division of … bed troops? Oh dear.
Mary Worth, 7/22/25
Is Mary copping a feel in that first panel? Is Ed going in for a “soul handshake”? What on Earth is happening
134 replies to “Spiral into madness”
MW:
You just know that the Taylors had their walls painted purple in anticipation of Mary’s visit.
MW:
“Penn Jillette?!? — what are you doing here, and what did you do with Ed?”
MW: Video chats are still enough for Mary to drain the youth out of her victims. Evy especially looks like she could be Mary’s Maalox chugging peer.
MW: when will we finally get the big reveal of Olive? What will Mary have to meddle? Will it anorexia obesity, drug addiction or demon possession?
Is Mary copping a feel in that first panel?
I thought they both were. They both have the same look on their faces.
FC: Do you really need a whole book to tell the story of Noah? Doesn’t Genesis get through it in, like, three chapters? Maybe the rest of the book is advertising for Northern Kentucky’s Ark Encounter.
MW: “Nothing beats being in person.”
That’s Zen, maaan.
(Note to Moy: actual humans would use the phrase “Nothing beats seeing you in person.”)
Beetle Bailey: If a guy walked up to me bound up on his cot like that, I’d forget the wailing of the siren: “came” would not land as “moved from that place to here.”
BB: I like how *seriously* Killer is treating this. “D-do you NOT hear that loud emergency alert, dumpy fat guy and weirdo bed-man? Why are you just standing around? GET OUTTA MY WAY!”
Luann: Those hand-made mascot outfits are actually pretty impressive. Knute should forget the comic book business and market his custom suits to businesses, sports teams, high schools, and furries.
Pluggers: Oh come on, a real Plugger would rub two sticks together.
Frazz: Christ, what an asshole.
CS: Re-read the last two days of this strip, but replace “Bombers T-shirt” with “Judge Wopner.”
MW: “Copping a feel?” Seriously, the only way these two could be hugging as drawn would be if each had their palms on the other’s ass.
Excuse me, mice did not need to fear cats before all animals were herbivore! How come Sunday’s “Pardon my planet” is more aligned with fundamentalist Christianity than “Family Circus”!?!?!
@Ettorre: we’re herbivore before the end of the Flood
MW: Shouldn’t that fireplace light on its own when Mary walks past it?
MW: Interesting; Mary shares the fourth wall with Evy, but allows Ed to upstage her. (oh, I know it’s not really interesting)
BB: I’d sooner greet the enemy armed with a cheese grater than rely on the denizens of Camp Swampy.
FC: Has Slylock Fox ever taken place on
Noah’s Ark? I’d read that.
MW:
“Mary, we’ve strategically placed our fruit still life on the mantle in today’s second panel to serve as powerful symbolism that we expect you to wax interminably, as you always do, during this visit with your Worthless bromides and aphorisms!”
Mary and Evy look unnervingly like they’re about to reenact the “same matter cannot occupy the same space” scene from “Timecop.”
@Banana Jr. 6000:
On Crankshaft : …Of course it’s mean old MOM who’s the culprit behind the disappearance of Jeff’s stupid CFL sweater.
**********
On Frazz : he sure is confident he can recover from his injury faster than Mrs Olsen can improve. I’d say something about him also being confident no one is going to be in the audience to see HIM lose, but it’s this comic, of course every single person and their dog is rooting for Frazz to humiliate Mrs Olsen (again).
**********
On Luann : Wasn’t “incredibly good at making costumes” GUNTHER’s thing? Or did it become his thing after this arc, when Greg realised that “I CAN MAKE COSTUMES FOR YOU WHEN YOU DO THEATER STUFF” was the wedge opening Gunther needed to get into a relationship with Luann (the fact that even then, it never went anywhere notwithstanding).
“I came as fast as I could”
“I know, Miss Buxley told me”
Mary Worth: The odd angles of Mary and Evy’s heads and their identical expressions are reminiscent of Rublev’s famed icon of the Trinity depicting the mysterious figures who appeared to Abraham and Sarah at Mamre. Or at least it would, if there were only two figures, only one of them simultaneously God and guest, the other a secondary character shortly to be absorbed into the divine being, leaving behind only bone and gristle.
FC: No wonder Jeffy’s concerned with the plight of small animals – he appears to be shrinking. That book is almost as big as he is.
FC: Jeffy asks when do they get to the part with the white whale.
Also Mary Worth: What’s going on, you ask? What’s going on is they’re in Brooklyn, where no one really cares if your brownstone is painted french blue and the mantel decorated with plastic fruit and some candlesticks you bought years ago at Pier One. At least it’s not Staten Island!
Beetle Bailey: I started to wonder how Beetle’s blanket and sheet stayed on his bed while he was walking around upright. And then I wondered if they strapped him into his bed at night, for everyone’s safety. And then I wondered if it was Miss Buxley’s idea. And then I wondered if it was a good idea to comment on the comics this early in the morning.
Mother Goose and Grimm: I’ve often thought that perhaps we here at joshreads.com were being too harsh on the cartoonists whose art we routinely mock. Surely, I thought, more work went into the production of said art than we realized, and the creators not nearly as lazy as we assumed. Well, it was a nice thought.
Beetle showing up to the emergency alert still in bed is a pretty good visual gag, completely ruined by Sarge’s pointing it out in dialogue. The Beetle Bailey team needs to have some respect for the intellects of their audience… who are still reading Beetle Bailey in the year 2025… hm.
@Hibbleton: They haven’t gotten to 1 Kings for Kids yet.
BB: This is more effort and less comfort than just getting up would have been. So, there’s legitimately a screaming siren that he recognizes as an emergency, possibly a tornado wreaking havoc outside, and Beetle decides that now is the time to perform some sort of mattress-girl protest, presumably against the various abuses that Sarge inflicts on him?
Luann: The one thing Gunther has been shown to be good at over the years is making costumes. It’s kind of his passion. And they’re throwing all that away to make Knute the costume guy. Admittedly, Gunther is engaged in his second favorite activity – complaining – but it’s still just not right.
Oh, Jeffy, no. The cats were too full from feasting on the bloated corpses of the brats who weren’t allowed on the ark because they kept asking bringing up things like that.
MW: That first panel is uncanny valley territory. No two human beings have ever embraced like that. And that second panel isn’t that much better, as Ed looks weirdly like a giraffe and that handshake has also never been seen in the real world.
Maybe Moy isn’t the only one who hasn’t interacted with a human being in some time.
MW: These greetings are the first time I’ve laughed out loud at this comic in MONTHS. Well done strip today for the funny pages, truly
Dustin: well, DustinDad could get up off his duff and, like the adult he is, go pick out his own dessert option.
MW: “…And so GLAD to have you over, Mary!” What does this mean?
OVER? Isn’t Mary STAYING with these people? Does Ed think Mary is dropping by for a brief visit, maybe some tea, or is he in for a really nasty surprise when Mary moves in for a visit that won’t end until she has to get back to Charterstone in time to make Thanksgiving dinner?
OVER? As in, “finished”? Well, if that’s what you mean, join the club, buddy.
OVER? As in “in control”? I’ve got news for you, Doc. Whether you’re glad or not, Mary WILL be “over”—and so will your pitiful notions that you are the captain of your soul or the master of your fate.
I follow an account on Bluesky that posts Nancy comics from the Ernie Bushmiller era and there are times ol’ Ernie would repeat gags. One might be from 1947 then he’d use it again in 1956, and why not? Coming up with a fresh joke a day is difficult and back then someone might remember reading it a decade ago but most people wouldn’t and it’s not like people had access to an archive at their fingertips.
Four friggin’ months though? No, there’s no excusing that.
FC:
“Remind me who gave us this book anyway, Dad.”
“Your Auntie Diluvian!”
Also, I just noticed I earlier wrote “asking bringing up things like that” and that’s going to haunt me until Mother Goose and Grimm makes that rooster joke again in November.
FC: “Now read us The Epic of Gilgamesh!”
GA: I know continuity isn’t a thing, but shouldn’t Slim have his truck looked at because of those wobbly tires, and not have driven all the way for food?
Well, it’s finally happened. The balloon has gone up, the Soviet 8th Guards Combined Arms Army has crossed into West German territory at the Fulda Gap, and the U.S. V Corps has been caught by surprise. The 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment has been mauled and is retreating in good order toward Frankfurt am Main. The only thing that can stop the Soviet juggernaut from reaching the Rhine in seven days are the men of Camp Swampy, a small outpost in the Vogelsberg. So, I guess Parisians better get used to vodka.
Mary is the Aunt Gertrude of the comics.
Family Circus: Jeffy is imagining the story with a cartoon cat and mouse chase. He wonders if the mice hit the cats with frying pans or dropped grand pianos on them.
Mother Goose and Grimm: Mike Peters is very old and probably suffering from some form of dementia. He might be repeating the same joke because he doesn’t remember he just did it 4 months ago.
Beetle Bailey: I am almost 100% certain that this joke about Beetle walking around with his bed has been used before.
FC: The facial expressions indicate an even more diabolical mentality than Josh suggests. Jeffy and Big Daddy are delightfully gloating over the millions of evil sinners getting what was coming to them. As an adult, Jeffy will draw hellish images of the Ark surrounded by hordes of bloating, stinking corpses in the water.
FC: if the Keane’s were REALLY followers of any Abrahamic religion instead of a pseudo-Christian cult, they’d read the actual Bibles, where Noah just brings two of every KOSHER animal and two of every sacrificial animal. If you weren’t officially edible or used for religious purposes, tread water, sucker.
@Charterstoned: Maybe it’s “over” in the pro wrestling sense, meaning “the audience buys into your persona.” Which very much disagree with Ed about. Wilbur is way more “over” as a heel than Mary is as a face right now.
FC:
“I don’t see any unicorns frolicking around in the water, Dad. Were the Irish Rovers just kind of making that up?”
MW: I genuinely like Brigman’s art, but she really shouldn’t have binge-watched 19 Kids and Counting before drawing panel 1. “Side-hugs” … yeesh
You just know Daddy Keane’s focusing on Genesis 9:20-27 and explaining that the Curse of Ham is why Billy can’t play with the kids next door.
MW-Nothing is happening like it always does.
Six Chix-“Save me giant sandwich!”
FC-“What was Noah’s wife’s name if it wasn’t Joan Van Ark?”
Curtis: I guess the joke is supposed to be that he thinks he’s going to become a productive member of society who forms healthy relationships with other people. Curtis is now part of generation alpha! He doesn’t stand a chance.
This is the most psychologically fucked up generation and our society has absolutely no idea on how to begin to fix it. This generation is going to be mostly unemployable and unable to ever live independently.
@Voshkod: When I read The Handmaid’s Tale, I wrongly assumed that the “tribe of Ham” was just Atwood taking Biblical literalism to its logical conclusion. Didn’t find out until later that some white fundamentalists genuinely believe in the concept, as if Noah somehow had sons who looked like Brad Pitt, Chris Rock and Jet Li.
MW: The Mary/Evy hugging, with each of them craning the neck as far away as anatomy allows, couldn’t be more intimate.
FC at least understands the first law of Noah’s Ark: You do not draw it without two giraffes on deck.
GT: If I didn’t know they were golfing I’d have thought it was a hand grenade.
Blondie: You can’t say Dagwood isn’t prepared for the enshittification of modern employment.
H&L: Threatening to move is just a gambit so Thirsty might mow the lawn.
Where’s an HOA when you need them?
Dustin: Dustdad and Dustmom are veering way too close to Fred and Mary Andrews’ territory. Expect a turf war any week now.
@Tonio: No, no, you see, Ham was white until he was cursed, then his skin turned black (seriously, some people argue this, and among those people are whatever church/cult/militia the Keane family attends).
9CL: Sigh. Thorax is “teaching” us how to lie. He instructs us on how to begin a sentence. He then says that the next thing you “hear” will be a lie. You don’t know what you are going to say until you hear it? It’s like Brooke confused “how to lie” and “how to tell you’re being lied to” in just two sentences. I suspect I read this paragraph more times than he did, and I am not the better for it.
“Mary! It’s good to see you! To listen to you, on the other hand…”
FC – The desperation in Jeffy’s eyes. “See Daddy? I’m still cute and so clever! Don’t you love me? Don’t you?!?”
I thought that Papa Keane was a King James Only guy! Unless King James only applies to the words, not the pictures
I guess this “Mother Goose and Grimm” is like Blade Runner’s Director’s cut or Star Wars Special Edition. The artist was not satisfied with how the original came out and took another chance to realise their vision
“Video chat is great, but nothing beats being in person”. This is also Ed’s opinion on cam girls
@Anonymous: It’ll take care of itself. Thanks to the accelerating development of AI across all industries, there won’t be any jobs for them to be employed with anyway, and climate change will force everyone into smaller and smaller enclaves of habitable land, so there’ll be no need for independent living!
…Too far?
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: if that’s so, then am I to assume that Ian and Dr. Jeff fill the roles of Frank and Joe Hardy, with Wilbur as chubby Chet Morton?
Hannibal Lecter: And what did you see, Mother? What did you see?
Mother Goose: Roosters. And they were screaming.
Hannibal Lecter: They were slaughtering the roosters?
Mother Goose: And they were screaming.
Hannibal Lecter: You still wake up sometimes, don’t you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the roosters.
– The Silence of the Roosters (1991)
MW missing third panel:
Wanna canoodle at the Coldplay concert? And by the way, Ed, I just fucked your wife.
FC – They were ogling their naked father-in-law? What happened next….
MG&G – I start each morning with a healthy bowel movement….
BB – So…Camp Swampy isn’t in Texas….
MW – Nothing like a good old fashioned face to face for a gaslight confidence grift to get Olive in a doddering old biddy’s will before we off her….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
“So, Ed, Evy, I see from the truncated menorah on your mantel that you’re 2/9th Jewish? Now that must be a fascinating story. Let’s talk about that for the next six weeks!”
@The Quiet Man:
Gen Z has an unprecedented mental health crisis. They all have severe ADHD, depression and anxiety. Apparently as much as 20% of them are LGBT. It’s going to be interesting to see where this all goes.
MW-“I like your scent, Evy.”
MW-“Ed, I made a special batch of muffins just for you. I got the recipe from a recent guest.”
Family Circus – Later that day Jeffy decided to play Noah’s Ark in the backyard, and managed to find two mice. When he put the mice into his ark (a cardboard box) alongside Kittycat, Jeffy was suddenly and disturbingly enlightened on the reality of “Nature, red in tooth and claw”.
Mother Goose and Grimm – A key lessoned gleaned from the Facebook groups the cartoonist is ripping “jokes” from is repetition. The same handful of trite jokes are told and retold, time and again, often with the same image, just degraded over time by copying, and with the scars of watermarks from other meme groups that did not originate the jokes. Legacy newspaper comics are in the role of just filling up space until its time to turn off the presses and the lights one last time, and don’t expect (or care if) readers notice.
Beetle Bailey – When America’s enemies do invade, Camp Swampy will be the last line of defense, due to America’s enemies assuming it was shut down during the post-Cold War Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. The Russians stopped sending their spy satellites over in 1999, thinking the activity they observed was that civilian environmental remediation workers, not actual troops in training.
Mary Worth – Even with newspaper comic strip time shifting Mary into different generations, there is no chance she was a Millennial who learned the early digital camera side face-to-face pose used by teenage girls for their MySpace pages.
@Pozzo: Colonel Sanders waits for Noah to finally land. Those last two sweet sweet chickens will finally be his.
“I misinterpret your joke so you don’t have to… wait… huh?”
Beetle Bailey: Beetle hopping around in his bed was funny enough on its own. Sarges line was unnecessary.
To Walker-Browne whoever… DON’T EXPLAIN THE JOKE!
FC: I’m sure that there’s some bizarre fundie rationalization for how the animals co-existed peacefully on the ark, along with answers to other questions like “how did, say, bison and kangaroos manage to get all the way to eastern Turkey” and “how did the prey animals live long enough after the flood to propagate sustainable populations” but I’ve had a late start this morning and I am NOT going down that rabbit hole.
MG&G: Anyone who’s been around chickens for more than a few hours know that roosters scream all the goddamn time, which…honestly, feels like an appropriate reaction right now.
MW: All of this is just killing time until Mary sees Olive and is shocked–SHOCKED!–to discover her sweet little friend is now (gasp) a teenager, full of rebellion and identity exploration and embarrassment of old people who use phrases like “tummy brain.” Will she have piercings and a pink mohawk? Short shorts, a halter top and “too much” (read: any) makeup? Will “Olive” now be “Oliver” and take Mary to task when she insists on deadnaming him? Eventually we will be wearied, even insulted by whatever comes to pass, but for this brief, sweet moment the possibilities are endless.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
Frazz: Christ, what an asshole.
No better summary of the strip and its titular character, (and supporting characters)
BB: Walking in bed like that is actually impressive. Beetle’s skills are wasted at Camp Swampy. He should be in some kind of special forces, or maybe the circus.
MG&G: Look at those eyes. Mother Goose knows she’s said this joke before, but she’s only a cartoon and has no choice but to say what the writer tells her to. I Am No Rooster and I Must Scream.
MW: “Mary! It’s good to see you in my peripheral vision!” “It’s good to see you in my peripheral vision too, Evy…”
@wesccov: There was a movie called “The Art of Lying” which exists in a reality where the concept of lying was completely unknown.
The protagonist was losing all of his assests, his house was being foreclosed. Then he had an idea and said “My house isn’t being foreclosed” and seeing as lying is a literally unknown concept, the guy believed him “I must have made a mistake, I’ll contact the higher ups and get this sorted out, my apologies”
He could say literally anything and people would believe him, it was almost godlike.
@TheDiva: It’s almost as if the bible makes literally no sense at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I love God, but I don’t believe anything the bible says aside from the morals they tell. “Don’t kill, don’t steal”
MG&G: So do all of the roosters Mother Goose knows scream in the morning, or is it just her dates? (Apologies if someone else told this joke four months ago.)
@BillieVee: Maybe they could bring back her old pig friend Hamm to play the role of AM.
@TheDiva: That was one of the best synopses (synopsisis?) of Mary Worth ever, and it’s captured the special 69 award, too. Well done.
WuMo: SPOILER ALERT!
C’shaft: “You were wearing the shirt for three months straight, it’s taken this long to even begin to get the funk out of the fibers.”
(Also, Jeff, you are HOW old and you aren’t doing your own damn laundry? The Divalings still haven’t worked out the finer points of sorting and folding, but even they can run a load without assistance.)
Dustin: Every dietitian and parent knows that the way you make fruit and vegetables appealing is by dressing them up and incorporating them into appealing recipes–broccoli with cheese sauce, fruit pizza, and such–but I kind of respect the lack of effort Dustmom is putting in here. She knows her husband will complain no matter what she does, so she just plonks a pear down in front of him and lets him bitch to his bitter black heart’s content.
GT: “Great! One question: who the hell ARE you?”
JP: Neddy knows the best way to deal with her family’s unending drama is to simply walk away from it.
Luann: So, they’re the only two running this booth, right? And they’re planning on chatting up guests and selling their books (yeah, I know, but they think they’re going to sell them) and all of that while wearing those stupid costumes? (I don’t even want to know how “Penrod” goes to the bathroom in that thing.)
That’s an excellent poser.
Definitely Wilbur as Chet, especially since Chet falls out of the boat all the time. On one of the Hardy Boys fan pages I’ve been on, they even have a drinking game where you take a drink every time Chet does that.
And we’ve established Mary Worth as Aunt Gertrude. Who would be the meek Laura Hardy, who lets Aunt Gertrude run over her all the time? Estelle could be good for that.
Dr. Jeff as Frank. Outstanding, especially since Frank never gets anything from Callie Shaw.
The stumper is Joe. No, I don’t want him portrayed by Ian. (Eew). How about Jared Not the Subway Pedophile? I could see that. And as Iola, how about Dawn. Okay, Franklin W. Dixon would spin in his grave if he were a real person and dead at the thought of the town bicycle being the virginal interest to Joe. But, what the heck, let’s shake things up.
Today’s advice from Aunty Acid.
MG&G – The previous version of this gag was only two panels. I hope they keep producing new versions of this strip with more and more panels, until it’s just a series of tiny slivers with one word in each.
Don Abundio, translated:
“I made bets with some teenagers that I can beat them in a road race tonight”
“You dope. You can’t win a race in this big truck”
“I won’t have to”
“They’re going to forfeit”
[On truck: SWAT TEAM / POLICE!]
Mother Goose: They didn’t even redraw ALL the art, they just replaced the last panel with two different ones. This shit isn’t even funny, its just embarrassing.
@Liam:
Drizzle, Drazzle, Druzzle, Dread, time for this one to take her meds
@Anonymous 18: Wasn’t “incredibly good at making costumes” GUNTHER’s thing? Or did it become his thing after this arc?
Good question. Either way, it seems like a missed opportunity for characterization.
I’ll be in with comics snark in a little while. Meantime, there’s something I’m interested in. I have a manuscript written for a mystery novel that’s first in a projected series. Shortish (c. 40k words) and light in tone. Do any of you know of any publishers that might be interested in something like that?
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Frank, a junior, was one year senior to Joe, a sophomore.
FC: Bears and wolves, my foot…that ark was carrying T Rexes and Velociraptors too, if creationists are to be believed. It’s a miracle anything survived besides cockroaches and rats.
MW: Is that a hug or an invitation to dance? And what’s with the secret “Skull & Bones”/”Masonic” handshake with Ed? Does QAnon know about these people???
BEEYLE BAILEY: Beetle: “I came as fast as I could. And that’s why Miss Buxley left all unsatisfied. Unfortunately it’s also why I’m stuck to the sheets right now.”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: I live just up the street from the famous
dog-dick pinkbubblegum pink Brownstone. The 95 year old owner sold it several years ago to people who re-painted to brown to match the surroundings.Luckily, they had enough of a sense of humor to make the house number pink, in order to preserve the memory.
Just a minor correction involving the Family Circus panel, but don’t you mean primary predator animals?
@Tabby Lavalamp: I *love* that account. There’s also a “Nancy without context” account which is also a lot of fun.
@TheDiva: MW: Especially insane will be Mary’s shock at any of these developments considering they’ve been video-chatting for years. Bonus if Olive’s reaction is “Mary who?” I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Mary thinks it’s perfectly normal for “kindred spirits” to talk through parental intermediaries
About that MW handshake: Ed is a Freemason, or an Elk, or a Modern Woodman of America, and is greeting Mary with the secret fraternal hand signals.
9CL: The first rule of reading 9CL is not to read the Thorax ones. The second rule is not to read any of the ones without Thorax.
@Little Guy: #37
“…’n then, daddy, daddy, for bedtime, read us the illustrated Necronomicon for Kids!!”
MARY WORTH: Ok, after looking at that first panel, now I’m thinking that “seeing Olive” was just a cover story and the real reason for her visit is because Mary knows these are the only people in her life who are willing to swing (and I don’t mean on the playground, if you catch my drift!).
GT: As a young, hip barkeep, of COURSE Beth would pull up in her golf cart and offer not some blah commercial Pepsi or Budweiser, but an Obscure vintage regional root beer.
@2+2=7: Ohhhh, I do catch your drift all right, but am really hoping we won’t see any more broad hints, because what we are occasionally shown of Wilbur’s sex life is bad enough, but seeing Mary’s sex life would break my brain.
@Daisy: Whoopsie, Daisy! I swear your post wan’t there when I sent in comment #96…
MW: Please, please make the twist that the little girl has NOT changed at all, and in fact still looks like a 9 year old. If there is a surprise reveal that the girl is a goth with a Mohawk, MW has already mentioned that she has been talking or face timing with the girl.
DT: “Don’t be scared, we’ll find this person and I’ll shoot that person with gun that fires metal bullets.”
RMMD: So, I guess he better get going and start reaching out to his possible new family; no need to stick around.
JP: Reena and Sophie got flushed out of the cafe – are they heading towards a trap? Has April finished beating the guy threatening her?
@Ukulele Ike: I admire the impulse, but my God, that was ugly.
@Anonymous: it is so strange to me that a generation brought up on screens, algorithms, and instant gratification would have ADHD. Or how a generation facing a drastic climate emergency their parents are denying; school shootings that no one cares about; and backsliding on the guaranteed rights they’ve been promised would be depressed and anxiety ridden.
As for the LGBTQ thing, I blame Tony Randall in “Love, Sidney.” And, I think about it, I blame him for all the aforementioned problems too. DEATH TO TONY RANDALL!!!’
Mary Worth: Has Ed always had an “Evil Spock” black goatee, or has Mary somehow traveled into the Darkest Timeline? (And if so — given the people she usually hangs out with and the situations she generally encounters — how could you tell?)
@brendancalling: Post of the day.
@brendancalling: There’s always some killjoy a-hat who can’t stop themselves from lecturing everybody and making everything political.
Mary Worth – Where’s the dog that Mary can point to as having a harder life than Olive when Olive cries about her own problems?
9CL – Pompous, pretentious dreck, Day 2.
That’s the current series, of course.
Arlo & Janis – I didn’t learn about this strip until a few years ago, so I’m enjoying these old strips made new.
Crankshaft – I didn’t care about Batton Thomas’s rambling, pointless shaggy dog story about himself. It doesn’t seem possible to care even less about something, but Jeff’s t-shirt in the laundry achieves that.
Pluggers – Why doesn’t he keep a flashlight in most rooms?
Frazz – Frazz gets to humiliate Mrs. Olsen in front of a crowd.
However, I predict that between her training and his just getting out of a leg cast, the race will end in a tie. If Mrs. Olsen makes an effort to become more active, she has to be not humiliated.
Luann: Ah, I thought this might be where Gunther puts on the wormcock costume.
@Ukulele Ike: That house must have figured in a lot of directions. “When you see the pink house, you’re almost there.”
I live in a development that was built starting in the late 1980s, so it isn’t a protected historical area. One of the neighbors painted their house trim that same Pepto Bismal pink, and the HOA made them change it.
Luann: Eltingville Club did a better story on making costumes
Careful, Jeffy. You’re getting dangerously close to pointing out the flaws in the Biblical Flood story. Do you want a week in the Shame Shed? Because that’s how you get a week in the Shame Shed.
MG&G: Josh, your research and historical knowledge are sans pareil. Wish you were a voice in international justice negotiations.
MW: how will the kid shock us tomorrow?
BB: no scoffing. Same thing recently happened in Peanuts rerun where scout member went on hike in sleeping bag.
I hate this new phone. After two months it writes what it wants rather than what I type. So if I say anything awful, it wasn’t me. It was the tech.
@Ettorre:
#13. Vegetarians: Gen. 1:29-30, 9:3-5. But a lot of us don’t take Genesis literally or absent of bias.
MW: Let’s not kid ourselves. By the second panel, Mary has already tuned out Ed and is relishing the juicy goss she can drop on the folks back at Charterstone. “Did you know they keep their *fruit* in a *bowl* on their *mantel*? And don’t get me started on how the *throw pillow* clashes with the *accent chair* … “
FC: The Big Bang Theory answered that one, Jeffy.
Sheldon: What did they feed the lions, Mother?
Mrs. Cooper: The bodies of the drowned sinners.
FC: Daddy, where does this Boner guy come into the story?
Crank: Okay, so Ed hasn’t done something absurd with Jeff’s lucky sports shirt, Pam’s donated it to a charity shop and is lying badly about it. Well done, Batty, that’s actually worse.
Curtis: Oh, hey, this storyline is back. I see Billingsley didn’t spend the time it was away trying to think of a joke.
JP: “Sophie, at times like this, when there’s danger, or complicated storylines, I’ve learned there is only one rational course of action. Now, I don’t know how to get to Alaska from Norway, but they’re both in the Arctic, so I’m guessing it’s not too difficult?”
MW: I’ve said before that
one of the fascinating thingspretty much the only vaguely interesting thing about the Olive story is that Ed and Evy have been consistantly presented as awful neglectful parents who dismiss her incredible imagination/powerful tummy brain insights/actual psychic powers and link to the divine (delete at random depending on Moy’s mood today) in favour of having sex all the time, and who only pay attention to her when they want to subject her to a killer surgeon. This isn’t us imagining subtext, it’s literally how they’re presented, but the most “tell, don’t show” comic strip out there doesn’t feel it can say that for some reason and Mary never calls them on it.Anyway, the point is that “It’s good to see you, we’re so glad to have you over” means “All the unpaid babysitters who can get here on less than a day’s notice have blocked our number” and Mary knows it.
SH: Me, incessantly for weeks: Are we really just going to ignore that Gill’s supposed awesome basketball skills are all based on a completely different physics than actually playing basketball?
Holbrook, now: Fine, let’s acknowlege that. Turns out it makes him even more awesome!
@Buck Ripsnort:
#42. Not what my Bible reads, Gen. 6:18-21. What does yours say? Again, many of us differentiate between metaphors and unbiased historical fact.
@Tonio: #49: In his short novel “Billy Budd” Herman Melville describes a black sailor as being of “the unadulterated blood of Ham”.
@Ukulele Ike, ythread: Thank you! I’m genuinely flattered, while at the same time feeling that I ought to apologise.
FC: I’ve always wondered if God just brought all the animals not native to the ancient Middle East to Noah or did his sons have to sail to Antarctica to collect the penguins.
FC: If the Flood even covered the highest points on Earth that means all on board the Ark would’ve been at a higher elevation than Mt. Everest. If the cold didn’t kill them wouldn’t the thin air have?
Crankshaft: There are all kinds of things that could have happened to Jeff’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers game shirt. Maybe Pam spilled bleach on it in the wash. Maybe Crankshaft tried to do the laundry and spilled bleach on Jeff’s shirt. Maybe Crankshaft used Jeff’s shirt as a cleaning rag, or to polish the car. Maybe Pam donated it to charity without Jeff’s permission, like Anonymous and Banana Jr. 6000 suggested. (I remember one story years ago when Pam wanted to donate Max’s old toys and picture books to charity, and Max objected.) Maybe she simply threw it away because it was getting ragged. Whatever happened, it’ll take a whole week, maybe two, for us to find out.
@Activist:
#119. Oops, should’ve add Gen. 7: 1-3, 7-10. Not much to do on arc so probably reproduced like rabbits.
love is… seeing a clock on a snail and thinking of her because she takes so damn long to do anything.
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
RIP Ozzy Osbourne, and the Devil better watch his back.
Luann-Penrod is just a remade gimp outfit.
@Horace Broon: Too late! I’d already decided not to read Safe Havens today.
Luann: Everyone who’s been to a book/comic book convention knows you gotta use sex to move product. Those Paddy n’ Penrod costumes need to include long legs and fishnet stockings, like the dancing 1940s packages of Old Gold cigarettes.
@Anonymous: I BLAME TONY RANDALL FOR THAT TOO.
BB: Tomorrow’s Buxley Wednesday so he can reuse the “I came as fast as I could” line. “Yes, Beetle, that’s the problem.”
FC: Are those two kangaroos hanging out at the stern or did this version of Noah bring along some freakishly large bunnies?
MW: It’s clear that Evy is very practiced in pretending to be happy to see people, and that Ed is very high.
I just discovered that GoComics has a (highly political) regular strip about the Pope, called Francis. Although it’s now about Leo. It features a Franciscan monk, so maybe he’s also named Francis.
@Poteet: We see Mary’s “sex life” whenever she’s in the throughs of her latest meddle. Like look at her expression when Sonia the college lib stereotype invaded her condo with paternity news. That was Mary’s “O-face” for sure (Dr Jeff, of course, can’t accurately verify this.)
C-Shaft: I stand corrected. It’s not Crankshaft who’s responsible for the missing shirt, but rather the Wife/Mother figure. As if it were a comic book collection or the like.
Dustin: It would be interesting to learn how a couple with such different attitudes to something as basic as food stayed together long enough to have two kids—one now a twentysomething, the other a teen. Not in the context of this comic as written but, you know, somewhere.
GT: Here’s another reason Gil is with Beth. Her idea to tap the functional alcoholic market right on the greens is going to make her a very wealthy woman.
H&L: Look at how helpful Lois is. Having new neighbors is her dream too.
JP: Assuming there’s at least one non-mobster in the café—and the chestnut haired grandma from 7/14 didn’t look like one—the police should already be aware of what went down.
Luann: Gunther helped create these characters and either he’s forgotten who they are or at least Knute thinks he has. Relatable.
RMMD: If they find out the least surprising thing for them will be that their half-brother is involved in roots country-adjacent areas of the music industry.